Olivia De Berardinis is a master (or should I say mistress?) of the classic retro pinup. And one of her favorite models is the Queen of Pinups, Bettie Page. Olivia captures Page in moods ranging from smiling to seductive, teasing and playful, full of the personality and charisma that made her an icon.
Artistic duo Pip & Pop, aka Nicole Andrijevic and Tanya Schultz, have answered all our childhood dreams with their recent installation “We Miss You Magic Land” at the Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane. A delirious magical candy-land formed out of incandescent sugar, it resembles a mysterious planet or coral reef, filled with intricate origami flowers, fungi gone wild, and tiny creatures.
The work is a rare representation of the intricate fantasy worlds of childhood, and attempts to reignite your childlike imagination and curiosity as you explore this Magic Land. You can also play with their interactive website.
It’s hard to believe that the immaculate flat surfaces of Lisa Alisa‘s works are really painted. Inspired as much by anime as by the traditional motifs and minimalism of Japanese prints, her work combines old and new beautifully.
Paolo Roversi photographed Tiiu Kuik for this photo-shoot “The Poetic Spirit” for Vogue Italia, September 2003. More art photography than fashion spread, these decadent sepia images seem to recall romantic vintage postcards.
Pics via Fashion Spreads.
This is second post featuring the work of the legendary polka-dot princess Yoyoi Kusama. While my previous post focused on her paintings this post features on her three-dimensional work: sculpture and installation. Yet there’s a wonderful harmony between Kuama’s painting and sculpture, it’s almost as if the decorative dots and lines of her painted work have expanded in her installations to create small universes of their own.
You can read more about Kusama in my previous post.
Pics via Poul Webb Art Blog, ARTBoom and Queensland Art Gallery.
Yoyoi Kusama is the kind of artist who needs little introduction. Her distinctive visual style based on the repetition of dots has seen expression in every possible medium throughout a career lasting over sixty years. Over this time Kusama have both pioneered and embraced the changing art movements of pop art, surrealism, minimalism and conceptual art. At the same time Kusama has remained an outsider creating deeply personal work.
But this vivid inner world has been both an inspiration and a burden, and Kusama has struggled with mental illness throughout her life. Today she voluntarily resides in a mental institution in Japan. And yet despite this she’s created an incredible body of work, and is recognized internationally as one of the major artists of the 20th century.
This is Part One focussing on her dot paintings, Part Two, will feature her installations and sculpture.
Pics via Poul Webb Art Blog, ARTBoom and Queensland Art Gallery.
The work of Takato Yamamoto is a careful balance between horror and beauty. Yamamoto has a knack for drawing gore beautifully, and bone and flesh is as delicately rendered as his doll-faced characters. Intricately detailed pieces with delicate linework show the influences of Art Nouveau with manga, and Ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints. The result is seductively beautiful gothic works.
The work of Milkbbi aka Justin Wallis is a sweet mixture of naive art with kitsch 90′s imagery. Using a pallette of summer-saturated colors like aqua, watermelon and sunflower; it’s an instant rush of feel-good nostalgia.
The world of Jeremiah Ketner’s work is a lush Eden filled with sprites and dreamy-eyed women. In which small creatures inspired by the simplified forms of vinyl toys play in fantasy gardens. Made with the aesthetic ideal of “small and round” his work veers between simplification and abstraction to delicately painted figures. Enjoy.
Rob Sato’s paintings are surreal and grandiose scenes of strange landscapes and dramatic battles. Machinery, insects, corpses and trees collide in bizarre arrangements that are truly fantastic. Enjoy.