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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Reza Bahmani's oil paintings, with each's distinctive texture and scale, carry a distinct intimacy. In his recent show at Saless Gallery an accompanying score that required the use of headphones further beckoned viewers to focus on the massive portraits.
Vivian Greven's oil and acrylic paintings, bridging Greco-Roman art and a contemporary sense of depth and space, are studies of intimacy. The artist's command of color and negative space offer riveting results, her treatment of the canvas as a membrane allowing her figures to move in and out of the plane.
Lisa Lach-Neilson’s vulnerable oil paintings often examine identity. The artist, hailing from Denmark, has shown across the globe over the past few years. She’s been painting professionally since 2012, with a background in clothing design as a master's student at Royal Danish Academy of Design.
Teiji Hayama's oil paintings, often depicting the celebrities of yesterday, meditate on the idea of celebrity and how it's evolved in the digital age. In his new show at Unit London, titled "Fame," the artist offers 17 paintings that feature the likes of Monroe, Taylor, and Bowie. The show runs from Jan. 16 through Feb. 15 at the space.
In his debut show at Jonathan LeVine Projects, Lynyrd Paras offers a set of oil paintings that explore the primal and emotional feelings stemming from total bombardment. “Attack of the Wounded Surface" is on view online through Dec. 31. Paras, a Philippines-based artist, has previously seen his work featured in shows throughout Asia.
In his third show at 111 Minna Gallery, Mike Davis offers new whimsical paintings that appear as a continuation of the Northern Renaissance while blending in notes of the artist’s own time period. "Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg" kicks off on Jan. 10 and runs through Feb. 29 at the space. Davis was last featured on our site here.
Painter Peter Ferguson returns to Roq La Rue Gallery with "Skip Forward When Held," bringing his sensibility that blends notes of the Dutch Renaissance, Lovecraftian creatures, and more. The show, running through January 25 at the space, brings new oil paintings to the space. Ferguson was last featured on our site here.
Dave Pollot revitalizes thrift store paintings with surreal or pop culture-centered flourishes. The artist recently painted giant banana duct taped to an existing mountainous backdrop for a piece auctioned for charity. The reason: Pollot says these conversations “can happen while people have little or nothing to eat."
Oil painter and performance artist John Robinson crafts cerebral, wistful, and, at times, humorous self-portraits. His works, often rendered in monochromatic tones, sees the artist donning masks and contraptions that speaks to his current reflections. Elsewhere, he re-imagines moments of art history through his distinct filter.
Amy Crehore brings her joyful paintings to La Luz de Jesus Gallery with the aptly named "Bathers, Buskers & Cats." The show, running through Dec. 1 at the Los Angeles space, offers a set of oil on linen works that move through time, cultures, and touches of surrealism, all while staying true to that title.
Conveying elapsed time and bombastic energy, Mitchell Villa’s process involves long strokes and motions that use his entire body. The self-taught painter depicts scenes that range from Biblical allusions to horror to intimate domestic portraits. Works like the triptych "Dinner Party" show the artist’s penchant for controlled cacophony.
Tokuhiro Kawai is known for paintings that both recall and satirize scenes from mythology. Yet, as his statement with Gallery Gyokuei reminds us, “The history of pictorial expression is history of reproduction.” In recent years, Kawai has specifically garnered popularity for the motif of felines donned in the garb of royalty.
There is seemingly no element too exotic to inhabit an oil painting by Alan MacDonald, whose works traverse cultures and histories to present something always elegant in execution. At the base of MacDonald’s work seems to be a need for adventure, exploring inspiration and varying perspectives in each work.
At once lush and eerie, Sarah Slappey's oil paintings offer vague limbs and organs against natural environments. Of her distinct visual language, she’s said “I wanted to build a world from the bottom up.” The South Carolina native, now residing in Brooklyn, New York, has recently shown these scenes at venues in New York City and Switzerland.
Pavel Guliaev describes his paintings as "subject realism," a world that is wholly his yet invites viewers to conjure their own meanings. Shifting planes, along with figures and objects belonging to no specific time or place, are qualities that seem to exist across all of Guliaev’s work. The result is a scene both dreamlike and visceral.
Justin Fitzpatrick’s oil paintings blend influences from Art Nouveau, illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages, anatomical drawings, and elsewhere. The actual subjects in the works likewise move through time, from using the construction workers as visual motif to creatures of the natural world rendered with Victorian flavor.
In Taylor Schultek’s riveting oil paintings, an urban structure is as much a character as his human subjects. The connection between humanity and environment is often at play, with the art of graffiti often in progress. The artist's own history in graffiti and graphic design seem to converge in building believable backdrops.
Sarah Ball's oil paintings, subtle in their complexity, are intended for the viewer to encounter the portrait's subject intimately. The practice of physiognomy, or judging the character of a person just from their facial features or expressions, has long been a subject of fascination for the artist. In efforts like her current Anima Mundi show "Themself," she culls her subjects from historic photographic archives, social media, and beyond. "These source images become a starting point for a methodical process of understanding, assumption and translation, where the aesthetic ‘mask' and what lies beneath become the focus of engagement,” the gallery says.
Joshua Hagler's new, massive oil paintings are packed with tension and political reflections, each appearing as memories emerging and dissipating. "Chimera” is his upcoming show at Unit London, named for the mythological creature or in a more contemporary sense, has “come to mean something which is hoped for, but is impossible to achieve.” The show begins on July 19 and runs through the end of August.
Amy Bennett's engrossing paintings, with figures and objects rendered in a miniature scale, present scenes from the everyday from unexpected vantage points. These perspectives are aided by the artist first building "miniscule three-dimensional models" from wood, plastic, and other materials before she begins painting, says Miles McEnery Gallery. Her new show at the New York City gallery begins this week and runs through Aug. 16.
Eunjeong Choi’s wild, illusionary oil paintings create cityscapes with kaleidoscopic forms. In a manner that can be likened to Maya Hayuk and Jen Stark, Choi creates both neat and muddied reflections on color, cascading in two and three dimensions. The painter-installation artist is currently based in Seoul, South Korea.
Alessandro Fogo’s oil paintings reach back through time, taking a deep inspiration from history with stirring results. There's a sense of ritual in many of the Italian artist's recent work, with connections so numerous that the end result is a broader look at our human history.
Whether Dutch still-life, late Romantic oceans, or the work of Delacroix, Matthew Hansel's recent major oil paintings bring the artist's distorting lens to different parts of art history. The latter paintings, in particular, show a disappearing, exposing the raw linen at the top of each work. He's currently showing these paintings at The Hole NYC in "Giving Up the Ghost." The show runs through July 7.
Naudline Pierre's paintings offer a look into both a broader spiritual plane and her own "personal mythology." The paintings, intimate and otherworldly, explore the vibrant and unseen. The artist's ghostly oil paintings has been shown in New York City, Los Angeles, London, and beyond, and she is a a recipient of the Terra Foundation for American Art residency.
Patt Yingcharoen’s provocative oil paintings build upon constructions from art history, mixing cultures and iconography that continue centuries-long narratives about human nature. In an upcoming show titled "Celebration of flesh and blood" at Number 1 Gallery in the artist's native Bangkok, several new, dark-surrealist works are offered. It arrives in July at the gallery.
The oil paintings of Vasilis Avramidis blend architecture with writhing, organic forms that appear both figurative and alien. In the new show “Host” at Hiro Gallery in Tokyo, several new works from the artist are collected. The show runs June 10 through June 29. Avramidis was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
Manuel Zamudio's oil paintings deftly blend realistic portraits with elements of street art. The Texas artist’s work comes to us through our Submission page (here). Over the last few years, Zamudio has shown his work through Texas and Mexico City.
Banksy returned recently with an unlicensed street stall in Italy, offering a tableau of oil painting to unsuspecting passers-by near the ongoing Venice Art Biennale. A video of "Venice in Oil" was posted on the mysterious artist's Instagram recently, showing an unidentified figure setting up and manning the stall as pedestrians comment on the work. The artist's installation was accompanied by another work, a stenciled mural of a migrant child, a likely continuation of his work surrounding refugees in Europe.
Robert Burden's latest, massive oil painting "Elephantidae" is the result of 18 months of work. The painting shows Billy, the iconic Asian elephant whose life at the LA Zoo has been the center of controversy, surrounded by more than 50 toys related to his species.
Before painting, Emma Webster first constructs dioramas with backdrops, lighting, and clay figures. What is created from those collaged maquettes are stirring paintings that examine both our own natural environments and world-building as a concept. Her recent show at Diane Rosenstein, “Arcadia,” collected those recent oil paintings.