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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Minimal and quiet, Brian Robertson’s artworks seem to be both a homage to cubism and other various abstract art movements, and to our curious obsession with space and the universe. Going against typical physiognomy, the LA-based artist dissembles people and objects with clean acrylic shapes and lines juxtaposed with controlled dashes of spray paint. Looking closer, you’ll also notice that various portals appear in his work — a black hole doorway to a starry universe, a triangular cut-out through which a blue line travels — perhaps a commentary on the loneliness of the human condition and the vast wonder of the universe. On a more humorous level, Robertson names every one of his people or objects with tongue-in-cheek titles such as Mr Pot-Head Worm-Mouth or Mr Yellow-Brick Shit-House.
If there’s anyone whose work could convey the experience of tetrachromacy, it’s Markus Linnenbrink. The multi-disciplinary artist’s trippy installations and paintings might take those with average vision closer to experiencing a condition where the affected see millions more colors on the spectrum than most human beings. However, Linnenbrink’s drips and strips of colors aren’t a result of a biological condition but rather an aesthetic preference (besides, tetrachromacy only affects women).
Road trips, the first sunsets (and sunrises) of the fall, a few beers, abandoned houses and a group of artists — that pretty much sums up the flurry of activity that took place at Salton Sea recently. The "accidental" lake (engineers originally dug an area for faster irrigation) in the Colorado Desert in Southern California was the setting for friends Eddie Colla, 2wenty, Nite Owl and Caratoes, who all made their mark there with signature work.
It’s all too easy to walk through life in a robotic daze, ignoring pressing issues right in front of our eyes. However, the current show at Above Second Gallery in Hong Kong, "Somedays Somedaze," intends to snap you out of the dreamy and sometimes destructive somnambulism of daily life. In this show, Hong Kong based artist collective Parents’ Parents (see our earlier profile of them here) and Singapore native Kristal Raelene Melson pair up to discuss a host of contemporary issues and reflections as a response to society and mass consumption, and the ever-present question of what it means, or takes, to be human in today’s world.
You might get a jolt of déjà vu looking at Brazilian artist Lucio Carvalho’s photographic work. Significant images in his portfolio feature monuments of culture - a towering Tate, a sinewy Bilbao Guggenheim, a sun-reflected Louvre - contemporary institutions that have proved integral to the architecture of a city’s art scene. However, in each of these images, something is a little off – the usual foreground and background are hijacked with paraphernalia (shopping bags, STOP signs, yellow plastic chairs) that reveal no explicit tie to the museum or gallery. The images are both familiar and unfamiliar, not so much a trick of the eye as a trick of our cultural systems.
In the summer, the city of Vienna, Austria quiets considerably as renowned opera houses and classical institutions take a break from their year-round fanfare of traditional cultural ventures. But on the streets, a nascent art festival is making major waves despite this year only being its second iteration. HilgerBROTKunsthalle is a spacious gallery nestled between other contemporary art spaces in a former Ankerbrotfabrik (bread factory) building. The space – opened by esteemed gallerist Ernst Hilger - organizes the annual Cash, Cans & Candy festival and its concurrent gallery exhibition, an operation dreamt up by curator Katrin-Sophie Dworczak. Running for the months of summer and into the start of fall, the festival consists of new murals by a myriad of artists well-known in the ever-evolving contemporary street and urban art scene.
Never one to shy away from the macabre, artist and graphic designer Hedi Xandt is known in art circles for his beautifully ghoulish sculptural pieces, which often incorporate elements of the human skeleton. His fascination with skulls and the human profile has led to a series of busts reminiscent of classical Hellenic Greek art. Taking inspiration from ancient Gods and beauties carved in marble, Xandt transforms these figures of perfection to align with his own dark vision.
Rifle through French artist Julie Sarloutte's art supplies and you might find not tubes of oil paint, but dozens of thread bundles. At first glance, her works appear to be paint on canvas, the unmistakable palette knife angling and impasto streaks making up portraits and muted scenes of political violence. But looking closer, you might see the pop of thread coming through, as all pieces are meticulously hand-embroidered by Sarloutte, who also dabbles in mosaic and yes, paint.
Sculpting small-scale worlds is all in a day’s work for Korean artist Myung Keun Koh. The Pratt Institute graduate’s oeuvre consists of photographic laminates delicately pieced together in three-dimensional forms - boxes that sometimes convey little buildings, cityscapes and classical nudes that glow with luminescent light from within. Koh prints his images on transparent film and then laminates those images, melting them together to form his sculptures. Viewed from different angles, the printed images on these boxes shimmer fluidly, the result of careful abstract arrangement. With the medium of photography, he captures a single moment — but when the photos are layered into boxes, the moment becomes alive again.
Whimsical worlds are neatly constructed in the works of French illustration and graphics duo Violaine Orsoni and Jeremy Schneider, better known as Violaine & Jeremy. Out of their hand-drawn pieces fly portraits bursting with personality: anthropomorphized woodland creatures, or human faces revealing character quirks with simple props — a crown of leaves and branches, a raven perched on a shoulder — a subtle nod to the vintage-style portraiture.