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The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Tag: Collage

London based photo-collage artist Jess Littlewood takes us into a spacey alternate dimension. These prismatic future worlds, dotted with geodomes, are her vision of a failed Utopia that is perpetually doomed. Littlewood's images are the result of built up layers of found images which she exhaustively archives. Alien crafts and upside-down pyramids hover in forboding skies overhead and forests burn in the background, while abandoned landscapes show little sign of survival below.
Hugo Barros is attracted to nostalgic, kitschy visuals and often arranges them in enigmatic ways in his hand-cut collages. The Lisbon-based artist uses snippets of vintage advertisements, pulp science fiction novel covers, and old family photos to create psychedelic compositions that deal with supernatural visions and apprehend our curiosity about the cosmos. He often chooses images that share similar stylistic elements despite their disparate content, resulting in absurd amalgamations that somehow retain a sense of harmony. Take a look at some of Barros's latest works below.
These dramatic images of fallen Baroque interiors are the collage work of Spanish artist Paul Genovés. He stitches together photos of nature with postcards of 17th and 18th century places that he's collected from street markets. The result is both dreamy and disturbing with a strong impact- and not too far from reality. Primarily, his subject is bodies of water, like ice floating through a Venetian palace or waves crashing down the stairs of an old theater. Recent works also show forests taking root in palace halls.
Russian collage artist Philipp Igumnov doctors old photographs to make them look like documentation of supernatural occurrences. An enormous cumulous cloud with doors and windows becomes a celestial residence; a woman holds up her palm to reveal a swarm of miniature UFOs; a soccer goalie dives to catch a speeding comet. Igumnov seems to enjoy messing with the idea of photography as a truth-telling medium and manipulates it to indulge his viewers' curiosity about aliens, ghosts, and the like.
Stephen Eichhorn spends hours sifting through vintage magazines and cutting out photos of plants. Especially enthralled with cacti and succulents at the moment, Eichhorn frankensteins the flora into colorful arrangements that would rival even the most manicured gardens. The saturated colors of his source imagery make for vibrant, unusual bouquets. Eichhorn pays as much attention to the background as the imagery itself, frequently mounting his collages on metal or ombre paper. While flowers are his focus, Eichhorn initially gained online popularity when he began posting the cat collages he created in his downtime on Tumblr. Check out some of his recent work below.
Japanese pop artist Keiichi Tanaami (previously covered here) has a new exhibition on view at Tokyo's underground gallery, Nanzuka. "Cherry Blossoms Falling in the Evening Gloom" is named after his show's titular piece, an effort to take the darkest of his personal experiences and turn them into a positive image. The 3-meter painting leads into a transformation in the artist's motifs, known for his glowing, grotesque creatures, which are shown emitting light.
Robert Hardgrave (previously featured in HF Vol. 8) is an intriguing artist from the Northwest, basing his studio out of Seattle, WA. Hardgrave is a self-developed artist with a wide range of techniques under his belt. Previously known for his colorful free-form painting style, he has moved forward and has allowed his experimentations to dictate his progression into a new visual realm. Though he took a step away from pursuing showing his work in galleries and filling his calendar with a demanding schedule of exhibitions, he never ceased his creative stream of art creation. The artist gives us an exclusive peek into his studio, as he is currently working on a new technique of large-scale photocopy collage transfers. Hardgrave explains how this shift occurred and how it has renewed his passion for making new work.
Emerging NYC-based artist Lala Abaddon's journey through the art world started with analog photography and poetry. The idea of creating works that carry more than one story always fascinated her, and Abaddon felt like she found the answer when she wove her first piece. Interested in the process of deconstruction and reconstruction, she decided to cut up multiple existing photographs and weave them into new images.
Belgian artist David Delruelle creates frenetic collages that defy physical laws. It would be misguided to look for some sort of lucid commentary within his work. Instead of using explicit symbolism, the artist relishes shock-factor juxtapositions and plays with his viewers' gut reactions and desires. A distinct thread throughout his body of work is a visceral depiction of human anatomy. Delruelle superimposes realistic illustrations of hearts, brains and intestines over human faces, creating strange mutants with scrambled parts. Other collages indulge the fantasy of escaping to a magical land. Delruelle juxtaposes close-up images of creatures and sweeping vistas to make human beings appear minuscule in the context of nature.
German-born collage artist Thomas Spieler creates intriguing multimedia works that play with the dualism that exists between the human and natural worlds. Spieler juxtaposes vintage black-and-white photographs of human figures with brightly colored photographs of more abstract forms. Many of the black-and-white photos look like they could be ads or pictures of movie stars lifted from old magazines, while others appear to be photographs of classical sculptures from antiquity. Meanwhile, the colorful photos are of objects found in nature, such as minerals, geological formations, butterfly wings and flower petals.
Berlin-based artist Pierre Schmidt's work floats freely between illustration and collage, traditional and digital. The artist splices vintage photographs of well-groomed ladies and gentlemen that evoke the standards of 20th-century propriety, turning them into bastions of surreal visions. In one piece, a cranium is cut open and in another, a face lifts off the head, implying a sort of out-of-body, psychedelic experience. Schmidt's drawings flow as freely and impulsively as doodles, with lots of frenetic line work reigned in by the geometric organization of each piece. Each piece a veritable mind trip, his work speaks to the day dreamers among us.
Though Mike Parillo's work appears to be a cacophony of colors at a first glance, the artist's abstract oeuvre is executed with the tightness of illustration. His latest series of camouflage-like paintings for his solo show, "Just the Tip" at LA's CES Contemporary, is a wild display of peacock tail hues. The colors take on cloud-like shapes or furry textures, rendered with precise line work that evokes early cartoons. The self-taught Parillo got his start as a commercial illustrator for snowboarding companies in the early '90s and his paintings certainly reverberate with the energy of extreme sports culture and imagery.
French born artist Liz Brizzi held her first solo exhibition with Thinkspace Gallery (previewed here) on Saturday. “Adrift” continues her experimentation with urban landscapes in the form of painting and photo collage. This time, Brizzi went to Asia in search of inspiration. “I’ve always loved Japan. I went there with this exhibition in mind, with a plan in my head to create my own version of it,” shared Brizzi on opening night. Among the cities represented in Brizzi’s new work are Roppongi, Tokyo and the Damnoen Saduak floating marketplace in Thailand. Seemingly uninhabited, her work celebrates the architectural design and essence of a place long after we’re gone.

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