Tag Archives: art

We came across artist Sergio Lopez’s work through a press release via Moden Eden Gallery and we’re immediately taken by his beautiful figurative work.  I had assumed the pictures probably didn’t do the paintings justice, so it was at the opening where we first experienced Lopez’s work in person.

I was attracted to Lopez’s use of Art Nuevo symbology, and design elements around his painted ladies. After viewing those works, I was taken by an even larger grouping of figurative works which Modern Eden Gallery had displayed in the second half of their space. Lopez has two distinct bodies of work in this current show entitled “Sacred Spring”.  One is an evolution of Art Nuevo, and the second is an absolutely stunning body of female figures enveloped in color and nature.  The work breathes light, and is a great example of the power of form and figure study.

We sat down with Lopez to talk about his work and his experience as an evolving artist.

Michael Cuffe (Warholian): Can you tell us a little about your particular aesthetic, and the subject matter you focus on in this particular body of work?

(Artist Sergio Lopez):  Well it’s grounded in realism, but I try to steer it into other aspects of art and design that inspire me. For example, all of the pattern and blending of the background/foreground things I do aren’t necessarily realism but I try to make it as believable as I can. The designs and patterns are a mix of my own designs and other patterns that fit into the aesthetic of what I am going for.

I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that an artist would enjoy painting the female human form as much as I do. I like painting classical nudes but I don’t feel like I’m challenging myself if I’m not adding my own thoughts and ideas to it. I would get bored if I didn’t try to push the boundaries of whatever style I’m working within.

(Warholian’s MC):  How did you first decide you wanted to become and artist?  Your background?  What formal or informal training have you received?

(Artist Sergio Lopez):  I’ve always been an artist as far as I’m concerned. The question is more about when I decided it was going to be my career, and basically my life. That was pretty much late in high school when I decided to go to the Academy of Art in San Francisco. It just so happened that one of the better art schools in the country was so close to my hometown of Santa Rosa. I went there for 5 years, right after high school, and once I left,  I’ve made my money from art in some capacity ever since.

(Warholian’s MC):  How has your process and subject matter evolved over time?  

(Artist Sergio Lopez): When I think of what I want to paint, I have switched from thinking about single paintings to thinking in series. It presents some challenges, but there are some advantages to that as well. When you know you have a certain framework to work inside of, you can devote more of your brainpower to dissecting that subject and seeing it from as many different angles as you can. You don’t have to come up with a new concept for every single painting you do. For me personally, that would be exhausting. It also gives you a bit of an advantage when approaching galleries because you can easily give em an idea of what to expect should they bring you on board for a show.

My subject matter has become more and more focused to try and be exactly what I want to paint. I’ve done concept art, illustration, and other things where you get dictated what you are going to paint. The more I do art the more I figure out exactly what it is that I want to spend my time making pictures of. I feel like its a process of subtracting the superfluous, like carving a sculpture from a big piece of wood, except there’s not much of a sketch to go off of.

(Warholian’s MC):  Who/what are some of your major influences?

(Artist Sergio Lopez): I have so many. I started a tumblr blog where aside from my own work, I post pictures of other artists who continue to inspire me. Artists such as Jeremy Lipking, Kent Williams, and a bunch of old school artists frequently find their way on there.

(Warholian’s MC):  What’s next for you?  Any exciting projects or opportunities?  

(Artist Sergio Lopez): I try to have something in the works for the future when I can. Aside from various shows later on in the year, there are some new galleries that have expressed interest in having me show with them. I’m always on the lookout for opportunities to show with new galleries if they are good prospects. I show a lot with the Christopher Queen Gallery over in the Sonoma Coast area.They like what I do, and they do well for me. I always have some new work for their shows.

Apart from all the figurative work I do, I am an avid plein air painter as well. I like to participate in the plein air paintout circuit, and the season is about to begin soon. Next month I am doing the Carmel Art Festival for the first time, which is one of the more prestigious events in the area so I am excited about that. In June I am participating in the Los Gatos plein air event for the first time also. I’ve heard all good things about it, so I am really happy to be invited to that one as well.

- written by Michael Cuffe for Warholian

To find out more about “Sacred Spring” visit Modern Eden here:  http://www.moderneden.com/collections/sacred-spring?page=2

For more on Sergio Lopez, visit his official site here: http://themainloop.com/Figures.htm

or follow on his Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/SergioLopezFineArt
 

Artist Adam Hunter Caldwell continues to evolve as an artist, and his latest works featured in “Discovery” a group show at Rook and Raven gallery in London is perhaps the best example of his work to date.

Caldwell seamlessly blends imagery together, creating visual poetry that itself has a much deeper artistic message.  The paintings pull the viewer in, allowing them to explore the subject matter further, and tell the story of inner contrast within each of us.

We sat down with the artist to discuss this latest body of work, his past, and where he’s headed…

WARHOLIAN:  Can you tell us about the more recent work you’ve been painting, and some of the symbology behind it?

ADAM CALDWELL:  I decided last year that I wanted to paint figures in interior spaces. As I sketched out compositions and ideas I began to see the rooms as a kind of body or the interior of a head and the figures as the self or mind inside. This sparked the idea of a series based on the mind body problem in western philosophy. Descartes was the first modern philosopher to really articulate the concept that the body/brain is purely mechanistic and that the mind is a completely separate non-physical  substance. The “problem” stems from how these two systems can interact.

 WARHOLIAN:  How has your exploration of the mind body dualism in your work affected you personally, and your overall aesthetic?

ADAM CALDWELL: I have been reading a lot of philosophers work on dualism and I see better how the concept has a direct influence on government and legal systems. I personally don’t believe that the mind and body are really separate, I feel that the problem boils down to the inadequacy of language to describe mental events in physical terms. My aesthetic has changed a bit from the actual painting I’ve been doing more than from the ideas, different colors and compositions are coming up in the process.

WARHOLIAN:  How do you go about picking the individual imagery in your work?  Are there any colors or palettes you prefer to work in?

ADAM CALDWELL: Once I have a general scheme for a series I sift through images from a huge collection of photos I have been taking myself, cutting from magazines, and pulling from the internet. For this series I have lots of tubes, ducts, gears and electrical chords that represent the mechanisms of the body. I also have a lot of text from Descartes books. Most of the interiors in my pieces are from abandoned and decaying mental hospitals. I love pushing black and white or sepia images against strong colors, trying to get them to work. I always use the same palette of colors but I’ve been moving from really warm, brownish hues into more blues and grays.

WARHOLIAN:  You come from artistic roots, can you explain again who your grandparents were and how they continue to affect your art?

ADAM CALDWELL:  My Grandfather was Erskine Caldwell. He was the best-selling author in the United States for many years. He wrote over 50 novels and hundreds of short stories and essays. My step-grandmother was Margaret Bourke-White a very famous photographer.  I’ve used many of her photographs as reference in paintings and I’ve always been influenced by my Grandfathers commitment to realistic depictions of social conditions.

 WARHOLIAN:  Do you have anything new and exciting coming down the road to tell us about?

ADAM CALDWELL:  I have a show up in London right now at Rook and Raven gallery. I have a show coming up in August with Brett Amory at Thinkspace in LA that I am working on right now. In November I am having a solo show at The Shooting Gallery in SF. This year is pretty packed and I am so grateful to have all these amazing galleries showing my work.

‘Discovery’ runs from April 13th until May 2nd, 2012 at Rook and Raven Gallery in London.

- Interview and Photos by Michael Cuffe for Warholian

For more on ‘Discovery’ visit:  rookandraven.co.uk/

For more on artist Adam Hunter Caldwell:  www.adamhuntercaldwell.com/

Follow Adam Hunter Caldwell on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Adam-Hunter-caldwell-art/163629696984640 

This past March White Walls gallery in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco was host to Sickboy’s latest show “Wonder Club”.  In a bit of a switch up, our Los Angeles photography correspondant Birdman happened to be in town to snap pictures of the show… and we’re just now getting around to sharing them now.  So despite this delay, we you enjoy this look back into Sickboy’s most recent work.

Via White Walls…

Hot off the heels of his critically acclaimed UK solo show last November, Heaven and Earth, comes Sickboy’s first US major solo show, Wonder Club. The title refers to a meeting place in the mind of the artist, where his cryptic street messages, surreal abstraction and comical illusions all come together. Sickboy’s new works reveal inspiration drawn from anatomical studies, the age of enlightenment, romanticism,comic books and fairytales.A solid body of work has been produced for Wonder Club, including eight large-scale (all measuring around four by three feet) surreally intricate, paintings, focusing on the inner workings of the human body. These large paintings, which bring the aesthetic of Sickboy’s street work into the gallery, are paired alongside installations which will act to transform the entire space into a dream world. Sickboy’s always innovative installations will be outdone with this show, featuring a few surprises and the “Artists’ Refuge,” an enclosed space built within the gallery that visitors may enter.

Amidst the dream land that Sickboy constructs you can expect to find smaller works exploring a new direction in mixed media ephemera, adorned on locally found San Francisco surfaces to place the artist’s imagery into a local context as well as a video collaboration with well-known London photographer Viktor Vauthier, capturing the creative process in motion.

“I see art as escapism, it’s an addictive solution to the daily deluge of life, the ‘Wonder Club’ is a place I can visit in my mind to try and bring daydreams to life, I have been documenting ideas as they happen and making sure I capture their essence by developing them into highly intricate finished paintings, it has meant a progressive shift from earlier freestyle work and more towards structured pieces that focus on content and message. This exhibition is for me a revisiting of the inner child and questioning what my dreams represent today.” – Sickboy

A leading artist to emerge from Bristol’s infamous graffiti scene, Sickboy’s humorous work has cemented his place in the upper echelons of the British street art movement. He is one of the first UK artists to use a logo in place of a tag, and his red and yellow street logo known as ‘The Temple’ can be seen on walls and wheelie bins worldwide. Sickboy has built up one of the largest bodies of street art works in UK history. His work hit the big screen recently in Banksy’s Oscar-nominated film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, and he is tipped by the leading financial press as one of the movement’s most bankable artists. His temples, slogans and audacious stunts – including the caged heart installation dropped outside the Tate Modern in 2008 – have landed him global recognition.

For more on the show and any available work visit:  http://www.WhiteWallsSF.com

For more on Sickboy visit:  http://www.thesickboy.com/

The ocean is often mysterious and dark, but it can also play a rejuvenating role within our lives. We’ve all had the experience of watching waves break, over and over, in a cycle that has been repeating itself since the beginning of planet earth. “Voodoo Chop” is the latest group exhibition at Project One gallery (in the Design District of San Francisco) which brings together a number of talented artists to examine the power of the ocean’s waves on our subconscious.

Artist Nick Flatt brings us another large scale work featuring a black and white ocean landscape classic of his aesthetic. The most intriguing part of this piece is crisp horizon line that cuts directly across the painting with precision, separating both water and air in a ying/yang style.

Christopher Jernberg is no stranger to surfing the waves of the ocean, and his intense interpretation of a wave about to break places the viewer in the path of nature’s power. “When it comes to the Voodoo Chop show I don’t think so much of the fantasy of a wave but what it is like to actually be out there in the ocean. I did a lot of water training and was made incredibly humbled and in awe of the ocean, it shaped my body to be like a superman, detoxified and energized my whole being and it made me realize how vulnerable we are out there, how insignificant and out of our normal control on land.”

Artist Aleksandra Zee creates site specific installations from reclaimed materials, and in Voodoo Chop she incorporated a driftwood “wave” that starts at one end of the gallery and crests at the other. Zee has exhibited at many other well known galleries around San Francisco, but it is her installations in retail spaces where her artistry and ability truly shine. The artist blends both contemporary aesthetics with “found objects” creating a seamless blend of the old and new, and we look forward to seeing more from Zee in the future.

Aline Dargie has studied textiles at the California College of the arts, and her interpretations of waves that hung throughout the gallery were simply stunning in concept and design. Hand dyed fabrics interwoven with metal fibers gave each work a shimmering mystical quality, and caught the eye of many visiting gallery patrons. Her signature piece was an textile interpretation of sunset light bouncing off the Golden Gate Bridge, casting reddish purple hues on the water below. A perfect concept paired with amazing technique.

Photographer Trent Mitchell aims to “produce contemporary photographs that celebrate the natural phenomenon of the breaking wave”. His photographs capture a beauty in the form of each wave, and give them individual personalities which are clearly defined in the frame.

The colors of artist Llewellyn Ludlow capture the hues and beauty of the ocean waves, and even hints of what lies beneath. A longtime surfer, it is clear within this artist’s body of work that Ludlow holds a deep love and appreciation for the water. His paintings hold a spiritual air which give the viewer the feeling of standing on the beach, taking it all in.

As a photographer for Surfer Magazine Todd Glaser is no stranger to the ocean. He has traveled the world covering some of the most impressive names in the surfing community, and has assembled quite an impressive portfolio while doing so. Glaser’s highlighted work in “Voodoo Chop” is some of his best, and most definitely eye opening.

Photographer David Orias also has had his work featured in numerous magazines around the subject of surfing. His work almost has an ease to it, which invites the viewer to spend more time within the photograph, exploring every subtle detail.

Voodoo Chop “An exploration of the tranquility, ferocity, and mystique of the ocean’s waves” runs from April 4 – April 30 , 2012 at Project One gallery, be sure to check it out.

- photo and review by Michael Cuffe for Warholian

For more information on the show, or any of the artists featured above visit: http://www.projectonegallery.com/voodoo-chop-april-4th-to-april-30th/