DAVID CHOE

(1976, Los Angeles, US)

David Choe is an American figure painter, muralist, graffiti artist and graphic novelist of Korean descent. His figure paintings, which explore themes of desire, degradation, and exaltation, are characterized by a raw, frenetic tone that he has termed "dirty style". In the graffiti world, he is identified with the bucktoothed whale he has been spray-painting on the streets since he was in his teens.

Choe wanted to be a comic book creator. In a single night in 1996, he wrote a 35-page book of violent sexual obsession which, coupled with drawings and paintings that he created over the next couple of years, eventually became the graphic novel Slow Jams. Choe initially made about 200 copies of Slow Jams on a photocopier and gave them away at Comic-Con in 1998, hoping to interest a publisher.

In late 2003, Choe arrived in Tokyo. In his first 24 hours he punched an undercover security guard due to a misunderstanding resulting from the language barrier. He was arrested and sentenced to three months in prison for violent assault. During that time, he suffered from loneliness, anxiety and a lack of access to art materials. With small pieces of paper and the one pen his cell was allowed, he made over 600 drawings from prison, including portraits of his Japanese cellmates. He also executed a series of erotic paintings using soy sauce, tea, blood and urine for color. After three months, he was released on the condition that he leave Japan immediately and not return.

Watch the documentary "Dirty Hands The Art & Crimes of David Choe": 

DATE FARMERS

(California, US)

The Date Farmers are Armando Lerma and Carlos Ramírez. The artwork by The Date Farmers echoes Mexican-American heritage rooted in California pop culture. Their paintings, collages and three-dimensional sculptures contain elements influenced by graffiti, Mexican street murals, traditional revolutionary posters, sign painting, prison art and tattoos. Living in the peaceful seclusion of the desert, the artists often travel across the border, into Mexicali and Oaxaca to scavenge for materials. With traces of ancient indigenous art, mushrooms, and mescal, the Date Farmers combine familiar pop iconography and corporate logos with figures from comics, folklore and Catholicism. Desert creatures such as coyotes, snakes, and scorpions appear frequently in their works as well as found materials like stamps, bottle caps, hand painted or collaged lettering.

The Date Farmers have a history that is just as compelling as their artwork. Originally from Indio, California, they met at an art gallery in Coachella Valley ten years ago. Marsea Goldberg of New Image Art gave them their first show, naming them The Date Farmers because Armando’s father owned a Date Farm in Coachella where Carlos worked, picking dates. Carlos’ mother was a migrant who once worked with civil rights leader Cesar Chavez -American activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers- during the grape boycott of the 1970s. Through their unique perspective as American-born Chicanos, The Date Farmers explore topical subjects with a profound simplicity.

Watch this video by alf alpha:

CORO

(Texas, US)

Justin Coro Kaufman is a west coat based Illustrator and Fine Artist. He is the Founder and Art Director of artist collective Massive Black. Coro also makes oil paintings for self-enrichment and exhibition, and writes and draws his own comics.

Watch a video of his self portrait by The Complete Artist:

CHARLES GLAUBITZ

(Tijuana, Mexico)

Glaubitz's work could be described as mythical, pictorial, illustrative, cosmological, and relating to sequential art and comics. It combines elements of myth, religion, and spirituality with comics, hermetic ideas, alchemy and science. He works in painting, drawing, watercolor, sculpture, installations, animation and comics.

"There have been two very important changes in my work. In the beginning of 2001 the work was influenced by the surrounding environment of Tijuana and characters from Tijuana and Mexican folklore, myth and pop culture. I call this work the “old world”— El Viejo Mundo— which is about our relationships to the exterior, whether it be relationships that are more indicative of a clashing against ideas of the border, or are more parallel to what the physical border means in real life.

In 2007 a change occurred in my work when “the old world” ceased to exist and I created two archetypes to confront each other in a final battle, the Capitalist King and the Gardener. In battle they ended up being more complementary and less oppositional and together they created a small big bang, and this big bang gave birth to the new world. This new world in my work is a realm of the “starseed” children and illuminati secret society.

My newer work addresses the idea of borders/limits within oneself, one’s own limits internally. I’m interested now less in physical borders and more in the borders that exist between imagination, abstraction, myth and fantasy; the internal conflicts as opposed to the external."

Watch this video by Creative Mornings: