Andy Davis

Andy Davis is an artist who I personally have been following for a while now after spotting one of his designs on a Billabong T-shirt about 5 years ago whilst mooching around in a shop! After that I kept seeing his name pop up and around all over the place. His contemporary, illustrative art embraces the surf culture and everything else to do with it, creating cool portraits of Dudes and Dudettes surfing, chilling and he has even captured this culture in pattern design.

Being a surfer himself has definitely influenced him and his style as I feel there’s no better way to learn about a culture than being out there and trying it yourself. His portraits are all super relaxed in his designs, slouched over with bent knees whilst catching a huge light blue wave, which really captures the relaxed side to surfing.

You can find all of his art on his website and I advise anyone who hasn’t seen them to check them out, whether your into that culture or not! They’re all fun and pleasant to look at!

THHE Art Edit

%$&(__)”((_%^& Glitch art?

Glitch art is a fairly recent phenomenon surrounding the art world, its a way of expressing a technical fault and turning it into a distorted piece of art. I suppose the movement might stem from the idea of cubism or maybe lo fi art? It looks similar to an old Piccasso painting mixed with a Mondrian painting  but more technologically advanced. Glitches are less common these days due to the ways in which technology is advancing, making glitch art rather interesting to look at and talk about.

The ideas of destruction in art have been around for years but non like the destruction of glitch art, some of the visuals can become just pure noise. Phillip Stearns an artist based in New York  who has turned this “noise” into beautiful textile art, which transforms the whole concept. You can find his WordPress here!! There is also a community of artists who replace kitschy photographs in hotels with a glitched version of the original photograph, some of them are so subtle housekeeping would barely notice!!

Technology in art is a constantly adapting theme as long as technology progresses which it inevitably will do then so will this style of art. Another artist worth mentioning who works with technology is Jon Rafman, a Canadian artist focusing on many different types of  works revolving around technology. My favorite of his is 9-eye’s in which he took screen shots of the weird and wonderful on google street view, I cant imagine where you would start with that kind of project as there’s so much going on in street view! But it’s been done and he has found a great way to turn something we use every day into some really interesting art.

–TB

THHE Art Edit

George Condo

One of the most influential contemporary painters of his time George condo creates surreal and cubist influenced paintings. His paintings are so bizarre and unique and to me are still considered as very contemporary still influencing artists today. His subjects in his portraits are uncanny and aggressive looking, long necks, stretched bottom lips, button noses, square heads, they come across as caricatures of upper class folk that you don’t really want to bump into. The paintings are influence by Picasso, Basquiat and even Willem De Kooning.

 

His portraits are some of my favorite paintings, there a completely different style and an insight into the mind of George Condo and how he portrays his subjects. They all look mad as if he is trying to comment on a certain persons character, really capturing the personality of who they really are. He doesn’t just focus on paintings as he has produced sculptures of some of his caricatures, bringing a different medium into his works so they can be visualized differently. He has also produced work for Kanye West which touches on popular culture.

All in all George Condo is a very interesting artist creating many different styles of work which can be appreciated by all!

 

Tom

THHE Art Edit

Hugo Schmölz.

I recently went to see an exhibition in liverpool at the Tate gallery, the exhibition was Otto Dix and August Sander’s portraying a nation. The works of art were all based from 1919 – 1933, which was an incredibly notorious time for Germany (both German artists) which you could see in their works. This influenced me to research further into German artists of this time and I came across Schmölz, a German photographer born in 1879 and father of Karl Hugo Schmölz one of the most interesting architecture photographers of his time living through major historic events.

I couldn’t help but notice the eeriness of his images, whether or not this is reminiscent of the time he was taking photographs, but they are all empty of people, with nobody in any of the shots. This does make you focus all your attention on the buildings and structures he would photograph. I really enjoy this in his work, having nothing to distract you other than following the lines and curves of the structures which is what you want from an architecture photographer. Compared to his son’s works which are much busier, but what I enjoy most about Schmölz’s work is the simplicity.

Bellow is Hugo Schmölz.

Bellow is Karl Hugo Schmölz.

Both these are very different images but you can tell Karl was influenced by his father in the fact his images are eerie but they are so much busier. you can also see the time differences in these images, the top one taken pre second world war and the second post world war. There is something nostalgic about photographs taken from this era, the buildings are all different, the scenery and the advertising everything had more character and told more of a story. I feel like a lot of places have lost some of this as our world has developed. The world was much different 100 years ago!

–TB