RSS
Close

Author: L

b

Formulaic Halo: The Art of John Brophy

The beautifully rendered paintings of Seattle-based artist John Brophy, evoking images of the Holy Virgin, combine the divine and the empirical, innocence and malice. Religious iconography is a predominant theme, and it goes hand in hand with math, science, nature, disaster, violence, and mythology. The mystical is juxtaposed with mathematical formulae, Christian virtue is bedecked with symbols of 20th-century evil such as Nazi swastikas and atom bombs. This surreal imagery has an immediate photographic realism that is achieved through Brophy’s technique of first making a 3D study of the work using Maya, ZBrush, and Photoshop, and then executing it in oil paints à la 15th-century Flemish masters. The polished, perfect tangibility of these images makes them all the more poignant.

{See more}

b

Alice Auaa A/W 2013

Featuring gorgeous, dark, structural coats and romantic dresses, Alice Auaa’s entrancing autumn/winter 2013-14 ready-to-wear collection abounds in ruffles and cobweb-like threads, as well as apocalyptic distressing, and is strikingly mysterious and sinister in its feel.

{See more}

b

Berlinde De Bruyckere: “We Are All Flesh”

These disturbing and uncannily lifelike sculptures by Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere are incredibly visceral and eerie. The repulsion instinctively triggered in the viewer comes from their verisimilitude, and the sense of reality of this nameless, grotesque, distorted, half-human, seemingly fluid flesh; combined with their beauty, the delicate, subtle mottling of colors, the pure realistic visceral “fleshiness” of the works, and their technical grace.

{See more}