PAUL INSECT

(UK)

Paul Insect is a street artist, who is most famous for his 2007 solo show Bullion exhibition at London's Art gallery, Lazarides Gallery. Damien Hirst is reported to be a fan of Insect, having purchased the show days before it opened. Insect, who also goes by the name of PINS, worked alongside well-known artist Banksy at the Cans Festival, Santas Ghetto, and on the separation wall in Palestine.

Insect is well known for his collective named 'insect' which started in 1996, and disbanded in 2005. Insect held an exhibition at a disused Sex shop in London's Kings Cross area in 2008 in partnership with Lazarides Gallery. This contained 12 bronze skulls with colour enameled bunny ears.

Watch this video of Paul Insect with BAST:

PAT THOMPSON

(Canada)

Patrick Thompson's installations of painting, wall drawings, printmaking and sculpture, are investigations of the idea of information; explored through mass media, architecture, history and the dynamics of culture, defined equally by their range and their lyrical visual language.

Highly esteemed for pushing the boundaries of street art, he has painted outdoors under the pseudonym Evoke throughout North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. Thompson is often placed into the "Canadian School" of street artists including Other, Labrona, and Thesis Sahib, a group known for their inspired improvisations and openness towards freeform mark making.

Thompson's own creative process develops through a self-coined process he refers to as "mistakism", whereby the artist allows a memory, feeling, sentence, or some other bite of information to spark the beginning of a particular work. Imagery follows, inspired by the 'in-between' places found throughout the Canadian landscape, converging into dreamlike scenes. This union creates a pictorial space where imaginary characters, forms and marks can interact in a place that is whimsical as well as charged.

Watch this video by DevotionBCN:

OLIVER VERNON

(1972, New York, US)

Oliver Vernon received his BFA from Parsons School of Design in 1995, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He has exhibited his work in cities all across the United States including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago, and has also shown in London and Toronto. His work is part of numerous collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Visually, Vernon’s paintings draw upon an incredibly varied pool of influences, from abstract expressionism, to post pop surrealism and the polished finish of figurative realism. Formally, his work is about the deconstruction, and hence the necessary reconstruction of visual space. From this central dichotomy stems many others: logic/illogic, physical/metaphysical, imprisonment/liberation. His paintings come to us, perhaps, as detailed snapshots of the few primordial milliseconds when the blueprint of the universe was being sculpted from the final throes of chaos. In this sense, anything goes. 

Each painting has it’s own set of rules, or rather the rules are being bent, broken and ultimately formed within each painting. Color, form, energy, architecture, good, evil, flesh and machine are lurking, never as physical entities, but as transient archetypes searching out their final places within the framework of the cosmos. Apart from this macro view, Oliver’s work can be seen at the micro level as well. We can view his paintings as representations of how the mind is formed from a foundation of thought, reason, and aesthetics, and how these entities are simultaneously at odds and interconnected.

Watch this video of his exhibition "Renegade Trajectories" by Colin M Day: 

NYCHOS

(Austria)

Nychos is a renowned Austrian Street Artist. One of the most prolific of the European scene. His style is characterized by pop surrealist and often has a sordid and critical content, particularly on media and society. He is a wonderful illustrator and he dissects and disembowels animals that fill his compositions to put them better into light.

He was born into an Austrian hunting family in South Africa and spent much of his childhood seeing things which many ‘normal’ people would consider cruel or even brutal. For Nychos though, it was a fascinating world. At seven he was bitten by a boar while he was playing in the forest close to home. Just a little while later he had boar meat for lunch. In another instance he saw a dead baby lamb being consumed by maggots the same color as its fur. Instead of being horrified, he was fascinated. He studied the hidden insides of animals and noticed the way life often grows from other life. At the same time he was also a child of the 80s, growing up watching cartoons and being influenced by their flashy bright colors.

Nychos has done collaborations with international giant urban art scene as Roa, Aryz, Satone, Zedz and Wany.

Watch this video by Hypebeast:

NATE VAN DYKE

Nate (N8) VanDyke is a prolific artist and illustrator who began drawing at the age of two. His medium of choice ranges from: pencil, ink, marker, watercolor, gauche, acrylic and oils. Regardless of what medium he picks up, his signature style can be seen in the contrast of his thin and thick lines in his pen and ink work and the high sheen contrast in his mixed media pieces.

Nate's heavily detailed illustrations feature his heavy metal humans and his well-known future primitive apes with dark menacing personalities. His color work features studies of animals (apes, elephants, giraffes) against lustrous backdrops.

He recently took a job as a senior concept artist at NCsoft working on City of Heroes/City of Villains. Just prior, he finished creating concept art and storyboards for the Sega video game, Iron Man. His work has also been featured in several magazines such as JUXTAPOZ, XBox, PlayStation and Heavy Metal. Over the years N8 has attracted clients such as Converse, Levi Strauss, Scion, EMI Records, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Burton Snowboards, Slayer and Wired. N8’s work has been commissioned and showcased internationally.

Watch N8 in his studio:

NATE VALENSKY

Dream Chaser Ride On, To all those who have not yet warmed their feet next to the warmth of Nate Valensky’s forest fire; I can only wish that one would feel the feather of bliss flying down a steep hillside after a glass of fine tequila and dried bananas. Nate will inspire one to find wealth in the release of what is not important, enabling the light of what is to shine through. Comparable to walking through a freshly burned pine forest in the Upper Cascade range looking for worms to feed your sick friend the mountain lion. Creating flow like a fresh rattle snake bite, Nate can be the one that sells you your ticket to board the bus to freedom. Whisking ones feet away with the dance of his brush and the flowering of unique color that lathers the mind with a creamy butter of goodness and purity. Approach Nate Like a bubbling stream you may come upon during a journey into a beautiful new world, dip your feet in, cleanse the soul, and fill your moose blatter to the brim, because it could be many moons before you come across something this good again. - Jonathan Oliver Stein -

Watch art life and all that freshness:

MUNK ONE

(US)

MUNK ONE is a contemporary American Illustrator, Poster Artist, Political Cartoonist, and Fine Artist from California. He is well known for creating Artwork for major label musical acts and world renowned brands, recognized for their creativity. His fine art has gained much attention through many galleries both at home and abroad. He was previously the official Juxtapoz Art Magazine editorial Illustrator. He is also owner and Creative Director of the Invisible Industries Brand.

His artistic style may seem serious and even dark at first glance, filled with undertones of mortality, religion, or politics but his work can also be full of movement with bright, and fun colors and ideas with a sense of humor. These elements seem to coexist and mix throughout much of his work both commercially and personally. Proficient in both traditional and computer media, he is comfortable using whatever methods his projects may call for.

Working within the apparel and merchandise industries since the mid 90s, much of his knowledge and technical expertise has been gained from hands on experience. In 2006 he decided to focus on creating his own style of art while using his website as the vehicle to share this creativity with the world. During the 2008 election He created a striking portrait of the then Presidential candidate Barack Obama that was to be used for prints, stickers, t-shirts and also ran at bus stops all over the state of Pennsylvania. In 2009 Munk One was featured in Juxtapoz Art Magazine issue #96. That year he also began to work on limited edition screen printed posters and has since worked on prints for Pearl Jam, Blink 182, 311, Soundgarden, City and Colour and More.

Watch this interview:

MR. JAGO

(1972, UK)

Duncan Jago is considered a veteran of the urban art and design community. He has been described as a pioneer of the Scrawl Movement. Growing up in the small village of Eye in Suffolk, Jago had an intense interest in graffiti, which led him to study illustration in Bristol.

He graduated from the University Of The West of England in Bristol in 1998. It was there that Jago met Steff Plaetz and Will Barras, which led the way to the start of the now renowned Scrawl Collective agency. Mr. Jago’s skills lie in everything from painting and illustration to creating artwork and designs for some of the biggest international brands.

Watch this interview by BBC Blast:

MR. ELEMENT

MORNING BREATH

Morning Breath's diverse portfolio includes designs for clothing brands, advertising campaigns, gaming and music packaging, the latter garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Special Music Packaging in the case of AFI. Morning Breath's unique and vivid approach to each project is evident by their work with notable clients that include Stussy, Vans, MTV, and Queens of the Stone Age amongst others. 

What began as a working partnership between founders Doug Cunningham and Jason Nato in 1996, the company was formally launched in 2002. Since its inception, Morning Breath continues to deliver original art that pushes the pace of the ever-evolving creative industry.

Watch this video by offthewalltv:

MISTER CARTOON

(Los Angeles, US)

Mark Machado, better known as Mr. Cartoon or more commonly just Cartoon, is a Mexican American tattoo artist and graffiti artist based in Los Angeles, California. Since the age of eight, Mr. Cartoon realized he was an artist and went on his first paying art job at the age of twelve. Having grown up in the Harbor area of Los Angeles County, young Cartoon began airbrushing t-shirts and Lowrider cars before adopting the legendary "Fineline Style" tattoo art, which was developed in the California prison system.

Machado designed the logo for Cypress Hill. He has tattooed the bodies of Kobe Bryant, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem, Method Man, Xzibit, Prodigy, Travis Barker, Scott Raynor, Bow Wow, Fredrik Ljungberg, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles, Danny Trejo, Adil Omar, Mena Suvari, Jules Jordan, Emilio Rivera, Kurt Sutter, Redman, Lewis Hamilton, and Gabriel McDonald as well as Snoop Dogg. 

In addition to tattoos, Machado's work has been used by Nike, Toyota, T-Mobile, MetroPCS and in Grand Theft Auto. Machado appeared in the documentary Scarface: Origins of a Hip Hop Classic and is a contributor to Mass Appeal Magazine. Together with friend and frequent collaborator Estevan Oriol, he owns Joker Brand Clothing. He is affiliated with Soul Assassins.

Watch this interview by Young & Reckless:

MISS VAN

(1973, Toulouse, France)

Miss Van started wall-painting at the age of 20, in 1993, initiating the feminine movement in Street Art. Originating from Toulouse, France and having spent most of her artistic life in Barcelona, Miss Van has travelled the world painting her instantly recognizable women on the streets, as well as on canvas. She has exhibited extensively for decades worldwide in Europe, USA and Asia.

Miss Van’s recent artistic pursuits have taken her to Los Angeles, Miami , Spain and Brazil, which hallmarks a recent return to street art, after several years spent solely painting in the studio, charging her new works with increased depth, emotion and an elevated romantic darkness and delicacy. Her iconic sultry female characters reappear in sensual yet dark animal masks and evolving environments.

In a gauzy romantic compositions, they carry a surreal quality of burlesque, resonating with a beautiful synergy of rawness, softness and emotion.

Watch this interview by Friends We Love:

MIKE PARK

Mike Park's polymer coated acrylic paintings on wood depict a melange of dream like narratives brimming with adolescent angst. His technique is impressive, and he reveals young men and women engaged in deeply personal moments, often exuding emotions of hope, fear and desire. The works can be read as a virtual map into the psyche of the human condition, where people grapple with feelings of alienation and sexual ambiguity.

MIKE MILLER

(US)

Famed photographer/director Mike Miller has worked with some of the most iconic 90’s supermodels, photographed over 500 major-label album covers from all genres of music from Tupac, Nick Cave to Herb Albert. Recently photographed and directed YG, A$AP, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Jeezy.

Currently working with Ferrari and collaborations with Retna, Shepard Fairey among others. Clients include Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, Cameron Diaz, James Franco, Sony, Nike, Puma, MTV Video Awards, Coca~Cola, Stussy, etc.

In his recent book, West Coast Hip Hop: A History in Pictures, he presents just what the title implies. A reportage of his iconic images coving the golden age of rap.

Watch this video of his hip-hop photography by KCETOnline:

MIKE GIANT

(1971, New York, US)

Acclaimed worldwide for his prolific work in graffiti, illustration, design and tattoo, Mike Giant is one of the most complete artists of his generation.

As a child he moved to Albu­querque, New Mex­ico, where he stud­ied archi­tec­ture and later he landed in San Fran­cisco, where he was offered a job as a graphic draw­ing artist at Think Skate­boards. Even when he was very young, he worked as a writer in the world of graf­fiti and skate sub­cul­ture, becom­ing at the end of the nineties a tat­too artist, motor­cy­cle and bike cus­tomizer and, lastly, cre­ative mind of the lifestyle brand REBEL8. 

Mike Giant, who defines him­self as an “old hip­ster”, is known inter­na­tion­ally for the extreme pre­ci­sion and rig­or­ous black and white of his lines, that is affected by the influ­ence of pop­u­lar Mex­i­can art and Japan­ese illus­tra­tion. In his pro­duc­tion, that mixes styles and sym­bols of dif­fer­ent nature, we see a con­ver­gence of reli­gious iconog­ra­phy and death alle­gories, tribal sym­bol­ogy and Bud­dhist doc­trine, let­ter­ing and old school ele­ments, in a con­tin­u­ous inter­sect­ing of sacred and pro­fane, love and death. Seduc­tive pin ups and wink­ing femme fatales, BMX bikes, skulls, snakes and Cal­i­forn­ian urban visions pop­u­late his work, all made with extreme care, regard­less of the sup­port, whether it’s leather, paper, metal or cement. His draw­ings and mul­ti­ples have been shown in numer­ous spaces and gal­leries all over the world, from WDWA Gallery in New York to Mis­an­thropy Gallery in Van­cou­ver, to Magda Danysz Gallery in Paris to Mon­ster Chil­dren Gallery in Aus­tralia. Fur­ther­more, his works have often been used by lifestyle and cloth­ing brands, among which the bike com­pany Cinelli and the brands Tribal Gear and Upper Playground.

Watch this video by LandOfChrome:

MICHAEL SIEBEN

(Austin, Texas, US)

Michael Sieben is a professional designer and illustrator whose work has been exhibited and reviewed worldwide as well as featured in numerous illustration anthologies. He recently took over the managing editor position at Thrasher Magazine and has a monthly column in Juxtapoz Magazine. He is also a founding member of Okay Mountain Collective in Austin, Texas, as well as the cofounder of Roger Skateboards. He lives and works in Austin, TX with his wife Allison, son River, and daughter Eve.

Watch Michael Sieben's Internet Shack Episode 1 by Volcom:

MCCLELLAND

(1980, Toronto, Canada)

Niall McClelland spent many of his summers in Northern Ireland, went to school in Vancouver and eight years later returned to Toronto where he now lives. His work has been published in Adbusters, Arkitip, Color, Design Anarchy, Hunter and Cook, I-Live-Here, Lowdown, Made, and The Walrus among others.

Recent exhibitions include “In The Dark” at Eleanor Harwood (San Francisco); Resurrection at Cinders Gallery (Brooklyn); Sails, Cubes and Folds (CR). McClelland was also included along with Jeremy Jansen, Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Serra in the group show Black To Back And Light at CR in 2009. Of that exhibition the Globe and Mail surmised that “..the works of Jansen and McClelland are plenty gritty enough to hold up against the Serras and the Kelly. Indeed they demonstrate the same kind of uncompromising bravura.”

Watch this video by MOCCA, Toronto:

MAYA HAYUK

(1969, Maryland, US)

With their symmetrical compositions, intricate patterns, and lush colors, Maya Hayuk’s paintings and massively scaled murals recall views of outer space, traditional Ukrainian crafts, airbrushed manicures, and mandalas. The artist weaves visual information from her immediate surroundings into her elaborate abstractions, creating an engaging mix of referents from popular culture and advanced painting practices alike while connecting to the ongoing pursuit of psychedelic experience in visual form. She has painted her iconic outdoor murals all over the world and, when not traveling, maintains an active studio in Brooklyn, sketching in paint to inform the large-scale works. Maya Hayuk sees her studio painting practice and mural making as both inversely relational and symbiotic.

Maya Hayuk earned a BFA in Interrelated Media from Massachusetts College of Art in 1991 and has studied at V.C.U. in Richmond, Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, the University of Odessa in Ukraine and at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. 

Her work has been the subject of one person exhibitions and commissions at venues including The Hammer Museum, LA (2013), The Museum Of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto (2013), Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht (2012) and Socrates Sculpture Park in New York (2011). Aditionally, Maya Hayuk has curated numerous exhibitions, is a member of the Barnstormers collective as well as the Cinders Art Collective and she frequently collaborated with other artists and musicians. She has created album covers, hand-made screenprints, videos, stage sets, photographs and posters for famous musicians such as Rye Rye/M.I.A and The Beastie Boys. Furthermore, she has curated “This Wall could be your Life” (2005 - 2011) on the exterior walls of the now legendary and recently demolished Monster Island/ Secret Project Robot in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Watch this video by Hammer Museum:

MATZU

(1976, Tokyo, Japan)

Tomokazu Matsuyama’s work is similarly influenced by both the austerity of post-war contemporary art and the rough extravagancy of popular culture. Perhaps the most intriguing and insightful in terms of cultural study, his work is a more conscious and introspective response to the tensions of bicultural experience. An upbringing split between Japan and America spurred the questions of national and individual identity that figure prominently in the style and subject matter of his paintings – attempting to parse the “natural chaos” of our social environment, Matsuyama pushes viewers to confront their conceptions of cultural homogeneity, which seems to contradict notions of Japaneseness.

Discerningly appropriating influences from modern art and Japanese art from the Edo and Meiji eras, Matsuyama’s paintings are an aesthetically exciting and culturally fascinating facet, which portrays the lifestyle of this time.

Tomokazu Matsuyama lives and works in NY. As a contemporary artist, Matsuyama exhibits his work internationally showing in galleries and in institutions in cities from Tokyo, Osaka, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, and Vancouver to institutions such as Asian American Arts Centre.

Watch this interview by plus81:

MARS-1

MARS-1 (aka Mario Martinez) is an artist who spends most of his time in the right side of his brain, communicating through a visual language. His unique imagery explores possibilities of otherworldly existence through highly developed, multi-layered landscapes. Often employing a fuzzy-logic aesthetic, Mars-1’s artwork has a sentient appearance, like a tulpa—which in mysticism, is the concept of a materialized thought that manifests into physical form. His unique style has been described as urban-Gothic, sci-fi abstracted, quasi-organic form.

Early inspirations include: graffiti, animation, comic book characters, ufology, extraterrestrials, unexplored life, mysteries of the universe, alternate realities and the abstract quality of existence. At the age of 13, Mars-1 began writing graffiti in his hometown of Fresno. He later attended Academy of Art in San Francisco, where he currently lives and works, remaining heavily active in the city’s contemporary art scene.

The true meaning of Mars-1’s imagery is ultimately left to the viewer’s interpretation. The artist feels this brings his creations full-circle, encouraging his audience not only to decipher the messages he wishes to convey but to receive thoughts and ideas of their own, as well.

Watch this video of his studio visit in San Francisco by Friends We Love: