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Anders
Wollin
Probably the best emerging figurative expressive painter in the world. Young prolific Swede is a
true son and heir to Chagall. Not weird, not whimsical. Simply beautiful
and engaging.
Strandbeest
Giant
wind-powered walking machines. The most inspiring man-made
creations I have ever seen, they are
beautiful
and other worldly in their motions. They
have undulating wings that gather wind energy and resemble giant
insects in form and function. The engineer is awed as much as the artist.
The films are all worth watching, especially
the 10-minute one at the bottom of Dutch physicist Theo Jansen
explaining how the things move and control themselves. They can even avoid
the water and adapt to changing wind conditions, or at
least have the basic processes prototyped. Everything is done by
simple mechanisms built from a limited number of standard
parts, the same type of parts that make up
the legs and the joints. Every aspect of the design is a demonstration in how
complex form and behavior
could
develop
naturally
from variation in simple components. That's not just
a claim. The working designs have been evolving. Truly amazing. Even
the sponsor advertisement played into the themes and genius of these incredible creations.
Andrzej
Dragan
Dark, severe, haunting. Dragan's photographic
portraits use the model and even the photograph itself as mere
starting points.
Travis
Louie
Louie paints monochrome imaginative portraits. His
subjects are from "his own imaginary world that is grounded in
Victorian and Edwardian times. It is inhabited by human oddities,
mythical beings, and otherworldly characters who appear to have had
their formal portraits taken to mark their existence and place in
society."
Charles Yuen
Arts
Yuen seems to paint from the part of his mind that is concerned
with symbols and dreams, and his works are decidedly more engaging
than the vast majority of artists who claim to be doing so. In spite
of apparent rawness or naivety, Yuen's works have great visual
complexity.
Hank Willis
Thomas
African-American artist of ideas and images.
Thomas's concepts derive and comment on corporate exploitation of
mindless consumerism in the black community juxtaposed to other
forms of black exploitation in other periods in history. The branded
series is particularly strong.
The Museum of
Bad Art (MOBA)
Naive work is always fascinating to me,
especially when it is flawed in a bizarre
way or the artist's vision outstrips his abilities or the tone of the
work seems to be beyond what the artist intended. You get some of
all that at MOBA plus some great wisecracks and observations about the
art. I would donate some of my earlier paintings from Riverson if
they wanted one, but most have been painted over
and recycled.
Bert Christensens Weird,
Strange & Just Plain Bad Art Collection
Bert's Bad
Art is very much in the spirit of MOBA with art from around the
Internet, and there is good satirical commentary.
Heidi
Taillefer
Interesting integration of art and
website, and the art is visually engaging and entertaining by
itself.
Pieces of drawings function
as links, but in a "left-handed" interesting way.
Maggie
Cardelus
Cardelus makes sculptures from stripped, shredded
and folded photographs.
Margi
Geerlinks
Geerlinks work echoes the myth of Pygmalion
with photographic images of old women crocheting babies, the
creator running a boy through a sewing machine.
Margot Quan
Knight
Knight produces narrative photographic series
from posed models and props.
Todd
Schorr
Schorr has a painting of Santa Clause and the Easter
Bunny in a knife fight.
Kukula
If
little girls had tea parties with lace doilies and cookies and
tatoos and piercings and mutilation, it
would happen in Kukulaland.
Scott
Radke
Radke's marionette sculptures and drawings
have a grotesque charm reminiscent of Burton's "The Nightmare Before
Christmas."
Alex
Gross
Allegorical and
surreal.
Lori
Field
Encaustic and mixed media
painting.
Anne-Julie
Aubry
Dark whimsical melancholy.
Laurie
Lipton
Charcoal drawings with great attention to visual
detail but fantastic themes. Think Mexican Day of the Dead
meets the old witch from Hansel
and Gretel.
Elizabeth
Mcgrath
Multimedia sculpture with a gothic esthetic.
Eric
White
Photorealistic, surreal with subtle use of the grotesque.
Aaron
Jasinski
Ranges from whimsical to haunting to sad
beauty.
Dany
Paragouteva
Bulgarian-born
artist produces work with some "eastern" Chagallesque
qualities.
Mark
Ryden
Ryden's work is like surreal
children's illustrations, multicolored as opposed to gothic and
black, but all the "darker" as a result.
Joe Vaux
There
is weird in the sense of gothic cliches, and then there is
truly quirky and original. Vaux has some elements of the
latter that makes his work interesting, visual details that play off
the narrative of the composition as a whole.
John
Brophy
Dali-esque.
Ryan Heshka
The
cartoon versions of 1950's horror movies where space aliens abduct
naked bikini models.
Nicoletta Ceccoli
Images
that suggest the strangeness of dreams via the use of
sparsity and space to focus attention on lonely figures
Nathan
Ota
Cartoon parrots wearing striped conical hats
and other specific and personal idioms.
Martin
Wittfooth
Scenes from dreams. There is too
much originality and freshness and mystery to describe
Wittfooth's work as fantasy art.
Etta
Winigrad
Winigrad's ceramic sculptures are
interesting figures and compositions as opposed to being funtional
items or the more
typical art-object ceramic.
Nathan
Stapley
Stapley's work has the charm of children's
illustrations where the narrative interpretation
is beautifully open-ended.
Ray
Caesar
Caesar's
produces nightmares and visions a la Frida Kalo, but with his own
motifs and themes.
Jonathan
Weiner
Figurative work with attention to visual detail, yet
also stylized and symbolic.
Michael
Hussar
Hussar has a page of great alla prima painting.
Carrie Ann
Baade
Intense, allegorical but not dull, well-executed.
Camille Rose
Garcia
If Disneyland were repainted for
skate-punks, but the esthetics were more sophisticated than the
usual spraypaint or gothic
cliches...
Andy
Kehoe
Weird
and original scenes.
Kris
Kuksi
Elaborate mixed-media sculpture reminiscent of the
work of H.R. Geiger.
Mark
Bodnar
Bodnar's work will make you giggle. Think 1950's
cartoons gone astray.
Amy Sol
Soft warm dreams of hugging panda bears and luna moths.
Scott
Musgrove
Musgrove's imagination is populated by strange
creatures with long necks.
Audrey
Kawasaki
Soft, sensual with Japanese influences and tastefully
erotic.
Kathy Staico
Schorr
Schorr's imagery derives from animation/illustration
and has an ineffable strangeness.
Dave
Cooper
Cooper is an award-winning graphic novelist and
alternative comics illustrator, and it shows in his painting and
other work.
Packard Jenning's
Centennial Society
It's clear from Packard's pamphlets that all
oppression and greed will end once corporations are destroyed by
mass riots. Nothing paves the way for the fascist right like
shallowness on the left...
Brendan
Danielsson
Grotesque human figures with tortured faces. Dream images
with an undefined quality.
Esao Andrews
Brooklyn based artist who paints scenes from
dreams, allegorical, stylized,
but visually engaging and chilling in their statements about a
reality larger than the art itself. The feeling
of the nightmare is conveyed.
Kathy
Ruttenberg
Ruttenberg includes some great figurative
sculpture with naive Finster-esque qualities, a man decorated with
painted scenes like a tatooed body, only clothed.
Joe Sorren
Oil
painter of imaginative compositions with great use of light and
dimension.
Lola Strange
Art
Lola's esthetics and style might be similar to other
artists whose work derives from illustration and animation, but
compositions are stranger, true explorations of the subconscious
mind of the artist.
Kathleen
Lolley
Work has the esthestics of certain classic
children's illustrations but with more dream-like ineffable
qualities.
Mollie
Kellogg
Kellogg's work is engaging due to an attention to
everyday visual detail and an absence of the cliche and predictable compositions that are
found in most fantasy art.
Kendrick
Mar
Mar's work seems to derive and play off younger
children's illustration. Mimimalist and somewhat dark in spite of
nice colors and rounded shapes.
David Choe
Choe's vision consistently shows in his painting,
drawing, sculpture and other media.
Chet Zar
"The
Painter of Dark." Zar paints grey monolithic humanoid figures
with expressive faces. When I first visited Zar's website, he was
having his "Ugly American" show at London's Strychnin Gallery.
Chris
Mars
Mar's work is very dark and gothic, and there is an
interest in visual detail that carries the works beyond cliche.
Chris
Scarborough
Scarborough has series of "synthetic"
people who are more real than real. They are digitally-modified
photographs a bladerunner might bring for a "job" interview at the
Tyrell Corporation.
The
Chapman Brothers at White Cube
The Chapman brothers seem to
be the quintessential art-school type of artist. Lots of
in-your-face psycho-sexual art with disturbing imagery used for
shock value.
Julia Adams
Figurative paintings with strange,
ineffable qualities. Motifs include girls in bear
suits with strange staring eyes.
Matt Sesow
"Outsider" painter
known for disturbed panda motif and raw expressive
style.
Art Galleries
The following galleries have good
online content and represent artists who produce art that is interesting
and original. I am still in the initial stages of
compiling this directory.
Galerie Urs Meile
Urs Meile's world-class artists include emerging Chinese contemporary artists
producing work with great emotional impact and social commentary,
but effectively done so that the audience is pulled in. Concept and installation artists producing smart work with a
wow factor. The paintings are similarly engaging and informed.
Arthur Roger
Gallery
New Orleans gallery with a range of art worth
seeing.
Gallery
1988
Locations in San Francisco and Los Angeles with
some great art derived from illustration and animation.
Jonathan
Levine Gallery
Exhibits a genre of work influenced by
illustration, comic books, graffiti art and pop imagery.
The
Proposition
Chelsea NYC gallery with
some interesting and well-done art in different media. Good
artists.
The Alcove
Contemporary Arts Gallery
Atlanta area gallery with a focus
on art derived from pop culture, illustration, animation.
PPOW
Pilkington-Olsoff Fine Art
PPOW is an NYC gallery "committed to
representational painting and sculpture and artists who create work
with social and political significance."
Beinart
International Surreal Art Collective
Online gallery of
surrealist, psychedelic, esoteric, outsider, fantastic, toy,
lowbrow, comic, erotic & visionary artists.
Deitch Projects
NYC gallery with
multiple locations in the city. Artists include Keith Haring,
Basquiat and other names.
James
Cohan Gallery
Chelsea NYC art gallery. Artists include Ron
Mueck.
Cannibal
Flower
Los Angeles scene gallery with an indy-rock
esthetic.
Shortbus
Gallery
Outsider, Folk Art and Contemporary Craft.
Copro Nason
Gallery
Santa Monica Gallery transcending the limits
of Lowbrow.
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