installation

USUGROW

in ,

(Japan)

Usugrow began his own artistic activity by creating flyers in underground punk and hard core music scene in early 90's. Since then, he has been involved in various album cover designs for bands and musicians regardless of genre, art directions and merchandises, and also collaborating with lots of skateboarding brands and fashion brands.

Usugrow expanded the range of his activity and done several solo exhibition at art galleries in Japan and overseas since 2005, and published his first monograph. In addition to his solo exhibition, he has been curating the group exhibition and book projects with Japanese artists since 2009.

He currently works on mainly illustration, painting and calligraphy as well as live painting, collaboration project with other artists and three-dimensional artwork.

Watch this video:


MARIO WAGNER

in ,

(1974)

Mario Wagner lives and works as an artist and illustrator in Berkeley, USA.

His work has been published in renowned anthologies, including 3x3 Magazine and Illustration Now! He also contributed work to advertising campaigns for clients such as ABSOLUT VODKA, Cheerios, IKEA and his work regularly appears in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal and WIRED Magazine. His fine art has been shown in numerous exhibitions in Berlin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and London, on art fairs like SCOPE, NADA and Art Basel Miami.

Watch this video of Mario Wagner making an art installation:

LUCY MCLAUCHLAN

in ,

(1978, Birmingham, England)

Lucy Mclauchlan is a contemporary artist from Birmingham, England. She is part of the "Beat 13!" collective.

In the era of extensive preparation using digital tools, Lucy is noted for her use of permanent materials and a one-take philosophy. In her deft hands this unedited process still results in considered and surprisingly slick executions. While working mainly in black and white she creatures a world rich in experience, and ruled by a passionate instinct.

Lucy's art combines ancient, almost prehistorical influences with a graphic modernist sensibility. The creative epoxy that binds these two disparate references together is Lucy's clear personal vision, resulting in the immediately recognizable style that is a hallmark of many memorable artists. A diaspora of other influences including art deco, psychedelia, naturalism and contemporary female figurative work consolidate its spellbinding charm. Four artworks from Lucy are featured in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert museum.

Watch this video by Walrus TV:


KAMI

in ,

(1999)

Known for their large murals and installations that draw upon their personal inspirations, Kami and Sasu collaborate to build stunning iconographies. Drawing from traditional Japanese Calligraphy and sprawling patterns, they create new sensual forms in bold colors that represent their signature style. As a duo, their work is recognized by Kami’s strong line work and Sasu’s distinctive patterns.

Watch this video of Hitotzuki by Giant Robot:


HERA

in , , ,

(1981, Germany)

Since 2004 the German street art duo Hera and Akut form a fruitful partnership having worked together on various successful global art projects. Their art works can be found in big cities around the world – from Toronto to Kathmandu, from San Francisco to Melbourne. Their joint creative art process is dialogical, among themselves as well as towards the outside by embracing the public. It’s about storytelling, the creation of imaginary worlds and inspiring their figures with individual characters. Hera sets the characters’ form and proportions, whilst Akut paints the photorealistic elements. The further process is determined jointly by the two artists. 

Together they experiment with different formats, materials and methods. Their art works ‘natural home’ is the public space, where everyone can take a pause from the city buzz in front of one of their massive murals. Equally, their gallery pieces, installations and canvases are characterized by their narrative style and their ability to lead the viewer into the imagination of those two exceptional artists. There is a pictorial and textual component in their art pieces. The short quotes, passages or descriptions written next to the figures are references to the character’s life. As a central theme, their figures can be seen in the context of social fractions and collective constraints, but also embedded into fabulous quotes that tell us of love. Thus, the figures reflect the diversity of life.

Herakut’s paintings are sensuous, savage, and always remarkable for their powerful dualism. Akut’s photorealistic details play out against Hera’s expressive, more gestural, line-work in canvases that seem poised to articulate stories of triumph and hardship. Humor and text are weaved their way into the work effortlessly.

Watch this video:


FAILE

in ,

(1999)

FAILE is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Their name is an anagram of their first project, “A life.” Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has been known for a wide ranging multimedia practice recognizable for its explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. While painting and printmaking remain central to their approach, over the past decade FAILE has adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to vast array of materials and techniques, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, installation, and prayer wheels.

FAILE’s work is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture, but recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media, architecture, and site-specific/archival research into their work.

Watch this video on their permanent installation by Vice:

EVOL

in ,

(1972, Berlin, Germany)

With a degree in product design, street artist Evol has become known for his urban installations and paintings made on reclaimed cardboard. Evol is interested in depicting the urban lives of ordinary people in decaying buildings. For his public practice, he turns electrical boxes and street fixtures into miniature architectural models of austere apartments, using a process that combines pasting paper, stenciling, and painting. 

He also stencils and paints urban street scenes and buildings onto cardboard and incorporates its tears, markings, and folds into his compositions as part of the buildings’ facades. Evol believes that the character and history of any space is manifest on its surface, and many of his works are narrative or suggestive of the turbulent history of Berlin.

Watch this video of his work:


EINE

in ,

(1970, London, UK)

The prolific street artist Ben Eine (Ben Flynn) is best known his series of spray-painted letter murals on storefront shutters along London’s Middlesex Street, or “Alphabet Street”, as it has become known. Eine’s trademark colorful typography adorns streets in cities all over the world, including LA, Mexico City, and Tokyo, and the artist also creates indoor installations and produces works on canvas in spray paint, acrylic, and glitter. Eine gained worldwide recognition when British Prime Minister David Cameron presented one of his works to President Obama during a state visit. He was also invited to participate in Banksy’s 2008 “Cans Festival” in London.

Watch this documentary:


DIE ANTWOORD

in ,

(Cape Town, South Africa)

Die Antwoord is a South African rap-rave group formed in Cape Town in 2008. The group's members are rappers Ninja and Yolandi Visser (often stylized as Vi$er) and DJ Hi-Tek. Their image involves a counterculture movement called zef and the influence of photographer Roger Ballen.

 

Watch this video of Ninja of Die Antwoord while he paints the walls at FIFTY24SF gallery by Walrus TV:

DENNIS MCNETT

in ,

(1972, Virginia, US)

Dennis McNett has been carving surly block prints for over 18 years. His encouragement as a kid came from his blind grandfather, who told him over and over again that his drawings were good. Later influences came from the raw high-energy imagery pouring out of the early 80's skateboard and punk rock scene.

His graphic aesthetic and love for narrative work has been translated in many ways. His work ranges from larger than life Viking ship performances and parades in Philly, resurrecting Nordic giants on West Broadway in Manhattan, Dragon slayings in Oklahoma, masks, installations and sculptures to unique hand-carved wood cut pieces, traditional relief prints, and graphics. 
 

Participating in both the fine art and design worlds, Dennis has been fortunate enough to create series’ for Anti-Hero skateboards, design shoes for Vans, have work fill the windows of Barneys, NY, and participate in the Deitch Artparade. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Juxtapoz magazine, Thrasher and Complex Magazine. 

Watch Dennis in his studio by Vans:



CHARLES GLAUBITZ

in ,

(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:



ANTHONY LISTER

in , , ,

(1979, Brisbane, Australia)

Lister is a painter and Installation artist whoes work presents us with a grimy fusion of high and lowbrow culture with influences from a number of areas and genres, including street art, expressionism, pop art, and contemporary youth culture, often drawing from television and the "misguided role models" that result. Revelling in the "spirituality", and the "heritage" of Western popular culture he takes this joint legacy and remoulds it into something equally alluring and grotesque, a perfect representation of the society he seeks to depict. 

Taking influence from the dirtier and rough techniques of "Bad" Painting and merging it with the spirit and practices of graffiti art Lister has embraced an explosive, scratchy, scrawling form of figurative art using a variety of mediums from painting, drawing and installation to film and music.

Lister uses comic book imagery for his own means, redirecting popular culture for personal expression. Heroes and villains are taken out of the panel and placed in a new space, devoid of the usual storyline, dialogue and scenery. His paintings are not controlled by cartoon contexts. Rather, the figures in these portraits are reinvented through the artist’s hand. His mixed media technique, involving layers of ink, spray and brushwork, allow his paintings to simultaneously have soft ethereality and a garish, raw energy.

Watch his interview by We Love Street-Art: