Hsiao Ron Cheng was born in 1986 in Taipei, Taiwan. She’s a delicate daughter of our hallucinated times, a perfect representative of remote lives, separated from the mess of the streets. Can’t stop loving her.
Alessandro Bavari
This is from Alessandro‘s latest project, Metachaos. Keywords are tragedies like war, madness, hate.. Metachaos is multimedia project made of digital photography, paintings and one video, everything with Bavari‘s usual style, isolation and loneliness of the human being turned into art. More after the cut!
Takanori Aiba
Takanori Aiba was born in 1953 in Yokohama, Japan. He is an amazing creator of microworlds, sometimes with bonsai trees. I’m speechless, I’d just love to be 3cm tall to be admitted to live in his Hôtel de Michelin (above).
[via Colossal]
Micheal Page
Michael was born in 1979, lives and works in San Francisco. His painting is ever-moving, from the first scenarios that remind the Thirties ghost stories told in the woods, to the kaleidoscopic explosion of primordial fluid that wraps animals, humans and towns. Always used in every culture, nature and its powerful symbols, horses and trees (for example), remain focused in Michael’s imagination, a third millennium’s “Maestro”.
[special thanks to Yasha Young]
Claudia Giannuli (Q.B. Quantobasta personal exhibition)
Claudia‘s personal exhibition opens tonite at Fabrica Fluxus Art Gallery in Bari, Italy. Her everyday and derailed characters seems to me popped out of Doctor Who: they seem scary and somehow acknowledged, like they are part of our lives all time long. So, don’t miss Claudia‘s little apocalypses and more pics after the cut!
Sean Vicary
Sean lives in Wales, he works mainly with video and his art is strongly connected to ecology. Once inspiring and soothing landscapes become symbol of an alien and/or helpless world. His latest video, ‘Lament’ is opening tomorrow at Oriel Davies Gallery.
Marcus Poston (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Marcus (New York, 1974) is a storyteller. He collects the city rubble to build cases and simulacra and uses the little, but important, things we lose to put a soul inside it. Keys, watches, locks… cold metal that contrasts with the wood’s soothed vitality; gentleness and strength are fused together. The opposites that, as usual, attract and the secrets are explored and brought to new life.
[special thanks to Yasha Young]
Chris Von Steiner
It took an year to Chris to develop his evolution. Here some examples of his new body of work; deviant pop, quirky as usual, his digital creations always strike the eye and make you feel in a strange fantasy land; but now he shows less to show more! Let’s wait for more artworks! More after the cut!
Chris Berens (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Chris was born in 1976 and lives in Amsterdam. In recent years he has developed his unique technique made of layers of paper, reagents, paints, pencils, inks.. this which allow him to paint pictures that only apparently seem digital. This skill combined with his childish imagination, made up of stories never told and magical hidden worlds, make Chris a great, kindly touching artist.
[thanks to Jaski Art Gallery]
Tessa Farmer (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Tessa was born in Birmingham in 1978 and lives in London. Since 2007 her unique sculptures and her stop motion videos have attracted worldwide attention. They’ve been shown in England, in various locations in Oceania and at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. The apparent spectrality of her work is actually a representation of a fairy world, a hymn to the natural cycle of life and death.
Read the Selva Obscura show press release in english HERE and in italian HERE.
Squp (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Squp was born in Castelfranco Veneto in 1967 and is Professor of Digital Image Processing. The aquatic world, its mythology, its originating process of life is the focus of her research. The alternation of attraction to the past (the monsters, meaning “miracles” according to the Latin etymology) and references to a possible future (women mutated, queens of the primordial elements) bring us in an evocative run into other planes of reality. Read the Selva Obscura show press release in english HERE and in italian HERE.
Eric van Straaten (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Eric (Leiden, Netherlands, 1969) is a pioneer in 3D digital sculpting. Being a perfectionist he abandoned the resin and the wax for the digital modeling, which allows near-total control of the result. Each sculpture is a special case, given the young age of technology and the climate of experimentation constant characteristic of today’s high tech world.
[special thanks to Yasha Young]
Hikari Shimoda (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Hikari was born in Nagano in 1984 and I proudly involved her in the Selva Obscura show (read press release in english HERE and in italian HERE). His characters move between enchantment and pain in a world of magic and childlike, polluted by all the contradictions of modern life and filtered by the rich contemporary japanese iconography. These are the two children of the stars paintings she sent me, hopefully they will save the world!
Nunzio Paci (Selva Obscura exhibition preview)
Nunzio (Bologna, Italy, 1977) is one of the 19 artists I have involved in the Selva Obscura show (read press release in english HERE and in italian HERE). He draws like an archeologist, using stratifications and revealing the fossils of our lives and soul and working with ancient materials, like bitumen.
Oscar Sanmartin Vargas
Oscar was born in Zaragozza (Spain) in 1972. He reveals a different world with mixed media creations, from illustration to assemblage dioramas; while I was lookin at his images all the sci fi books of the 50s and 60s I read popped up in my mind. They were wild and extremely generous in exploring new worlds; they had so many ideas deep inside their pages.. just like in Oscar‘s art: a mix of metaphysical, steam punk and poor art. Amazing! More after the cut!
son:DA
son:DA is a duo (with son:DA little helpers in many of their projects) from Slovenia. They make a kind of hyper contemporary conceptual art, or at least that’s what it seems to me. The city is their playground and the wires and the byte their sand castles. Their next solo show will be at spazio Ultra in Udine, Italy, over.psd: stickers will cover the gallery wall and floor and buyers will have the chance to buy and print a limited number of times the files. Welcome to the digital collection world!
Daniel Martin Diaz
I admit: I wanted to have this idea, this chance and those artists! I’m for peace but war memorabilia always fascinates me. The Bone Yard Project opens on Jan 28th at Prima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, you will see the resurrection of disused airplanes (or parts of them) due to amazing artist’s touch. Above you can see Daniel Martin Diaz‘s Vietnam era Cluster Bomb and here the making of. Other artists are: Colin Chillag, Crash, Daze, Tristan Eaton, Jameson Ellis, Ron English, Faile, Eric Foss, Mark Kostabi, Lisa Lebofsky, El Mac, Alex Markwith, Walter Robinson, Hector Ruiz, Randy Slack, Ryan Wallace, and Eric White, among others. Impressive!
Olle Essvik
Olle is a game artist from Sweden. Endgame is his latest creation, a mix between an ancient 8bit game (but made in Flash) and an anti utopian drama. In his words: <<The work consists of a programmed interactive animation sequence, where the gaming element has been left out and what remains is a kind of theatre play that you control with your computer keyboard.>>. Every floor brings a surprise, it’s like descending the hell of capitalistic society. You can play it HERE for a limited time. More images after the cut.
Regan Rosburg
I love Regan‘s paintings. She lives in the heart of the mountains of Eastern Tennessee and it is almost possible to touch her love for nature in her multi_layered creations. At first sight they are very delicate, if you go deeper you see she uses bones, feathers, insects, found objects.. fragile and strong at the same time, a feminine compendium. More after the cut!
Selva Obscura (flyer preview) and more upcoming news
So, I’ve been quiet for a while, a bit of holiday and a bit of future planning. Here you can see the preview of my upcoming show: Selva Obscura at Officine dell’Immagine; it will open on Feb 23rd, deep in the heart of Milan’s Fashion Week. Look at the amazing painting by Chris Berens! And then.. there will be a new logo soon and a limited edition printed Woodenleg fanzine too! And a tribute to Philip K Dick with a ot lof italian photografers and a project about Ufos.. look at the news section every now and then and stay tuned!
