Allison Sommers

Here's another artist who falls more or less into a category I've come to know as Pop surrealism. It's a world that falls somewhere in a kind of no man's land between fantasy illustration and fine art. Personally I love it. And there are some really fine galleries popping up in major art markets dedicated to it. Allison Sommers mines a vein of very dark, sometimes grotesque humor in this field. She has a cast of recurring characters including the greenish long-necked guys in the first two pieces here. This sense of an ongoing mythos or milieu is an important aspect of her work. The world itself, is often filled with viscera and polyps. She paints very small, with intense detail, often using a magnifying glass in the process. The result is that one feels as if one is peering into a miniature world of microbes transformed into some dark Dr. Seussian nightmare. Fun stuff!
Check out her web page (www.allisonsommers.com) and/or her Flickr page for more.



















"The Sudden Picnic in the Succulent Grove" 8.5" x 7.5" gouache on illustration board 2009


















"H & G in the Garden" 11" x 14" gouache on illustration board 2009























"Afterbirth" 12" x 12" gouache on illustration board 2010























"Treehouse 7.5'' x 9.5" gouache on illustration board 2008























"The Alchemist & His Son" 3.5" x 5.5" gouache on illustration board 2008

EVOL/CT'INK

EVOL is the moniker of a German graffiti artist who turns random objects into buildings by using stencils and spray paint. He's perfected his technique to create extraordinary optical illusions. The first three pieces here are part of an ongoing series of broken down cardboard boxes transformed into urban tenements and street scenes. Some of these images are quite large and you'll really appreciate them better if you click on and view them full size. He also turns other objects into buildings; electrical junction boxes, parts of walls, a cassette tape, whatever. Anything vaguely rectangular really. You can see a few of his pieces at www.wilde-gallery.com but if you really want to spend time with this artist's work, you'll want to go to his Flickr page and look through his set labeled some of mine. There you can also find this time lapse video of his process.






















"Dieffenbach Str. Backyard" vers.#1 spraypaint and stencil on cardboard 110x98cm











"Lehmbruck" 9-11 spraypaint and stencil on board 54x117cm


















"Wallflower" vers.#1 Spaypaint stencil on cardboard 54x68cm























"PLATTENBAUTEN"
spraypaint and stencil on electrical cabinet, 96 x 78 x 32 cm

















Okay, so now that you kind of get the idea, try to wrap your mind around the following installation piece called "Caspar David Friedrich Stadt"; a recent effort in which he transforms the interior floor area of a slaughterhouse in Dresden. To quote the artist:

"Painted in a 10x8meter hole in the ground on the abandoned slaughterhouse area in Dresden,
probably the former foundation of a huge boiler plant to derive soap from rendered beef fat or other utilization of carcass. However, even 15 years after closing down, it still smells nauseating.

The main slaughterhouse complex was built 1906 by hans erlwein. Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Slaughterhouse Five" also takes place there. Caspar David Friedrich painted that area called Ostragehege in 1832, And my favorite footnote is that his father was a soap-boiler ..."

Kris Lewis

Most of Kris Lewis' work is taken up with young beautiful women, they're hair perfectly coifed, their dress, if any, elegant and slightly outlandish. There is certainly a bit of the "Playboy" aesthetic to them. There is no doubt that he has an eye for striking design, and an interest in the alluring, even the downright erotic, but his art lies in going beyond mere form and capturing an extraordinary depth of personality. He also presents his portraits in a landscape tableaux that creates a kind of narrative to engage the viewer. He cites influences ranging from Holbein to Wyeth in obvious adoration of the masters of realism, but he often incorporates a very contemporary stylization of form that is usually fairly restrained (as in the pieces below) although occasionally, more pronounced. His few paintings that are not of young women reveal that his fascinations and insights into character are hardly restricted to one sex.
To see more visit his website at www.krislewisart.com






















"Low Tide" oil on board 36"x24"






















"We're Going South" oil on linen 30"x30"























"Deconstruction Period" oil on canvas 24"x24"























"Red" oil on wood 24"x20"
























"Funeral" 30"x24"























"Cory" oil on canvas 30"x24"

Adriana Varejão

This is an artist whose work I stumbled across some time ago. I saved an image or two and then forgot to follow up. So when I came across it again, I knew I'd better post it right away before I forgot again.
The main body of her work consists of these empty baths and saunas. I have no idea whether or not each piece represents a real place or not. At times they appear so cryptically labyrinthine that their existence in reality seems doubtful. Whatever the case, the geometric lines of the space and the graph-paper like lines of the tiling give the work a cold and calculated presence. But they are deeply psychological interiors as well. Her use of color can add warmth or suck it away. And the occasional relic of a human presence, a stain of blood, a clump of hair, adds a dark disturbing note. The title of each piece often suggests a particular person, a character or perhaps merely a type. But it further heightens the psychological aspect of the work. She hails from Rio De Janeiro but has been successful enough to have had shows recently in Tokyo, New York and this year, London. So congratulations Adriana.
She does a lot of other work aside from painting and it's well worthwhile taking a visual stroll through her website: www.adrianavarejao.net
















"The Dreamer" oil on canvas 170x230cm 2006


















"The Hungarian" oil on canvas 200x255cm 2006















"The Guest" oil on canvas 45x70cm 2004











"The Seducer" oil on canvas 230x530cm 2004










"The Shining" oil on canvas 230x560cm 2009
















"The Wicked" graphite on paper 70x100cm 2009