painting

WILLIAM ARVIN

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(1985)

William Arvin's work follows the recent tradition of press photos, advertisements and film stills, that are the common targets of appropriation, and have been for decades since the dramatic spike of their ever-growing presence in our daily lives. With immediate access to nearly every possible image and every form of media in the limitless landscape of digital space, the subjects are naturally rather disparate from one another, both in content and source media. Social upheaval, cinematic escape and the authority of advertisement are just a few of the issues that lie beneath the images, although, all politics aside, bringing physical form to these fleeting digital encounters under the umbrella medium of paint on canvas is of primary concern.

The role of text in his work serves multiple purposes; it asserts his own obscure sentiments toward the image in question, creates a familiar visual language that viewers speak fluently, that of the calculated design of advertisement, and drives a wedge between the viewer and the illusionistic space of the image, adhering all forms to the flatness of the canvas. 

Flatness against space is also explored through the pixelation of areas in certain images, offering an automatic and systematic form of abstraction. Relying on the predetermined organization of information in digital images, he is free to focus less on composition and more on the play and exchange between these units of reality. Creating a system of tightly organized units within an image is no stranger to the process of painting, however here the process is laid bare, maintaining the unique character of each unit, as well as directly referring to their digital origins.

WENDELL MCSHINE

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(Trinidad and Tobago)

Wendell McShine's creates a series of antagonizing situations between the subject and the way in which the imagery seeks to interpret its ideas: animations that conflicts with their sketchbook counterparts. Canvases that are constructed within aspect fine art and then broken down by their illustrative treatment. small installation boxes that seems to be frozen in their melancholic dream state, only to be pulled out of their sadness through the use of intense color placement. Adding to what is a ceremonial dialogue of fantasy and reality as one engages.

Raw, transcendental and overly mystifying it is no surprise that International artist Wendell McShine (aka SHINE) is from the island of “the Carnival” Trinidad and Tobago. Currently based and producing work in Mexico City there’s a lucid cross pollination expressed through stunning iconography.

When one moves full heartedly into the doorway of Wendell’s work, a multi level narrative, which constructs upon itself is discovered. Bandidos, Jewel Stars, King Crows, Nahuales, Humming Birds, mezcal bottles, plantation houses, skulls, towering coconut trees, hibiscus flowers, rubber ‘slippers’, etc., coexist in a world of wooden panels, canvases, organic animations and paper mache masks.

Watch this video of his work:


USUGROW

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(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:


STEVEN VASQUEZ LOPEZ

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(California, US)

Steven Vasquez Lopez was born in Upland, California and currently lives in San Francisco. Raised in Southern California in a Mexican-American household, Lopez's early obsession with architecture, manual labor and bold fashion continues through his hard-edge graphic acrylic painting and ink drawings. 

Lopez received his BA in Studio Art from UC Santa Barbara in 2000. He was a recipient of the William Dole Memorial Scholarship (1999, 2000), Abrams Prize (2000), Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship (2006), ArtSlant Prize (2012). Since completing his MFA in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007, Lopez has exhibited at CES Contemporary, Aqua Art Miami, ArtsPadSF, the San Francisco Art Commission Gallery, Riverside Art Museum, Diego Rivera Gallery, Parklife Gallery, Roll Up Gallery & Root Division Gallery.

STEVE LOPEZ

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(Los Angeles, US)

Born in Los Angeles, Steve Lopez was heavily influenced by hip hop culture and graffiti art. He is a painter who has emerged from the graffiti subculture and academic influence. While attending the University of Oregon Lopez studied under the guidance of master sculptor, Dora Natella and design theorist, Leon Johnson. Lopez absorbed attention to form associated with Natella’s sculptures, while refining his conceptual vocabulary through Johnson’s critique on visual continuity.

In 2000, Lopez Received his B.A. in Fine Art. His work can be found within a myriad of corporate and private art collections both in the United States and abroad. He currently lives and works in the City of Los Angeles.

SASU

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(Tokyo)

Sasu's work fuses natural and urban elements with her graphic yet balanced style. Her sensibilities, rich colors and feminine lines create a unique world never seen before.

Sasu believes that her instinctual sense of balance, as seen in her more characteristic paintings symmetrical, mandara-like shapes and figures truly reflect her personality. Mural being the center of the scene, she pursues new areas of artwork. 

The wishes for the endless glow is created into shapes, and the process is crystalized into fine artwork.

Watch this video:

 

RYAN JACOB SMITH

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(California, US)

Ryan Jacob Smith was raised in Orange County, California, and spent his younger years rock-collecting, skating and cub-scouting. In 2001, he graduated with honors from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

His narrative work explores themes ranging from the earth and its environment to consciousness, the human body, survival and hurt and healing. Incorporating illustration, painting, and collage, his work is a blend of intention and improvisation. Fragments, mistakes and unconscious marks remain in each piece, revealing the process and of their development. With a combination of acrylics, spray paint, silkscreen and graphite, Ryan’s work is as much informed by the street culture of his youth as his formal fine art training.

Ryan Jacob Smith currently lives in Portland, Oregon where he enjoys collecting old science books and ephemera from thrift stores, skateboarding and buying records.

RON ENGLISH

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(1966, Texas, US)

Ron English is an American contemporary artist who explores brand imagery and advertising. He is known for the use of color and comic book collage.

One of the most prolific and recognizable artists alive today, Ron English has bombed the global landscape with unforgettable images, on the street, in museums, in movies, books and television. English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie “Supersize Me,” and Abraham Obama, the fusion of America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image widely discussed in the media as directly impacting the 2008 election. 

Other characters carousing through English’s art, in paintings, billboards, and sculpture include three-eyed rabbits, udderly delicious cowgirls and grinning skulls, blending stunning visuals with the bitingly humorous undertones of America’s Premier Pop Iconoclast. English was one of the on-camera subjects interviewed for the documentary Super Size Me (2004), which showcased his McDonald's-themed artwork -- inspired by English's belief about the effect of fast food franchises andrestaurant chains on the American culture.

Watch this interview by Hurley:


ROB MARS

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(1969, US)

Robert Mars uses art to express nostalgia for a time before he was born. An artistic descendent of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, he explores American Pop icons from Marilyn Monroe to Coca-Cola, packaging celebrities opposite brand names and advertising copy as though they were luxury objects. 

To create his work, he uses Xerox transfer to layer images and text pulled from his vast archive of vintage magazines—making photocopies and blowing them up to enhance their imperfections—and adds boldly colored paint and minimalist patterns, then distresses the image to further highlight the sense of a fading era. Mars finishes the works with a coat of resin, or by adding neon lights, imparting a glossy sheen to these memorials to desire.

Watch this video of Rob discussing his process and concept:


ROB ABEYTA JR.

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(1972, US)

Rob Abeyta Jr. is painter, designer and art director living in the harbor area of Los Angeles. Currently, he is working with NIKE as the senior designer on a new line of sneakers & apparel to rollout later this year. In addition, he is a member of SA Studios creative team with Mr. Cartoon and Estevan Oriol. 

His past works have included collaborations with Spike Jonze, French Director and Academy Award Winner Michel Gondry and numerous music packaging designs ranging from the seminal punk band LOS CRUDOS, to The Transplants, to LA hip hop legends MACK 10, Cypress Hill and DJ Quick. 

Other works include the design of numerous skateboards and apparel while working as an Art Director for Fourstar Clothing at the Girl Skateboard Companies. While design and art direction take up his days, the nights are taken up by learning the process of tattooing with Mr. Cartoon.

RICHARD COLMAN

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(1976, Washington, DC, US)

Richard Colman graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts in 2002 and has exhibited extensively throughout the world in both solo and group shows. In 2006 Ginko Press released a book cataloging his work titled I Was Just Leaving. Colman currently lives and works in San Francisco, California. Recent exhibitions include Black Diamond at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen and Mad Love Young Art in Private Collections at the Arken Museum Of Modern Art, Denmark.

Watch this interview:


RICH JACOBS

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(1972, California, US)

Rich Jacobs is an American artist and curator who currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. Jacobs has exhibited in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. In 2008 his work Minor Threat Family Tree was featured prominently along with other works by Jacobs at the London Ontario Live Arts Festival in Canada.

Inspired by graffiti, psychedelic and folk art, Jacobs' raw, colorful work frequently appears on a broad range of materials such as magazines, books, CD and LP covers (including most of the albums for Salt Lake City-based group Iceburn), footwear, apparel (such as parkas, skirts and dresses), skateboards, buildings, pillows and so on.

Watch this video of Rich painting on Culture Catch:


RENE ALMANZA

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(1979, Monterrey, NL, Mexico)

Rene Almanza graduated from the School of Visual Arts of the UANL (Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León). He began working during his adolescence as a visual artist; first in graphic novels, underground fanzines, the newspapers of Monterey, and later in printed media mainly designing signs. In 2000 he joined the editorial or political cartoon department of the group Reforma (which included the newspapers El Norte of Monterrey, Reforma of Mexico City, The Mural of Guadalajara, and Palabra of Saltillo), illustrating various articles in these newspapers.

For two years he was in charge of illustrations in the cultural section of the newspaper El Norte, where he received 6 awards for his work from SND (Society for Newspaper Design) based in New York, which every year rewards the most outstanding international work in photography, design and editorial illustration. After three years with the group Reforma, he joined the “Shinseken” Editorial group of Tokyo, Japan, working in a project which collected folk tales from around the world to condense them into a collection of illustrated books, published in five languages. Once the project was completed he moved to Oaxaca.

He is a founding member of Galería Arte Cocodrilo (Crocodile Art Gallery), and the graphic arts studio Pata de Perro ( Dog’s leg), independent spaces dedicated to the diffusion of emergent visual arts in the Oaxaca area. Currently he is working with the publishing house Sirpus (Barcelona, Spain) in collaboration with linguists from the Colegio de México, illustrating a series of bilingual books on the history of the Zapotec communities of Oaxaca. His work can be found in numerous private collections in Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Chile, Canada, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Holland, Morocco, Australia, Japan, Bangladesh, China and Vietnam.

Watch this video:


PEAT WOLLAEGER

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(St. Louis, MO, US)

Peat 'EYEZ' Wollaeger has been drawing and painting ever since he was a kid. He started doing commercial art in the 90’s and continued for almost a decade, creating urban designs for such clients as Coca-Cola, R. J. Reynolds, M&M Mars, Anheuser Busch and some lesser evils. Burned out with the graphic arts scene and not creating any personal art, he started using stencils and spray enamels to reproduce his illustrations, and now it’s his medium of choice. 

Internationally known for his whimsical, raw, and brightly-colored stenciled characters that include, Mr. Teeth, the Dead Fat Comedians, Albino Alley Cat, and the Luchador series, Peat Wollaeger is one hard-working artist. His work can been seen all over the globe. His Luchador room at Hotel Des Arts in San Francisco, his massive wall tribute to Keith Hairing at Art Basel in Miami, the 700,000 aluminum bottles of Mountain Dew with emblazoned with his original design, his recent exhibit in Melbourne, Australia, Peat Wollaeger's art is everywhere. 

Watch this video of 'Opening Eyez on the Street' by TEDx Talks:


PAUL INSECT

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(UK)

Paul Insect is a street artist, who is most famous for his 2007 solo show Bullion exhibition at London's Art gallery, Lazarides Gallery. Damien Hirst is reported to be a fan of Insect, having purchased the show days before it opened. Insect, who also goes by the name of PINS, worked alongside well-known artist Banksy at the Cans Festival, Santas Ghetto, and on the separation wall in Palestine.

Insect is well known for his collective named 'insect' which started in 1996, and disbanded in 2005. Insect held an exhibition at a disused Sex shop in London's Kings Cross area in 2008 in partnership with Lazarides Gallery. This contained 12 bronze skulls with colour enameled bunny ears.

Watch this video of Paul Insect with BAST:


OLIVER VERNON

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(1972, New York, US)

Oliver Vernon received his BFA from Parsons School of Design in 1995, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He has exhibited his work in cities all across the United States including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago, and has also shown in London and Toronto. His work is part of numerous collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Visually, Vernon’s paintings draw upon an incredibly varied pool of influences, from abstract expressionism, to post pop surrealism and the polished finish of figurative realism. Formally, his work is about the deconstruction, and hence the necessary reconstruction of visual space. From this central dichotomy stems many others: logic/illogic, physical/metaphysical, imprisonment/liberation. His paintings come to us, perhaps, as detailed snapshots of the few primordial milliseconds when the blueprint of the universe was being sculpted from the final throes of chaos. In this sense, anything goes. 

Each painting has it’s own set of rules, or rather the rules are being bent, broken and ultimately formed within each painting. Color, form, energy, architecture, good, evil, flesh and machine are lurking, never as physical entities, but as transient archetypes searching out their final places within the framework of the cosmos. Apart from this macro view, Oliver’s work can be seen at the micro level as well. We can view his paintings as representations of how the mind is formed from a foundation of thought, reason, and aesthetics, and how these entities are simultaneously at odds and interconnected.

Watch this video of his exhibition "Renegade Trajectories" by Colin M Day: 


NYCHOS

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(Austria)

Nychos is a renowned Austrian Street Artist. One of the most prolific of the European scene. His style is characterized by pop surrealist and often has a sordid and critical content, particularly on media and society. He is a wonderful illustrator and he dissects and disembowels animals that fill his compositions to put them better into light.

He was born into an Austrian hunting family in South Africa and spent much of his childhood seeing things which many ‘normal’ people would consider cruel or even brutal. For Nychos though, it was a fascinating world. At seven he was bitten by a boar while he was playing in the forest close to home. Just a little while later he had boar meat for lunch. In another instance he saw a dead baby lamb being consumed by maggots the same color as its fur. Instead of being horrified, he was fascinated. He studied the hidden insides of animals and noticed the way life often grows from other life. At the same time he was also a child of the 80s, growing up watching cartoons and being influenced by their flashy bright colors.

Nychos has done collaborations with international giant urban art scene as Roa, Aryz, Satone, Zedz and Wany.

Watch this video by Hypebeast:


NATE VALENSKY

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Dream Chaser Ride On, To all those who have not yet warmed their feet next to the warmth of Nate Valensky’s forest fire; I can only wish that one would feel the feather of bliss flying down a steep hillside after a glass of fine tequila and dried bananas. Nate will inspire one to find wealth in the release of what is not important, enabling the light of what is to shine through. Comparable to walking through a freshly burned pine forest in the Upper Cascade range looking for worms to feed your sick friend the mountain lion. Creating flow like a fresh rattle snake bite, Nate can be the one that sells you your ticket to board the bus to freedom. Whisking ones feet away with the dance of his brush and the flowering of unique color that lathers the mind with a creamy butter of goodness and purity. Approach Nate Like a bubbling stream you may come upon during a journey into a beautiful new world, dip your feet in, cleanse the soul, and fill your moose blatter to the brim, because it could be many moons before you come across something this good again. - Jonathan Oliver Stein -

Watch art life and all that freshness:

 

MIKE PARK

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Mike Park's polymer coated acrylic paintings on wood depict a melange of dream like narratives brimming with adolescent angst. His technique is impressive, and he reveals young men and women engaged in deeply personal moments, often exuding emotions of hope, fear and desire. The works can be read as a virtual map into the psyche of the human condition, where people grapple with feelings of alienation and sexual ambiguity.