Paul Barnes brings his unique storytelling to Los Angeles this week in the form of his first LA solo show Happy Valley in Thinkspace’s project room. The Scottish artist uses a muted but warm colour palette within his work and the textured plaster backdrop applied to the board he paints on adds a beautiful and timeless depth to his playful compositions. Barnes’ work features a cast of superbly rendered characters steeped in folklore and narrative, and you should definitely try and check them out in […]
Here’s something to get your gums around… Everyone’s favourite purveyor of eye-candy Sweet Toof, one of the most prolific street artists in London, is bringing a selection of new paintings to London’s Arch 402 Gallery next week. He’s of course a classically trained fine artist, and the Royal Academy trained painter is well versed in working fast and dirty outdoors as the man who over the last couple of years put the ‘candy’ into the Burning Candy crew. Having A Dig brings the more refined […]
On occasion of his inclusion in Spoke Art’s Urban Osmosis exhibition (which we previewed last week), the Los Angeles-based Shark Toof made the much-traveled trek north to the Bay Area. While in the area, Mr. Toof knocked on the doors to the Oakland studio of his friends and occasional mischievous collaborators, Eddie Colla and D Young V to check out the impressive installation piece they were creating for the exhibition. Consisting of the familiar sight of East Bay Express newspaper boxes (although you normally don’t […]
Jesse Hazelip (studio visit here), has a new show opening up next week at the San Francisco gallery, 941 Geary. Following his massive installation last year at White Walls, Hazelip looks to go even bigger and better in the larger museum-quality space as judged by Colin Day’s beautiful video above.
In what is shaping up to be a true multi-media experience, collaborative art duo Mrzyk & Moriceau will be unveiling a new body of work, entitled The Man With The Golden Gun, this coming weekend in San Francisco. Opening January 7th at Ratio 3, the European artistic pairing known for their playful, optical illusory black-and-white ink drawings will be taking full advantage of gallery real estate with an installation including wall paintings, masks, and video animation. Their unique visual narrative, however, should shine brightest through […]
We wanted to share this documentary we recently watched put out by the Tate Modern on Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds installation (covered). Hosted at the Turbine Hall and part of the Unilever Series of commissions for the museum, the impressive project from the Chinese artist and dissident took two and half years to complete and involved over 1600 artisans handcrafting 100 million ceramic seeds. The footage rolls as Ai Weiwei takes the viewer through the entire creative process from the mining of the raw materials […]
It look like while ROA was in Los Angeles for his pop-up show (covered), he found time to take a little detour to the Salten Sea. While there, the Belgium artist painted a fish in his signature style to mark his passage. It certainly is a telling piece as the fertilizer runoff combined with the increasing salinity is certainly threatening the survival much of the fish species there. Another view as well as perhaps the inspiration for this piece after the jump…
Here’s some big news to ring in the new year. James Jean (interviewed) will have his first solo exhibition of his fine art career in Los Angeles at Martha Otero. Although the exact date is not yet released, it will be in March. Following up his highly acclaimed Kindling at Jonathan Levine in 2009 (covered), we hear the artist will be scaling it up with larger canvases featuring his unique mix of romantic, classical, youthful, sometimes surreal, and nostalgic paintings. Keep an eye out as […]
Last week, the Japanese American Nation Museum hosted “Zen Garage”, a small exhibition featuring some custom vehicles from Shinya Kimura, Giant Robot’s Eric Nakamura (interviewed), and David Choe (featured). The highlight for us was Choe’s custom monster Scion xB showcasing some of his signature artwork on its body and his love for the drums in the back. More photos courtesy of Brandon Shigeta after the jump…
For a New Year’s Eve treat, AM stopped by the Highline in Chelsea’s meatpacking district to check out Ryan McGinness’ outdoor installation located at Phillips de Pury’s 15th St. auction floor. Even more impressive in person when compared to our preview, the specially designed show was created with two parts in mind – an indoor display (more on that later) of his paintings during business hours and the other being a transformation with signature black-light treatment after sunset for the outdoor passersby via the Highline bridge […]
Near the end of 2010, AM attended the afternoon session of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary auction (full results here.) This field trip was special in many ways for us. First, it served as the estate sale of legendary actor/collector Dennis Hopper’s impressive art collection with a chance for us to see many of the famous works he collected as we were shown in a video tour of his residence created before his passing. The second was to get a chance to bid on a unique variation of […]
Take a look at these nice homemade plushes from Audrey Kawasaki (interviewed) that she posted on her English blog recently. She made her new hobby known a little while back but has definitely upped her game recently by including her own artwork. Perhaps she should start her own line like Camille Rose Garcia? Take a look at different views as well as the creation process after the jump…
