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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POINT MAGAZINE: Issue #1 Feature

Cool little feature for Issue #1 of P-OINT (People of Interest) Magazine, pages 72-75:

http://issuu.com/p-oint/docs/pointmag/1

Alexis Marcou: Slippery Illustrator

Let’s face it: in the context of art that’s ‘cool’, a plain portrait is boring. The unfortunate reality is that there are too many other people out there who are capable of doing exactly what you can do. Something else has to be happening. 

Over the past year, I have experimented – simply through pursuing a creative 'mistake’ I once made – with geometrical lines of distorted light. Perhaps it’s a coincidence, but I’ve spotted a peculiar pattern recently with illustrators/artists (Agnes Cecille, Carne Griffiths) playing with aesthetics that replicate shattered glass, cubism and bewitching light reflections. Is there any particular reason for this trend, apart from the fact that it looks effing radical? 

And I'll tell you why this kind of style is so important today. As you’ve probably detected from my attitude towards the cretinous use of Photoshop, artists appear to be fighting back with work that defies Adobe’s determined mission to make pencils - indeed humans themselves – obsolete. Whatever you can do, I can do better.

Alexis Marcou is an inspiring saviour who makes our craft still worth persevering. His work is clearly the product of blood, sweat, and a shit load of graphite. Marcou uses an intriguing juxtaposition in his work: the monochrome becomes activated by the most minimalist traces of colour, suspending his figures between frozen stasis and explosive chaos. 

My favourite piece of his has to be ‘Noire’ (first image) though I’m sure that comes as no surprise to those of you who know his work. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s the wet-look about the piece which gets me most – and before you whine that it’s just a quick photoshop job – head over to his Process page to be proved firmly wrong. 

Such a simple image, yet that fluidity about it delivers a selection of mysterious interpretations: Is the figure frozen in time/death? Crying in the pouring rain? Drenched in blood? Marcou’s obsession with lines renders his work with a highly contemporary and virtual feel, playful with dimensions so that his finished pieces offer multiple zones of vision. Marcou's perspectives have reached vertiginous heights with commissions already from both Nike and HP.

Marcou encourages aspiring artists, "Create your own unique style. When working for clients listen but don't compromise your style." Take note - I'm currently designing a poster for a BBC film, and throughout the entire process I've been plagued with paranoia that I'm wasting my time because I'm still creating in a way which will guarantee my own aesthetic satisfaction above anyone else's. That's not selfish, right?

I'm holding you responsible, Marcou.

http://alexismarcou.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/