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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
The work of Oakland based painter and street artist Allison Torneros, better known as Hueman, looks spontaneous, but to her, it is a science; a perfectly calculated blend of opposing elements. "I am constantly seeking balance between the beautiful and the grotesque, the abstract and the figurative, and that golden moment between sleep and awake," she says. Hueman's art has become instantly recognizable for its equally geometric and ethereal air, broken up as if seen through a colorful prism. Hueman elaborates on the ethereal aspects of her work with her latest exhibit "Just One Moment", which debuted over the weekend at Mirus Gallery in San Francisco.
Los Angeles based artist Justin Bower’s larger than life oil paintings feature anonymous subjects that appear digitized, but are painstakingly hand-painted. Through their expressive, glitchy faces, first covered in Hi-Fructose Vol 31, Bower examines our close relationship with technology. In our 2014 interview with the artist, he said, "My work is foremost about the destabilization of the contemporary subject in an increasing control society, and often I use the digital realm as the environment to place them in. It’s almost an ontological build up from scratch, building a new idea of who we are." On September 10th, Bower will debut a long-awaited new series at UNIX Gallery in New York with his exhibit "The Humiliations".
Swedish artist Mikael Takacs creates mesmerizing paintings that he then distorts with marble effects. His subjects are people that he has met in his own life, warped into his own interpretations using the abstract expression of marbling. "I find that the half abstract nature of my portraits makes it both easier and harder to connect with them. It's harder in the sense that you can't really see who it is, or maybe even what it is. It may be easier to connect with them for basically the same reason, as you can project so much of your own thoughts onto someone you can just barely see."
Berlin-based French artist Jaybo Monk (covered here) creates visual collages where figures and their surroundings become one, a place that he calls "nowhere." He then mixes unexpected elements into this nonsensical space, an experimentation Jaybo also carries into his sculptural works. "I want to disobey in my paintings; disobey the symmetry, the techniques and the narratives system. I am interested in nonsense, the only space for me where freedom is real. I use tools like chance and mistakes to evaluate my craft. I flirt with the impossible. I need to go to places I`ve never been before." We visited with Jaybo in his Berlin studio, where he is now working on a new series inspired by immigration.
Joram Roukes' collage-like oil paintings, with their floating figures and colorful washes, appear dreamy, but his greatest inspiration has always been based in reality. In "The Great Beyond," his new solo exhibition currently on view at Stolenspace Gallery in London, he sets out to escape it. Roukes has recently experienced a sort of escape himself, when he relocated from the Netherlands to Los Angeles. This time last year, he held his first show as an Angeleno, "Paramnesia" (covered here), which summed up that experience visually. Now with a wider sense of exploration, Roukes continues to draw upon his life experiences.
Hueman, Erik Jones (HF Vol. 27 cover artist) , and Alex Yanes recollect their various artistic beginnings in "So Far, So Good", now on view at Joseph Gross gallery. Notably, the show also marks each artists' first in the famed Chelsea, New York area. Though having followed very different career paths, they have each arrived at bold and colorful palettes. Check out more photos after the jump!
On Saturday night, KAWS returned to Honor Fraser Gallery with new drawings, paintings, and sculpture in "Man's Best Friend". Hundreds lined up to for a chance to meet the artist, and there was no shortage of instagram selfies. The show offers bold abstractions of his favorite cartoon characters, this time Peanuts. KAWS' technique of superimposing abstract shapes onto his own versions of the characters is almost unreal. Upon close inspection, you won't find any hint of the artist's touch. His work is meant to be taken in as a whole, described as a "landscape" that pays homage to animated icons and 1950s American Expressionism.