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[…..]
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[…..]
Ellen Altfest is a hyper-realist painter whose work contains an illusionistic material quality. Each painting is created from still-life observation, focusing on the individual object’s inherent complexities. Altfest’s painted objects blend into their surroundings. Engulfed by the environment, these paintings focus on the physicality and the patterns found in images of nature. The artist received an MFA from Yale University School of Art and attended[…..]
Austin-based artist Jonathan Marshall creates large paintings and drawings that rely heavily on wit, working through color and design. These graphic images explore nature and the landscape through illustrative imagery, showing destruction through absurdity and humor. His success began shortly after his graduation from University of Texas at Austin (2003), and, in 2005 alone, Marshall received the best-in-show award for the Texas Biennial and a[…..]
Later this month, installation artist Paola Cabal will open a new intervention with Western Exhibitions in Chicago. Cabal’s work is created on-site, working from elements inherent to the space. She “intervenes” in subtle ways, usually playing with a particular source of light, capturing moments of the constantly changing world. Using materials as diverse as spray paint, powdered ash, thread and tape, she studies and marks[…..]
Miki Carmi, a recent Columbia University MFA graduate (2005), has received notable attention after selling out of his first solo exhibition at Stux Gallery in New York City last year. Carmi works from old family portraits, producing compelling and innovative large-scale paintings of aged heads that float on a white ground. The paint is applied with heavy strokes, so the physical properties mimic the texture[…..]
