Sunday, June 10, 2012

Top 10 June 11

Hold your horses busy Monday morning.
There is still time for fun and games.

Enjoy this weeks nuggets.

Mr. J

1. Todd Hido







Todd Hido (born 1968, Kent, Ohio) is an American contemporary artist and photographer. Currently based in San Francisco, much of Hido’s work involves urban and suburban housing across the U.S., of which the artist produces large, highly detailed and luminous color photographs.

2. Spiritualized - Hey Jane



The protagonist of the video for “Hey Jane,” Spiritualized’s sweepingly stunning new single, is a transwoman who attempts to raise kids while turning tricks, stripping, and — in one unforgettable long tracking shot — getting into an absolutely brutal fight. There’s probably a term paper to be written about the video’s treatment of race, class, gender, sexuality, and violence. This is a good one, folks. AG Rojas directs. It’s below.

3. Andrea Galvani









Andrea Galvani was born in Italy and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing from other disciplines and often assuming scientific methodologies, his conceptual research informs his use of photography, video, drawing, and installation.
Galvani's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum, New York, NY; the 4th Moscow Biennale for Contemporary Art; the Aperture Foundation, New York, NY; the Central Utah Art Center, Ephraim, UT; Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Trento, Italy; Macro Museum, Rome, Italy; GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Oslo Plads, Copenhagen, Denmark; and the Unicredit Pavillon, Bucharest, Romania. In 2011, he received the
Exposure Prize from Artists Wanted and was nominated for the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
Selected publications include: Flash Art, Art Forum, Tema Celeste, Modern Painters, Around Photography, Herald Tribune, Boiler magazine, Title, Arte Critica and Zoom Magazine.

Galvani earned a BFA in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna in 1999, and his MFA in Visual Art from Bilbao University in 2002. He has been a visiting artist at NYU (2009/2010) and has completed the artist residencies: Location One International Artist Residency Program New York (2008), LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2009), MIA Artist Space, Trinity Project /Columbia University Department of Fine Arts (2010). From 2006 to 2009, he was a professor of Photographic Language and the History of Contemporary Photography at the University of Carrara for Fine Arts in Bergamo, Italy.

4. Omid Delafrouz






Omid Delafrouz born 1982 in Teheran, Iran.
Lives and works in Gothenburg, Sweden.

5. Luc Coiffait







Luc Coiffait. 22. London. Fashion and beauty photographer/director.

Despite being only 22 years of age, AOP award winner Luc Coiffait has been regularly published fashion photographer for 5 years.
A relaxed and personal approach to shooting has defined Luc's unique style of intimate and eye-catching photography. Great things are expected of this young and charismatic photographer...
"Prolific in all aspects of his work" - Topman Generation [click HERE to see the full interview]

6. Melissa Murillo




Berlin based illustrator, Melissa Murillo , better known as “Meyoko” articulate a creative predominance that is a direct line to the darker of Art Nouveau.Executed in edge free hand, with a fountain pen Black China ink and more recently Gold, the artworks by Meyoko are like open doorways to a microcosmic wilderness populated by divine entities and mythical creatures which intermingle and amalgamate to one another until they ultimately resemble, abstract and hybrid worlds partly vegetal - partly animal. Forests made of luxuriant hair are inhabited by tattooed flowers and plants ;by ravens and hummingbirds with strange silky bodies in place of feathers. An organic apotheosis executed with extreme minutia and with a creative sensibility.

Meyoko fearlessly attempts to dissect the depths of human nature itself and she does it with surgical precision. Her work often incorporates emotions such as melancholia, vulnerability, the fear of abandonment yet she confronts them with dogmas such as utopianism, heroism or humanism to achieve a narrative dialogue of intense poetry. The recent series "Dreamscapes" are evoking the mechanic of metaphysic. "The Beauty" becomes "The Beast" and vice versa; each engaging in the dizziest of waltz and finally coming together as one singularity. Meyoko currently lives and works in Berlin.

7. Kim Cogan








Kim Cogan was born in Pusan, Korea in 1977 and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Art University in 2000. An award-winning artist, Kim has exhibited his paintings to great acclaim nationwide. His work has appeared in Art News Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, American Arts Quarterly, Harper’s Magazine, Playboy, and American Art Collector Magazine.

Kim lives in San Francisco, California and is currently working on a new series of wave paintings for a solo exhibition in September 2012 at Hespe Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

8. Anouk Griffioen





Anouk Griffioen prefers to draw at big pieces of paper or canvas. In thick black lines, smudges and leaving white spaces, she exposes a (wo)man, an emotion. Through a collaboration in 2010 the background became more important and her work started to change. Women that were once so important are fading in a natural surrounding and are looking for shelter, a hiding place. Drawings become more abstract and layered.

9. Gregory Bojorquez








Gregory Bojorquez has been photographing the people and places within Los Angeles for years. Whether capturing women in Hollywood, crime, or musicians, he keeps it raw and in-your-face.

10. Ilona Szwarc - American Girls






Statement:
“American Girls” is a series of portraits of girls in America who own American Girl dolls. American Girl dolls are extremely popular toys for girls in America. Their design embodies contemporary cultural values. They were conceived to be “anti-Barbie” toys modeled after a body of a nine year old.
Each doll can be customized to look exactly like its owner, yet all of them really look the same. American Girl dolls offer an illusion of choice therefore an illusion of individuality. The dolls become sculptural representations of girls themselves, they become their twins, their avatars. With a wide variety of miniature accessories, a doll hospital, a doll hair salon with personal stylists they are perhaps the most luxurious toys ever invented.
It is disturbing that the product- the actual doll is called the “American Girl”. It imposes stereotypes about American race. Branding behind the doll perpetuates domesticity and traditional gender roles. I examine how culture and society conditions gender and how it invents childhood. Gender becomes a performance that is again mirrored in the performance of my subjects for the camera.

See mor work by Ilona Szwarc HERE