IAN JOHNSON

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(1979, Syracuse, NY, US)

Ian Johnson lives and works in San Francisco, CA. He creates portraits predominately of jazz musicians of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. Johnson investigates the space between the spontaneous nature of jazz music and the physical structure of the human form.  

Johnson is also the art director of San Francisco’s Western Edition Skateboards, which allows him to explore the fundamental nature of his portraits as both a cultural and commercial product.

Watch this video by Ando Nesia:


HVW8

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(2006, Los Angeles, US)

HVW8 Art + Design Gallery was founded by Tyler Gibney and Addison Liu with a focus on supporting fine art & avant-garde graphic design.  By furthering artistic visions at the intersection of art, music and design, it soon became one of the premier underground galleries in Los Angeles.  Over the past 7 years emerging and established artists such as Parra, Geoff McFetridge, Kevin Lyons, Hassan Rahim, Mark Gonzales, Cody Hudson, Lisa Leone, Janette Beckman, and Jean Andre have exhibited their works. In 2014 HVW8 Gallery expanded with a Pop Up Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

HUSH

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(1976, Newcastle, England)

HUSH, inspired by detritus, uses futuristic silvers and blacks clothed in a chaotic collage of colour to create a sensual blizzard of femininity, power and loss. Painted in grayscale, often with the eyes blacked out, HUSH's female faces are dehumanised. By reducing them to shells of sexuality, he perfectly encapsulates the transient nature of modern life as well as the timeless forces of passion and desire.

By action painting these faces from history, he achieves "pure expressionism". The collage-effect backgrounds are screen-printed and hand-painted, then the graffiti elements added by hand in the action painting style, sometimes over many months. The final layer of colour replicates sheets of flyposters peeling from our city's walls whilst the Bravura use of aerosol on the portraits lends the pieces a futuristic sheen, echoing the seductive promise of technological fulfillment.

"Some people think my women are serene, others that they're scary. What is clear is the power of their sensuality", says HUSH. The portraits he paints are imposing and alluring, yet confrontational and unobtainable. The implication being that while the pleasures of modern life are fleeting, the succubus legend remains the most potent, rewarding, and perhaps destructive compulsion offered to man.

Watch this installation video by carmichaelgallery:

HERBERT BAGLIONE

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(1977, São Paulo, Brazil)

Internationally known graffiti artist, Herbert Baglione, has been making compelling and narrative works on both the streets and in galleries for years. Baglione is renowned for his strong, simplistic street murals that are reminiscent of cave drawings, morphed with extraterrestrial images, brilliantly placed on rooftops and street surfaces, which are only visible in their entirety from an aerial view. His images are of the obese and the painfully anorexic - extremes of human shapes, elongated and rounded for the ultimate in simplistic, dramatic and iconic human symbols; thus illustrating his interest in human imperfection and extremes.

Baglione's art is constantly evolving and changing via strong aesthetics and visual language, though his figurative subjects remain constant. He relies heavily on a monotone palette of black, white and golden hues. At times, Baglione's work has had a strong minimalist and simplistic bent whilst still utilizing his elaborate calligraphic language. 

Regarding his installations, he has expressed to have a particular interest in finding places he has never worked before, such as a garden from the seventeenth century, in the city of La Rochelle, ruins, a Church from the sixteenth century in the town of Celles Sur Belle and an underground hospital complex in Niort. Baglione, who uses a deep narrative as the basis of each painting, believes that: "An artist who stimulates the spectator's pleasure and desire to research his production is most important. Being just aesthetically beautiful is not enough."

Watch this video of the work and technique of Herbert Baglione by Walrus TV:

HERA

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(1981, Germany)

Since 2004 the German street art duo Hera and Akut form a fruitful partnership having worked together on various successful global art projects. Their art works can be found in big cities around the world – from Toronto to Kathmandu, from San Francisco to Melbourne. Their joint creative art process is dialogical, among themselves as well as towards the outside by embracing the public. It’s about storytelling, the creation of imaginary worlds and inspiring their figures with individual characters. Hera sets the characters’ form and proportions, whilst Akut paints the photorealistic elements. The further process is determined jointly by the two artists. 

Together they experiment with different formats, materials and methods. Their art works ‘natural home’ is the public space, where everyone can take a pause from the city buzz in front of one of their massive murals. Equally, their gallery pieces, installations and canvases are characterized by their narrative style and their ability to lead the viewer into the imagination of those two exceptional artists. There is a pictorial and textual component in their art pieces. The short quotes, passages or descriptions written next to the figures are references to the character’s life. As a central theme, their figures can be seen in the context of social fractions and collective constraints, but also embedded into fabulous quotes that tell us of love. Thus, the figures reflect the diversity of life.

Herakut’s paintings are sensuous, savage, and always remarkable for their powerful dualism. Akut’s photorealistic details play out against Hera’s expressive, more gestural, line-work in canvases that seem poised to articulate stories of triumph and hardship. Humor and text are weaved their way into the work effortlessly.

Watch this video:


HENRY LEWIS

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Henry Lewis is a San Francisco-based painter/tattooer/graphic designer. In his studio is where Henry sits and paints and smokes cigarette after cigarette, ostensibly for hours and hours every single night, after he leaves Everlasting Tattoo.  

Henry'’s been working almost exclusively in oils over the past year, and has become incredibly adept with the medium. There’s something about oil paint that you can’t get with any other paint; it has to do with luminosity. The layers all build on each other and when handled with some skill, the canvas fairly glows. It’s also a very subtle medium and difficult to master. 

HAJIME SORAYAMA

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(1947, Japan)

Hajime Sorayama is a Japanese illustrator, known for his precisely detailed, erotic hand painted portrayals of women and feminine robots. Using brush, pencil and acrylic paint, airbrushing only finishing details, he creates memorable images in a hyper-realistic style. He is often referred to as the contemporary Vargas by those familiar with his pin-up style works, and is respected by artists and illustrators for his perfect technique.

In retrospect, Sorayama's work has been remarkably prescient. Beginning in the 1970's and evolving into the 21st century, the futuristic aura of the robotic, mythic and fantastical figures in his art have always been ahead of their time.

Watch him at his studio here:


GREG GOSSEL

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(1982, Wisconsin, US)

Greg Gossel has a background in design, his work is an expressive interplay of many diverse words, images, and gestures. Gossel’s multi-layered work illustrates a visual history of change and process that simultaneously features and condemns popular culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad, including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, and London.

His commercial clients include Levi's, Burton Snowboards, Stussy, VICE Magazine, and Interscope Records while his work has been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, Artslant, and ROJO Magazine. Greg currently resides in Minneapolis, MN.

Watch this video about him by MN Original:

FRANKY AGUILAR

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(California, US)

Franky Aguilar was tired of drawing family-friendly cartoons. The young designer, in early 2012, started hanging out at a Starbucks in Walnut Creek, Calif. with his cracked MacBook and a $100 Wacom tablet. He began scribbling fire-spewing cat heads and flying squadrons of fuchsia donuts, odder visions that harkened back to his high school graffiti days.

Aguilar, who had taught himself programing, cobbled his drawings into a photo editing app called Catwang and released it for free in April 2012. A month later the app had more than 130,000 downloads by people pasting his cartoons on photos they would share on Instagram. Aguilar’s crucial next move: giving his doodles a 99-cent price tag. Within two months the app was bringing in $400 a day.

Soon after, Aguilar and street-apparel maker Upper Playground sold rapper Snoop Dogg on an app called Snoopify, which offers packs of cartoon pimp hats and dreadlocks. On a whim Aguilar designed a $99.99 cartoon marijuana joint called the Golden Jay. Incredibly, 1,000 people have since bought it to garnish their Instagram selfies.

Watch App Art with Franky by KQED Art School here:


FAILE

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(1999)

FAILE is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller. Their name is an anagram of their first project, “A life.” Since its inception in 1999, FAILE has been known for a wide ranging multimedia practice recognizable for its explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. While painting and printmaking remain central to their approach, over the past decade FAILE has adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to vast array of materials and techniques, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, installation, and prayer wheels.

FAILE’s work is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture, but recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media, architecture, and site-specific/archival research into their work.

Watch this video on their permanent installation by Vice:

FAB FIVE FREDDY

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(1959, New York, US)

Fred Brathwaite, more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American hip hop pioneer, visual artist and filmmaker. He emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a camera operator and a regular guest on Glenn O'Brien's public access cable show, TV Party. There he met Chris Stein and Debbie Harry. He was immortalized in 1981 when Harry rapped on the Blondie song "Rapture", "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly." In the late 1980s, Fab 5 Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking and first internationally telecast hip-hop music video show, Yo! MTV Raps.

EVOL

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(1972, Berlin, Germany)

With a degree in product design, street artist Evol has become known for his urban installations and paintings made on reclaimed cardboard. Evol is interested in depicting the urban lives of ordinary people in decaying buildings. For his public practice, he turns electrical boxes and street fixtures into miniature architectural models of austere apartments, using a process that combines pasting paper, stenciling, and painting. 

He also stencils and paints urban street scenes and buildings onto cardboard and incorporates its tears, markings, and folds into his compositions as part of the buildings’ facades. Evol believes that the character and history of any space is manifest on its surface, and many of his works are narrative or suggestive of the turbulent history of Berlin.

Watch this video of his work:


ESTEVAN ORIOL

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(Los Angeles, US)

Estevan Oriol is an internationally celebrated professional photographer, director and urban lifestyle entrepreneur. Beginning his career as a hip-hop club bouncer turned tour manager for popular Los Angeles-based rap groups Cypress Hill and House of Pain, Estevan’s passion for photography developed while traveling the world. With an influential nudge and old camera from his father, renowned photographer Eriberto Oriol, Estevan began documenting life on the road and established a name for himself amid the emerging hip-hop scene.

Nearly 20 years later, Oriol’s extensive portfolio juxtaposes the glamorous and gritty planes of LA culture, featuring portraits of famous athletes, artists, celebrities and musicians as well as Latino, urban, gang, and tattoo counterculture lifestyles. He has photographed Al Pacino, Robert Dinero, Dennis Hopper, Marissa Miller, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Floyd Mayweather, and Lance Armstrong amongst others. He has also produced shoots for internationally-acclaimed photographers such as Ellen von Unwerth for Sang Bleu and Luca Babini for GQ Italy.

His work has been showcased in select galleries and institutions—such as Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives, Mesa Contemporary Art Center, Petersen Automotive Museum, and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles’ Art in the Streets exhibit—concluding with a best-selling book of his work: LA Woman, capturing the dangerous and alluring beauty of women shot in his uniquely provocative and raw style. His photography has been featured in Complex, FHM, Juxtapoz, GQ, Vibe, Rolling Stone and other publications, with appearances on popular television shows such as, HBO’s Entourage and Last Call With Carson Daly.

Watch this video of the compelling installment of Oriol's work by Kitte Sencula:


ESCIF

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(Valencia, Spain)

Escif is a graffiti artist. He works upon the walls of his home city of Valencia, Spain (and beyond), his arresting black-and-white-and-minimal vignettes depicting strange and thoughtful scenes. The paintings are deceptively simple yet inspired and often incorporate repetitive elements drawn from his personal symbology, which oddly enough may elicit an equally strong response from the viewer.

Black holes; walking walls; tumbling, floating, or falling common objects… there is a mysterious commentary spread over the urban surface that can puzzle and intrigue while somehow making perfect sense. Escif intentions ambiguity in his vertical masonry canvases. When he feels he’s getting tired and predictable, he moves on, looking for new languages that put the past in doubt and reinforce the process of eternal learning.

Escif feels strongly that graffiti removed from the street loses its validity and purpose. The attempts of the established art world to embrace, incorporate, and curate the interventions that a street artist deploys on the walls of the city completely miss—no, lose—the point. He says, “Graffiti as a concept implies transgression of “public” space, and because of this its institutional adaptation ceases to have value.”

Watch this video:


ERICAILCANE

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(Bologna, Italy)

Ericailcane is an Italian artist, street artist, illustrator, draftsman and sculptor. He makes graffiti worldwide. According to the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, Ericailcane "belongs to the new generation of European street artists that have revolutionized how to design public space".

The works of Ericailcane are characterized by scientific precision. The artist presents different variations of disturbing animals human-like, in strange contexts, sometimes charged with a social or ecological significance. He often depicts majestic, unpleasant or monstrous figures resembling the Middle Ages. These aquatic or terrestrial animals are often drawn fighting in more or less hostile or adverse environments. The same iconography is used in its refined drawings in his books, in his collages, in her videos and installations, such as the huge puppet presented in 2009 in Bologna for traditional Vecchione, traditionally burned at midnight December 31 in the Maggiore plaza.

Watch this video of the making of a mural in Bastardilla:


EMILY J. MOORE

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(South Dakota, US)

Emily is an artist and illustrator currently residing in Denver, Colorado.  She was born in a small town in South Dakota and grew up with her parents and younger brother in the suburbs of Kansas City, MO.  Emily moved to Colorado to pursue her art at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2009.  She graduated in the spring of 2012 with a BFA in Illustration. She works in a variety of mediums, both traditional and digital.  Her figurative mixed media work is deeply personal.  She likens each piece to a journal entry and a brief visual representation of a moment in time.

ELICSER

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(Toronto, Canada)

With a gritty-soft pallet of distorted figures, teetering tree houses, jumbled skylines, and even infamous hug-me trees, Elicser Elliot is arguably Toronto’s best loved of graffiti artists. A graduate of the Illustration at Sheridan College, he has been producing and showing work in Toronto for almost twelve years. 

Elicser’s outdoor work has ranged from collaborations with the vast majority of Toronto’s top underground artists on murals and grassroots art shows, to being a staple at the Toronto Jazz Festival and Harbourfront Centre. His prolific output has also been featured and reviewed in publications such as Mix Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Spacing and NOW Magazine.

Using artistic skills honed on the alleyways of Toronto, Elicser’s gallery practice often consists of free-form collages -- soft character work mediated by his experiences and relationships with others, and highly improvised found-object experiments.

Watch this video by Wonder Cafe: