morgan blair [paint]

morgan blair paints neon geometry spliced with memories. the colors alone could be future (or past) american apparel prints, but don't quote me on that - i don't live in america.

brandon bird [art]

alexander lobanov [art]

the self-portraiture of russian outsider artist alexander lobanov is singular in its ornamentation and its weaponry, or, perhaps, its weaponry as ornamentation. lobanov's repetition, attention to quirky detail, and use of color are immediately evocative of the likes of henry darger and adolf wolfli. like darger and wolfli, lobanov spent a considerable portion of his life institutionalized, and, as with the others, his artistic output was prolific. deaf and mute from a very young age, lobanov was reputed for violent outbursts in his youth and it is believed that a form of art therapy may have helped him find a certain level of peace. much of lobanov's work shows the heavy influence of russian propaganda during his lifetime, and he often presents himself as the pundits of the time. little seems known of lobanov, though a short documentary was made about him. anybody seen it?

new math [art]

christian faur [art]

i was never any good at coloring. looking at christian faur's crayon pictures, maybe he wasn't either. while my old slaphappy method of splaying smiley faces on poorly proportioned two-dimensional dogs and people was garish and abstract in all its refrigerator magnet glory, like so many others my enthusiasm for the crayon ended on those sheaves of coarse brown paper. apparently, faur was bent on getting more out of his crayons. as such, his idea of retaining aesthetic while ditching traditional utility makes the crayon into a whole 'nother tool. in the pieces in faur's crayon series, the tips and slender columns of the crayons become 3D pixels, and the contours of the images change depth, shape, definition, and perception as the viewer changes vantage points. feels to me like these snapshots of life are meant to look familiar, and yet not quite. i find a lot of associative memory in the images: looking at someone through a screen, an old newspaper photo blown up out of scale, an infrared image, what life looks like with my glasses off, the millisecond after you look directly into a camera flash, a not yet developed polaroid. see what you want, the looking seems to be the important part.

mercedes helnwein [art]

when i bring the pulp novel out of obscurity, i'm going to get mercedes helnwein to do my cover art.

adolf wolfli [books // art // insanity]

charles bukowski said, "john fante was my god." had he been lucid enough or worldly enough, in spite of his own fervent piety, henry darger might have paid similar homage to adolf wolfli. numerous parallels exist between the two debatable savants: as a patient at waldau, a swiss mental asylum, wolfli created a 25,000-page illustrated narrative that stretches from the fantasy of his afflicted past far into the future; darger, an extremely staunch recluse, generated more than 30,000 pages of autobiography and technicolor fiction accompanied by hundreds of illustrations and collage. click an image or the link above and expect to lose track of time.

LINK: not entirely unrelated
(via int)

jim denevan [art]

A // B

jef aerosol [street art]

i'm a sucker for anybody who'll expend the necessary energy to cut a stencil of a pouty, school-boyish woody allen. jef aerosol is a street artist in the vein of banksy with considerably less political mien. aerosol's focus on quality, despite graffiti's temporary nature, makes his work stand apart from the rest of the noise of heavily-tagged walls by giving a nod to the bemused delinquency inherent to graffiti.

LINK: jef aerosol at streetsy
LINK: flickr

amy casey [art]

i caught amy casey's painting a short time back on my love... and it nearly slipped through the cracks of my faulty, well-intended memory.

the voynich manuscript

the voynich manuscript has been a fascination of mine for some time though i don't think i've ever had an actual conversation about it with anyone, not unlike your 12-sided die or that miley cyrus cd that you only play when you're in the car by yourself. the voynich, named for the man who discovered it, is an anonymous medieval text that some have seen fit to dub "the most mysterious manuscript in the world", which seems about right, though finnegan's wake and the story of the vivian girls still merit mention in that conversation. the manuscript is handwritten in a cipher that has few if any connections to any known languages and dates from sometime between the 15th and 17th centuries, depending on whose references you prefer. most interpretations are that - if it's not some elaborate, 800-year-old hoax - the subjects of the manuscript are multiple facets concerned with the study of alchemy. there are indications of astrology and physiognomy, and the whole text is illustrated with mysterious plants, almost none of which actually exist. i could go on about this at length, but i'm no expert. hit the links at the jump, get your head around it, and maybe we'll have an actual conversation about it.

LINK: one voynich opinion
LINK: gallery of voynich illustrations
LINK: related? oh, henry!

Infart

Yes, Infart sounds like something sixth graders snicker about; it actually takes the name from the collective of artists that organizes it. And yes, I'm a couple weeks late on this, but seeing as I can safely say that I don't have (m)any Italian readers, I'm calling it still relevant. On September 6th and 7th, Infart turned Bassano del Grappa - a city of some 40,000 in the Veneto region of Italy - into the self-proclaimed "Street Art Capital of Europe" for the third year running. For this year's Infart, Bassano del Grappa was opened to 80 graffiti, sculpture, video, and music artists. Bassano del Grappa, which dates to the 2nd century BC, chose to open the old section of the city to the competition, which appears to include a number of courtyards, playgrounds, plenty of stuccos and garages as well as numerous alleys. Despite being mostly in Italian (spliced with just enough charmingly poor English for effect), the website is easy to use and a great reference for a whole range of amazing artists. Flickr links after the jump.

LINK: Garage Nardini
LINK: Zellaby

Migration

Catch this flock of abstract birds on the billboard outside the Espeis Gallery in Williamsburg (11th and Wythe). Migration is a project by London illustrator/painter Hellovon, who has done projects for the New York Times, Nike, and Serum vs. Venom, among others, and works equal magic in ink, charcoal, watercolor and acrylic. The birds appeared last month on London's Truman Brewery and will be in Williamsburg until further notice, so go take a walk. And when you get back from that walk, check his page for other work. I highly recommend clicking through the showcase link to the watercolor Teenwolf poster. For serious.