Langdon Graves gentle, somewhat off-kilter drawings.
Louie Cordero’s Having Reached Climax at Age 28 … I am a zombie — made of styrofoam, acrylics, and cement, 2006.
Amborama on Flickr.
Michael Kenna’s Quixote’s Giants, Study 2, 1998
Paul Ulrich
A diptych by Levan Kakabadze
Hydrogen, by Schühle Lewis, which Lewis says is good for Physicists and Scientists and bad for Creationists. The image is based off of a quote by Edward R. Harrison, which can be found here.
Artist Morgan Blair is all about bright colors and abstract shapes. Her website is dizzying, but a lot of her pieces intersperse geometric shapes with well-drawn figures, and it is these that are most interesting. See below.
Recoat’s Good Wives And Warriors.
Caitlin Hackett combines beauty with decay in this amazingly illustrated Vulpes Masquerade.
Digital collage by Katty Bouthier that is simple but otherworldly.
A drawing by Chris Scarborough that turns this deer into quite a mound of shapes.
With his most recent body of work, Adam Friedman combines traditional landforms with some truly interplanetary shit. His mixed media pieces initially come off a little like illustrations in a scientific textbook, but closer inspection reveals worlds where land is replaced by oceans and mountains by lava-like flows. It seems that physics as we know it doesn’t really apply to Friedman’s created worlds.
But let’s sum it all up with a quote Friedman himself uses on the front page of his website; the abstract concepts in this quote absolutely explain what is going on in these works.
“Grateful for our departure? One more expression of human vanity. The finest quality of this stone, these plants and animals, the (landscape) is the indifference manifest to our presence, our absence, our coming, our staying or our going. Whether we live or die is a matter of absolutely no concern whatsoever to the (land). Let men in their madness blast every city on earth into black rubble and envelop the entire planet in a cloud of lethal gas - the canyons and hills, the springs and rocks will still be here, sunlight will filter through, water will form and warmth shall be upon the land and after sufficient time… things (will) take a different and better course.”
Edward Abbey - Desert Solitaire, 1968
Friedman currently has a solo show up at the Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. Check it out!
Greg Ferris is inspired by machines, architecture, and perhaps the mystical. Combine those things, and you get a shiny new .gif-fy take on what all those things might look like when worked together. Here’s what Ferris had to say about this piece:
“This particular work sprouted out of conversations with a local sea-faring veteran I often encounter during my daily routine. I’m a young man, and he has more than a few lifetimes on me… perhaps save this insight as the foundation for visual dialogue.
All the elements are piled about my studio: the wood blocks photocopied, angular rainbow cut outs, white-out, and the final collage hangs. I put it into the computer, then realized how much more it would convey as a 2 frame .gif animation. Like a circulating perspective, through the sextant? Macro/micro conditions? Not the most conventional medium, but undeniable I think.”
UK-based illustrator (and former Redefine cover designer) Andrew Wheatley now has some pretty cool items available for sale through Envelop, a site that allows artists and designers to put their works on a wide array of cotton products (largely household items, for the domesticated art freak). Wheatley’s items include his almost Alice-in-Wonderland-like Tea Party Tote Bag and his amusingly political Love And Hate Apron, both of which make boring items completely desirable with their off-kilter designs.
www.andrewwheatley.co.uk
www.envelop.eu
www.envelop.eu/shop/articles/details/p/tea-party-2
www.envelop.eu/shop/articles/details/p/love-and-hate
On rare occasions, a gallery does such amazing things with its space that you kind of want to poop yourself with excitement. Gallery 1988, which has one branch in Los Angeles and one branch in San Francisco, makes me want to just that with their latest exhibits. They are doing such exciting things with their space that I kind of wish I was in California to be able to attend their openings more often. While tomorrow’s show will be about the current show at their SF location, this post will be about their current exhibit on display at the LA location, entitled Idiot Box. Prepare to be absolutely astounded by what these artists have managed to turn memories of your favorite childhood television stars into. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Jem, Alf, Gumby, Ren & Stimpy, Urkel, and many, many more individuals are paid homage to, artistically, offensively, and ridiculously. Honestly, though, this group show is so amazing that this blog post CANNOT even come close to doing the show justice, so please rush over to the gallery’s blog about this show or to their website. Seriously.
Fan favorite Alex Pardee flexes his horror-art muscles yet again by turning Urkel from “Family Matters” into an infected (playful) beast in S.Urkel Jerk.
If all of the mishaps, misunderstandings, and formations of social circles from “Saved By The Bell” were present in this day and age, the playful high school television show might look a little something more like this bloody video game pixel mess. Raw as the idea for this piece is, Jude Buffum has managed to genius take on a classic television show.
Valued at $2,500, there’s a damn good reason this piece by Ewelina Ferruso has been sold. Waa, The Trash Heap Has Spoken is an oil on canvas exercise in patience. Brilliantly colored and masterfully textured, the piece is equally playful as it is technical, making it a solid tribute to “Fraggle Rock.”
“Schoolhouse Rock” has been parodied in many a television show, but it’s hasn’t been quite so present in the art world. Interplanet Janet Leaves The Boys Behind by Patrick Gannon features colored, cut paper marvelously arranged on wood.
Part of me thinks that Nickelodeon wouldn’t be too pleased at these plushies of Ren and Stimpy, but these 12″ tall plushies by Jen Rarey are just precious.
Believe it or not, there are 99 Seinfeld references in this piece by Kiersten Essenpreis. Ridiculous. The piece sold out quickly, as one might imagine, but prints will be available through Gallery 1988 soon. Keep your eyes peeled.
Although the real MacGuyver would have been equipped with some items more useless than duct tape and a Swiss army knife (such as a clothes hanger and some chewing gum), Wade Schin’s one-of-a-kind acrylic MacGuyver is a terrific creation. Kudos.
Lolcats meet Alf? Casey Weldon’s We Can Has A.L.F.? is horrific and awesome at the same time.
The sheer number of amazing pieces in Idiot Box is amazing and this post could honestly be three or four times longer, but I will close it out with Another Battle For My Affection by Roland Tamayo, which references Gumby, The Twilight Zone, Ninja Turtles, and many other lovable television shows.
Again, though, head over to Gallery 1988 now if you’re in the Los Angeles, or at the very least, scope out their blog and be prepared to be extremely amused by this remarkable group show, which is on view now until April 23rd and features one freaking hundred artists!!! (Although I’m sorry, for your sake, that you’ve probably by now missed the art opening, which was hosted by Dennis “Mr. Belding” Haskins, formerly of “Saved By The Bell”.)
With a Bachelors of Fine Arts and a Masters in Counseling Psychology, Laura Kimpton makes art that’s even more diverse than her education; she has a wide array of gallery installations, Burning Man sculptures, collage works, and encaustic pieces under her belt. Showcased above is one piece from her most recent creations that combines collages with textures and dripping waxes.
This Wednesday, March 18th, will be the opening reception for her latest show, His & Her: Line In The Middle, at the Project One Gallery in San Francisco. Her works will be showing alongside the sculptures of Jeff Schomberg.
After I became resigned to the fact that most of the boutiques on Los Angeles’ infamous Melrose strip sell clothing for pretty much the same three kinds of people, I stumbled upon The Congregation of the Forgotten Saints. This shop, which caters equally to goth-glam men and women and to those stepping in line with My Chemical Romance’s fashion senses, doubles up as an art gallery. From month to month, the shop holds an art show centered around a different and completely atypical theme.
Their current show, curated by fellow artist Jeremy Cross, supported/produced by Wild Card Productions / The Metal Awards & Forgotten Saints Clothing, and on behalf of Art Core Presents, is dedicated to “Forgotten Saints”. Over 40 artists from around North America have their works on display for this show, with almost all of the works being considered at least slightly blasphemous to a religious individual. The show’s tagline? “Saints that never were, but should have been.” This “should have been” extends to robot saints, monster saints, mythological saints, goofy saints, and pretty much any kind of saint you can think of.
Here are a few selected pieces from that show which really stood out as inventive or simply well-crafted.
Vince Locke’s Saint Ebba is a painted Cthulu saint.
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Filipino/German artist Ted Von Heiland’s Saint Solace is a mixed-media sculpture that features the only cyborg-esque saint of the show.
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Thomas Pendleton and Anthony Lawson’s St. Mangina features… well — a rubber vagina — over the face of a saint. I wish I could share the entire artists’ statement on the piece, because it’s hilarious, but suffice it to say that it starts off with a cleverly punned, “GLORY HOLELUIAH.”
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Illustrator Jeff Rebner flexes his comic book muscles with “Aleistor SamHain,” a black-and-white skeleton-faced saint.
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With more than 35 other pieces on display at the shop, be sure to visit it if you happen to be in Los Angeles.
www.forgottensaintsla.com
www.bastardart.com
www.myspace.com/wildcardprods
www.myspace.com/themetalawardshow
www.myspace.com/artcorecfs
www.vincelocke.com
www.vonheiland.blogspot.com
www.ministryofink.com
www.boneseeds.com
www.rebnerwerks.com
www.myspace.com/thedirtylounge
Artists of all different styles are constantly posting their work on REDEFINE’s MySpace site, and once in a while, an artist posts something interesting.
Philippe Jusforgues‘ collage works place awkward images of oddly-positioned humans atop vintage images of interiors and exteriors. The viewer gets the impression that every image has a deeper meaning lurking beneath the surface.
These images are from his fourth series, Série Noire.
Evidently Dave Barnes is a somewhat famous soul musician, but that’s not the Dave Barnes we’re talking about here. The Dave Barnes we’re talking about is a Canadian artist and illustrator who combines gritty materials and dated colors with polished illustrations to form what he calls “oldification.” His pieces are nostalgic yet humorous and modern at the same time — the best of all times.
And, as you’ll notice in this piece below, Eatin’ Right, Barnes pays a lot of attention to small details. Check out the random related newspaper clippings, the pen marks added around the rooster’s head, or the slightly faded starbursts in the background.
Barnes will be a part of a group show titled “Made In Canada,” at the Bear and Bird in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The show opened yesterday, and Barnes’ work will be shown alongside that of artists like Rey Ortega and Lori Joy Smith.
