Ronit Baranga

Ronit Baranga is an Israeli artist and sculptor. I found this artist online through Juxtapoz Magazine. I instantly loved her work, because I love all things strange and creepy. I feel like she also is drawn to similar things as I am, such figures and specific parts of the figure. I personally really like hands, and she does a lot of sculptures with hands. 

I love her style. It's so simple, yet very clever and thought-provoking. It kind of makes you think why she choses that specific body part and implants them into some everyday object or morphs them into something familiar.

The colors she chooses are normally very dull- grays and whites, with an occasional splash of color. I really like how she chooses the colors though, even if they are very simple. Sometimes simple is best.

It even kind of looks like it's regular clay that has never been fired. I do believe she makes good choices in the colors because I feel that if there was too much or even a little but of color in this piece it would be very busy and you wouldn't be able to see the small details.

It also seems that in a lot of her pieces there is repetition, or some sort of gathering of something similar.

I love how she chooses to use a gloss-type coating/glaze on some of her pieces. Especially the ones with the mouths because it makes it appear more realistic. 

I feel like maybe her intention of some her pieces shows how we can make anything out of our bodies, or possibly mocking those who become so inhuman and artificial. I'm not really that sure, but I feel like there's something she's trying to say and these pieces aren't void of any sort of meaning. 

http://www.ronitbaranga.com/

Olivier de Sagazan

Olivier de Sagazan is a French artist who does not only sculpture, but also painting and incorporates this into performance. 

http://vimeo.com/8623092

This is the first video I saw of him, and it's both terrifying and beautiful. He shows this horrible transformation from a man to a monster though clay and performance. Even though you know it's a performance, it feels incredibly emotional and almost frightening. I really love creepy things, and I feel that his work is very conceptual and isn't about making something look aesthetically pleasing. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TOx64AEIkQ

This video is probably one of my favorites. I feel like it shows the monsters that live in nature itself, and even they can be seen as beautiful.

I find it very interesting that he uses himself as the base of his sculptures in his performances. Obviously, it helps in the actual performance aspect, but its amazing to see him transform himself into various creatures and play the part very well. 

         

His sculptures seem almost robotic, or mechanical. A lot of them all share this similar feel- almost like they are all part of a race, or species in some sort of story. 

The materials he uses work extremely well with each other. It creates this realistic, yet fantasy-like feeling to it, by using what looks like clay (a more natural material) and possibly what also looks like metal. 

He also paints, which I'm assuming he takes scenes or ideas from his performances and paints them which always turn out to be very beautiful.

I absolutely love his work, and he by far is probably my favorite artist. His tastes are very similar to mine and I feel that he has an enormous amount of creativity and artistic talent. He takes creepiness to an entirely different level and I love it.

http://nefdesfous.free.fr/

Matteo Pugliese

Matteo Pugliese is an Italian artist born in Milan in 1969. He had always loved sculpture and illustration, but never continued on to have a formal education in art. Pugliese graduated with a Modern Literature degree. He has had several exhibitions, and many of his works are located in Italy and large cities scattered throughout the world, such as Rome, Hong Kong, and London. 

He has a series of works called Extra Moenia that consists of many male figures. Most of them seem to be coming out of walls, or going through them- making them very interesting to look at. 

Some of them almost look like they are coming out of this white liquid. 

Bronze is used for most of his sculptures, which isn't very shocking because they look very solid and metallic.  I feel like this is very fitting for these sculptures since they are very masculine and hold very masculine and strong poses, which goes with the strong and sturdy medium.

I really love this piece above, because he chose to focus on the back. I like how backs and spines look, so this was very beautiful to me. The details are amazing and I almost which I could touch it. It's really interesting how he did this- he didn't have any shots of this piece on his website that showed the front view, only this one and the top view. This really shows how stunning the human body can be, and it's not just the front that can be beautiful, but also the back.

The colors on his pieces are also very nice. 

He creates this aged and weathered look to them which I really love. I also love texture, and he makes the bodies look extremely rugged and worn- making it look and seem more real. The colors are very natural too- which aids in the realism. 

I also really like how they are always places on a white surface. It creates the feeling that you don't really know if the piece is mounted on the wall or sitting on the floor so it's kind of up to you to determine where the piece is coming from or sinking into. 

Overall, I just really love his work.  Although there may not be a really deep concept or anything, they are incredibly beautiful to look at.

http://www.matteopugliese.com/

Gunnmgally

Jae Liu, or better known as Gunnmgally is a Chinese artist who specializes in digital and traditional art.

Itchy - 01

pencil, watercolor and acrylic

I found this artist on DeviantArt by seeing one of their pieces while browsing some art. She has a very unique style and creates these stunning and very creative pieces. It seems like a lot of her pieces feel cold. It's hard to explain, but they feel like they don't give off warmth or a lot of happiness. The colors tend to be very muted, or the subjects are very reserved and not very open.

Cosmic Girl

In the piece above, it looks incredibly simple. If you look at the shape, it's almost just a circle, but there seems to be so much detail within this simple shape. The body isn't defined perfectly or precisely, but you can still understand the image. Though the skin color looks warm, it gives off a cold feeling by looking at the red elbows, back and hands, and the blues off her legs. I personally just really love the simplicity yet deepness of this piece. 

Book Cover - 1on1

Even though this illustration was done for a book, it still looks very beautiful, yet the boy looks dead. She is very skilled in creating these lifeless expressions and bodies. 

I feel like her intention for some of her pieces is to create a certain feeling. And she does so with the colors she chooses in each work.

  

  These just create feelings of emptiness, lifelessness, and numbness. They are again, fairly simple, but the colors really dictate how beautiful and expressive they can be. These pieces with more saturated colors and more highlights would not create the same effect. Though Gunnmgally may not create these works with a specific idea or concept in mind, they give off that feeling that something more went into these illustrations than just time and effort. 

"All For Fatty"

  

Some of her works seem to come in collections or a series. Just like the three above, and the other three (the more wide/horizontal ones) that were shown before. These three above are from the "All For Fatty" series. They share similar colors and a similar feel. When you physically see them all together, you start to notice the subtle similarities. Such as the pinks and reds in each one. In the middle the red is the brightest, and fades to a pink on the right, and a dull, gray-pink on the left. It's really fascinating to see the story they might be telling just by having them next to each other. 

I just really, really love her work. Though she doesn't provide a lot of commentary or explanations for her work, it only makes it that much more interesting to try to figure out what it means or what she was thinking when she created these pieces.

http://gunnmgally.deviantart.com/

&

http://gunnmgally.cghub.com/

Cristina Córdova

Cristina Córdova is an American born and Puerto Rican artist and sculptor. I found her through Juxtapoz magazine, and was very impressed with her work. I only really sculpt figures in my work, so I found her work to be really interesting since I love the figure and how they can be represented and shown in different ways. 

A lot of her sculptures are made of mostly clays and concrete which is interesting because they look like they have been carved completely from stone. The muted colors give this illusion that they are very old, or even old Roman sculptures. 

I feel like she creates a lot of these sculptures with the intent that they don't look super new and "edgy" but more artistic and even historical, but with a twist. The faces on these figures also also somewhat ambiguous as to what gender they are. 

Some of her other works don't share this repetitive color scheme, and instead have large amounts of contrast and the bodies are colored unnaturally or one solid color. I think her intention with this is to bring your attention to not just the colors but what exactly is happening within the sculpture. 
I'm not entirely sure whether or not she has concepts or some other meaning behind her works, but they definitely make you think. What made her chose to make this piece? What was the idea behind it? It's really not clear in many of her works because more often than not, there is only really a single figure in the sculpture without other objects to give meaning or hint at what it could possibly be trying to show.

                

I also started to notice that the faces look very similar. The ones that are clearly men all have very masculine jaws, chins, and noses. I'm not sure if she was meaning for this face to be repeated, but I noticed and I find it strange. It kind of makes me wonder if that repeated face actually belongs to somebody. 

Some of her works also seem to represent the figure in a way that looks messy, confused, or disorganized. 


      



She may be trying to go for a chaotic look to her figures, but I really like it. The faces don't always look the prettiest or most appealing, and the faces always have some sort of expression- it's never just blank. To me, I feel that she is showing the uncleanliness that humans hold. We are not flawless, and naturally have far more vices than virtues. A lot of these figures don't show the physical beauty of a person, and instead show the exact opposite.


http://www.cristinacordova.com/