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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
In a new show at Littlejohn Contemporary in New York City, Maggie Taylor's digital composite prints relay the tales in Lewis Carroll’s writings with vintage-sourced, Victorian-inspired imagery. “Through The Looking-Glass and Other Stories” kicks off in conjunction with the release the book “Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There,’” for which she provided works. The show runs Sept. 6 through Oct. 6.
New Mexico painter Dorielle Caimi explores real-world themes of feminine strength and grace through mixed-media, pop surrealist imagery. Her graceful figures, often rendered in oil, are juxtaposed with abstraction and fantastical touches. Glitter and goldleaf add to the playful and sincere aspects of the work.
Robert Nelson's blends of pop flavor and art history are rendered in graphite and acrylic paints. The artist works in contrasts, pitting elegance and grotesqueness, stark patterns and fluid lines, against each other. The artist's work has recently been shown at spots throughout the West Coast.
Whether it’s his amorphous forms or otherworldly creatures, Alexander Ross's unusual texture are the result of blending colored pencil, crayon, graphite, and watercolors. The works are packed with notes of our own world’s ecosystems, each work a mysterious lifeform of its own. Just like his materials, the work’s origins are multi-sourced.
Mernet Larsen's paintings shift perspectives and reimagine our world in a manner that recalls early computer-generated modeling. Offering both corporate and domestic environments, the acrylic and mixed-media works both convey the humanity of these scenes and remixes their contents. Larsen was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
John Byrd works with taxidermy, hand-built ceramics, cast plastic, and other materials to create works that recall decorative souvenirs and knick-knacks. The artist says that “within a domestic space, I’m intrigued by the ability of an encapsulated aesthetic to establish, defy, and challenge characteristics of culture and class.”
In Debbie Lawson’s ghostly rug sculptures, animal heads emerge from domestic patterns. In some pieces, flora and fauna extend from the unlikely objects. Yet, in her full body representations of bears, the work is at its most powerful and captivating. The intricate patterns of the fabrics add to the contours of the beasts.
Yoon Ji Seon's embroidered portraits blend fiber and photography. Much of work consists of self-portraits, with varying degrees of emotions, abstraction, and detail. Her "Rag Face" series goes back to 2006, when she started experimenting with these mixed-media pieces.
Matthew Stone photographs paint strokes on glass and then uses them to build bodies using software. When printed, they inhabit “a shared world,” a statement says, “defined by a grey infinity floor, proliferating petals of paint and a raw linen void as backdrop." In a new set of work recently shown in at The Hole NYC, under the title "Neophyte.” He was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Ceren Aksungur, also known as Dolce Paganne, is an Antwerp-based artist who crafts surreal, unsettling drawings and paintings. Her work combines both the strange and the mundane, subverting the everyday. Works such as "Pomegrenade," implement both acrylics and colored pencil on paper.
Chen-Shun Lin’s unsettling sculptures carry their own, ongoing narratives. Whether it’s the physics of a piece or the content itself, the off-kilter nature of the works suggest a purposeful tension with each work. And often, the artist’s figurative pieces, though at times troubling, carry an unexpected grace.
Paolo Grassino’s strange sculptural creatures teeter between organic and manmade forms. Using both contemporary synthetic materials and elements such as iron and wax, his contemplative inhabit spaces across the world. Further, some of the Italian's figurative works appears as though it's still coming into form, rather than already realized.
Carol Prusa crafts worlds and celestial bodies in her new work, using silverpoint, graphite, and other materials on acrylic. A new show at Bluerider Art in Taipei City, aptly titled "Silverpoint Drawing," collects her new work. The show runs through July 7.
John Biggs, also known as Dugong John, is a U.K.-based illustrator that uses his narrative talents to explore varying cultures and backdrops. His work moves between sci-fi intrigue and mystery and snapshots from the everyday.
The strange worlds of David Ball are forged with acrylic paint, colored pencil, and collaged materials. The artist’s pieces have been described as “otherworldly dreamscapes, composed through the harvesting of an endless trove of carefully selected images.” With this varied blend of materials, there’s both an organic (and animalistic) and mechanical quality to these creatures.
Taylor White's vibrant, mixed-media explorations of form and movement evolve in the artist’s newest show, "Physical Phenomena,” running through June 30 at ABV Gallery in Atlanta. White says her latest work “builds upon the universally recognizable visual language of movement” and that she is inspired by the dance community of the North Carolina cities Raleigh and Durham. White was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
David Altmejd’s unsettling mixed-media sculptures subvert and mutate the figurative, while exploring our relationship to science and mythology. With works like "L,oeil" (above), he uses a robust set of materials: expanded polystyrene, epoxy dough, fiberglass, resin, synthetic hair, quartz, Sharpie and pens, gold leaf, glass paint, and much more. Throughout these forms, Altmejd creates surreal embellishments with natural and unnatural emulations.
Whether in a gallery or on a public wall, Li-Hill’s hybrid imagery carries distinctive energy, movement, and weight. The Brookyln-based artist uses painting, stenciling, and sculptural elements to create those pieces, often packed with social observation. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Marc Scheff layers paint, pencil and gold leaf in poured resin and shows “the parts of ourselves we want seen and the parts we prefer to keep to ourselves.” A new show from the artist at Haven Gallery, titled "Depth Charge," collects several of these works. It opens on May 19 and runs through June 23 at the Long Island gallery.
Using transparent cloths clad to the canvas, painter Pavel Gempler creates a "second skin, through which the lower pictorial layers shine through and create an irritating doubling," the artist says. The result is both captivating and creates a pixelated effect to his works, which then carry photograph-like benefits of the light.
Chris Konecki's mixed-media sculptures blend faithful miniatures and flourishes of surrealism. In a new show at 111 Minna Gallery, his recent sculptures are shown. "Head On Swivel" runs through May 26 at the San Francisco spot. Konecki was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Tishk Barzanji plays with architecture and perspective in pastel-hued landscapes. The mixed-media works use both digital and photographic techniques to create these absorbing, yet off-kilter explorations. The use of varied sources takes the viewer in and far out of reality within a single work.
Michael Reeder's sold-out show "mOMENt" comes to a close this weekend at Thinkspace Gallery in Culver City, Calif. The artist's multilayered graphic works use oils, acrylics, spraypaint, and other materials for striking portraits. The artist was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 44, and he was last mentioned on the Hi-Fructose blog here.
Winnie Truong's explorations of the female form and its relationship to nature evolve with a new show at VivianeArt. The collection of mixed-media works, implementing colored pencil, pastel, and collage, are displayed under the title "Perennials." The show kicks off April 27 and runs through June 9. Truong was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Sci-fi-tinged nostalgia runs rampant in the illustrations of Paul Paetzel. The Berlin-based artist has a knack for both narrative and humor, whether it’s his comics, illustrations, or stray personal work. Paetzel has been part of the Berlin collective known as Biografiktion, also featuring artists Till Hafenbrak and Ana Albero.
Bom.K continues to evolve his varied, bombastic style with recent work that appears as a controlled cacophony of influences. Works like “Anything” (above) implement spraypaint and the canvas, offering a look at approaches the artist has used throughout his career. He was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
Lien Truong calls her recent works "a frenetic amalgamation of western and Asian painting techniques and philosophies." The artist's choice of materials—oils, silk, thread, cotton, acrylics, and antique 24k gold-leaf obi thread—create an absorbing cacophony of culture and honed skills. The series "Mutiny in the Garden," in particular, take on varying and converging histories.
Colin Chillag's paintings blend the vivid and realistic alongside unfinished, preliminary parts of the work intact. The effect is not only disconstructive in looking at how memory functions in art, but also exploring the process of painting itself. Chillag was featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 19. He was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Germany-born artist Kati Heck crafts absorbing oil and watercolor paintings that use varying sources, whether literary or living models. At times, these surreal scenes utilize abstracted backdrops, at times adorned with text reminiscent of advertisements. Heck was last mentioned on HiFructose.com here.
The new work of Joseph Loughborough blends distorted figures and meditations on color, each providing its own mystery and eerie sensibility. The artist uses oil stick, pastel, and charcoal to create these works. In a new show at the gallery Anno Domini in San Jose, the artist shows a new collection of work that is both dynamic and haunting in execution. The artist was last featured on HiFructose.com here. The show, "Notches," runs through April 14 at the gallery.