visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!
The latest (2011) from Sheffield, UK based artist PHLEGM. Born in North Wales Phlegm is well known for his self-published comics and street art. Much of the large scale street works originate from his comics.
Check out more of Phlegm’s work at PhlegmComics.com and on Flickr.
Belgian street artist ROA recently finished up a solo exhibition at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco. He also left a few pieces on the streets of San Fran before leaving town.
“ROA got his start by painting intriguing murals of animals in hidden places – underneath bridges and on walls that strayed from the beaten path. A darling of the underground street art scene, photos of his work regularly appear on Vandalog, Brooklyn Street Art, Wooster Collective, Unurth, and a fury of London newspapers and blogs running to his defense when a street piece he did in Hackney faced removal late last year. ROA is earnestly repopulating the cityscape with animals, as a way to have them re-enter the contemporary landscape that was once theirs.” (White Walls Gallery).
Check out more of ROA’s work on his Flickr photostream.
Discovered via: Arrested Motion
Adam Neate is a British painter and one of the best known urban artists in the world. Neate was born in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1977 and studied Design at Suffolk College. After graduating, he moved to London and worked as a graphic designer in an advertising agency. He began painting on cardboard boxes using aerosols and found objects. Neate’s figurative images often become three dimensional as he tears his materials, builds them in layers and staples the pieces together.
Neate first came to the public’s attention by leaving thousands of his paintings on the street of London, for people to take, or leave. In August 2007, his first solo exhibition called Paintings Pots and Prints at Elms Lesters was a sell out. In May 2008 he joined with pop surrealist Ron English in the two man show The Adam and Ron Show.
Neate’s influences include his wife, Waleska, New York graffiti artist, Daze, and Picasso. He is a pioneer of a radical new movement, which shows street art in conventional art galleries. His work has gained recognition from the National Gallery, the Tate, and the National Portrait Gallery.
Neate’s latest solo exhibition, A New Understanding, in October/ November 2009 became one of the most talked about exhibitions of the year with record numbers of visitors, including important collectors and representatives from major international institutions.
On November 14th 2009, Neate staged a public participation event The London Show where he and teams of distributors, left 1000 works over all 33 London boroughs. An estimated 50,000 people were out that night looking for them.
Of his work Neate says, “ I wanted to drag what is perceived as painting forward to compete with the modern day barrage of visual media. We as a society are exposed to more and more visual imagery. In ten minutes on the internet a person can browse an entire world of images and instantly disregard images that hold no interest to them by the click of a button. During the past year I have taken my son to the cinema six times, to see six 3D films. His generation will grow up with an extra dimension in visual media – this language will be seen as the norm. I asked myself how can painting compete with this? With the ‘new’ painting, the viewer will be able to walk around it; light, time and space will affect / react with it.The new painting will exist! more than just depict ”
To see more of Neate’s work, visit Elms Lesters Painting Rooms.
Related Books:
Street World: Urban Culture and Art from Five Continents
Beyond the Street: With the 100 Most Important Players in Urban Art
Graffiti Women: Street Art from Five Continents
Sources: Artificial Gallery, Elms Lesters
Currently based in New York, Brazilian urban artist Eder Muniz aka “Calangos de Rua” (Street Chameleon) started his career as an artist many years ago when, as a little boy, he was obsessed with drawing all over the walls of his house. He advanced to spray paint in high school and hit the street of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil as a pichador (tagger). His street art shifted when he began to develop his technique (he never went to art school and is completely self-taught) and his style began to incorporate human figures, animals and abstract and surreal images.
Muniz’s street name – Calangos de Rua represents the multiple genres that he incorporates in his own art – painting anything he gets his hands on – from walls to sneakers, tee-shirts to subways, living room walls to classrooms, glass and his latest canvas – rugs and mats. His style incorporates his indigenous Brazilian roots to produce colorful pieces that come alive through a mix of spray paint, water color, acrylic on paper, canvas and glass.
To see more of Eder Muniz’s work, visit EderMuniz.com or check out his photostream on Flickr.
Discovered on: Wooster Collective, Bio from: Myspace
Os Gêmeos (The Twins) are brothers Otávio and Gustavo Pandolfo. Based in São Paulo, Brazil, the pair have been painting graffiti since 1987, and their work has been a main influence on street art in Brazil.
Their subjects range from family portraits, to social and political commentary, and Brazilian folklore. As well, their work often features yellow-skinned characters; “When we dream, everything we dream has yellow tones’, Gustavo Pandolfo explains. ‘This is something of ours, myself and my brother. We use it in our painting. We can’t use another colour. We have to use yellow.”
Aside from walls, Os Gêmeos also paint canvases, make sculptures, and are both graphic designers and photographers. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cuba, Europe as well as numerous exhibitions in Sao Paulo and Latin America.
The brothers’ current exhibition Pra quem mora lá, o céu é lá, (For those who live there, the sky is there’) at The Berardo Museum in Lisbon runs through September 19, 2010.
To see more of Os Gêmeos, OsGemeos.com.br.
Phlegm is a a urban/comic artist based in Sheffield, UK. “The name phlegm came from one of the four bodily humours in ancient Greek medicine, blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Phlegm was believed to be responsible for an apathetic and unemotional temperament.”
His comic, also titled “Phlegm”, contains his pen and ink illustrations, cartoons, and spraypaint work found in the streets. “The work is intricate, often surreal, but most of the time it looks like a mad person has been locked in a room for years with no company but a bottle of Indian ink and a scratchy nib….because that’s precisely what it is.”
Phlegm produces an issue of “Phlegm” every four months or so depending on what other projects he’s working on. The comic started in June 2005 and sells all all over the UK as well as in Germany, California, Australia, Japan, and online.
To see more of Phlegm’s work, PhlegmComics.com.
Today’s images are by the German collective known as Herakut. Comprised of Hera and Akut, the artists met in 2004 at the Urban Arts Festival in Seville, Spain and have been painting together ever since.
Hera is a classically trained painter who “creates gestural, emotional figures in a freestyle manner using numerous tools including spray cans, brushes, and her hands.” Akut is completely self-taught yet is skilled in creating hyper-realistic images of animals and flesh using only a spray can. “What initially seemed like an unlikely pairing both conceptually and technically has since become one of the foremost collaborations in urban art and an innovative presence in contemporary painting.”
To see more of Herakut, visit Herakut.de or check out hundreds of images from fans on Flickr.
Sources: Coleman Burke
These cool paper sculptures are by Tucson, Arizona based artist Nick Georgiou. Georgiou’s work is inspired by “the death of the printed word/world, economic collapse, political and environmental uncertainty.
Georgiou states: “Books and newspapers are becoming artifacts of the 21st century. Whatever we used to read off paper, we’re now reading off digital screens. Our way of interacting with text is changing. My work is not only about the decline of the printed word in today’s society but its rebirth as art.”
Georgiou recently opened a new gallery/studio space in downtown Tucson. He is also completing a documentary about the decline of the printed word, and is working on a series of sculptures for a solo exhibition in Cyprus and Greece.
For more information, check out Nick’s blog: MyHumanComputer.blogspot.com.
Sources: Juxtapoz Interview 1, Juxtapoz Interview 2
The pool of talent coming out of São Paulo, Brazil seems endless and it’s no wonder it is considered by many to be the centre of the street art /urban art movement. The images featured today are by Brazilian urban artist Claudio Ethos. Born in São Paulo in 1982, Ethos currently lives in Birigüi, in São Paulo state.
Ethos began working with spray paint as well as ballpoint pen at around the age of 15 and still uses these mediums today. Influences include Brazillians Os Gemeos, Vitche, Onesto, and Herbert Baglione. His stunning large scale murals usually originate from his small ballpoint pen drawings and the intricate detail of his work has gained him recognition from his peers, art enthusiasts, and galleries around the world.
“Ethos’ characters have undeniably become some of the most recognized all throughout Brazil with his ephemeral work at times straddling the line of the figurative and abstract. His elongated, flexible, and strained figures have an almost liquid quality to them; one foot firmly in the school of the surrealists. He also displays a solid grasp of textiles in the use of patterns. Huge black balls serve as eyes for the exhausted and maligned residents of the concrete jungle. These characters are a mixture of dreams and fragments of everyday life within the city.” (from Juxtapoz)
As well as being seen on the streets of São Paulo, Ethos has exhibited internationally including Studiocromie in Puglia, Italy, San Francisco’s 111 Mina, and the Christopher Henry Gallery in New York.
To see more of Ethos’ work, visit ClaudioEthos.com or see the source links below.
