Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Italian artist Agostino Arrivabene uses antique painting techniques to create a foundation from which metamorphic figures emerge in moments of creation. The time-consuming labor of grinding pigments and layering paints is evident in the complex, heavily textural works. New worlds hide beneath and within cracks and crinkles as human-like figures manifest above ground and often out of water.
During the late Italian Renaissance, ‘Mannerist’ artists had technically mastered the nude and began playing with her proportions. Toronto based artist Troy Brooks uses the same visual language in his figurative paintings of elongated women. The ‘women of Troy’ are characteristically fashion forward and emotionally indifferent; caught between moments of boredom, rebellion, and transformation. Often, his blonde ‘heroine’ is compared to Psycho’s Norma Bates, which might cast her as a manipulative she-devil. She is posed in weird environments of soft colors that match her pale white skin. Her abnormally stretched limbs are almost torturous-looking and unsettling, complimenting Brook’s bizarre themes.