Voids of Liminality: Michal Janowski

The individual is everything yet appears nowhere. 

The ravenous pursuit of eminence leads him to nothing but bloated egocentrism and stunted human identity. We regress into tribesmen as we disconnect from society and hunt like blind animals to acquire the dream that won’t make us happier. 

I first discovered the arresting work of Michal Janowski through Signal, a London gallery that has already provided me with an exciting roster of artists to review. I’m a big fan of anthropomorphism, elements of which I have started to include in my own work and which is of course being executed so well by Signal’s very own success story Joram Roukes. But Janowski employs his beasts in a more confronting way that forges a very direct relationship with the viewer. 

These are portraits depicting a new human identity. Janowski is holding up a harsh and disconcerting mirror here. At first you develop a sympathetic connection with these raw, faceless figures, as they stare back with the desperate angst and hopelessness of someone – or something, enslaved. Yet Janowski denies his subjects full human identity; they are neither completely human nor wholly animal and as such we are magnetised by the tension of these figures that appear in a constant state of flux; everywhere and nowhere - lost and abandoned in an ambiguous void of liminality. 

That tension is heightened by the figurative nature of his subjects and the abstract backdrops against which they are set. It’s as if Janowski teases the viewer with scraps of reality, only to have them warped by these monstrous hybrids and their origins that remain forever unknown. 

And there is another level to all this when you look at Janowski’s captivating titles which are almost works of art in themselves: ‘Shape Shifting as Favourite Method of Deception’, ‘Trickster; Shaman of the Liminal’, ‘The Assassin of Fake Sanity’* (an unforgettable favourite). Janowski leads us to fawn over his curious subjects that are in fact aggressive and hostile reflections of our own debased nature. ‘Permanent Liminality’, one of Janowski’s more experimental pieces quite literally oozes a psychedelic hyperreality, as the face of a human subject appears to spoil beneath the bleeding mask of a cat.

Janowski thus presents us with ‘shape shifters’, ‘tricksters’, ‘shamans’ of the liminal world: deceptive spirits of another universe that are harbingers of both reality and illusion. And yet these entities are precisely us: we are the abstract monsters masquerading as humans in our perpetual greed, hypocrisy and primal destructiveness. The ‘assassin of fake sanity’ is the subconscious version of ourselves as we indulge in the masochistic fantasy of a world that is not real, not true, and not sane. It’s a beautiful device from the artist that lures the viewer into more self-reflexive territory than a photorealistic rendering ever could. 

Michal Janowski’s work is available at Signal Gallery 

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BAEL: Beautiful Monsters

Are you GAY? STRAIGHT? BLACK? WHITE? FAT? SKINNY? RICH? POOR? CHRISTIAN? MUSLIM?

The remanufactured bullshit of such labels in society - of those defacing constructions imposed upon human identity - are no longer important. 

At least not in the world of fine artist Michael Bell, who goes by the suitably mysterious and somewhat primordial pseudonym of "BAEL". Mr. Bael has wiped the slate clean of his figures; cleansed them of life's suffocating and compromising 'titles'. Instead, his subjects have regressed (or progressed?) to a collection of raw humanoids, naked in a world where gender, race, sexuality, religion no longer define humanity; where "purity" and "essence" of being finally have their meanings reinstated. 

Here the human body is stripped in favour of a brutally visceral exploration of deep human emotion. Initial impressions? Well, if I was totally honest I'd say that I can't stop seeing that terrifying Cyborg Ninja from the Metal Gear Solid franchise. It's that anthropomorphism, the confluence between animal and human which tinges these pieces with the horror of classic sci-fi monsters - those which, rather chillingly, have their essence bred in human biology.

In any case, these pieces are positively haunting and disturbing. The figures are like ethereal apparitions from a nightmare, projections of our most deeply repressed fears and anxieties. What intrigues me about these subjects is just how vivid they are despite such a crucial lack of physical information. At first sight they give the impression of being rendered through quick, rough etching marks in a similar vein to Egon Schiele - everything appears so suggestive and enigmatic. Yet despite being so puzzlingly minimal, these figures offer more emotional truth; have more substance and presence than a dense photorealistic representation of the human form.

While Bael has asserted his artistic determination to avoid making his viewers feel "comfortable" and "satisfied" (and I do indeed feel moderately freaked out when I consider his pieces for too long) - I still think there's something redemptive and liberating to be drawn from his figurative work. In their reductive starkness, these oddly feral creatures look to a Prelapsarian time (a future?), with human identity unspoiled by the pangs of contemporary society. No longer is physical aestheticism a fragile target for scrutiny and anxiety; now it serves as a mere vessel through which the artist can explore the greater importance of human emotion.

And through Bael's provocative use of vermilions, the nature of those emotions are pretty clear. His faces are suspiciously bloodied, with mouths pinned or scratched out that amplify the certain lack of human civilisation here. More and more we err on the side of animalism with Bael, his figures found lurking, stalking, crouching - generally looking threatening and diabolical. The monochrome offset only by the blood lines and fills truly exemplify these characters as possessing nothing but unbridled, fiery emotions: hot, aggressive sexuality; youthful angst and violence bubbling beneath the molten surface. 

The piece above, entitled 'Cons', is my favourite work from Bael. For me it encapsulates everything the artist is trying to articulate. Stained with the metaphorical blood on its hands, the figure appears like a new-born, caught in a existentialist moment of self-discovery and disgust at the revelation of its own being - of those base desires of human identity which come to define it more truthfully than any other. 

Don't kid yourself.

http://www.bael.co.uk/

Chloe Early: 9/11 in Disney Land

Now, in the normal way I would copy every other overzealously polite blogger and apologise for my delay in posting new material. No; I haven't been recently hospitalised and no, I haven't been occupied by a family bereavement. In any case, what I have to show you next is worth the wait. If you're like me and have an insatiable appetite for bittersweet art, then I present you with 9/11 debris decorated in a lush Garden of Eden:

At least that's what I see. Mind-fuck? And what a great one. The artist behind the brutal chaos is Chloe Early who, according to her blog, quite plainly and innocently "Paints Pictures". Clearly not as innocent as she professes. Early works with disconcerting yet gripping juxtapositions: exuberant and abundant nature framed by harsh and suspiciously posited airplane engines - callously discarded and reassembled in the aftermath of a mysterious tragedy. 

Everywhere you look there's an explosion of bold colour that suggests life and vitality and liberation, but it's always muddied by an undercurrent of violence bubbling beneath the surface, or by a triad of missiles delicately descending at the bottom of the artist's canvas. So while at first sight you may imagine Early's suspended figures to be falling in blissful oblivion, there's a more troubling ambiguity here. 

Her central subjects - of which there is usually a pair - seem frozen in time and space, locked in some dream-like fantasy which anaesthetises them to the barbarity inflicted upon them. As mentioned, these airplane turbines almost take on a new, diabolic identity in Early's contrived arrangement of them, as if to echo the sick trivialisation of tragedies like 9/11 by manic pop references in the media.

Early's religious undertones here are clear, but if these landscapes are indeed alluding to a spiritual realm, the question I ask myself is: Where are these figures going? Are they angels falling or ascending to Heaven? Are they infinitely and indefinitely spinning in space? Or perhaps they are being exhibited in the most explicit sense: innocent victims falling from an obliterated aircraft...

There are certainly sniffs of Micallef's 'Disney Torture Porn' aesthetic here (research it if you think I've coined that term out of clinical pervertedness). It's that concoction of flowery lightheartedness bled with the fumes of a morbid utopia that works so well. It transmits doubt into the viewer's eye; tips the prospect of escapism into a nihilistic post-apocalyptic world (and vice versa). 

Early is a master of decontextualising and recontextualising iconography, with a keen eye for subverting images of celebration; we have Micky Mouse mingled with bullet shells laced with roses, patterning a memorial that evokes the insanity of war's warped realities. In fact, in their ordered presentation and arrangement, these pieces have the seductive scent of glossy magazine covers, as if beneath the chaos lurks a subtly packaged symphony of false ideals.

Wake up and smell the debris.

http://chloeearly.com/

http://chloepaintspictures.wordpress.com/
http://www.stolenspace.com/

Ryan Hewett Painter: Screaming for Freedom

With Antony Micallef as probably one of the most potent influences on my own artwork, I seem to gravitate to other artists in whom I detect traces of the man himself, like a damaging but intoxicatingly good smell. But before you attempt to have my career as an arts writer shut down, I am not insinuating that painter Ryan Hewett lacks his own aesthetic identity: Micallef conjures scenes of chaos, but Hewett injects the distorted, dehumanised style into portraits of poise. What makes his heads so engaging is their contained ordinariness and child-like innocence hemmed in behind tragic and hell-raising realities.

For me, Bio [above] is without question his most powerful piece. I can't stop looking at it. There's a raw tension between these apparently natural photographic poses and the rather unnatural deformation of them through striking and potentially destructive marks. I've always imagined Hewett's figures as brutalised war victims. But this notion goes beyond the physical: his figures are us, everyone, enduring some crushing emotional strife, drowned by a history of repression and, thanks to Hewett's art, they are finally screaming out to be heard.

Hewett employs highly painterly techniques, so much so that his process pieces are equally if not more intriguing to look at than the finished product: 

There's a very real sense of human identity in crisis here. Hewett plays with the depth of his surfaces, subduing an eye here or a lip there, whilst letting other features bleed through so that we are confronted with 1000 yard stares; vacant yet deeply soulful expressions which wrench at your heart. 

For me, Hewett is illustrating a violent, progressive onslaught on our generation, with deeply vulnerable and defenceless individuals barely able to resist and stay afloat. Identity, innocence, youth, beauty - something is being erased in the process, and it does not portend a prosperous future. Who are the culprits? I'm gonna go ahead and say The Only Way Is Essex, Geordie Shore, BigBrother, Jedward - those fuckers, just because they successfully demonstrate everything that's wrong with our society today. Consequently, through no fault of its own, the aspiring youth is reduced to a monstrous, rotten and unidentifiable core.

Depressive cynicism aside, this guy is seriously talented. Before Hewett discovered oils, he was accustomed to tight pencil drawing. His draftsmanship is still evident in his work, but you can feel how much he enjoys the liberation of free and experimental brush strokes. Everything about Hewett seems to be a narrative of liberation, of freedom: breaking out of incarcerating strictures, the struggle for release. The struggle to breathe.

http://ryanhewett.foliosnap.com/

Urbane Urban: Byroglyphics

Byroglyphics. A pseudonym so incurably urban I can just taste the grit grind inside my mouth. Russ Mills, the man behind the mask, exceeds the label 'artist'. He has that kind of ungodly talent; you know, the sort that will disillusion any budding painter into depression and bring them to the sensible conclusion: Give up. Yeah, that kind. This guy is someone who actually deserves the traditionally pretentious appraisal that an artist's work "transcends" something. Because Mills does.  

The fact is, Mills is like this untouchable, fully autonomous, self-commodified brand. He has a unique aesthetic identity which you could spot a mile off in the hazy mist of teeming aerosol-wielding graffiti artists. When I discovered that his work is a fusion of fine art with photography and digital experiments, I breathed a sigh of relief: I got some solace in the reassurance that Mills was indeed human like the rest of us.

That said, it's all still bloody staggering stuff. With the nauseating reality of Photoshop appearing to take over the world as we know it, Mills has responded with a sophisticated, even elegant style that appeases the best of both worlds without totally conceding to the superficial one. His artistic skill is firmly in tact, not compromised by the "need" for, or reliance on image manipulating software; it rather functions as a polishing tool to make his finished pieces look coma-inducingly good.

On a personal note, I'm obsessed with his distorted, manic arrangement (do I spy an oxymoron?) of lines in his portraits. At first sight you may wonder whether this is just a quick mishmash of paint, but look closer and these are expertly handled, beautifully explosive "painting disasters", to quote Mills himself - the kind of 'good accidents' we crave as artists.

The trick with Mills is that his work alludes to many elements: not just fine art, but photography, illustration, graphic art, promotion, and beyond. Mills has a colossal army of followers, and it's no surprise why. He's got it all: purity of skill and digital capabiltiies that would make him thrive in pretty much any creative environment - not that I can see him working for Saatchi & Saatchi any time soon.

Mills is currently selling a bunch of signed Summer Salts prints on his website, at prices so reasonable I might actually be able to fork out the cheddar for one. 

Time to watch some Photoshop tutorials.

http://www.byroglyphics.com/

Lora Zombie Illustrator

Lora Zombie is sick - and I'm not talking about that unforgettable tag-name.  With her use of dark satire and subversive pop references, the Russian-born "grunge" artist at first sight seems like another predictable product of the anti-capitalism urban art trend.

But there's something more digestible about Zombie's beautifully light and loose illustrative style which is no less impacting. Parodying Disney characters is nothing new I hear you scream, but Zombie designs in a way that is not excessive. She controls the chaos: initially what seems to be a random attack of splats and drips on a canvas turns out to be a masterful and disciplined application of paint.

There's nothing too deep or stifling about them either. They're not overloaded with political messages that will make your brain fry before you can even attempt to appreciate what they look like. They're just effortlessly cool, making them perfect to be appreciated purely for aesthetic beauty or for their Banksy-esque tongue-in-cheek rebelliousness.  Either way, her minimalist style comes to define the artistic cliché that less can be more. You get the sense that Zombie enjoys absolute liberation during her creative process. She should be applauded just for putting Spiderman in a tutu...

But while Zombie injects humour into almost all of her pieces, it is her more sensitive and touching work which I'm really drawn to.  I reviewed the portfolio of fine artist Joram Roukes recently, whose work I praised because of its terrifying beauty, its hilarious disaster... I could continue with the oxymorons until I buckled under my own pretentiousness. Anyway, Zombie (I have to stop referring to her like this) works in a similar fashion in terms of thematics, but uses a much more subtle and suggestive approach.

So many urban artists today seek out shock factor, and whilst they are still hugely effective, they can tend to force the viewer into submission by their subversive and violent imagery. They'll usually leave an aftertaste of bitter cynicism, too, which leaves not much room for any hope or redemption. But these pieces, despite their air of tragedy, always have some undefinable promise contained within them, as if to say, 'Yes, our situation is shit, but everything's going to be alright.'

Zombie recently exhibited at the Pandamonium show at Signal. With the current tidal wave of Superhero movies, it's no surprise that her own Depressed Superheroes collection was an instant hit. You could quite easily imagine these works as graphic prints for a gritty East London fashion label.

Also, visit her Facebook page at your peril, because you'll feel instant guilt once you're there. Not only does she have such a diverse range of works, but she's also got shit loads of them - up to 400 illustrations and oil paintings. I always thought her style was efficient, but jesus. It's no surprise her huge output of work has made her an international success.

All in all, Zombie uses her pop icons as clever metaphors for the absurdity of lofty ideals, the futility of  superheroic dreams and aspirations in a contemporary society reduced to supermodels and overpaid footballers. There's only so much we can achieve as real human beings.

Wasn't going to let you get off that easy.

http://www.lorazombie.com/