Streetwear label LRG highlights the technique of Chicago-based graffiti giant Pose in their two-part “Artist Driven Series”.  Pose based each piece on the graphics he originally designed for LRG t-shirts.  Watching Pose wield a spray-can is like watching poetry in motion.

See more of Pose’s work via the Known Gallery.

Check out Pose’s blog here.

Read a recent interview he did with Juxtapoz Magazine here.

posted by: Harold Johns III

“Have Everything And Die”, 2009, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 39 x 24 x 16 in

“The Girl and the Bear, 2008″, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 108 x 108 x 22 in

Artist’s Approach:

Through her tri-dimensional works designed to evoke the virtual modelings simulating reality, Susy Oliveira questions our habits of replacing nature with fabricated replicas. In her works, there is a playful dynamic which associates the characteristics of photography with those inherent to sculpture. Their structure incorporates the angles and features of some giant origami. The photographs are mounted on each face of a volume to restore the three dimensions of the image. Through this process, the shape is both simplified and amplified, giving the photography a volume, an ambiguous character oscillating between reality and fiction. (via)

“Night eyes open”, 2007, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 20 x 24 x 6 in

“Time is never wasted”, 2006, c-prints and foamcore, 144 x 58 x 15 in

See more of Oliveira’s work here

posted by: Brent Carter

“Glassy”; 2006; photo-collage, acrylic, gouache, and resin on wood panel

The Brooklyn Museum is set to host a mid-career survey of artist Fred Tomaselli’s work. The show runs October 8, 2010–January 2, 2011 in the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 5th Floor. Read on to find out more about Tomaselli from the gallery:

This focused mid-career survey presents a selection of Fred Tomaselli’s unique hybrid paintings and collages from 1990 to the present. These layered paintings combine cutout images of plants, birds, smiling mouths, and hands (clipped from field guides and magazines) with passages of paint and actual prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants to create highly stylized, eye-popping compositions. Tomaselli’s artwork draws upon a wide range of sources from both popular culture and art history, and from his own hobbies of gardening, kayaking, and bird-watching. Growing up near the desert in southern California, Tomaselli felt the influence of nearby theme parks, with their manufactured reality, and the music and drug counterculture of Los Angles in the 1970s and 1980s. His distinctive melding of these influences coalesces into a folk-driven, utopian vision of the mythic American West and of lush gardens as sites of contemplation, loss, and possible redemption. One of the pioneering artists who moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the 1980s, Tomaselli continues to live and work in the borough.

“Hang Over”; 2005; leaves, pills, acrylic and resin on wood

“Untitled (Expulsion)”; 2000

posted by: Tricia Rock

In 2003, Florian Jenett and Valentin Beinroth placed about 50 of their handgun replicas made from tinted ice in downtown Frankfurt for a project entitled Freeze!. Bringing the idea back in 2009 with a new edition called Freeze revisited, the two created these edible guns using coke, licorice, cherry and food coloring.

posted by: Harold Johns III

“Bury Deep in the Ground”

“Globe Jungle”

Artist Bio:

Kenichi Yokono uses traditional woodblock methodologies to address the comic book horrors of contemporary Japanese culture. Manga, anime, horror movies, and other stereotypical aspects of Japanese pop culture merge to present iconic images of buoyant menace and cruelty, which serve to contrast startlingly with the sugary cartoon characters that are also common. Although functioning woodblocks, the works are only ever exhibited directly and prints are never produced. Such a method maintains the primacy of the hand made object and the artist retains a tangible presence. These multiple oppositions in Yokono’s work results in pieces that are highly relevant critiques that retain a pleasing irony. (via  Mark Moore Gallery)

“Dreamy Gaze: Girl Looking in the Ghost House”

“Girl and Bear”

See more of Yokono’s work here

posted by: Harold Johns III

The opening reception for Rest For the Wicked will be held at The Shooting Gallery on Saturday, August 14, 2010 from 7-11pm. The exhibit will be on display through September 4, 2010 and is free and open to the public.

Exhibition Statement:

Highly inspired by bedtime stories and comic book consumption as a child, Ferris Plock‘s resulting nostalgia drives the creation of his art today. Plock utilizes his art practice as a mental and emotional outlet, where he illustrates the childhood spirit of make-believe and fantasy. The artist, a storyteller by nature with a formal education in creative  writing and modern literature, easily capsulates a full narrative voiced  through a single character. He breathes a sense of humor and cheer  into his pieces by depicting unexpected characters (such as Tuff Taco), monsters and animals in everyday human conditions. He cites Japanese comics and cartoons as consistent influences for his work as well as traditional Ukiyo-e wood block prints. His works are primarily on wood panels, canvas and found objects in which he often times employs the use of unconventional materials such as house paint, wood stains and gold and silver leaf.

Read an interview with Ferris Plock about his upcoming show here

posted by: Harold Johns III