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by Dorothy Circus Gallery
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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
MILLOBorn in Pescara Italy in 1979 Francesco Camillo Giorgino, aka Millo, is an Italian street artist whose mural works appear all over the world’s cityscapes. Millo’s large-scale murals depict friendly giant inhabitants in the act of exploring their urban setting. The Artist suspended universes are characterized by black and white landscapes saturated with details and hidden life. Illusionism and introspection are some of Millo’s art's main components. The spectator feels completely absorbed by the extension of fictional cities and gets lost in their streets leading to a nowhere based metaverse like reality representative of ancestral memories. The unknown chaos generated by the Artist’s visionary mind leads us toward a central point in the canvas where a familiar scene appears reassuring and comforting. Painted with an elaborate illustrative technique on large size canvases, Millo’s artworks are like open doors to the human mind. Reflecting our most intimate sensations such as Love, Hope, Strength, Loneliness, and Fear hence the protagonists of Millo’s narratives are often a couple sharing a moment of tenderness calling our attention to stop the frenetic stream of time and carry us back to the simplicity of human feelings. In a meticulously calculated balance between maximalism and minimalism, Millo generates a visionary code which stands as completely unique both in the street art movement and the neo-surrealist scene. -
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
JOE SORRENJoe Sorren was born in 1970 in Chicago and he grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. He began painting in 1989 and, in 1993, he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Northern Arizona University and worked as creative director for Transworld Snowboarding Magazine.After a long-term residency in New York City, Sorren spent a few years in Florence and in Barcelona, where he had the chance to absorb both Italian and Spanish art vibes.The artist’s poetic imagery, his fading landscapes, peculiar brushstrokes and unique codes, make him one of the leading figures on the scene of the American cultural avant-garde of Pop Surrealism of which he is a prime mover.Contemporary master of “emotion lighting”, Sorren paints with muted, but luminous, palette and golden-like oil colours that make the viewer feel transported into the realm of the canvas, a warm wool of soft textures. Sorren’s brushstrokes are like sunbeams that penetrate the foggy atmosphere of an ever-spring realm. His style is hyper-contemporary and hyper-impressionistic at the same time, a feature that characterises his signature touch of colour and makes his art widely recognisable worldwide.Sorren creates layer upon layer of texture with oil paint upon his canvas until creatures and sceneries somehow captured by extreme emotion emerge with impressionistic brushstrokes, as if from the deepest meanderings of the Artist’s imagination. Sorren’s inspiration for his paintings comes from human behaviours, classic moments that he turns into romantic, everlasting fractions of time. “Since painting is a physical record of movement in time”, Sorren affirms, “brushstrokes are not unlike the grooves on a vinyl record-capturing not just the colour and shape of a stroke, but the timbre; the energy and emotion experienced at the time it was painted”.Sorren allows his artworks to evolve sensitivity naturally and subconsciously. The process of study and realisation may take even years and each new layer of paint, reflects the subject’s spiritual metamorphosis into new beings. A figure may develop into a hill or in a landscape; or perhaps a tree may morph into a human being. Mysterious creatures enclosed in their inaccessible ocean and absorbed into their simultaneously melancholic and joyful state, populate Joe Sorren’s large size paintings, which examine the wonders of nature and of the human spirit.Always playing with new forms and palette, Sorren highlights the tender faces and gestures of his inimitable figures and generates his unique, living fairytales. By recording feelings of joy, he creates something like a sweet symphony coming out of our ordinary moments, which ultimately realises an idealistic freeze-frame belonging to modern life. Sorren’s emotional subjects are remarkably moving and able to step us back into the memorable and timeless serenity of childhood.His artworks have appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Time and Rolling Stone and he has worked with media companies such as Warner Bros, Fox, and NBC. During the last 15 years, he has shown his artworks in solo exhibitions in galleries and museums both in the United States and abroad. In 2010, Sorren was featured in the exhibitions “Art from the New World” at the Bristol City Museum, and “Pop Surrealism,” held at the Museum of Visual Arts Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto, Italy curated by Dorothy Circus Gallery during the “Festival dei Due Mondi”. -
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
ALEX FACEAlex Face is born in 1981 in Chachoengsao, Thailand. He lives and works in BangkokAlex Face (Patcharapon Tangruen) is a Thai graffiti artist who expresses himself across street art, painting and enormous sculptures of bronze. His Street Art established itself in Thailand, subsequently achieving success in overseas cities thanks to the recognisable iconography with which the artist provokes the city's inhabitants through interventions in public spaces to reflect on contemporary social issues. His significant fame came in 2009 when he became a father, concerned about the becoming world in which his daughter lived when Alex introduced the main character of his works: a three-eyed child dressed in a ragged rabbit suit, inspired by his daughter, Mardi, who has sometimes her eyes closed and gives passerby a sense of weary vulnerability and wry look.
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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
Hop On the Train of Wonder with Kazuki TakamatsuKazuki Takamatsu was born in Sendai, Japan in 1978. He attended the Department of Oil Painting at Tohoku University of Art & Design, where graduated in 2001.
Takamatsu’s depth-mapping technique and his intimate language are inspired by Japanese Manga girls. His works are as unique as painstakingly intricate, fusing classic drawing, airbrush and gouache painting with computer graphics. His Lolita's emerge from the dark abyss, and take shape in a series of coloured layers to review a mystic light and the traditional symbology through the highly detailed decorations of Japanese traditional symbols. Through his paintings you can catch a glimpse of the conversation between the realistic human feelings and emotions, and the unrealistic expectations that us human beings have of each other.
You can find a reflection of yourself in the current state of the world, Takamatsu combines classical approaches such as drawing, airbrush and gouache with computer graphics. In his paintings he artistically documents the feelings and emotions of the human being, thereby reflecting the state of our culture. Within his most popular black and white series , the artist through the dissolution of light and shadow, refers to the battle between good and evil, the renunciation of colors means to amplify the opposites and enhance the lightness of the soul standing out against the absence of light. In the artist most recent and exclusive series we find two colors Red and Blu, both these colored series are born after a profound and careful choice that aims to share the deepest symbolism of the color as elements and message to unravel in his pictorial narratives. The red is in fact associated to birth, fire and energy of creation.
The Blue takes inspiration from both the discovery and wide use of this color pigment back in mid 19th century by the impressionist artists. The Blue resonates with the Spirituality, the introspection, the ocean and the power of nature.
Takamatsu exhibits his work internationally and with Dorothy Circus Gallery since 2013. -
ARTIST SPOTLIGHT
A Message of Serenity and Peace - Interview with Japanese Artist YokoteenBorn in Sakaide City, Kagawa Prefecture, in Japan, Yokoteen is a self-taught oil painter with impressive technical skill. His Artworks became renowned worldwide with the Series of works called Friends in Paradise. This Series reflects the Artist’s core aim to send messages of serenity, peace and happiness which are all sentiments to be found in the simplicity of human life and through pure values like friendship and solidarity.Yokoteen's signature character is often depicted surfing, surrounded by Hawaiian landscapes filled with aquamarine shades of fresh transparent water. With these joyful images the Artist invites us to unwind, enjoy life and the beauty within.The Artist uses the Water element to unite us all, making its ancient presence known via its psychological power that comes with it. The connection between water, life, birth and rebirth all contribute to a spiritual symbology. -
CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
Insight into Grace Eunshin Kim: In Search of HappinessGrace Eunshin Kim's art is a dynamic and playful exploration of contemporary society through a masterful interplay of references to the great works of art history.Born in Seoul and based in Canada, Grace Eunshin Kim transports us into a static yet historical dimension.Her paintings, illuminated by a vibrant palette, exude an exuberant plastic force and convey a sense of tension towards equilibrium, in constant reference to the mysterious code of the Italian Renaissance. Through an innovative combination of hues, the artist’s playful scenarios are pervaded by deep sense of surreality.