Billich’s paintings read as smoothly as photos. They are composed mostly of architectural elements with arbitrary touches of human figures and statues. The majority of subject matter is depicted in a flattened, slick manner, with a consistently ultra smooth gradation. Despite these flattened surfaces, the scenes composed in these paintings are arranged in so many layers that the picture as a whole perpetuates a great sense of depth. Microenvironments are found within the larger picture many times over. Sharp, mirrored architectural spaces can be discovered existing inside each other. Whispy, soft blues, pinks, and purples and the hyper-smoothed, polished shading are shared in both the objects and atmospheric space, making for an illusory feel. Some of the paintings seem to parallel the setting of a galley or museum, having spacious walls with images hung about them. Within each image there is a newly constructed space, however, there is often a similar atmosphere or color scheme that connects the images to the walls and to the surrounding space that it exists within. And the walls themselves seep in and out of antonymous colors and shades, deconstructing the solidity and truth of the walls, making for an otherworldly ambiance. A complicated, confused space is the result, something quite surreal and dreamlike, leaving the viewer questioning exactly what is what, and what is a possible reflection, or even an imagining.

Though differing vastly in mark, Domingue’s pieces all have a characteristic feeling of a slow growth and gradual manipulation. In his piece, Symbol of Inner Strength, the gracefulness of the steady easing of the bright orange into the black background tames the difference between the two opposites. The two colors at their most saturated moments are quite extreme and it’s remarkable to see such a peaceful transition between the two. The subtle scale changes in the fragmentation are rather slight and very delicate, as well. The differing size, shifting from larger to smaller also gives the piece a sense of perspective and depth. Keeping within a two-color color scheme, the relationship also helps to build a stronger presence of light and perspective. In his piece, Global Warming, the color variations leak in and out of numerous colors instead of just two. The result is a more abstracted form. At first the black area appears as a cut-out obstructing the view of a beautiful, colorful, kaleidoscope. However, in looking more closely the viewer can make out a few ambiguous areas that lie somewhere in between the absolute black and the segregated, opposing vibrancy of the colored area. In both these pieces there is a bleeding haziness that gives the textural feel of a cross between watercolor and an airbrushed feel. This texture along with the unique organic shapes compiling these forms invent some intriguing and delightfully atmospheric abstractions.

Exuberantly colored in bright blues, oranges, pinks, light purples, Colina’s work gives the immediate feeling of a children’s book. Through the setting’s abstract forms she composes a fantasy-like playground for the characters in her narratives. Her figures range in form, from a shape analogous to human, to creatures that look more similar to insects, bacteria, or perhaps an anticipated alien? Regardless of their representative associations, Colina’s characters’ relationships and interactions definitely add to the complex plot that exists within each of her pieces. Maybe more visually intriguing than the figures within each piece are the intricate and involved landscape fixtures that serve as a sort of cornucopia of habitat and activity for her characters. Seemingly ever-growing, they flower outward, increasing exponentially in size with each outer layer. They pull the viewer’s gaze in towards their receding center. Often appearing curious and questionable, these forms take on a different feeling from the lively color and zest of the rest of the piece. At times they even translate an erotic quality with the central hole surrounding by the many folds and layers, often having pipes and beams, signifying phalluses, passing through. Upon first glance, Colina’s work is animated, playful, and seemingly child-like, however, with further observation it begins to take on an ironic transformation.

Annie Swift

A new breed of painting Elisabet Persson’s work invites viewers to a world full of vibrant colors and mysterious visages. Persson gracefully incorporates picturesque elements into the paintings she creates—works that stand for a reality observed through her own eyes and imagination. The result is a representation that is dreamy, capricious, and out of this world.

Swedish artist Elisabet Persson’s works explore a deeply contemplative corner of the visual sphere. Through her unique work Persson seeks to eliminate the boundaries of memory, history and geography in order to make a state of true contemplation possible. Her paintings span a dynamic assortment of stylistic and thematic conclusions that are linked by their reflective nature. Each work utilizes the canvas as a forum to display the conclusion of a journey that begins with her imagination and ends with a poetic act of expression. Her art teaches the viewer that pure art springs from a meditative state of mind. Expressive and fantastical, the innovative imagery of this multifaceted artist reveals the hidden side of her subjects’ personalities. Fascinated by imperfection, narrative and humor Persson attempts to incorporate incongruities and irregularity into her warm folksy mis-en-scene portraits. In fact, Persson proclaims, “I prefer to create with warmth and well-being as a theme, I want to approach the difficult things in life with a sense of humor.” Tur Att Jag Har Dig depicts a woman with a crimson face, conversing with an enthralled puppy, combined with a muted backdrop of slate grey and ivory. Encompassed by the near colorless negative space, she is engulfed in a space that is not of this world. The splatters of crimson and umber paint slashing across her facial features, evokes a sensation of violence, an impression compounded by her languid body and expression. Persson’s organic yet unified forms are deeply rooted in realism and are often renditions of people she knows well. Her oils, drawings, and prints reveal an intense observation of the subject; she makes his mark with authority and finality, and arrives at the essence of her figures. Persson’s signature thick black lines and the furious mark making she employs give her subjects a flickering quality of energy.

http://www.elisabetpersson.se/

Logan Riley

In the world of mysticims and sacred culture, woman is the center of the universe. Woman the creator, the bringer of life. It is woman, in the guese of the Hecate with their yarn and scissors or Diane and Artemis with the Moon and night sky or Psyche enamoring the epitome of love itself that has driven ancient and modern cultures. For a time though, the role of women has been misplaced, swept under the rug to make room for machismo and male domination. But, as they did then, things change.

imberly Berg is restoring women to their rightful place. Berg almost acts like the Tarot’s High Priestess- she ushers in the unseen, drawing back the mystical curtains, magical forces to enlighten The Fool- representing the world. Her art, as she says, is a door way (not an explanation). A doorway for the viewer to create and imagine a message. Kimberly Berg mixes the female form in a multitude of poses (some strong, some merely passive, but none weak) with mystic and sacred images like the sun, mandalas and even the metaphor of the dark wood. Using the ever malleable media of pastels, graphite, and other mixed media Berg manages to both draw focus to the woman subject as well as express a piece of the universe in the background. Sometimes the woman blends with the background like in Goddess I and II, while in Visitation of the Goddess the woman is the center and the background. In her Creatress series (mainly mixed media) Berg brings subject and metaphor to the front. Many of her women are pregnant, fulfilling a natural and divine rite- creation, the bringing forth, the holder of the sacred Yoni. Kimberly Berg breathes life into her art, a divine birth of creativity where art is the placenta that sustains the world while it grows, develops, and eventually becomes enlightened.

Kimberly Berg’s work will be on display at the Florence Biennale 2009.

http://www.absolutearts.com/portfolio/i/isisrising/

Catherine Y. Hsieh

Segueing between paper and oil paint, artist Betty Disco creates a mysterious world that solicits viewers to explore the strange beauty of her paper sculptures, paper installations, and oil paintings. Disco’s creations, while coming in different forms and mediums, possess a similar quality, the quality of colors. Turquoise, off white, purple, green, navy, and earth tones permeate Disco’s work. She is skilled at cutting and twisting paper into imaginary objects that remind viewers of their everyday life and distance them from it at the same time. Her oil paintings, abstract and multihued, manifest innocent and thoughtful brush strokes. Disco takes great advantage of the texture of the two mediums: paper, soft and gentle; oil paint, creamy and fluid. Both become more versatile in the artist’s hands as she wields her scissors and paintbrush.

By creating unique paper pieces, Disco tells stories of nonexistent cultures that reside only in her mind. Organic shapes and natural shades bring forth a fairy-tale land visible to the ones with an eye for the magical and the fantastical.

With a palette in hand, Disco travels through the continuum of time and space, painting an entirely different dimension with her oil-on-canvas work. Undistinguished forms and broken horizons rise from the surface and a private universe materializes. One that is full of passion, perplexity, and pathos.

Raw and primal, Disco’s work speaks a language with an exotic tone, understood and appreciated by viewers whose state of mind stay untainted by mass culture and public brainwashing. A pioneer on her artistic journey, Disco intuitively excavates along the way rare splendor that lies amidst the sheets of paper and just beneath the layers of paint.

Simone Cappa

Minimalist artist John Gesager Nielsen’s oveture are a tribute to the legacy of sculpture and engineering as well as to its visionary union of art and nature. Nielsen’s questioning of the conventional attitudes of art and culture does not stop with the creation of objects and images; he is committed to exploring of attitudes and ideas as a critical component of his work. Nielsen has been creating evocative figurative and abstract sculpture for many years. An earnest devotee to the human condition, he renders both Plexiglas, and metal in an elongated, mannerist style. Nielsen who is Danish-born, and now based in Norway uses his sculptures to grapple with emotions fundamental to interpersonal relationships, from passion and desire, to loneliness and love. His abstracted figure sculptures depict individuals and couples running, standing, kneeling, and embracing each other—each work possessing a sense of life and movement that seems to belie the static nature of sculpture.

The artist’s recent work in Plexiglas further highlight his astonishing capability to create figurative sculpture that transforms human bodies into an elongated, aesthetical form. His sculptures depicting couples describe feelings such as love, passion and erotism. They portray perfect unity and harmony juxtaposed with a struggle for domination and independence. Nielsen’s haunting, poetic—even anguished images could be described as perfect expressions of the way in which human figures form relationships with one another in space. Certain pieces (Confidence for instance) could also been seen as symbols of human fortitude. Though the form is heavy and rooted to the ground, each part of the sculpture echoes two bodies rising up, determined to stand up straight regardless of any adversity they may encounter.

Despite the consistent use of metal or plexiglas throughout Nielsen’s work he is more varied than could be assumed— it can be playful, sensual and even devoutly tender. Volumes of bodies are scattered throughout his overture; linked through a network of connected points and faceted planes. In another series, Toward summit the artist highlights his innately diverse nature: tentative of surface and awkward in description, this series sharpens one’s sense of Nielsen’s developing powers, not only in his capacity for emotional depth and surface variety, but also in terms of compositional power. In addition to revealing how people feel on the inside, he captures the exterior with a painterly surface marked by traces of the artist’s hand.
The viewer can’t help being powerfully struck by Nielsen’s extreme openness to a plethora of visual influences, from Giacometti and Picasso to Lipchitz, Laurens and Brancusi, not to mention more traditional modes of European sculpture. His work is also about myth, meaning and movement. Combining the great cross-cultural tales and themes of humanity with the technical skill of the sculptural masters, his work aims to capture the defining moment when timeless storytelling, profound significance, and realistic bodily movement intersect.

www.gesager.com/

James Wcycoff

Thérèse Boisclair is an international artist whose monolithic watercolor Works thread together conceptual practices with material practices, excavating memory and lived experience in order to distill the essences of these immaterial events into translucent images that glow, vibrate, and reverberate together in unexpected and magical ways. Evoking an array of psychological notes, her work enables viewers to rest, reflect, meditate, and celebrate, instilling a range of emotional responses. One such feeling is passion, as demonstrated by the work Vers la lumière, whose apocalyptic abstraction fuses futurist landscapes with dreamscapes, incorporating decadent color and exuberant design elements. Works on view such as Vers le boisée, and Vers la lumière, reflect a sense of transformation, ethereality, and individuality that are among the most profound threads of life. Yet, not all the work is so dense. More esoteric and luminous in ambiance are the three works that comprise Fire Storm collectively. This triptych is more dispersed composition of delicately floating stains of vibrant saffron, Crimson and umber.

Boisclair’s paintings appear weightless and ethereal, intuitively encouraging viewers to extend their gaze inward. In her delicate watercolor landscapes, such as Ciel De Feu, her fluid and saturated strokes caress the painting surface to create an image depicting a forest silhouetted against a backdrop of sea and sunset, allowing colors from azure and periwinkle to melon and crimson to intermingle in a rich quasi-abstraction that is reminiscent of Gaugin’s tropical landscapes. Here the transparency of light emanates through her willowy strokes, evoking the warmth and heat of the sun and fluid coolness of the water. Ultimately, this is the essence of Boisclair’s art—an otherworldly voyage into the unknown that plunges the depths of the subconscious, and the heights of our inspirational dreams, indulging our whimsical free spirits into a realm that is both visionary and contemplative, experimental and studied, and where all the threads of life merge into a united fabric of experience and existence.

Kristina Asvarn’s serene paintings create an innovative world within a world. Each of these “worlds” have led to the artist to develop a reputation for poetic epic works that display both delicacy and fragility, revealing a deep respect for something fundamental, some primal, indigenous sense of shape and color. Her paintings are playful, spirited, freeform and deceptively complex. There’s not a single corner, hard edged, geometric line to be found in her composition, instead the shapes are as fluid as the submerged sounds that fuel her imagination. Using acrylic paint to explore color, luminosity, movement, and relationships, Asvarn captures the energy of the life—from the people she meets to the places she travels. With raw energy and provocation Asvarn’s work explores painting’s potential. Her art occupies a domain between a romantic and a conceptual art form in which a deep, psychological experience is formed. In her works broad brushstrokes and symbols of affection, in acidic and delicate colors, dash across an epic surface inviting the viewer inside, allowing them the freedom to let feelings be their guide. Her paintings and sketches straddle the line between representation and abstraction. The artist’s strength lies within this fluid movement between genres and categories. Caught between description and dreamlike states, the observed and the imagined, Asvarn’s work transforms the natural world into poetic visions and fantasy, while still utilizing symbolic elements to convey psychological ideas and emphasize the “freedom” of art from traditional culture.

Utilizing every inch of the canvas her artistic vision is not hampered by the edges of the canvas limits. This is a method Asvarn come to be known for during her many years of artistic discourse. Born in Stockholm, Sweden Asvarn’s works are reminiscent of a dream voyage to another place, deeply personal, evoking her own subconsciousness, while revealing universal truths about the journey and celebration of life. 

Kristina Asvarn

<a href=”http://www.artfairsinternational.com/images/2009/12/goldfish.jpg”><img title=”goldfish” src=”http://www.artfairsinternational.com/images/2009/12/goldfish-300x207.jpg” alt=”goldfish” width=”300” height=”207” /></a>

<em>Catherine Y. Hsieh</em>

Gao Yi Lei’s vibrant palettes bring marine creatures back to life in his oil-on-canvas series <em>The Times of Ke Long</em>. A lobster in green and royal blue seems to be jumping off from the canvas surface against a backdrop of vast oceanic blue while in another piece a dark purple octopus wags its tentacles in remarkable energy with shades of crimson exploding in its center contrasted with an atmospheric background of power blue. Gao paints exquisite gold fish in another piece with carefree brushstrokes and unexpected hues. The little gold fish come in rainbow colors: fiery red, passionate orange, fleshy pink, with splashes of lime and sea foam blue. The movement of the tail as the fish swim across the canvas complements the fluidity of the painting as the graceful beings materialize vividly in the contrast between negative space and positive space. Seemingly a lover for nature, especially sea life, Gao manages to recreate the world under the sea in a tone that is serene and effervescent at the same time.