Sebastián Velasco

"Bajo Las Gradas del Plantío"  oil on canvas  72 x 115cm

title unknown   size unknown

"Donostiako Portua" (Post of San Sebastian)  oil on canvas  81 x 65cm

"Pasillo" (Hallway)  oil on canvas  80 x 100cm

"N-1"  oil on canvas  60 x 80cm

I stumbled across Sebastián Velasco's work on Flickr a while back. I can't find any other website or galleries with his work. But he's posting new stuff, so if you're on flickr, make him a contact. If not, well just go look. This is good solid painting, with deft, confident brushwork and solid compositions. Subtle hue and value contrasts create some beautiful lighting effects. For the most part this is simple straightforward observational work about everyday life in a mostly urban environment. The work also includes some portraiture, depictions of soccer and one study of grapes. There's no overarching themes or agendas, just the desire to capture the world in paint. He occasionally strays into stylization and caricature and this variability suggests to me that the artist is still pretty young, just flexing his abilities and trying to figure out what works best for him. I could be totally wrong, but the first of his 36 images was posted just last year. If I'm right, I'm guessing he has a long successful career to look forward to.
www.flickr.com/photos/sebastianvelasco/
and for an interesting contrast you can look at his graffiti work here: www.flickr.com/photos/sebasura1
my apologies for the delay. I should have another new post later this week.

Gong Yuan

"Condition"  oil   37.4" x 43.3"

These portraits by the artist Gong Yuan make me think of Francis bacon with a better sense of humor. But where Francis Bacon plumbed the depths of pure dark emotionality, using the figure merely as a prop these are true portraits. Okay, maybe some of them or more caricature. But even so, they take caricature up to the level of high art. All of the disturbing and agonizingly recognizable qualities of real people are there lurking behind the chaos of gestural paint, but there is a tender, comic element as well. A lot of fine art tends to take things just a bit too seriously. And audiences buy into this. If it isn't horrible, dark, despairing, or at least shocking, then it must not be very important. Of course there's a whole school of artists out there, many of whom I've featured, who turn all that seriousness on it's head and trumpet the value of humor in art.  But very rarely do you see both points of view so delicately balanced, so perfectly reflective of what it is to be a human being.
There's more work here:
www.saatchionline.com/gongshunblues
And the artist has a website here:
photo.163.com/gongshunblues
but be forewarned, it's in Chinese and you may find it difficult to navigate.

(most of the work on the Saatchi site is untitled. No sizes given.)

Marco Wagner

Like the artist in my previous post (Esao Andrews) and many others, Marco Wagner is another artist/illustrator blurring the lines between the two endeavors.The term pop-surrealist is sometimes used to describe the genre, although the more familiar I become with it the less suitable the name seems. But that's the nature of labels. Marco Wagner's work reflects the nuanced differences between artists of this sort in Europe and those in the U.S.. Much of the work in the U.S. leans towards the cartoonish, fantasy, or kitsch, often but not always with a healthy dollop of sarcasm. Marco Wagner's work on the other hand leans toward a generally more serious tone with a greater emphasis on design and technique. These are often dark images and somber themes tempered slightly by a lightness of approach.
There's plenty of both his personal work and his illustration on view at his website: www.marcowagner.net

Esao Andrews

"The Stray" 24"x 24" oil on wood. 2011

"Polished & Powdered" 24"x 36" oil on wood. 2011

"Drifters" 36"x 48" oil on wood. 2010

"Meigh" 20"x 24" oil on wood. 2010

"The Haircut" 8"x 11" oil on wood. 2011

Esao andrews is among an enormous group of contemporary artists who intentionally blur the line between fine art and illustration. What I find refreshing about a lot of them, and Esao Andrews is no exception, is that they combine a real dedication to craftsmanship and skill with unfettered imagination and a whimsical visual inventiveness. His work is wide ranging and it would be difficult to pin down specific themes, but in general I see elements of childlike innocence and fantasy combining with a darker vein of psychedelia. Not every piece works, but why should it? That's what invention is all about. Trying new things. Looking through his portfolio, and that of others like him, you're reminded over and over again that the potential for representational image making is truly unlimited. We should all be glad that pioneers in the 20th century opened up the possibilities of abstraction, but declarations of the death of representation were not just premature, they were absurd. And representational artists like Esao Andrews use elements of abstraction to enhance the inventiveness of their own work.
You can see much much more on his website: esao.net