Artist and illustrator Tae Querney was born in Seoul, Korea but grew up in Seattle and is currently living in New York City. She has an interesting yet still somewhat small body of work one half featuring more contemporary art and the other illustration. I just couldn’t take my eyes off of the painting above, it’s like passing by a train wreck. You can’t look away.
Although you could say the name ‘Tnacir’ is a little questionable, it’s hard not to like the combination of contemporary art nudes with patterns using a warm muted color palette. You can see them in the Tnacir Flickrfolio. I wish I knew more about this artist but I guess the work speaks for itself.
The synchronized bounce and crash rhythm entitled Gravité from Renaud Hallée gave new meaning to the phrase ‘balls to the wall’.
Via The Denver Egotist.
Painter Kwon Kyung Yup first starts with a photograph and then works from a draft before finally finishing her oil paintings. The strength of her realistic portraits comes from the addition of symbolic elements communicating an experienced trauma and vulnerability in her subjects.
Pulpo Corporate is the work of Argentinian artist and illustrator Fernando Herenu. After graduating from the University of Buenos Aires he has spent the last several years working as an artist for the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim. In his after hours he has been working to develop his own style which can be seen at his personal site.
This is the first animation clip produced by Tant and Unga of the ‘Broken Fingaz‘ graffiti crew from Israel. Be sure to drop by their website after the video to see more of their work.
I was contacted this week and notified that the ‘Life in 2050‘ exhibition curated by Transmission for the 9th Sci-Fi-London Film Festival kicks off tomorrow at Proud Central Gallery in London. I posted news of the show back in January but have been waiting to say more until work was online and available to view. Work has been posted this week and prints will soon be available to purchase. Contributing artists include Alex Trochut (whose entry is shown above), Dan McPharlin, Mario Hugo, Tom Muller, Universal Everything and several others.
The ident above was commissioned for the show and created by Future Deluxe. I really wish I could be there for this one.
Emmanuel Malin left a comment on the blog earlier this week under the name ‘Animatic’ disagreeing with me in that he didn’t think the work of Eesley Eggebrecht was as good as I claimed it was. I left a comment stating that if he had done better work himself to back up his comment by posting a link to where people could see his own work. So he did. And I really liked Emmanuel’s work. The site has an old school Flash preload you have to wait for but once it has launched you can click through the thumbnails to see the work. Malin’s work is heavily influenced by Japanese art but he has his own style and he has produced a large body of imagery. He currently lives and works in Paris and is available for freelance commissions.
Thank you Emmanuel.
UPDATE: Alright well I am going to negate everything I said, the comment left earlier was not actually Emmanuel Malin, it was left as an example of work that was more inspirational. So there goes the notion that for once, a hater was backing up his/her comments with examples of their own work that was better than what they were hating one. Regardless, it was still a pleasure to discover Emmanuel’s work and my hat is still off to his talent.
I saw some of San Francisco based artist Jesse Balmer’s work in the recent issue of Juxtapoz and was reminded how much I like his personal brand of pop-psychedelia. There is some new work in his Flickrfolio to check out. It’s just a shame it isn’t posted at a little larger of a scale to show some of the detail of his imagery.
I was quite taken by the dense, sometimes morbid and extremely detailed work by artist and illustrator Caitlin Hackettart. You can view her work at Carbonmade and Society 6. You can get a better insight into her work through her artist statement.
Artist statement:
“In my work I am exploring the relationship between humans and animals; the idea of the human denial of our animal nature and of humans as the dominant species, as well as the mutation of the animal created by the human interpretation of the animal. My work alludes to the boundaries that separate humanity from animals both physically and metaphysically, as well as the objectification of and personification of animals. I invent creatures, anthropomorphic, mutated, or pseudo mythical in imagery, using my imaginary world and bringing it into the physical world in an attempt to create a language that speaks about the human animal relationship and the natural and unnatural elements of it.
I am faced with the fact that we live in a planet in decline, where almost every natural ecosystem in the world is slipping away. Human kind has created a planet of refugees; animals forced to flee ever farther from the insatiable encroachment of urban development, victims of a war for space which they cannot hope to win. My drawings refer to this decline and to the refugees it has created. I am left with the question of what is natural; are we (human beings) still a part of nature? If so, does that make all that we have created, cities, vehicles, factories, all technology, part of nature as well?
As we move into an increasingly plastic, electronic, and robotic culture how can we define our own fundamental nature as the nature of the world around us changes and our metaphysical identity evolves into something beyond the human as an animal? As we separate from our animal nature, will we be able to still see and understand the importance of other animals and our relationship to them? As we are able to remove ourselves from our own physical bodies and to come to experience life through the metaphysical, the digital, and the psychic, how will this distance from our own bodies and the physical experience of the world affect our relationship with nature and the way we see creatures who exist completely within their physical bodies and are defined by their physical needs?
As my work evolves I am beginning to think more and more about the way in which people bestow identity and how, deprived of identity, animals are reduced to a kind of living taxidermy subject to human apathy and mutated by human ideals of beauty or monstrosity. I am telling a story about disappearance and the rapid and extravagant destruction of the human-animal, and how this loss of our animal nature is affecting the way human kind views the animal world. I am describing these questions through the use of paper and ink in the form of life sized anthropomorphic creatures, which are installation pieces. Done entirely in ballpoint pen, ink, watercolor and colored pencil, these massive creatures are a balance between the power and physical presence of the life sized and the intensity of the dense, delicate, and time consuming detail of the ballpoint pen and ink. By installing these animals cut out on the walls they are released into our world and become characters that must be addressed in terms of our physical space, and must be granted an identity.”
“Them-And-Us is an initiative aimed at bringing together 20 European and 20 African visual artists, designers, illustrators and photographers. The project aims to explore the similarities and differences between first and third world views and aesthetics by pairing up artists from Europe with their African counterparts.
Through a series of 20 double sided posters, artists are invited to explore the notion of ‘Them–And–Us’ and the broader theme of tolerance (or intolerance).
Working in two prescribed colours, each artist will create a poster. The reverse will feature a poster designed by an artist from the other continent. Each pair of artists will be paired and introduced at the outset of the project. Together each team will choose a specific theme, such as ‘Light–And–Dark’ or ‘Smart–And–Dumb’ and communication and cross polination will be encouraged. The final outcome should be two posters that talk to each other yet are distinctly the product of their respective makers.
The final 40 posters will be packaged together along with a 64 page publication profiling each of the artists involved and detailing the purpose and process of the project. Them–and–Us will be exhibited in Durban, Cape Town, Stockholm and London early in 2010. All proceeds from sales will go to Amnesty International to help in the global fight against intolerance.
Them–And–Us is curated by South African design studio, disturbance, Stockholm resident and graphic designer, Noel Pretorius and British designer/writer Adrian Shaughnessy who will also write and edit the accompanying publication.”
There is some inspiring work on display at Them and Us.
I am intrigued by the art work in the Flickr-folio of ‘Blood Today‘. The artist originally hails from Oakland, California but currently resides in Brooklyn.
Culture motif mixing artist Scott Anderson received his first BFA from Kansas State and from their went on to earn a MFA at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His surreal and sometimes apocalyptic visions are realized in oil and he has exhibited mostly throughout the U.S. since earning his MFA.
The Creative Lives has released a nice interview with Beautiful Loser artist Barry McGee. It’s always good to get it from the horses mouth when seeking to understand the person behind highly influential and inspirational art.
California-born New York-based artist Suzanne Unrein is a big fan of Rubens but she is also fond of Poussin, Raphael, Correggio, and Bougereau. Although you can see the influence of old masters on her work, she has developed an old world meets new impressionistic kinetic style utilizing a subdued color palette where every stroke counts in capturing an almost subdued kind of violence.
Artist Ariel Schlesinger was born in 1980 in Jerusalem and currently lives and works in Berlin. Schlesinger creates extremely strange and profoundly interesting, in a miracle through the mundane kind of way installation art.
“Combining influences from abstract expressionism, British landscape painting, Japanese woodcuts, and graphic street art, Ashcroft integrates varied visual styles to generate a crossover between space, object and environment.”
There is something almost ‘comic book’ about some of London based Phil Ashcroft’s work and although it is in a sense abstract expressionism there is a deliberate pop flair about it and I like that. Abstract comic pop-expressionism.
The 3rd issue of the art and poetry magazine Popshot is now available and the publication appears to be gather steam with some really great content. The current issue includes illustrations from such talents as James Dawe, Holly Wales, Paul Holland, Dan Hillier, David Sparshott, James Majowski, Jules Julien and Mydeadpony. You can view images of the recent issue and purchase a copy here.
