Claudio Parentela

Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, journalist free lancer. He has been active for many years in the international underground scene and has collaborated with many zines,magazines of contemporary art,literary and of comics in Italy and in the world. His work can be categorized as street art but with a variety of mediums. He describes his illustration style as,"anarchic, cool, conceptual, twisted, schizophrenic, obsessive, and chaotic."

"I feel completely absolutely free only when I’m amongst my 'artistic things' and in my studio, with my photos, my papers, my colours, my glue, my scissors, my ropes, tapes, plastics, all my 1000 things I found around in the city. It’s been difficult to arrive here where I’m now but it’s a wonderful continuous magical journey, every moment and every day," he says.

What advice would you give to other artists?
To be and to continue to be, and try to be themselves. It’s so important, and then to have fun to have fun to have fun.

 

Edgar "Saner" Flores

Edgar "Saner" Flores is an urban artist, muralist, professor, illustrator & graphic designer.  Raised by his parents in Mexico City and surrounded by rich color and tradition, Saner developed an interest in drawing and Mexican Muralism early on.  "I visited Oaxaca a lot when I was growing up because my mother is from there, and certain traditions which they carried out there really caught my attention."  He began expressing himself on paper and through graffiti art, later going on to earn a degree in graphic design from the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico.

 

His lively & humorous images of masked characters on public walls, found objects and other canvases are influenced by Mexican custom and folklore, color, mysticism, masks, and skulls.  A mix of these lifelong interests and passions has led him to become the artist he is today.  "The masks that I use are traditional masks from Mexico."  The jaguars, coyotes, skulls, and other recurrent characters appear in my work because that parallel world is the real self, the real face. "

 

Saner's work has been featured in galleries in Mexico, the United States, London, Berlin and Barcelona.  Recent projects & exhibitions include "Kidnap Express," Mid-City Arts Los Angeles, "Nose Job," Eric Firestone Gallery East Hamptons NY, "The Bone yard Project," Tucson Arizona, "The Bone yard: Return Trip," Pima Space & Air Museum, "The Wynwood Walls," Miami/Art Basel.  He has collaborated with Kidrobot, Vans, G-Shock, HQTR Canada, Pineda Covalin, Persigna Store, Bacardi, Adidas Mexico, Televisa, and many others.

 

MEXICO CITY'S SANER - CATHARSIS - ART EXHIBIT TRAILER - OPENING SATURDAY OCTOBER 27, 2012 - NEW IMAGE ART from THE CINEMA on Vimeo.

Eric Lindveit

"Like odd dream-like artifacts, his pieces create a highly accurate reproduction
that remains entirely implausible." -Robert Egert

The art of Eric Lindveit draws us to the expected - a side of wood, a tree trunk, an organic form - that soons becomes unexpected because it is not what it first appears. As he describes, "These works, built of paint, paper, burlap, pencil, and sawdust, explore the epidermal personification of surface via the petri dish of sylva and evidence my curiosity about the conception of what is real. They are not, however, intended as science. I am informed by observation of New York City street trees, often damaged and diseased, and pre 20th century hand colored medical and natural history books but I have no interest in making simulacrum of a subject one would be better served to see in the round outdoors. Rather, via scale change and invention, I am making greatly exaggerated composite portraits that combine my interests in surface, identity, entropy, and the skin of paint. They belong to the built environment."

The series "Skin Conditions" and "Sylvan Natural History of New York" are part of a growing vocabulary of smaller works that evoke displays of early anatomical wax models. As much dimensional drawing as painting or sculpture, they're inspired by an exhaustive series of hand colored books started in 1842 titled the "Natural History of New York", a thirty volume, fifty two year attempt to depict all things flora and fauna in the state of New York.

The human scaled "Parade Shields" are built on articulated box springs, singles and doubles, and sit on steel mounts 6 to 18 inches from the wall like blown up sylvan potato chips. The title refers to ceremonial objects from the 15th and 16th centuries, like Andrea del Castagno's shield "David with the Head of Goliath", that were carried in pageants, civic processions, and spectacles. Usually made of wood, painted, and even carved in relief, some Parade Shields may have been used as symbolic protection from enemies, while others celebrated noblemen's enthusiasm for classical antiquity and mimicked Ancient Roman triumphae. Art is a parade of ideas, perceptions, and symbols.

Kyu Seok Oh

Kyu Seok Oh is a sculptor based in New York who works with handmade paper. His sculptural work is organic and graceful with a hint of whimsy.

His artist statement adds - Paper is a diverse material. It can be strong like the roots of the trees from which it was made, or it can be delicate, easily breaking down and crumbling at the slightest touch. In this way, paper is similar to life in the fact that there is no sure thing. The process of sculpting with paper expresses this delicate balance that exists in everyday life.

This video showcases his project "Counting Sheep" installed in New York City's Time Square which consisted of a flock of his paper, actual sized sheep:

George Condo

Since the early 1980s, George Condo has used traditional artistic methods and materials to depict unexpected, grotesque, and comic subjects. In The Butcher and His Wife, what appears at first glance to be a classical bronze sculpture of embracing figures is, in fact, a couple interrupted in the middle of a sexual encounter. Their startled expressions lend a comic sensibility which is immediately contradicted by the violence of the cleaver in the male figure’s head.

Beyond a critique of art historical convention common to his contemporaries, Condo engages in a deeper exploration of the sexuality and violence, comedy and tragedy inherent to human nature. The rough texture of the sculpture reveals the materiality of the clay from which the bronze was cast and renders ambiguous whether the figures are emerging from amorphous matter or disintegrating back into it.

Art Spiegelman

Arthur Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in his early childhood. Spiegelman studied cartooning in high school and started drawing professionally at age sixteen. Despite his parents wanting him to become a dentist, Art Spiegelman majored in art and philosophy at Harpur College. After leaving college in 1968, he joined the underground comix movement.

The following decade, Spiegelman became a regular contributor to various underground publications, including Real Pulp, Young Lust and Bizarre Sex. Under a variety of pseudonyms like Joe Cutrate, Skeeter Grant and Al Flooglebuckle he drew creations such as 'Ace Hole, Midget Detective', 'Nervous Rex', 'Douglas Comics' and 'Cracking Jokes'. In 1975, he and Bill Griffith co-founded Arcade, an influential comix revue with artists like Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and Justin Green.

Perhaps his best known tour de force was Maus . 'Maus' was based on the experiences of his parents as concentration-camp survivors. He expanded this premise into a full-blown graphic novel, which he drew from 1980 to 1986, with the Jews presented as mice and the Germans as cats (the Katzies). The book 'Maus: A Survivor's Tale', earned Spiegelman fame. He completed the tale in 1991 with 'Maus II: From Mauschwitz to the Catskills'. Art Spiegelman received the Pullitzer Prize in 1992.

 

Maira Kalman

Working as an illustrator, author, and designer, Maira Kalman illuminates contemporary life with a profound sense of joy and a unique sense of humor. 

Kalman speaks of her work as a form of journalism. She uses writing and drawing to render an ongoing account of the world as she sees it. Hers is a daily discipline of creativity based on photography, travel, research, walking, talking, and open observation. A serious love of distraction pervades. Abundant depictions of fashion, food, art, and architecture represent life’s great pleasures. At the same time rubber bands, pieces of moss, bobby pins, and snacks stake a claim for smaller forms of satisfaction. All of this might seem pretty trivial were it not for the counterweight of history, memory, and loss that is also ever-present. Chaos is another constant, be it crazy and madcap or simply devastating.

Indeed, it is her work’s gift to illuminate those things that affirm our own capacity for joy, sadness, humor, charm. In short, Kalman’s art inspires our humanity in light of life’s overwhelming events and details.

Maira Kalman (b. 1949 Tel Aviv, lives New York) is the author of twelve children’s books including Ooh-la-la (Max in Love). Among her adult classics are The Elements of Style, an illustrated edition of Strunk and White’s timeless grammar, and The Principles of Uncertainty, a picture book of essays based on a yearlong online column for The New York Times. She has just completed a second online epic for The Times titled And the Pursuit of Happiness.

Kalman’s best known work, created with fellow illustrator Rick Meyerowitz, is New Yorkistan: a cartoon map of the city designated by tribes, such as Pashmina, Irant, and Irate. When it ran on the cover of The New Yorker in December 2001, it sanctioned a first burst of laughter in the aftermath of 9/11. A relatively more secret aspect of her identity is as the “M” in M&Co, the revolutionary design firm founded by her late husband, Tibor Kalman, with whom she was a constant collaborator. The firm’s famous 10-One-4 watch is based on one of her doodles. She has collaborated on projects with the fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, the choreographer Mark Morris, and the composer Nico Muhly. Her work can be seen in The Jewish Museum .

Dan Witz

Dan Witz, born 1957, Chicago, IL, is a street artist in the finest sense. He attended Cooper Union in New York City’s East Village. In 1982 he received a NEA grant and in 1992 and 2000 fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. His first book, “The Birds of Manhattan” was published in 1983 by Skinny Books. Solo exhibitions include Semaphore Gallery NY (1985,1986), Clementine Gallery (1996), StolenSpace, London (2007); DFN Gallery NY (2003-5, 6, 7, 8, 10) and Carmichael Gallery, LA (2009). Group exhibitions include: Buying Time: Nourishing Excellence, Sotheby’s NY(2001); and Fifteen, NYFA Fellows at Deutsche Bank, NY (1999). Submission (curated by Juxtapoz) Fuse Gallery NY (2005); From The Streets of Brooklyn, Think­space Art Gallery, LA (2009) and Beach Blanket Bingo, Jonathan Levine Gallery NY(2009). Dan lives and works in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Prolific author, video star and artist.

 

Anastasia Elias

 Anastasia Elias is an artist whose medium might be considered a bit unusual. “I cut the small paper shapes that I stick inside the toilet paper rolls. I use tweezers to manipulate the paper shapes. I select the paper of the same color as the roll. It gives the illusion that the paper figures make part of the roll. I need few hours to make one piece.”

Anastasia Elias, just like Andrea Dezso with her tunnel books, uses paper in three dimensional stage-like misenscenes. Elias' work is unusual in that it creates silhouettes that change with the use of light.