Mark Ryden creates surrealist-inspired paintings of corrupted children in provocative relationships. Each image is delicately handled with painstaking technique, referencing a culture of destruction through elements of classical painting. The color is masterfully rendered in pale pastels, with a playful child-like quality, while the imagery demonstrates harsh and graphic events and addresses issues of pop culture. In recent years, Ryden has shown with the Earl[…..]
One of Brazil’s most famous artists, Ernesto Neto creates room-sized environments for the viewer to navigate through and interact with. By using light, stretchable fabrics and organic shapes, filled occasionally with scented spices, Neto’s work allows the viewer to experience the work through all senses, creating a spatial labyrinth for the journey through the passages in the room. Currently, Neto is collaborating with Merce Cunnigham[…..]
Havana-based artist collective Los Carpinteros creates work that investigates the intersection of art and society and often takes the form of architecture, design, sculpture and drawing. Los Carpinteros consisted of artists Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodriguez and, until 2003, Alexandre Arrechea. The group first adopted the name Los Carpinteros (“The Carpenters”) in 1991, choosing the collective name as a way of abandoning an individual artist persona[…..]
The fantastical worlds of Swiss artist Leopold Rabus are loaded with cliches and symbols, as his satirical characters engage in a variety of dualities. Rabus’ characters investigate morals, ethics, religion and sexuality through absurd and ambiguous narratives. The surrealistic imagery is rooted in Christian iconography and art history and is explored through a variety of media, including wax, real hair and miscellaneous particles. Rabus attended[…..]
San Francisco new media artist Deborah Oropallo continues to surprise the art world by reinventing her work with consistent quality. Oropallo allows her images to evolve with the change in technology, and her mediums range from oil on canvas, to digital photos and permanent pigment prints. Most of her work focuses on mundane objects, but Oropallo transforms them into elegant images through formal concerns like[…..]
Los Angeles artist Tim Hawkinson has been called one of America’s most singular and inventive sculptors today. He is renowned for creating both monumental and microscopic works made of complex kinetic and sound producing elements, which are operated through low-tech programmed systems. Hawkinson’s work is seemingly scientific, and the necessities of his inventions often lead to new tools, widely imaginative approaches and diverse mediums. Hawkinson[…..]
Raqib Shaw is a London-based Kashmiri artist whose work is influenced by decorative objects of the East. The artist uses Japanese screens, Asian textiles and antique carpets, along with paint, to create a rich and layered surface where an erotic world of hybrid creatures inhabits an underwater enviornment. Shaw incorporates a catalogue of flora and fauna into each piece, mixing aquatic with animal and human[…..]
