French/Italian artist Sonia D’Argenzio sent over some of her new abstract ‘anti-photographs’ this past week, and i’m more than impressed. Her ability to pull an excellent image from film before/after/without processing is unrivaled (at least to my Tumblr eyes), and i’m even more convinced by her devotion to the analog process. She might just be the real deal.
Evan Meister‘s drawings have a certain Old New York feel to them- a dark past (or future) referenced through shrewd hieroglyphs. I always find myself trying to read his work like a comic strip in an unknown language- where the punchline is Evan’s perfect balance of technical skill and engaging originality.
Arguably the most low-brow of all popular artists of the mid 2000′s, Porous Walker is sorely missed. Now existing as a torrent of blog posts and a flickr, Porous’ rapid-fire drawings and punchlines remain as appropriately inappropriate as ever. His untimely ‘demise’ in 2007 can only remind us that… well, maybe we shouldn’t take art so seriously.
Landscape photography is a fickle mistress. Jonathan Robert LeBlanc’s photographs weave an elaborate tapestry of cramped urban decay and endless country skies- facing history with little or no irony.
Is it semiotics or shamanism? Work that feels both automatic and authentic, eluding formal structures of control with a well-versed hand– Dan Rocca’s drawings perplex even the most learned planeswalker.
Michael Burnett, renowned skate photographer extraordinare, has taken many of the iconic photographs that come to mind when thinking of greats such as Tom Penny and John Cardiel. However, taking a great skateboarding photograph is a much different task than photographing the people above the skateboard. His portraits of suburban kids sprawling for free t-shirts and familiar faces removed from their territory tell a different story- often the much more interesting one.
Michael Skattum is another one of those artists that seems to barely exist outside of Flickr- which is a shame. His serigraphs and paintings of 3d melting monsters will leave your eyes weeping for more.
Toronto’s Niall McClelland uses what works. Utilizing spray paint, graphite, ink cartridges, photocopies, roaches, and lighters as his mark-making media, Niall’s work maintains a tactile and uncompromising quality unrivaled by his fellow contemporaries.
