La imagen de superior está hecha por Van Arno, un artista de la noche, de esos que han vivido tantos excesos que lo normal ya no les satisface y buscan exagerar sus pinturas, hasta volverlas histriónicas, grotescas. Por un lado desprenden sexualidad, y por otro lado esa sexualidad se transforma en fealdad.
La página de Van Arno se puede visitar aquí.
Sus cuadros me recuerdan a una serie de fotografías del fotógrafo Erwin Olaf, a quién se debe la imagen inferior.
La página de Edwin Olaf se puede visitar aquí.
Van Arno
Van Arno was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1963, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended a Christian Science school from Kindergarten through High School.
He was accepted at Otis Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, where he studied under Carol Caroompas and Lita Albquerque. Supporting himself working late nights as a bouncer in nightclubs and adult video arcades in mid 1980s LA.
As a young illustrator his work appeared on album covers, video game box art, and nightclub posters around the city. By the late eighties, he began producing large paintings blending cartoon imagery with portraits of cultural and historical icons. These early paintings used black lines and luridly cartoon color to depict characters ranging from John F. Kennedy to Herman Goering to Othello. His guerrilla installation of a 12 foot tall ANGEL could be seen hovering over Sunset Boulevard in Siverlake, Christmas 1992.
In the early 90s he became fascinated with the calendar of the ancient Maya, and traveled to Yucatan to see the ruins at Chichen Itza, Coba and Tulum. At the same time, he began to create heroic figurative works featuring religious and folk heroes from Christian, Mayan and American history (St. Francis, John Barrymore, Joan of Arc, Nat Turner, Nellie Bly) in cell vinyl on masonite. This work was shown extensively in Los Angeles, Seattle, Nashville and New York, and prominently featured his series of Olive Oyl paintings, inspired by his life-long fascination with the unattractive sexpot. A feature in Juxtapoz Magazine documented his work to date in January 1999. In the spring of 2000, several of his pieces were included in a national survey of Lowbrow painters at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center in Florida along with Mark Ryden, Chaz Bojorquez, Kenny Scharf, Sandow Birk and others. Van was pleased to speak at the opening to detail the history of lowbrow painting and its place in art history. In the fall of 2000, he painted a 36-foot billboard for the East Side Artcrawl entitled Abolitionist Goat War which received local news coverage for its indictment of pimp culture. In November, 2004, Van was honored to have a solo show in Hamburg, Germany, which was well covered in the local press because of growing interest in the JUXTAPOZ movement, and because of the re-election of George W. Bush, 3 days earlier. More recently, Van was introduced to oil painting by Robert Williams, and the classicism inherent in that medium has brought his work to a new level.
His ongoing fascination with the imagery of religion and its use of the heroic figure continues to find new relevance recently, as American Values are re-examined at home and abroad.
Although, he has been exploring non-narrative themes; recently, his focus remains on the figure, and its power to engage the viewer.
Erwin Olaf
Erwin Olaf, born in 1959 in The Netherlands, originally pursued a career in Journalism, attending the School for Journalism in Utrecht. There, he discovered photography and film.
Within the diversity of Olaf's subject matter - fashion, cinema, society, history, and advertising - he always achieves a very individual style. This is characterized by, on the one hand, making the personal public, creating unease as the protection of anonymity is drawn aside; and, on the other hand, extending the role of simple voyeur to that of transgressor. We feel his characters to be too intrusive, too close to us, and we imagine taking on their roles to become, for a moment, a porn star, a cruel clown or a martyred celebrity.
Labels: Artistas, Fotografías
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