Manila, Phillipines based artist Dex Fernandez creates works that range from street art murals, animation, painting and drawing to photography. Using a variety of media, his ongoing series of eclectic collage portraits combines almost all of his interests. Fernandez’s inspirations are equally diverse. His series juxtaposes good and evil, beauty and ugliness by mixing pop art, religious iconography, and vintage images from posters and magazines that he finds in thrift shops.
For Canada’s foremost ‘pop artist’ Gary Taxali (first featured in HF Vol. 4), the artist’s first major retrospective exhibition in Ontario was a long time coming. Currently on view at Design on Riverside, “Here and Now: The Art of Gary Taxali” features hundreds of Taxali’s personal and professional works over the years in a salon-style presentation of paintings, toys and objects, and assemblages of his most popular prints. The artist is recognized worldwide for his tinted illustrations of cartoon characters and vintage-inspired typography, which have appeared in the likes of New York Times, GQ, and Rolling Stone.
Ohio based artist Alfred Steiner has an admittedly bizarre predilection for anatomical and fragmented parts since his childhood. His watercolor paintings of pop culture icons, logos, and cartoon characters use unseemly pieces to build an image. His work could be described as modern day Pop-Mannerism, a combination of Pop Art and Mannerist art, and brings to mind that of Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, who painted imaginative faces made of fruits and other objects. However, Steiner credits more surprising and eclectic inspirations, such as the fantastic imagery of Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch and fictional characters like Homer Simpson.
In 2010, street artist and character designer Jeremyville began posting a series of daily illustrations at his blog called “The Jeremyville Community Service Announcments.” In his quirky and colorful style, those simple images and words resonated with people online and before long, the project went viral. Today, there are over 500 announcements in the series. In theme, it touches upon pop-culture topics and as Jeremyville describes, “everything about what it means to be human.” For his current exhibition at Groove@CentralWorld in Bangkok, Jeremyville reimagined some of his most popular CSA’s as giant sculptures.
Recently named the most popular artist of 2014, Yayoi Kusama (HF Vol. 25) has currently taken over two expansive spaces at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. Her exhibition, “Give Me Love,” which closes this week, includes a reenactment of her popular installation, “The Obliteration Room” (2002), new pumpkin sculptures, and paintings. They share the hallucinatory, obsessive, and energetic qualities we’ve seen throughout her career, something this exhibition aims to embody. More photos after the jump.
San Francisco based artist Ryan De La Hoz (previously covered here) recently opened his new solo show, “Impassible Terrain” at FFDG. Consisting of new mixed media works and illustration, De La Hoz’s new body of work seeks to highlight our collective experiences through antiquity and traditional iconography. Using historical references to execute this personal ideology, De La Hoz’s new show rests on impactful yet simple motifs to convey broad concepts.