Even when he’s playing with classical motifs, there’s something unmistakably current about the sculptures and drawings of Thomas Lerooy. In recent work, his characters have cherubic bodies but golden skulls as heads. The effect is both humorous and slightly menacing, as these youthful creatures scale surfaces around the room.
“Like renaissance depictions of saints and martyrs, Lerooy’s sculptures find themselves doomed to wear the consequences of their choices as lasting imagery, long past their finite existence,” a statement says. “But Lerooy goes further: Suddenly, his subjects are no longer themselves, but become fragmented and dismembered, literal physicalizations of their shortcomings.”
See more of Lerooy’s work below.
In Jillian Denby’s voyeuristic, yet expansive paintings, people engage in both everyday activity as well as the unexpected. When viewed as a whole, her scenes offer a connectedness between its parties that each likely couldn’t see themselves. With works like "Genius of the River Chases Away The Frenzy of Art," the reality of what’s human and what’s art itself is blurred. “Nature can be overwhelming and landscape a little removed. With that in mind and viewing it directly, I try to acknowledge its presence, while conceptualizing a fragile observational dialogue,” the artist has said.