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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Upon the recent launch of the "Beyond the Streets" exhibition in New York City, which features more than 150 artists taking influence from and implementing graffiti and other street art forms, Zane Meyer of Chop 'Em Down Films offers a star-studded peek into the launch. Among the featured artists are Shepard Fairey, Cleon Peterson, Felipe Pantone, Guerrilla Girls, Kenny Scharf, Timothy Curtis, and many, many others.
Portugal-born muralist Sergio Odeith is known for dazzling with his optical illusions created on walls across the world. He first emerged as a practitioner in the graffiti movement in the 1990s, before turning his interest to toying with how his subjects can subvert expectations from viewers.
Etnik’s latest mural is a swirling collection of hues and geometric shapes, towering above an Italian street as part of the Without Frontiers Project. Etnik emerged as a graffiti-slinging street artist in the vibrant early '90s, before integrating all facets of his into a versatile practices of canvas, sculpture, installations, and massive mural work into a holistic approach. The Italian-Swedish artist’s real name is Alessandro Battisti, and he’s currently based in Turin, Italy. The artist last appeared on HiFructose.com here.
Hula is the moniker of artist Sean Yoro, who creates massive, delicate murals above waterways and alongside abandoned structures. The self-taught painter was raised in Oahu, where he engaged with the ocean as a surfer before embarking on a path in street art and tattooing. Today, he creates his massive figures in oil paint and creates pieces across the world.
Boy Kong, a painter and muralist who resides in both Orlando and New York City, combines both traditional painting and street art to make absorbing three-dimensional work. Pieces like "First Flower Tiger Pelt" use both affected textural elements with acrylics and oil and materials like horse hair and custom wood-cutting to create wholly new creatures. The artist’s murals and oil on panel works are more traditional in dimension, yet all carry a kinetic vibe in which the subject is reacting to the shape of the canvas.
Street artists Pichi & Avo bring a blend of surrealism and classic urban art to walls across the world. Within these works, a conversation occurs between what we know as modern street art and iconography and styles of centuries far gone. The Spanish duo, in particular, has been referencing classical mythology in a slew of recent murals that have appeared in Miami, Hawaii, and New York.
At Galerie Le Feuvre in Paris, works by Invader are presented in a new show called “Masterpieces.” Invader is the enigmatic street artist known for crafting square ceramic tiles into images that resemble digital, pixelated renderings throughout the past few decades. The gallery says that the show was triggered by “discovery of works dated from 1997.” The artist was featured way back in Hi-Fructose Magazine Vol. 2.
Raquel Rodrigo creates street art using the unlikely process of cross-stitching. The Spanish artist’s works occupy walls and structures in Madrid and Valencia. Whether towering over passers-by or adorning eye-level dividers, Rodrigo and her team craft flowery pieces in the same intricate, painstaking process. All appear as pixelated wonders when closely inspected.
Van Saro's current show at La Luz De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles is called "Concrete Jungle," and this newest collection hints at his past with street art. Whether it’s using oils on U.S. and foreign currency or adding poignancy and surrealism to street signs, Saro continues to grapple with the concepts of hope and decay in the contemporary experience. Within Saro's work, governmental iconography is replaced with the faces of children, haunted animals, pop culture references, and instruments of destruction. Saro was last featured on HiFructose.com here.
French artist Astro takes flat urban surfaces and creates passageways into the void. Using shadows and light, calligraphy-inspired designs and winding curves, the artist’s optical illusions are made for public consumption. And even when they’re not so obvious to some passers-by and cars on a quick route to work, Astro has many of us looking at the big picture.
Since 2005, Australian artist Buff Diss has been adorning city sidewalks, trains, and industrial buildings through his unconventional use of tape - expanding upon the more traditional forms associated with street art. His body of work incorporates a variety of styles and subject material, from contour drawing and geometric shapes to intricate portraits of mythological figures. Despite the impermanent nature of the chosen medium, the artwork itself leaves a lasting impression on those who are fortunate to see it.
When it comes to creating a compelling work of art, in the case of Kobi Vogman, no structure, location, or material is considered off limits. Based in Jerusalem, Vogman is a muralist, illustrator and animation director who works in harmonious collaboration with his environments to create narratives which explore the relationships we have with our histories, cultures, and ever-changing landscapes.
Dan Ferrer, also known by the moniker Freeuno, is a street artist/illustrator based in Madrid, Spain, where his works populate both enormous public walls and traditional canvases. His works often combine the subversively abstract with the strikingly real, whether rendered with oils, spray paint, or a Wacom pencil.
After mainly painting in his homeland, Russian artist Rustam Qbic has spent the last couple of months traveling around the world, creating monumental murals everywhere from Australia to the Swiss Alps. Recently, he was invited to Urban Samtidskunst in Oslo, Norway, where he painted a fresh new piece, titled "Water of Life".
Brooklyn, New York based artist Dan Witz, featured here, has been producing activist street art around the world since the seventies. His provocative interventions feature images that trick the eye and often, the majority of people don't notice them right away. He plans to take his art to London next with his latest project, "Breathing Room", an ambitious undertaking where he will install his signature-illusionistic paintings in the city's iconic red phone booths.
The Louvre's famous giant glass pyramid, designed by Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei, became a landmark of the city of Paris in 1989- until it was made invisible by French street artist JR last week. The artist's installation is a trick of the eye, a gigantic paper photograph of the Louvre Museum covering the pyramid as part of JR's "artist takeover". Featured here on our blog, JR is well known for monumental black and white pastings covering buildings all over the world.
The work of Brooklyn-based Aaron Li-Hill, who also goes by Li-Hill, is instantly recognizable for his dynamic portrayals of animals and figures, where his subjects appear suspended in motion, drawn frame-by-frame. Featured here on our blog, Li-Hill describes his art as a frenetic "storm of imagery and density", where beauty surfaces from various styles, inspired by his background in graffiti and cultural experiences. The artist just unveiled a new installation, in collaboration with the nonprofit JustKids, at the iconic Friedman-Mincer historic building in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Looking at the art of James Bullough is like looking at reality through the shards of a shattered mirror. The American born, Berlin based artist's paintings and murals, featured here on our blog, have become instantly recognizable for his mixture of realism and abstraction. Bullough describes his work as "altered reality", a style leaning towards photo-realism and working with a combination of materials including oil, acrylic, latex and spray paints.
The word "mythological" is often used to describe the work of Mexican artist Curiot (real name Favio Martinez). Featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 29, Curiot doesn't apply a specific myth to the images that he paints, strongly inspired by his Mexican heritage which he hopes to uphold in his art. "The mythological creatures represent the forces of nature, the energy that flows in the universe and their relationship with the world- I like to believe they come from the spirit realm," he told us.
Argentinian artist known as Hyuro's art makes use of negative space through a series of repeating figures, where the location of her work is integral to how we perceive it. Featured here on our blog, this has usually taken place in the streets. But whether she is mural painting, building installations, or showing her paintings in a gallery, Hyuro is making observations about life: framed by an empty white background, the people in her work demonstrate our relationships and how we interact with one another.
Andrew Schoultz's art is filled with chaotic imagery, expressing a rather dystopian vision through a variety of techniques, from sculpture to collage, street art to installations to paintings. Featured here on our blog, his eclectic work cultivates an arsenal of personal symbolism: fragments of dollar bills, fractured Grecian urns, ripped American flags, war horses, and slave ships are just a few of the symbols he uses to juxtapose Western culture with allusions to conflict and exploitation.
The hardworking team behind one of the world's longest lasting street art festivals, Nuart in Norway, covered here over the years, recently announced the launch of yet another public art project. Nuart Sandnes Art Trail is Norway’s first official Street Art Trail, and its main goal is to connect Sandnes’ urban center with the city’s surrounding rural areas.
It's a common belief that twins share some sort of unexplained mental, even spiritual connection. Identical twin brothers and artists How and Nosm (Raoul and Davide Perre) were raised together and also sharing the passion for art, have a connection and dynamic that is unique. It certainly explains their highly singular vision: dynamic artworks and massive, global murals that are instantly recognizable for their use of red, black and white based imagery featuring intricate patterns and shapes.
Brazilian twin artists Os Gemeos, Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, were recently in Milan, Italy, working on a large mural installation for Pirelli HangarBicocca's new public art project, Outside the Cube. Their mural, titled "Efemero" (ephemeral) features one of their signature, colorful characters climbing up the hangar-shaped building, painted to look like a subway car. The site-specific piece also incorporates logos from international metro systems and personal messages.
Matthias Gephart is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Berlin, Germany, who is revisiting his roots in graffiti in a project that incorporates his creative interests. "Stylewise, my personal background is the underground and alternative music scene, graffiti writing and Dadaist collage," Gephart shares. Since 2010, he has been transforming neglected spaces with his graffiti that combines graphic design and collage visuals, taking the idea of mural painting to the expanse of an entire room. He calls this project "The Magic Moment."
There is an infinite number of ways that Lego toys can be arranged. Artists have taken the popular Danish toy to surprising places, pushing it beyond the boundary of what “toys” are, as we’ve seen here on our blog. But one artist Jan Vormann based in Berlin, Germany has taken Lego to the streets. Some have called it “Lego bombing”, but Vormann prefers to describe his work as “patchwork”, a project that he is bringing around the world.
Strong, clean lines and cubist inspired characters in vivid colors have long been the main signifiers of Berlin based artist James Reka's, aka Reka's, paintings. His previous works, featured here on our blog, depict geometrical figures but the choice of colors, the backgrounds, and the style have dramatically changed over the past few years. His graffiti background is becoming less evident as Reka is increasingly interested in abstraction, and his new work may be his most enigmatic.
A Milan, Italy based street artist known only as Biancoshock has been garnering some attention in the past few days for his curious new series of miniature rooms set within his local city streets. Underneath manhole covers and openings in the pavement, he has built elaborate and even luxurious interiors titled "Borderlife", a series while surreal and evoking images of Alice's tumbling rabbit-hole, takes its inspiration from a very real and serious issue.
In the late 1970s, celebrated muralist Kent Twitchell began his famous artists series, featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 37, starting with notable Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha. Measuring 70 feet tall on the side of a downtown building, Twitchell's full-length portrait of the artist in a red silk shirt and pleated slacks took almost 9 years to complete because it was self-funded and there were other projects that came to him during that time. Why did he choose Ruscha as his first artist? "It was a gut decision," he says. "He was and is unique and seemed to characterize the American Individualist to me as McQueen did in the film world."
Brooklyn based painter Beau Stanton has honed his artistic talent over the years with his mural works, adapting the techniques of his mandala-like nautical inspired paintings to his largescale mural works. Although he has painted in some of the most undoubtedly interesting places around the world, from the Berlin wall to the 12th century Crypt of Saint John the Baptist, featured here, his most recent mural presented a particularly unique challenge.