Category: ARTISTS

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Lucas Lamenha

Graduated in advertising, Lucas Lamenha has been working as a creative for over 15 years. He has received significant national and international awards throughout his career, such as 5 trophies in the Gramado World Award (2003 and 2005) and 2 Short Lists in the London International Festival (2003), one of the most revered festivals in the world. It was his experience as Creative Director in advertising that led Lucas Lamenha to explore and discover himself as an artist.
Lucas uses graphic elements and characters that not only reflect the modern world’s chaotic surplus of information, but also work together to convey a larger story. He draws the viewer in repeatedly and provokes the public by using storytelling as a key element in his thematic, transformative way of converting memories into stories told with spray, acrylic and marker – Stories about a ludic, original and colorful universe of his own making.

The uniqueness of his strokes and his outstanding style imprint generalities, such as numbers, music, dilemmas, idiosyncrasies, love and peace, that translate some of Lucas’ essence, past and present into paper, canvas and objects. By doing so, Lucas is taking the sub-genre of “doodle art” into previously uncharted territory.

 

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Harry Bunce

Born in 1967 and raised in a small Hampshire village, Harry Bunce was a prolific artist throughout his childhood, drawing on anything that was available. His family were builders who were supportive but ill-equipped to guide him beyond school (Harry was to become the first member of his family to get a degree). A short and volatile spell at the local art school almost killed his love of art: “You weren’t allowed to like Hockney, and he was the only one I knew”. Disillusioned, he moved west to the city of Bristol to study Fashion and Textiles. Following graduation, he worked for twenty happy, but ultimately unfulfilled, years in the fashion industry.

In 2007, he attended the fortieth birthday party of an old school friend. When meeting people he had not seen for several decades, the only question asked of him was, “How’s the art going?” This event proved pivotal; he resolved then and there to return to ART.

He began to draw and paint around existing commitments, often working late into the night in a frenzied attempt to make up for lost time. The early pieces feel almost deliberately ‘anti-art’: portraits of rabbits, foxes, etc. (reimagined childhood heroes and villains) that would not have looked out of place in a country pub, his rationale being that his audience was the public, not the critics. His work then and now has much in common with ‘Folk Art’, and he considers himself largely self-taught, but it defies easy categorisation.

By creating a space he could call his own within the burgeoning Bristol art scene Harry quickly gained a loyal following. A chance collaboration with screen printing gurus, Screen One, who also worked with Banksy and Nick Walker, introduced a more graphic element to his style, sharpening its unique, slightly unnerving edge and unwittingly broadening his appeal.

Harry often raises environmental concerns and is a fierce defender of the countryside. He has contributed to projects with Greenpeace (2014) and Keep Britain Tidy (2020). He now works in rural Somerset. His 2020 solo show Harry Bunce / On Hold was a sell-out, and Harry has recently shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London.

 

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Fernando de Ana

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Fernando de Ana is best known for his abstract geometric creations that are crafted using the complex technique of resin and complemented with elements of neon and iridescence. His work can best be described as an overlap between painting, sculpture, and collage, and the materials selected are the foundation for his work.He follows minimalist practices, and carefully arranges the overlapping features of his work to evoke themes of interaction, creating a dialogue between both the viewer and the work, and the viewer and their environment.

Fernando originally graduated with a degree in Fine Arts and initially focused on graphic design in the Netherlands, but more recently decided to return to Spain and focus on his artistic career. Since then, he has captured the attention of a variety of collectors, foreign galleries, and media, solidifying his place in the art world.

His work is also displayed in a variety of private collections including but not limited to: Louis Vuitton, Santander Central Hispanic Bank, Casino of Madrid, Colonial Collection, Hines Collection, and Watson, Farley and Williams Collection.

 

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Amit Kanfi

Amit Kanfi 藝術家 1：1個人照

Amit Kanfi, born in 1995, raised in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam and Istanbul.Based in Tel Aviv.Kanfi began painting following military operation “Protective Edge” in July 2014, which left him with emotional scars and deep trauma. The machoistic environment which characterizes the combat units, did not allow him to share the mental difficulties he was facing with those around him. The notebook and pencil served him as a safe space in which he could shout his authentic voice and release the burden of dealing alone with what the world presented to him.

During his late adolescence, he was living in Amsterdam, where he discovered punk culture. Kanfi adapted the style, musical taste, and cultural mimics of the scene. When he returned to Israel, after graduating high school, he had to adapt to the society that surrounded him once again. As serving in the Israeli army is mandatory, Amit joined at 18y and served in an elite combat unit.Today, Kanfi is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Tel Aviv. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions and created personal art projects in Israel and around the world. Kanfi works in mediums such as painting, graffiti, sculpture, animation, video, and installation.

Amit Kanfi is an expressive artist with an outspoken voice, a refreshing artistic style and a unique quality that resonates with people from all walks of life. He creates a new type of art that expresses complex ideas in simple language through the symbolic images of his generation. His works are blatant, naive and sarcastic and convey a “wrong” social sensitivity that is expressed through the vulgar and dark sentences that he writes. His technique is intuitive and fast, he uses paint straight from the tube, in some parts with gentle brush strokes, and in others he draws with his limbs. Kanfi creates works that give a sneak peek of his worldview, which is expressed in the description of reality in his style, imagination and temperament.

 

 

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Gabrielle Graessle

Gabrielle Graessle was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1956, and has been learning to draw and create since she was a child. She studied for 5 years at the Zurich University of the Arts and received a BA in Graphic Design. She had her first solo exhibition when she was still a student, and during this period, she mainly created self-portraits in black and white charcoal.

Gabrielle settled in Andalusia in 2015. She decided to once again immerse herself in her own whimsical world and express herself in a figurative style. Therefore, she located her studio in an old villa of the countryside, a place where she can forgets all her distractions, and then immerse herself in the mother nature to concentrate on her creations. In 2020, she re-presented her work at Art Fairs in Barcelona and Madrid, and participated in group exhibitions in Germany and France.

“I paint all what surrounds me, what I see. My work is intuitive and inspired by whatever takes my interest.”

All kinds of sorts enter into Gabrielle’s drawings and paintings: animals, nature, fashion, films, books, news, also feelings, music, images from childhood up to now, there’s no restrictions.Gabrielle’s paintings can be described as colorful, and figurative. We can find it apparently that she loves large paintings the most, as she explained that it’s such a blessed to be surrounded by her creative paintings.“I work normally on 4-6 paintings at the same time and switch between drawings and paintings, which frees me again and again and also leads to my work to new topics……”For her, this is a way to get an endless source of inspiration. Gabrielle’s creation is intuitive and unplanned, which allows each of her pieces to take on a life of their own.Now she lives and works in a old cottages in the south of Spain where she has several studios to paint and to draw. Her paintings are colorful, figurative, and peculiar, sometimes accompanied by words, sometimes with glitter.

 

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Katharina Arndt

Katherine

Katharina Arndt is a contemporary artist from Germany who lives and works between Berlin and Barcelona. She studied Fine Arts at Braunschweig school of art and later on obtained her Master of Fine Arts by John Armleder. 

She does this through artificial mediums such as PVC film, lacquer paper and Plexiglas with glossy acrylic paint and lacquer markers, using glossy texture to represent our plastic and materialistic culture. The focus of Arndt’s practice is the observation of digital communication and the portrayal of mass consumption in the digital age. Her cartoon figures are a reflection on how we express ourselves in the digital arena and how we are becoming ever obsessed with the digital world whilst losing ourselves in the physical.  Fast, reduced, almost childlike, motifs and medium  ironize the contemporary mass consumerist aesthetic of a decadent, abundant society in picturing her everyday life.

Many paintings with beach references, sunburns, and even Spanish brands of drinks like beer cans or juices can see the influence of Barclona on Arndt.  She also thinks clothes and accessories give a perfect impression of the spirit of the age we are living in. The stark contrast between reality and fantasy in her artworks reflect the artist’s livelihood in her young age in the East side of Germany, back when there wasn’t any food in supermarkets. She is deeply perplexed by the absurdity of our modern day-to-day activities and behaviors, and adopts a seemingly childish way of painting as an attempt to step back and look at things as they genuinely are.

 

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Albert Pinya

Albert Pinya is an ultra-contemporary artist who lives and works in Palma, ranked among the Top 100,000 globally, and among the Top 1,000 in Spain. In Pinya’s universe, everything is simple, energetic and dynamic.  His work is based on a deliberate and ironic ingenuity that manages to dismantle the perverse structures of reality. He takes inspiration from movies, TV series and cartoons, and has quickly developed his own identifiable style, in which applies the codes of popular culture, comics, illustration and a thoughtful naive aesthetic that hides a precise treatment of the themes he explores. 

The artworks of Pinya are a continuation of the rich tradition of pop art, begun in the second half of the 1950s by artists such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Richard Hamilton. Pinya’s work, although no stranger to socio-political and ecological reflections, seems to laugh, in effect, at the dogmatic gravity that for some is the paradigm of our time. The works show lubricious linear forms, entering and exiting from different orifices, forming complex circuits and deep, pulsating spaces.

His work denies “l’ art pour l’art” and regards art as a means of expression, which should be eminently communicative and always be based on an ideology. That is, rather than talking about ‘artistic creation’ we should talk about ‘artistic reaction’. Painting, drawing, intervention, installation, performance, graphic work and sound are the means with which he develops the discourse of his narrations. One of his greatest obsessions focuses on the study and observation of human beings and the way they establish relationships with society and with the environment.

 

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Akihiko Yoshida

Over the past few decades, Yoshida has produced more than 10,000 works, ranging from small items such as belts to large works over two meters high. Regardless of the dimensions, each piece is carefully crafted and is equally important to Yoshida. From softly sculpted objects to expressive figures, he hopes to bring laughter to everyone through his work, an art that embodies warm feelings of Yoshida.
Yoshida’s sculptures are visually as ethereal and light as porcelain. What makes people unexpected is that they are carved from a whole piece of wood. There is no stiffness in traditional woodcuts at all. Every piece of work has its own aura, each very lively. In recent years, Yoshida’s creative themes are mainly animals. These animals are records of the artist’s daily thoughts, acting as his spiritual diary. Through anthropomorphism, the artist seeks to express the universality of joy and sorrow that humans experience through animals. If you look closely, you can see that the eyes of the animals are closed, giving a sense of serenity, reverence, and security. The artist also composes a lovely poem for each piece.

 

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Cai Yi Xiu

Cai Yixiu was born in Fujian in the year 1987. After graduating from Fuzhou Arts and Crafts School, Cai Yixiu started interning at the studio of Shanghai-based artist Su Xiaobo in 2008. He has been working in the field of lacquer art for many years and is now a professional artist. He focuses on lacquer art creation and is affectionately referred to as Cai Yixiu by his friends due to his resemblance to the character “Yixiu.” His real name is Cai Chuanxiao. “The integration of tradition and modernity has always been what I’ve been exploring,” Cai Yixiu said. During his youth, Cai Yixiu studied under the guidance of artists Zheng Chongyao and Su Xiaobo.

Initially, during his self-exploration and creative phase, he leaned more towards mastering the technical aspects of craftsmanship. Under the tutelage of Zheng Chongyao, he honed his craft skills. However, after coincidentally meeting Su Xiaobo, he broke free from the confines of traditional craftsmanship and seemed to discover a new world. From then on, he began contemplating the subtle connection between art and craftsmanship. Cai Yixiu also mentioned the challenges he faced during his studies. Both teachers held high standards for themselves and extended the same to their students. The traditional techniques of Zheng Chongyao and the contemporary artistic language of Su Xiaobo complemented each other and collided in fruitful ways. This experience influenced Cai Yixiu’s creations, and now his lacquer art is “shedding” its past. Breaking away from traditional craftsmanship, Cai Yixiu presents a fresh perspective on lacquerware that deviates from the norms set by artists in the field. Despite the costliness of lacquer, the young artist Cai Yixiu hopes to not view lacquer art merely as a craft but rather as a material for free artistic expression, breaking traditional rules under the influence of art.

Viewers often sense “vicissitude” and “loneliness” in your creations. Can you share the story behind these themes in your life?Cai Yixiu: Many people who see my work say that it doesn’t seem like something created by someone my age. The traces of time evident in my works often stem from personal life experiences. In the work environment in Fuzhou, I am essentially on my own, and my creative space is relatively enclosed. Facing walls that carry the remnants of time on a daily basis, being in constant contact with these atmospheres, it naturally has an impact.

 

 



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Jose Macias

Jose Macias

Hyperbole: A rhetorical figure of thought that consists of exaggerating or  diminishing what is said. 

“These landscapes are called hyperbolic for obvious reasons. They are  exaggerated landscapes, exacerbated with large oil fillings and with an almost  sculptural pretense. The roots are fundamentally expressionist and in the  horizons only the horizon line would be left to arrive at pure abstraction. In This  horizon line, heaven and earth, contaminate each other, making it impossible to  discern where one begins and where another ends. It produces its contemplation  or memory, which is why it is a type of painting that wants to directly appeal to  emotion, to that spring that almost always remains asleep and which is beyond  our control.

These landscapes change into a different and emotional language. My intention  is that the viewer, when looking at them, feels that a set of emotions and  sensations of some memory that floats or resides sheltered in some unknown fold  of that immense drawer that makes up memory are relived. It is about painting painting, visceral and primal without further pretense. 

When I paint I do not seek to make a copy of reality. On the contrary, what I want  is to represent a parallel reflection where landscapes are evoked, intuited or  apprehended from the fragility of a memory or of an instant. A kind of emotional  flash where memory recovers a landscape like a reverie, like a spark caused by a  slight memory file that swarms through our heads and that sometimes wants to  come alive again. So they don’t look like reality, nor do they need to”.