UNPLUG: The Painting: The UNPLUG painting and its companion blog are simple reminders that my existence is a modest part of a greater whole. I do not seek an entirely unplugged life but I do seek a soul enriching connection with our little planet’s natural wonders.

I could use a little more of that.

I went to sleep last night with Lisa Solberg’s paintings as the last thing I saw on my laptop, and I think some of her works snuck into my dreams. It isn’t hard to imagine. Her subject matter ranges from cowboys and Indians to tigers (or tiger masks) to topless girls vomiting rainbows — and of course there is the Mexican wrestler party. Did I mention that some of the works require 3-D glasses? As if you didn’t need another reason to understand just how her fun and strange her works can be. She has a new collection going up at Kinsey/DesForges in L.A. Opening reception is this Saturday, October 11th at 6 p.m. The show runs through November, but if you can’t make it to Los Angeles, have a look at the paintings up on her website (you will have to provide your own 3-D glasses).

The head artist and founder of the REAS International, Todd James, has a history of creating comic-like statements of his surroundings. When you find out that he began making art as a kid on the streets of NYC, painting simple shapes and characters, it all begins to make sense. His style has evolved into a sort of Bevis and Butthead dream sequence of a political cartoon. Bombs, blood, boobs and creatures fill his illustrations to make jokes about war, death and modern life. It would be ridiculous artwork if the satire wasn’t so evident. The new exhibition titled Blood & Treasure will be in London’s Lazarides Gallery in Soho starting on Friday and running through the September 26. The exhibition features 20 new paintings and one brand new animation.

The beauty of art is that there is nothing that its defines boundaries or rules; you can work with any media on any surface and it is art. Daniel Edlen found his niche painting portraits of American legends on original vinyl LP records using monotone acrylic paint. He’s chosen to stick with favorite artists such as Ray Charles and B.B. King but his portrait of a young Audrey Hepburn has gotten him some much deserved attention. The records are of course the artists’ and he simply mounts them on top of the cover, all of which go inside a frame. His style reminds me of Pointillism and I am impressed at how well he captures the faces of artists we all love. Check out his gallery on Flickr and his website for more information about his work and on purchasing.

I’ve really enjoyed watching the evolution of Japanese artist Aya Takano. She uses acrylic and diluted gouache paints to create fictional, erotic, and sullen images featuring thin, big-eyed Geisha girls– there’s a taste of sex, sadness, and the future all at once. She has been showing her work all over the place in the past few years, most recently at the MOCA in Lyon, France, and currently at a group show at the Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Miami. I’ve heard that she may be expanding her feminized world in the near future, so maybe some men will be popping up in her new works. For now, Aya, along with her cohorts at the Kaikai Kiki Collective, are really setting the bar high in the world of modern Japanese art.

Many of you know about Tom Judd’s successful quest to illustrate one page per day for an entire year. Well, Jeremiah Palecek had the same goal, but he is a Czech painter specializing in nerd art. To Jeremiah, ‘nerd art’ means pixelated paintings, 80’s video game art, and other nerdy forays. I have to admit, I really enjoyed browsing his work– I came across a wealth of familiar portrayals– things like the Gmail log-in box (which I see 97 times a day), and the Konami cheat code for Contra (both pictured here). Jeremiah’s paintings will make you chuckle and feel nostalgic– all good art doesn’t have to be prolific, does it? As long as it creates a favorable feeling in my gut, I’m all about it. As an added bonus, on Jeremiah’s blog, each painting is accompanied by an entry written by Jeremiah that explains what each painting means to him; he gets pretty personal in his descriptions. If you are interested in purchasing some of Jeremiah’s paintings, email him from his blog. I may have to outfit my little nerd den (a.k.a. home office) at home with some of his work!

While I am freezing my ass off in CO this week, artist Warren Schultheis is most likely freezing his ass off in either his studio or in the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, California. Warren apparently has a thing for modern and minimalist furniture, so I think we’d get along well. It also appears as though Warren is a talented artist. I had the chance to check out his website this morning, and it gave me a good sampling of his work. Maybe it’s the lawyer in me, but my favorite piece of his is a 2003 work entitled ‘Order Seeps Inward,’ for which I had to do a little digging to find. If you want to know more about Mr. Schultheis, and stay up to date with his current works, you can read his blog, or paddle out into the lineup off the coast of Santa Barbara and ask him in person.

The origin of the word ‘Metabolics’ comes from the word Metabiosis, meaning intermediary symbiosis: a more indirect dependency in which the second organism uses something the first created, however after the death of the first. Alexandre Orion’s work ingeniously captures the Metabiosis between Sao Paulo, Brazil street paintings and the photographs Orion captures in his Metabolics Project. We had a chance to see some of Alexandre’s work at the Photo Maimi fair last weekend, and it stood out as something truly special– a photojournalistic register that encapsulates ‘the endless duel between photograph and painting, that in the information era, makes us think of how fragile images are.’ Alexandre’s work can be found at the Foley Gallery, and you can also purchase the Metabolics book from his website, which has 80 pages, 12 x 12 inches, of Alexandre’s work.

While visiting the Scope Miami show last weekend, we had the pleasure of seeing some of Austrian Lois Renner’s artistic photography. Lois tries to hurdle the limitations of media with his large format photographs, and breathes a mysterious living quality into his paintings. Lois sees the studio as a “spatial situation and as [a] starting and crystallization point of artistic action and begins his analysis with it's miniature reproduction.” The work is interesting to look at to say the least– his pieces are full of nuanced details, object size illusions (at least I thought so), and a simultaneous blending and clashing of lines that can only be explained by seeing them for yourself. My favorite is ‘Sound 101‘ pictured here on the left.

Not all of the art gems we found while in Miami were at the organized fairs, or even at private showings for that matter; Josh and me discovered Ross Ford while walking down the pedestrian shopping plaza on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach during the Saturday lunch hour. I have to admit– I was drawn to the paintings at first because of their size, bright colors, clean (albeit curvaceous) lines, and contrast– they were pleasing to the eyes. Ross’ explanation of his work intrigued Josh and I even more– each painting is a face, pulled from a daily emotional diary of faces from his sketchbook. Ross puts brush to canvas for sketches he finds to be particularly significant. The final product is an organic type of emotional self portrait all his own (in every sense). When you go to the ‘paintings section’ of Ross’ website, click on individual photos within the photo matrix to see enlarged versions; it will also inform you of which ones are available for purchase. Ross Ford’s art was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise sensory overloaded weekend of art fair viewing in Miami. More on Ross after the jump…

READ MORE…

We viewed a wealth of amazing work at the Scope Miami fair over the weekend. Young Ryan Carr Johnson’s paintings were at the top of the heap for me. From what I can deduce, Ryan layers paint onto plywood and then refines the living daylights out of it with a hand sanding process. The result is awe-inspiring to see in person, because the art has such depth and structure to it– regrettably, I can only bring to you, our beloved readers, two-dimenstional images of Ryan’s work. The images I have included here are phases 2 and 4 of the piece entitled ‘Blotter Acid.’ Ryan’s work was shown as part of the gogo art projects initiative, which is Connor Contemporary Art’s attempt to incubate emerging and experimental art; it evolved from CCA’s annual Academy Exhibition of recent BFA/MFA grads from the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area–and appears to be a great program.

Although most of the pieces have already sold, I still wanted to point you all toward some of Tra Selhtrow’s new paintings. They are being featured at Seattle’s OKOK Gallery throughout November in Tra’s ‘Sincere Intentions’ exhibit, so you if you’re in the Seattle area, definitely go check them out. Tra works with graphite and oil to produce these impressive works. The two that I featured in the post, ‘Loosen Your Grip,’ and ‘A Moment of Rest,’ especially caught my eye.

For those attracted to fresh textures, find some time to explore the work of Christine Peloquin, my personal favorite. Inspired by her French-Canadian ancestors who immigrated to work long hours at the textile mills during the industrial revolution, Christine claims to have a “personal intimacy” with fabrics and paper. She begins with a wood panel, then covers it with either antique (burlap, tea towels, tablecloths) or contemporary (velvets, polyester, cotton) fabrics, and then paints using charcoal, acrylics, tints and glazes. The two collections–collages and figures–are innovative and evocative, each whispering a message about the passage of time, the right to change, and the secrets that some choose to keep. With 15 years of exhibit history and countless awards across the southeast region, her online works are often sold before I can even take a peek. Visit gallery exhibitions in Florida, Tennessee and Alabama.

Indianapolis based Guatam Rao calls himself the ‘Playful Painter‘, and playful he is indeed. His latest Macintosh OS X inspired oil paintings are totally great. Most of them are available for sale as auctions on eBay, all for reasonable prices (around $100). Brightness, iSight self portrait, and the dock close up. Apple geeks of the world unite!

Motomichi Nakamura was born and raised in Japan, lived in Ecuador for a bit and currently works as a digital artist in Brooklyn. He has exhibited his animation, paintings and drawings around the world. The Monster Series is pretty fun– he says he tries to visualize some of his fears and nightmares in the form of simple characters. He used similar characters in an editorial illustration for the New York Press. The image above is part of a new animation he calls Whisper–created for a Dutch newspaper. It pokes fun at the whole Patriot Act situation. Definitely check him out.