Mike Simi is an artist whose sculptures seem almost more like jokes than they do “art” (in a good way). Every one of them is funny, playful, and but also informed, like the products of an MFA student tired of everyone around taking art way too seriously, whose peers then applaud his efforts at subverting their academic approaches.
Swedish designers and architects have taken the fad of adult tree house building and made it extraordinarily Swedish in the best way possible at the Tree Hotel. Mirror houses, UFOs with star-print sheets, giant bird nests; these exist in real life. What a wonderful world.( via )
Peter Scherrer is a Washington (state) based artist and makes amazing paintings about the woods he grew up around. His newer work feels like a combination of fauvism and DeKooning, but his older stuff is 100% woods and it makes the woods feel like a whole other kind of jungle. If you find yourself in Seattle in the next two days, check out his work at the Cornish College where he is hanging until the 13th. ”You have to love the paintings of Peter Scherrer. They’re perfectly serious, thick and virtuosic and painterly and dark, and funny at the same time.” – Jen Graves of The Stranger ( via )
Daniel Heidkamp uses combines the styles of old timers like David Hockney and Claude Monet to paint the people and places around him in the 21st century. The results are fresh, energetic, and 100% joyful to look at. If you’re not careful you could end up staring at these all day. Not that that’s a bad thing.
Michelle MacKinnon‘s photorealistic portraits use the human face to investigate secrets and their relation to the idea of public/private. The artist explains:
“The series is a combination of a list of exposed secrets, and with no direct link to them, portraits of the sitters expressing their emotions/reactions to their listed secret. Provoked by the idea of confession, this series will explore the public/private relation of people and the exposition of their secrets. By anonymously submitting secrets to the artist and later posing for a portrait depicting their secret, this series strikes an interesting note of juxtaposition between the public and private sphere of secrecy. Publically, these secrets, and therefore their keepers, have been indirectly exposed. Out of instinctive human nature, curiosity drives the viewer to either intuitively match the portrait to their secret, or become empathetic to the portrait deriving from relation to their own secrets. Privately, the confession becomes an outlet for the sitter; a chance to formally acknowledge and confront their secret, yet knowing that, though it may be assumed, no one but themselves will be entirely accurate as to which secret is theirs. It becomes a veiled breach of the private into the public and a connection without fact; after all, we all have secrets.” – Michelle Mackinnon
Megan Whitmarsh‘s embroidered paintings and sculptures are a real treat. Drawing inspiration from Annette Messager and Niki de Saint Phalle they are energetic and youthful, but made with the old fashioned tediousness of hand sewing. She has a show up at New Image Art Gallery until the 20th, hurry and see it in person while you have the chance!
Art duo JIMMYnADI (composed of Jimmy Marble and Adi Goodrich) teamed up to make a series of motivational PSAs promoting optimism. Watch them and live today without fear.
“JIMMYnADI are a creative duo living, dreaming and hustling in Los Angeles. Today is tough, creative people are working really fucking hard and making wonderful things but as stated, it gets rough. These Motivational Public Service Announcements geared towards creative minded people are to motivate people to keep going, have a clear mind and to constantly do your best. It’s tough out there, but we’ll all be okay if we stick together.” – JIMMYnAdi. (via)
Ara Dymond and Jesse Willenbring have a great show of their paintings and sculptures up at the Laurel Gitlen gallery in NYC. Check it out if you’re in the area!
“In this overcrowded, if appealing, two-person show, the eye ricochets between Dymond’s jocular sculptures made of synthetic materials and Willenbring’s screen-printed doodles on wood. Several of Dymond’s lime-green and pink plinths display images of absurdly cute dogs printed on aluminum cutouts; others sport digitally carved designs reportedly inspired by Lucio Fontana. One catchy drawing, sketched by Willenbring straight onto the wall, repeats a motif of overlapping light bulbs—an A.D.H.D. bright idea. Through Oct. 14.” - The New Yorker
