Found through B/D. I tried to place his style by comparisons, but there’s too much originality. Isoe’s got his own incredible style and it will be a basis of comparison from now on rather than a product of it. I’m a fan to say the least. I even like his webpage design. Isoe for the win.
I keep trying to look at the work of South Carolinian Hollis Brown Thornton without thinking I’m asleep. But the quality of his work is so dreamlike that I just can’t manage it. There are vague, ambiguous shapes drifting through static points in time, like every dream I’ve ever tried to grab onto while asleep. It’s the shock of grasping something intangible that is constructed from my collected ideas of tangibility. I don’t know how to make that sentence sound any less pretentious. Regardless of me sounding like a complete douchebag, the work of Hollis Brown Thornton is definitely worth a look. Several looks. Just openly stare at it for a while.
I found out about New York artist Larissa Bates through Beautiful Decay. They have a great interview with her up on their site. But before I read anything about her I thought “wow, it’s like Neo-French Renaissance or some male obsessed Gainsborough. And then she mentions those influences in her interview. It’s nice to know sometimes that I’m not completely uneducated. What I really thought was that her work looked like Henry Darger trapped in the French Renaissance. There’s the same kind of oddness about her subjects and the way they fit into the background, mostly that they don’t fit at all. Although I can’t pin down why. Of course a lot of her other work doesn’t look like that at all. She’s just a giant enigma wrapped in bacon-y riddle. Figure it out for yourself after reading the interview.
What is up, Takashi Iwasaki, my colorful, Japanese painter friend. I dig your Dalek meets Chagall, bright abstractions, and I’d like to get them tattooed on the insides of my eyes so they can warp my dreams. Like a giant punch in the nightmares from Dr. Seuss. And for some reason your works make me really want a pastrami sandwich. I don’t know what that’s about, but I vowed long ago to report honsetly the entirety of my reactions. Regardless of my cured meat fetish, Iwasaki is tits in my book. He’s the sugar frosted cereal of my balanced art breakfast.
Queens-based artist Brandon Friend has a mixed media style unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. His works consist of a variety of materials pasted onto the canvas, then torn, treated, or removed, then combined with acrylics. The outcome is an amazingly complex and active surface, and a beautiful composition. His Master’s Thesis was the first group of work that I saw, thanks to this video. Just overall incredible work from this recent graduate. Brandon Friend is definitely a name to write down in your little black book under “work I need to buy now while I can still afford it.” Shit, if Damien Hirst can make over $200 mil with his crap, there’s no telling how much Friend can make with work that actually means something.
To round out today’s all over the map posting, I thought I would calm things down with the simple abstractions of Nadine Nakanishi. And once the abstract has sunk in you can spend some more time looking at her amazing print work under Sonnenzimmer. She manages to combine soft and bright, abstract and geometric, in a way that I’ve never seen before. Hello, art crush.
Audrey Kawasaki, the most unattainable artist in my dream pantheon of artists whose work I want on my walls, has posted a great set of photos of all the works in her new show, Kakurenbou, that recently opened in Rome at Mondo Bizarro Gallery. I have been watching her work for almost four years now, and I still can’t believe that she keeps getting better. Any normal human being would’ve reached their pinnacle of talent already. Unfortunately the better she gets the more distant my chances of ever owning one of her works becomes. Her shows sell out way before they ever open, and her prints go almost as fast. My solution: become an equally renowned artist and just trade work with her. Now I just have to keep her alive for the 100 years it will take me to accomplish that.
Kevin Scalzo popped up on my art radar screen like a Gary Taxali meets zine art bat out of hell. I was a little down that there wasn’t more work on his site, because what’s there has me chomping at the bit for more. You could almost call his work abstract except for the fact that it’s not. It’s more of a Bosch version of 1920’s cartoons filtered through a bowl of fruity pebbles. Some of my metaphors are so esoteric even I don’t understand them. Look at me, I’ve become the kind of person who uses the word esoteric. I’m gonna have to start eating caviar.
Oh, Ann Toebbe, you are a breath of flattened perspective fresh air this morning. I was all set to give up the ghost on anything good coming out of today when I stumbled across your simple shapes built into beautiful compositions. Not to mention that some of it reminds me of all the houses I’ve tried to grow up in. Your works are like Saul Bass hypercubes, and I really can’t imagine anything more flattering than that. And all your church paintings make me want to actually set foot inside of a church, which I’ve never done before. Or maybe I would have to be on mescaline for it to look like one of your paintings. You paint churches on mescaline? Is that what I’m saying? I guess it is. I would consider that a pretty high compliment anyway.
Just a quick note to let you know that ISM’s art auction, titled Sk8ology, is now in full swing. As the name implies all the works are on skate decks, which is kind of played out, but it’s the giant roster of amazing artists that makes everything worthwhile. Oh, and the good cause. The proceeds go to support Now That You Know, a non-profit that gives girls from developing countries a “secure environment for learning and growth.” If you want to know more about the show/auction you can check here. Get over to the auction page now or later. You’ve still got 17 days until the auction runs out. But don’t put it off and forget like you did with that one girl’s birthday. You remember how pissed she was?
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