Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine
In her graphite drawings and paintings, Catriona Secker finds inspiration in biology textbooks and vintage natural history tomes. In the drawing above, in particular, the artist said she found inspiration in the reproductive system of a cockroach. Secker, whose work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, Australia, and beyond, is based in Sydney.
Davor Gromilović continues to craft lush fantasy worlds in his drawings and paintings, with both massive scenes and intimate looks at his monsters. The artist is constantly experimenting in his works, toying with perspective in odes to NES games or blending textures. Gromilović last appeared on our site here.
The graphite drawings of Christopher Charles Curtis resemble collages in how they pull in imagery from disparate and vintage sources, yet all elements are crafted by the artist’s hand. The Oklahoma-born artist has recalled tales from fantasy in his work, as well as the real-life influence of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Each work carries its own mystery, further underscored by the lack of color in most of these works.
There’s both an elegance and jarring quality in the otherworldly creations of Caratoes. The artist shares these disfigured characters in both murals and gallery works, moving between monochromatic and vibrant hues. The artist had a recent installation at Superchief Gallery’s Miami location during Miami Art Week.
The fantastical graphite drawings of Ethan Murrow have a sense of both realism and absurdism in how they examine the Western experience. In particular, Murrow has a fascination with discovery and reckoning with the world around us. Murrow was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Amy Cutler’s gouache narratives explore womanhood and the Western experience through surrealism and icons of domestication. The Poughkeepsie-artist plays with pattern and texture in these scenes, pulled from both contemporary design and historical fashions. Her work has been shown in solo shows from New York to Stockholm.
Visoth Kakvei, a Cambodia-born artist who resides in Maine, crafts intricate, illusion-filled drawings inside of his sketchbook.The artist sometimes digitally enhances these works, further pushing the absorbing nature of his work and keeping the viewer guessing which aspects of the work are inherent and which are affected.
In the past, Jillian Dickson’s colored pencil drawings blended flowers and female anatomy. With “My Undies,” the artist’s realistic, vibrant style highlights a different brand of intimate imagery. The artist says that “the reality of women’s underwear seems to be one big dirty secret.”
Jeremy Fish's solo show "Yesterdays and Tomorrows" at San Francisco's FFDG has a carefully planned installation. Black lines on the gallery's left wall outline a cartoon thought bubble that houses almost 20 years worth of drawings; on the parallel wall of the narrow space, mural-scale paintings hang inside the hollow outlines of cartoon bunnies painted directly on the room's surface. But at the opening night of "Yesterdays and Tomorrows," it was difficult to even get close enough to see these meticulous details. A huge crowd had amassed to celebrate an informal retrospective of one of San Francisco's most well-known artists from the past two decades.
Illustrator Kate Lacour describes her work with three words: "body horror beauty." More silly than terrifying, her "Bodies" series of drawings remixes factual textbook-style anatomy diagrams, transforming the make-up of the human body into kaleidoscopic arrangements of limbs and organs. Lacour achieves visually pleasing symmetrical compositions through strange juxtapositions of parts. In one piece, the musculature of two faces intertwines like an infinity symbol, nestled inside a female pelvis that has been opened up for view. In others, she incorporates Buddhist imagery (the lotus position, open-palmed hand gestures) — perhaps to show that these bodies shouldn't inspire fear but rather expose a new perspective on the structures we take for granted.