Charles Bierk
Toronto-based painter Charles Bierk creates hyper realistic portraits of modern youth and explore the visual sense of gestures
Sculptures by Jaime Pitarch
Jaime Pitarch creates sculptures, drawings, videos and installations often using humble everyday objects such as a guitar, chair, or household and consumer products. He employs inventive strategies of displacement, re-contextualization and visual punning to peel away at their routine uses and meanings to alter our relationship with such utilitarian items.
Pitarch describes his work as mainly having “… to do with the human being’s inability to identify with the structures he himself has created.” Having been stripped of their functionality, we are free to view them in the alternative narratives the artist provides.
Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable: Damien Hirst
"In 2008 the wreck of a treasure ship called the Apistos (meaning “the Unbelievable”) was found on the seabed off east Africa. It sank about 2,000 years ago. Its unique cargo of global artefacts, assembled by a freed slave called Cif Amotan II, have spent two millennia undergoing a “sea change” straight out of Shakespeare’s Tempest, becoming wrapped in coloured corals and bizarre crustacean growths - until the archaeologists who found this sunken marvel asked Hirst to use his millions to help recover it."
"If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. The curators who told this bit of hokum straightfaced at the start of the press view deserve bonuses, if Hirst has not yet bankrupted himself creating this luxury masterpiece. " The Guardian
Photographed by Christoph Gerigk
© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.
The elaborate backstory is slightly undercut by the fact that the fake relics include not just historical references, but the faces of Pharrell, Kate Moss, Rihanna, and Die Antwoord singer YoLandi Visser, not to mention Mickey Mouse.
Sphinx by Damien Hirst. Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
Photographed by Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved, DACS/SIAE 2017.
‘Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable’, April 9-December 3, Palazzo Grassi and the Punta della Dogana, Venice; palazzograssi.it
Photographed by Christoph Gerigk
© Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.
Skull of a Cyclops and Skull of a Cyclops Examined by a Diver. Photograph: Prudence Cuming Associates © Damien Hirst and Science Ltd.
Photography from exhibition by Rita Bamburova
Hyper Realistic Sculpture by Sarah Sitkin
Sarah Sitkin is a Los Angeles based contemporary artist delivering hyper realistic and somewhat provocative art. Her sculptural works are made in wide variety of media including but not limited to silicone, clay, plaster, resin, and latex.
Assimilate Anew with Etre Britta, dir. by James Aiken
'Assimilate Anew' is a collaboration between British filmmaker James Aiken and Australian artist Brittany Stephen - known as Etre Britta.
The film explores the relationship between experience and creative output where the essence of a scene can be transported in a 2d form.
Concept and direction jamesaiken.co
Featuring etrebritta.com
Sounds and music wearefather.com
20 years of Convenience by Me Kyeoung Lee
"For the last 20 years, South Korean artist Me Kyeoung Lee has traveled around her home country, armed with acrylic inks and a penchant for painting quaint little convenience stores. Throughout her childhood, Lee recalls frequenting these charming corner stores that are now becoming few and far between in modern-day South Korea. In each painting, she captures every little detail, highlighting each store’s idyllic features, its traditional signage, and miscellaneous bric-à-brac."
JAHNKOY Fashion by Maria Kazakova
"Jahnkoy" means "new spirit village" on Crimean. Jahnkoy’s work is a decisive return to craft, meaning the very hands that create and define cultures. Siberia-born, the New York-based visual artist Maria Kazakova explores textiles and ancient techniques, and aims to blend the traditional with the contemporary, highlighting the invisible, and reorienting the practice of fashion to the realm of art.
Maria is a graduate from Parsons School of Design with a MFA in Fashion Design & Society, also holds a BFA in Fashion Design from the British Higher school of Art & Design, Moscow and a Graduate Diploma in Fashion from Central Saint Martins, London.
"Maria debuted with "Jahnkoy" collection at New York Fashion Week 2017 and has been shortlisted by LVMH Prize. Also Kazakova was able to secure a collaboration with Puma and resources from Swarovski for her debut collection, quilting second-hand sports t-shirts with embellished fabrics that swaddled the wearer."
Photos from NYC Fashion Week 2017
Campaign video directed by Sasha Kulak
Art of Rustam Iralin
Russian figurative painter Rustam Iralin shares his love to abstract portraits and invites a viewer to read the visual stories hidden in between of canvas, strokes and layers of oil. You may read an interview with Rustam on Yatzer published today
Forbidden Fruit by Chris Antemann
"In 2012, Oregon-based sculptor Chris Antemann was invited to participate in artCAMPUS®, the art studio program of Germany’s renowned MEISSEN® Porcelain Manufactory. The program enabled Antemann to collaborate with Meissen’s master artisans on unique pieces and a series of limited-edition sculptures, resulting in a grand installation that reinvents and invigorates the great porcelain figurative tradition."
"Using the Garden of Eden as her metaphor, Antemann created a contemporary celebration of the 18th-century banqueting craze. Inspired by Meissen’s great historical model of Johann Joachim Kändler’s monumental Love Temple (1750), the artist sculpted her own 5-foot version."
Wood Sculpture by Willy Verginer
Italian sculptor Willy Verginer creates figurative sculptures from wood, pieces that allow his carving skills to stand out with minimal additions of monochrome bands of paint.
Verginer’s newest work is included in the group exhibition After Industry at Wasserman Projects in Detroit through April, 8 2017. You can see more of his minimally painted sculptures on his Instagram.
Art of TYPOE
Typoe (Michael Andrew Gran) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice plays upon the constant tension between the dark recesses of the urban underground and the shimmering bling of celebrity. With both gravitas and irreverence his work might be regarded as a contemporary memento mori with a smile.
Typoe’s work evolves in response to a given situation or environment and he often works with gunpowder, fire, plastic, spray paint and found objects in the creation of his works and installations., the messenger that while laughing, points to hypocrisy and excess while announcing the melancholy of time lost.
Based in Miami, Typoe has participated in gallery and museum shows around the world and exhibited his work in Mexico City, Mexico, New York, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Basel ,Switzerland. Typoe is cofounder and Creative Director of PRIMARY, an art collective and gallery in Miami.
Art of Jenny Morgan
Figurative artist Jenny Morgan explores femininity in aspects of life, death and rebirth. "Fusing figurative realism with graphic forms, her impeccably detailed images demonstrate an exceptional technique, while purposefully abstracting the human body—at times literally reducing it to its fundamental, skeletal structure."
Rala Choi’s Faceless Portraits
Rala Choi is a Seoul-based photographer who’s best known for his use of rich, saturated colours. The colours and textures of his images often make viewers question whether they’re looking at a photograph or an oil painting.
"I Want to Play God" by Cao Hui
"Fascinated by anatomy and realistic depiction of human organs, the artist divided classical artworks into pieces showing anatomic details that compose their interiors. Believing that the object’s inner side is as important as the surface, Hui challenges the viewers’ expectations towards the classical sculpture. When assembled, the artworks appear to be predictable, traditional sculpture.." text by Monika Mroz, iGNANT
Traveling Landscape by Kathleen Vance
“With the series entitled “Traveling Landscapes”, vignettes of nature are encapsulated within steamer trunks and train cases aged through travel. Displaced elements indicative of natural landscapes are presented in partially opened cases, as to not fully expose the delicateness of what is contained within. Streams and rivers activate the scenes as they course through the landscapes contained within the cases. The illusion of life and growth, illuminated within, reflects the desire to capture a part of nature untouched by humans. Used as a mediation device between the lush pastoral scenes contained within and the harsh actuality of their physical surroundings, the trunks and cases elicit visions of travel, preciousness and possession.”
Lighting, Layers and Reflections by Autumn de Wilde
"Lighting, Layers and Reflections" installation by Autumn de Wilde was commissioned by Cadillac for their Escalade ad campaign (in 2014). Where De Wilde was inspired by the reflections of the landscape on the vehicle
“I designed the sculptures so that they would interact and transform with the landscape as the sun rose, passed over us and set.”
Digital Art of Petra Cortright
Already named as the Monet of XXI Century by Artsy's Charlotte Jansen "beyond botanicals, her current practice is increasingly aligned with Impressionist ideas, but for the 21st-century set" digital art of Petra Cortright is something to focus on now.
"Her most recent works, now on view in concurrent exhibitions at San Francisco’s Ever Gold [Projects] and Berlin’s Société, are evidence of this: digital paintings filled with flowers and water lilies that are instinctively reminiscent of Monet. Both shows illuminate Cortright’s multi-pronged process. She begins by sourcing imagery online, employing a sort of digital impasto technique to make what she calls “a mother file,” which she then manipulates and prints onto various substrates—such as aluminium panels, sheets of linen, rag paper—which are layered to create the final painting, varying in opacity and translucency." says Artsy
“I came up in such a boy’s club, surrounded by guys—technology-based work can be very guy-heavy. When I was at Parsons, there were maybe three girls in the whole program, it was crazy. Pinterest is heavily geared towards women and I wanted to be using more of that imagery and energy, trying to make something that a lot of people really make fun of, things that are reductive to something that was additive.”
Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey (installation shot). Courtesy of Prague’s National Gallery.
Ai Weiwei: Law of the Journey
"At his upcoming exhibition at Prague’s National Gallery, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei continues his investigation into the European refugee crisis. A refugee himself, Ai’s latest body of work has preoccupied him since the onset of the mass migration of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa for Europe in 2015."
"The exhibition, titled “Law of the Journey,” takes place against the backdrop of an Austrian proposal to cut European Union subsidies to member states refusing to participate in the EU’s refugee relocation program. According to Sputnik News, the Czech Republic has been reluctant to accept refugees from Italy and Greece in recent weeks."
Quayola: Fragments
bitforms gallery nyc is very pleased to continue its fifteen-year anniversary season with Fragments, Quayola’s second solo show with the gallery.
Born in Rome, Quayola’s practice is deeply affected by the grandeur and decay of ancient sculptures and Renaissance masterpieces that he encountered at an early age. Architectural façades, objects, and artworks that were once new chip, fade, crack, and break over the centuries. While the perception and reception of distressed frescoes or fractured sculptures is fluid, the work itself remains, containing a multitude of temporal narratives. Quayola translates this experience into his sculptures and works on paper and aluminium, which he presents in the exhibition as “simulated archaeological artefacts.”
Laocoön Fragments is a series of sculptures based on the Hellenistic sculpture Laocoön and His Sons. A paramount example of the Pergamene Baroque style, the work was endlessly copied—beginning in Roman times and through the nineteenth century—both as an artistic training device and due to its sheer popularity. Quayola inserts himself into this tradition with a digitally-driven approach. The artist’s software imagines and renders alternative breakages, fragmenting the work into two distinctive styles: representationally accurate sections and geometric abstractions coalesce into new forms. Made with a unique blend of pulverized iron powder mixed with resin, the sculptures are then chemically treated to cause an accelerated patina effect. The geometric sections are polished and waxed to achieve a smooth, newer appearance, while the representational segments appear oxidized and textured. Thus, the visual contrast between the “past” and “present” becomes more pronounced.
Art of Grant Haffner
Inspired by quiet rural roads and grand, open landscapes, artist Grant Haffner creates vibrant neon depictions of sprawling vistas bursting with bright color.
