Secret Still

You’ll have to forgive my use of hyperbole (or don’t, it really doesn’t matter to me), but I’m calling it….art is over. I’m afraid that you can all pack up your brushes, pencils, chisels, welders, or whatever you use, and just call it a day. Ryusuke Fukahori has beaten you all. He has created something beautiful, complex yet simple, and so mind-blowing that I had to lay down after seeing it. “What is this marvel?,” you might ask. Goldfish. Just some goldfish. Suck on that MC Escher. The thing that makes Fukahori’s work so incredible is the process. He pours clear resin into wooden boxes (usually wooden boxes anyway) in layers, and paints goldfish on each layer to create a more 3-Dimensional image, similar to the way a 3-D printer works. The results speak for themselves. So just in case you were getting a canvas gessoed for a new painting, or ordering some fine Italian marble for a sculpture of Lady Gaga riding Richard Nixon like a donkey, you can go ahead and quit now, because art…art is over. Feel free to watch a video of Fukahori being way more awesome than you after the jump.

Ryusuke Fukahori

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As a tattooed person, I’ve never really been too into the American Traditional style of tattooing, what most people would think of as the Sailor Jerry style. I don’t hate it, but I don’t particularly love it either, although I do respect what it represents and means to tattooing as an artform and an industry. However, all that is about to change, as today I will get my first and last traditional tattoo. It’s just an impulse that I have; an impulse with a week’s worth of planning because that’s how I do impulsive. But I think that french artist Odö is partly responsible. Nico Odora’s paintings are complexly built of traditional tattoo imagery coupled with all that pop goodness the French love so much. The other half of my tattoo’s impetus is that I have a friend who specializes in traditional tattoos, so let’s not go giving the French all the credit. That’s just what they want us to do. So while you’re giving Odö’s work an eye-bathing, you can think of me sitting in a shop somewhere getting a needle driven into my hand thousands of times per minute. Lucky me.

Odö

What do you call someone that combines naturalist paintings with surrealism? Surraturalist? Nasturrealist? Clearly I’m not going to inventicate a new word to describe this style of painting, so I’ll just lead with an artist’s name: Amy Guidry. I could’ve said Josh Keyes, too, but he’s more of a dystopian than a surrealist. Guidry’s got all your surrealist bases covered — life, death, sex, love — but her subject matter is photorealistically depicted animals and landscapes. It’s got that really delicious weirdness of surrealism, and the belly-filling beauty of Audobon-like naturalist works. Jesus, why are most of my metaphors food based? It’s because inside this skinny body is a fat dude trying to eat his way out. It just so happens that both of them are art lovers, and they are definitely smitten with Amy Guidry’s work. That just means that few things will have to change in the world of my aesthetic preference once the fat dude bursts out of my stomach all Aliens-style and asks for some chicken wings. Wait, how did I get to this point?

Amy Guidry

Long time comrade in arms Tessar Lo tipped me to a new solo show he’s opening at Jaski Gallery in Amsterdam. The show, titled The Dying Wishes, opens to art lovers everywhere, or at least everywhere in Holland, on Saturday, October 22. What I love about having been in and around this community for so long is that I’ve gotten to watch artists’ styles change over time, watch their works evolve. Tessar is definitely on of those whose work has evolved, and equally as definite is that the evolution has brought new complexity and depth. There is an odd juxtaposition in that depth, as the compositions themselves have simplified in some ways, like in the representations of the figures, which have slowly become more childlike and primal. This simplification is, however, a source of power for the paintings, similar to Chagall’s work. Even better is that Tessar is still a young man in his prime, and on this track he’s set to become an even greater artist as time goes on. I, for one, can’t wait to see where he goes next. As for where you should go next, the answer is simple: Jaski Gallery on October 22 from 4-7pm. Until then here are some preview images to tide you over.

Mixed Media? Collage? There are so many words that can mean almost the same thing, and things get more and more blurry in some sectors as technology progresses. I have no idea what label to use for Alex Cherry’s work. But I have a lot of adjectives for describing it: chaotic, transitional, dramatic, beautiful, subtle, and powerful. That list goes on and on. So, pragmatically speaking, it doesn’t matter what kind of label is attached to his work, just so long as the adjective ‘good’ or one of its many synonyms finds its way into my brain when I see it. That is definitely happening, so problem solved.

Alex Cherry

Mmmm, abstract deliciousness to carry you through to the weekend. I would walk all around in those paintings.

Melanie Authier

Hey, Brad Kunkle, Gustav Klimt called…he says you’re doing a great job. So yes, there are a couple of elements like Klimt’s in Kunkle’s paintings, namely the dynamic female figures and the gold leaf elements, but that’s pretty much it. In fact I had to dad-poke a friend in the chest to really drive home the point. And Kunkle’s paintings are so beautiful, I tend to overlook any similarities. Each piece is sharp and soft at the same time, carefully crafted with gold and silver leaf to create different effects in different light. The contrast between the metals and the washed out palette just kills me. Seriously. Dead. This dad-poke is coming to you from beyond the graaaaaave (spooky ghost voice). OOoooOOOOoooooOOOOoooooo. Bonus points for having the same first name as meeeeEEEEeeeeeEEEEEeee.

Brad Kunkle

Lush double exposure paintings by Pakayla Biehn to drag your Thursday out of the doldrums. If that word is unfamiliar to you, then go read The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. But first get some solid look time in with these paintings of beautiful women superimposed over flowers. I never wake up thinking I’m gonna say things like that sometime during the day. And that is why I keep doing this.

Pakayla Biehn

If I were sitting alone in a quiet, unheated room on a cold Winter day, my breath fogging in the air a little, wrapped in a warm knitted blanket, reading Gravity’s Rainbow, with Eliot Smith quietly playing on a record player in another part of the house, and two hits of clean acid pulsating through my pupils, that would be the embodiment of Ryan Schneider’s work. Flattened, super colorful, but with mystery and loneliness and magic, this is the kind of work that makes you think of all those times you’ve come home from a walk through the empty streets at 3am to an empty house, brightly lit and expectant, like a puppy waiting for your return. Thanks Ryan, for reminding me how it feels to be all by myself in a world of gentle possibility.

Ryan Schneider

Swedish artist Andreas Englund has a good sense of humor, or at least his paintings do, so I assume that, by the transitive property, he’s also a laugh riot. What I think I enjoy the most is his exploration of mortality and the everyday beauty in the mundane. And fortunately all of that is wrapped up in a humorous amplification through fictional characters. This is probably the same sort of catharsis that really great authors derive from writing that one, perfect, 3-dimensional character that they can control and pretend to be. Hell, that’s why we read them. Maybe an active fantasy life is what we all really need to get some closure on our various neuroses. Time to bring back that imaginary friend, kids.

Andreas Englund