With Patricia Piccinini’s current exhibition at Arken Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, the sculptor’s hyperrealistic creations carry a surprising intimacy. Running through Sept. 8, "A World of Love" offers figures and forms across several years from the artist. She was last featured on our website here. (Museum photographs by David Stjernholm.)
Ron Mueck The exhibition “Reshaped Reality: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Sculpture” has currently taken over at the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taiwan, with the likes of Patricia Piccinini, Ron Mueck, and several others. The survey of hyperrealistic figurative work features both larger-than-life and distorted takes on the human form. The exhibition runs through Sept. 22 at the space.
Marc Sijan's hyperrealistic figurative sculptures are both unsettling and vulnerable. The artist often depicts everyday people, from blue-collar workers and public servants to characters in their most vulnerable moments. And at times, works like "Birth" take on a more conceptual role.
Aleah Chapin’s vulnerable figures exist within a spectrum of emotions: joy, contemplating, stoicism. Yet, in each, the painter has the ability to tie our natural states to nature itself, often crafting lush environments for her subjects. The artist is particularly influenced by the region she inhabited in her youth.
Ron Mueck gathers 100 individual, enormous skulls for a new installation at National Gallery of Victoria’s Triennial. The sculptures in "Mass" are crafted from fiberglass and resin, and each is about a meter high. Mueck's hyperrealist work was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Using silicone, wood, resin, actual hair, and marble, Mexican sculptor Ruben Orozco crafts realistic depictions of famous figures. Created in varying scales, these entrancing figures have gone viral for their eerie reflection of humanity. He's created sculptures depicting Frida Kahlo, Pope Francis, and other historical figures. The work may remind you of other sculptors of realistic figures, like Ron Mueck and Kazuhiro Tsuji.
Kevin Peterson is a Houston-based oil painter recognized for scenes in which wild animals and children interact against urban backdrops. One Peterson piece, "Coalition II," was recently used as the cover for the newest Red Hot Chili Peppers record, "The Getaway." The artist’s third solo exhibition with Thinkspace Gallery, "Sovereign," runs through Sept. 10. Peterson last appeared on HiFructose.com here.
On the section marked “Giant Drawing” on Sergio Barrale’s website, a factoid provides a sense of the hardship that goes into each portrait: “500-700 pencils died in the process of making these works.” Look into any corner of Sergio’s “faces,” and you’ll believe him.
Ghanaian artist Jeremiah Quarshie finds the inspiration for his paintings in his immediate environment. Living and working in Accra, the capital of Ghana, his highly realistic acrylic portraits depict models, typically ordinary women, in roles of beauty queens, businesswomen, and laborers alike. In his own words, the people in his portraits are characters representing the “foundations of society into pools of utter elegance", 21st century workers and fictional women.
Carole A. Feuerman's hyperrealistic sculptures of graceful human subjects like swimmers, divers, and dancers, featured here, are undeniably lifelike. But they are also magical in their dreamy state. Her sculptures also capture something that isn't real in the tangible sense, and that is the soul and emotion of a living person. Some call it "super-realism", but in Feuerman's words: "My sculptures combine both reality and illusion- I'm idealizing the human form, its not life as it really is."
During the last seven years, Ontario based artist Kit King has struggled with agoraphobia which is clinical anxiety in response to open spaces. As she explains, she lives her life "behind the same walls day in and day out" and worries she may never see her art outside the studio. Her emotions and relationship to spaces inform her works, featured here on our blog, and while highly technical, they represent the artist's study of identity in the context of space.
Nigerian artist Oresegun Olumide goes beyond realism with his meticulously detailed oil paintings that could easily be mistaken for photographs. Notoriously difficult to capture in fine art, water plays a central role in his portraits: each figure is unclothed, allowing Olumide to explore the distinct texture and aesthetic quality of water-on-skin.
The grotesque miniatures of Korean sculptor Dongwook Lee are not for everyone, and yet his work stems from what he describes as a basic concern for all human beings. Previously featured here on our blog, the Seoul, Korea based artist's figures are small-scale sculptural works, most measuring no more than 12" inches high made of Polymer clay, that typically depict contorted human forms. He embodies the idea of physical "likeness" in his most recent sculptures, featuring humanoids with growths of pink-colored mushrooms and massive, heavy lumps of flesh that they are forced to carry.
Korean sculptor Xooang Choi's sculptures of bodies and imaginary creatures are often described as hyper-realistic, but they are also surreal in their elements of fantasy and nightmarish distortion. We've featured both his most imaginative and more graphic visions on our blog, sculptures that explore themes of destruction, transformation and re-assemblage. To Choi, the body is a vessel through which we perceive and express ourselves, and one that provides him with an ideal medium to explore the possibilities of the human condition.
Austrian-Irish artist Gottfried Helnwein, who presides between Ireland and Los Angeles, is vocal about his concerns relating to violence in modern society; in action movie and video games, the hero carries the biggest and baddest weapons, while in real life, people have been brutally killed in mass murders like the Holocaust, and in recent years, children have gone to school and been shot by other children. "For me, painting is just a way to strike back and force people to look at that. That's my response to it," Helnwein says in a new documentary about his work.
Frida Kahlo, Mexico's most famous woman artist best known for her numerous self-portraits, is portrayed once more as hyperrealist Kazuhiro Tsuji's latest subject. Tsuji, featured here on our blog and in Hi-Fructose Vol. 35, has become well known for his larger than life portraits of celebrities, artists, presidents and other popular figures. Rendered with a heightened realism, Tsuji's Frida is made of resin, platinum silicone, and other materials by the same technique that he once practiced as a special effects makeup artist.
Portland based artist Eric Wert, first featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 32, is known for his larger than life and visually intense still life paintings of plants and food. Though his style is hyper-realistic, there is something about his portrayal of the vibrancy and ripeness of his subjects that makes them more appealing than life. Wert makes every day florals and foods like grapes and tomato look beautiful and evocative with a certain wildness. He has said, "I want to create an image that one can be lost within. To me, still-life painting is about looking intensely. It's about intimately exploring a subject." For his current exhibition at William Baczek Fine Arts in Massachusetts, Wert created a smaller series featuring hydrangea, lilies, pansy, iris, and figs in luscious, glistening still lifes.
Toilet paper, keys, pills, and dice are just a few of the every day subjects that Chinese artist Chen Wenbo depicts in his larger than life, hyper-realistic paintings. Chen once explained that he is most interested "in the surface of things", something he explores in his exaggeration of small details. His subjects almost feel important in their massive scale, which allows us to appreciate details like their vibrant colors that would otherwise be overlooked. Most of Chen's works are irregularly shaped, distorted or fractured in a way that looks like broken glass. His latest body of work draws upon the theme of the "Fat Years", inspired by the Chinese dystopian thriller written by Chan Koonchung.
Hyper-realist painter Maria Teicher, featured here, likens the experience of being an artist to being in high school. As a student, she felt like an outcast who didn't quite fit in, a "loner" forced into an artificial social dynamic. Teicher explores this theme in per paintings, which portray people in powerless moments, often wrapped in "veils" that distort their faces. Her work almost stops your breath, not only for her impressive use of the oil medium, but because you can feel the moment of constriction. For her latest body of work "Here Together, So Alone" at Arch Enemy Arts in Philadelphia, Teicher observes how we group ourselves together as humans while remaining inexplicably alone.
Most of us flinch when we see a bad bruise. Finland born, Helsinki based artist Riikka Hyvönen sees an inspiring myriad of colors that tell a story. Her art combines hyperrealism painting with sculptural elements, pop and kitsch styles, taking the pain that we have all experienced at some point and making it strangely alluring. She calls bruises "kisses", specifically worn by roller derby girls, of which she collects photographs and then reinterprets into large-scale artworks.
Born in Cologne, Germany, former tattoo artist Mike Dargas paints portraits of women dripping in honey. His hyperrealistic oil paintings are painted on a large-scale and appear as impressive photographs. With such provocative titles as "Golden Thoughts," "The Ecstasy of Gold," and "Carpe Diem Baby," the portraits exude a certain opulence, suggesting honey as a metaphor for gold. Using this analogy, his paintings may be interpreted as commentaries on the role of monetary wealth in contemporary society. With closed eyes and probing tongues, Dargas' women become greedy narcissists caught in moments of private ecstasy.
What makes some of us feel repulsed may be a thing of a beauty to others. That seems to be the case with Buenos Aires based studio and artist collective Six & Five's latest work. The group has designed a beautifully disturbing series of digital creatures that they call "Morbo". Inspired by oceanic organisms, the Morbo are all that remain of a recently-occurred apocalypse, discovered on toxic beaches during low tide. They are strangely alluring in their hyperrealism.
Seattle based artist Claire Johnson and Canadian artist Brad Woodfin each portray their own take on natural beauty with realistic detail. While Johnson overpowers her canvases with largescale aerial landscapes, Woodfin's animal subjects are mysteriously bereft of their environment. Opening tonight, the two artists will debut their new works together at Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle.
Portuguese multimedia artist Gustavo Fernandes portrays a parallel universe in his oil paintings. According to this essay on his work, Fernandes had a difficult childhood and once referred to himself as someone who had lost his roots. Roots are a recurring motif in his more surreal paintings, where grape vines grab hold of mysterious objects, such as spheres, and perform a strange balancing act between earth and water.
Cuban artist Alan Manuel Gonzalez once found it inconceivable to be showing his art outside of Cuba. He has described his paintings as the result of the inescapable circumstance of being created there. Today, censorship in Cuba is the most intense in the western hemisphere. Gonzalez relies on the use of metaphor and surrealism to express both his love for his country and disdain for its problems.
Dogs are called man's best friend for a reason. Anyone who owns a dog understands that life long bond. For Seoul, Korea based artist Jeong Woojae, owning a dog also represents a strange combination of needing to satisfy one's insecurities with the newfound comfort it brings. In an ongoing series of whimsical oil paintings, Jeong tells the story of a little girl growing up in Korea with her giant chihuahua. Set against vibrant and hyperrealistic backdrops inspired by the artist's photographs of his hometown, their fairytale life feels very real.
Berlin-based American artist James Bullough splinters and fractures hyper-realistic paintings of women to open spaces through which complex and unfinished stories are revealed. The vibrancy of skin tone and naturalistic musculature in Bullough's technique were learned through an intensive study of Old Master paintings. Bullough's interest in Old Masters is also evident in the way in which several of his nude subjects stare at the viewer, while taking care to keep their faces at least partially concealed.
Throughout his forty-year career, the late artist Duane Hanson made lifelike sculptures that portrayed working class Americans. For the first time since his UK retrospective in 1997, Serpentine Galleries in London is showcasing a new selection of some of the sculptor's key pieces. Hanson is credited as a major contributor to the hyperrealism movement. His art went on to inspire contemporary artists like Ron Mueck (covered here) and can be found in major museums and collections, such as the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Patricia Piccinini is an Australian artist known for her unsettling sculptures of hyperrealistic hybrid creatures. Her work began as a review of biotechnology such as genetic manipulation, but has developed an emotional context over the years. For example, in her sculpture "The Long Awaited", Piccinini seeks to form a relationship between the creatures and viewer on an empathetic level. The piece is currently on display in her exhibit "Relativity", the first major survey of the artist’s sculptural works in Europe coinciding with Galway International Arts Festival.
Attention all artists! In partnership with our friends at Squarespace, Hi-Fructose will be highlighting five artists who are currently using Squarespace for their website or portfolio, to be featured on HiFructose.com. This week we are featuring Ontario based artist Kit King, who in collaboration with her husband, creates large scale hyperrealistic oil paintings that portray her subjects in fragments. Her compositions feature tight crops of their faces, eyes, hands, and tattoos with plays on light and shadow to establish mood. King labels herself as a recluse, and getting up close and personal with her subjects enables her to form personal connections to them.