New York-based artist Yohei Horishita creates digital illustrations with a textured effect that evokes traditional painting. His work is ornate and figurative, juxtaposing human characters with imaginary settings that seem to belong to no particular time or place. Flowers and feathers consume his backgrounds, cultivating a fantasy space removed from our contemporary reality. While Horishita does extensive client work, his pieces have a distinct style that allows them to stand alone.
New York-based artist Yohei Horishita creates digital illustrations with a textured effect that evokes traditional painting. His work is ornate and figurative, juxtaposing human characters with imaginary settings that seem to belong to no particular time or place. Flowers and feathers consume his backgrounds, cultivating a fantasy space removed from our contemporary reality. While Horishita does extensive client work, his pieces have a distinct style that allows them to stand alone.
As an artist, Natalie Shau wears multiple hats, so to speak, and this shows in her process. Aside from her personal projects, she has worked in fashion photography and designed artwork for theater productions, the music industry and advertising. Her personal work is similarly interdisciplinary: She makes props and set designs, stages photo shoots and then puts her photos under the (digital) knife, transforming her models from realistic women to warped, surreal vixens. Shau's latest body of work will debut at Last Rites Gallery in New York City on May 31. Her first solo show with the gallery, "Forgotten Heroines" brings mythological influences into Shau's vignettes of solitary, tragic protagonists. There is as much Shakespeare in these pieces as there is Marilyn Manson. "Forgotten Heroines" will be on view May 31 through July 5, but before the show opens you can get a first look after the jump.
Self-taught photographer Jon Jacobsen creates portraits that feel like the stuff of beautiful nightmares. In fact, he operates on the idea that reality and fantasy might not be so far from each other as we think. His portraits and self-portraits reflect the fragility of human nature and many works echo the symbolic language and dark beauty of memento mori pieces. The colorful, swirling lines that emanate from his subjects seem to hint at another person or personality. What could look like a placid, somewhat Classical portrait becomes disturbing and distorted. It's hard to tell whether the subjects are rotting away or actually transforming into their true shape.
Jun Seo Hahm is a Seoul-based digital animator and designer, known for his delightful fictional creatures that inhabit other worlds. Much of the artist’s work is rooted in his lifelong fascination with the scientific field of biology. In an interview with the publication Massage, he says he actually considers himself to be a reverse-biologist. Instead of studying real creatures in the natural world, he creates new ones and worlds for them to inhabit.
Trippy magicians and warriors find themselves in an unnamed land with black skies in Martin Ontiveros' current exhibition, "Strange and Unlovely" at Pony Club Gallery. Based in Portland, the artist and self-described metal-head (HF Collected Edition 3) has created a world of bizarre denizens throughout his painting career. Featuring new ink illustrations, mainly monochromatic, the show indulges in their fantastic strangeness. Check out more photos from the show after the jump!
