Elmo Hood (b.1989) is a British contemporary artist living in Brisbane, Australia. As a self-taught, his unconventional technique is a manifestation of his creative intuition and workflow. Elmo’s specialties are collages using play cards – something relatively new until 2013 when he became viral with a collage piece he created out of two play cards. That artwork opened his doors to various international exhibitions and a firm celebrity fan base.

ElmoHood’s Creative Technique

By cropping, shaping, and burning the cards, he aims to represent human feelings and often stretches the references to philosophy and the paranormal. His work is now best depicted as a fuse between pop art and mixed media as he uses a variety of materials and different techniques to achieve his compositions.

Figures and Color Palette

The chosen play cards always guide Elmo’s color palette, but he also uses darker tones to define outlines and other shades. Indeed, a figure will pop out of a juxtaposition of cards. Sometimes a King or a Queen, sometimes Batman or an octopus. Aside from the figurative subjects, Hood wants to attract the viewer through several routes, such as curiosity, surprise, engagement, and feelings.

Publications and Exhibitions

Publications to date include British GQ, Forbes, Glamour Magazine, Wall Street International, Oddity mag, Sloane Square Magazine, and many more.
Elmo has exhibited artwork in London, Paris, New York, Miami, Ibiza, Bahrain, and Munich throughout his career. His work was auctioned off at the Houses of Parliament.

Elmo Hood also creates NFTs. Go here to discover more >

Visit Elmo Hood’s website here, or follow him on Instagram! 

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Nate Kitch is an Oxford-based illustrator. He is a Southampton Solent University graduate at the School of Art & Design in 2012 and has been filling newspapers with his colorful collages in the past few years.

Nate is always engaged in the process of making. Folding, cutting, dripping paint are all activities he explores with success. This passion of his lately led him to create interesting images intentionally made to communicate and translate a message into a visual piece.

NATE KITCH’S WORK PROCESS

Nate’s workflow starts with all kind of sketches which he will then discuss with the Art Director. He translates the sketches into a final piece to communicate the initial idea. “I’m quite open to mistakes and errors and sometimes those are what ‘make’ the image. It’s exciting”, he says.

As he grew in his practice, new editorial clients arrived and Nate found himself dealing more and more with politically driven themes. He worked, for instance, at the Brexit matter for a client, stating that it felt quite good to make some revisions and corrections to the initial magazine cover direction. Collage is what he thinks reflects the current situation in the UK, as it shows off the layered aspect of the country’s society.

He is aware of the difficulties a young artist is facing in the present UK, having to deal with a jungle made of loud content and the complexity of standing out in the mob. That’s why he believes in making art for yourself, without chasing ‘likes’: “If you are saying something in a unique way and translating fresh ideas to people, that is far superior than say an illustrated cult character with thousands of likes”, he says.

ARTIST’S VISION

Nate Kitch is a person who believes in dipping below the shallow surface of the mainstream. He thinks there is so much to be explored in the art world that a creative soul should be patient and dig, aiming just at getting excited and finding that wonder that will then inspire and make his own process.

Kitch finds his own inspiration from a lot of other mediums outside illustration. He loves Jazz and is always with something jazzy playing in the background. Comedy is also a source of beauty and harmony to him, as he defines it tasty and smart, while movies are inspiring for the infinite possibilities to tell a story.

Nate has then been working on a regular base for the Guardian, New York Times and Harper’s Magazine while teaching college illustration workshops. He recently participated at Swirlzine – a stylised booklet, designed by award-winning creative to provide straightforward wisdom from mental health professionals.

It sold out at Tate Modern on January 22nd, 2019.

Nate is then represented in North America by Marlena Agency.

Check more about Nate on his website, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Also, check more about Swirl here!

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Alessandra Testa was born in Milan in 1980. Her’s an interesting creative story, as Alessandra doesn’t define herself as an artist (yet). Although, as she told us during a very spontaneous phone interview, she feels, since she was a little girl, the urge to explore how to fill her spare time with artistic hobbies, such as dance or theatre. Despite this, her interests grew towards a different career, so she became a criminal defense lawyer. The years passed by, while Alessandra had to focus quite exclusively on her challenging job. But one day, as she was walking next to her office, an art gallery caught her attention. It was a photography gallery exhibiting digitally manipulated images made of juxtaposed layers. At first glance, she only felt attracted to those colorful artworks, but as soon as she discovered their high cost, she started nurturing the idea of doing some by herself. But again, her demanding job took most of her time for her to fulfill this aim.

ABOUT ALESSANDRA TESTA’S CREATIVE PATH

It all re began on a sleepless night while she was in Miami for a holiday. Alessandra was suffering from jetlag and couldn’t sleep, so she grabbed her phone and started playing around with some images she took those days of the American city. The more she was doing so, the more she discovered new tricks and tools to develop the resulting creative ideas she has been thinking of so far. The timing was the right one, as Alessandra was shortly launching her new law firm and was looking for original art to hang on the wall of her brand new office. Motivated by her first creative attempts, she kept layering photographs, and this is how she created her first work Miami.

When she got back to Italy, despite being reimmersed in her lawyer-look, she was now convinced in keeping her creative hobby alive. As for today, Alessandra created several artworks with a recognized style of vivid digital manipulation of her photographs.

During our conversation, we asked what pushed her to do so, and she straightly explained how she aims at creating collages of her memories to remind her of all the joyful things that took place in her life. Also, the objective of decorating her home with personal, joyful artwork is what kept her in doing so. The reason why she never thought of taking a step further in her art is probably this one: to keep it as a diary to herself. Today she has to withdraw this thought as she agreed about being part of a creative collective such as st-Art.

When motivated by founder and curator Carlo Tozzi to deepen her artistic skills, she came to Amsterdam for few days to know more about it and, together with the st-Art team, to examine in-depth her portfolio of works. Alessandra could then begin considering her passionate hobby as more structured and is today very capable of taking her art seriously. Alessandra indeed well explains as her artistic process is as an urge to depict her fears and emotions. She dreads the concept of emptiness, both figurative and emotional, and this is what pushes her to create collages of works filled with personal feelings and memories. She also wishes to arise in the viewer to search for its own thrill, as she suggests to dig all the juxtaposed layers and details to discover eventually some emotional connection.

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His work is vivid, geometric and surreal, both filled with classical or futuristic acts. Karol well adapts to the given brief, still maintaining an editorial freedom that is always well appreciated. The color palette then is for him something he meticulously concentrates on, to express the mood of his layouts and characters at best.

His illustrations are inspired by both classical painters like Picasso and Basquiat and the multitude of modern art he finds online to create his surreal style. He also has an alias name, Korneliusz, and as a kid was a Lego and small cars fan. He now defines himself quite an expert of a mixed media style from which he gains his final pieces, made up from collages, vector images, drawings with acrylics or pencils etc. Everything helps him out to start with a new project: music, everyday inspiration, contemporary and classical art, and his art it’s like an experiment through which he searches for new techniques, compositions, and style.

Karol indeed doesn’t like the idea of being conceived in one unique and only visual style, although we have to admit that his latest artworks are well recognizable. He is a free minded young man, looking forward only to work through his passion for creativity as much as possible.

To view more of Karol Banach’s work, go here.

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What led them to collaborate is an exciting journey that they told us through an exclusive interview. Goran is an award-winning writer, journalist, and filmmaker, while Marija does performance, experimental theatre, and photography. So first common thread identified, they are both in front, and behind a camera and their collaboration, it’s as for today an eighteen years long one.

They never lived together, and probably this urge to deepen boundaries is what to pushed them to restore family ties gradually. As they are both enthusiast explorers, this child-adult combination also defines, at best, their unique mutual approach to art. While Goran intends to turn chaos into harmony, Marija has indeed a wilder method given by her vibrant instinct.

ABOUT THEIR TECHNIQUE

Their creative method focuses on collage and mixed media, which they also like to define as “arte povera.”

All the elements that create their pieces are mostly found objects as newspapers and clips or photographs meshed with personal images of their family photo albums – to add a significant emotional contribution.

“We find old photographs especially endearing, no matter to whom they belong, as long as they have been declared unwanted,” they explain. To the duo, this process represents the core of a father and daughter relationship, as it encloses the relationship’s sense of finding oneself in the other.

–

Can you briefly describe what you do and say something about your technique? 

We mostly combine several techniques, mixing watercolors with pastels and pencils. The result’s probably not so pure but undoubtedly potent. We never use expensive materials in our work; we prefer leftovers and junk founded pies. Working with minimal resources to obtain a maximum effect is a skill we learned by living in Serbia. Our method is a potpourri of elements, and our favorite technique is collage.

What drives you to make art? 

People often describe our work as uplifting, positive, and cheerful. We feel that the world is in bad shape, and we are, for sure, not the first ones who want to make it a better place. Art, however, should not only beautify or decorate. What matters is a kind of imprint that an artwork carries in terms of energy. Thus the subject matter is irrelevant; for example, religious art can give negative energy as much as profane art can be healing.

What is the main feature that has changed in your works throughout the years? 

We considerably improved our technique and emotional result through consistent practice. Our starting point was children’s scribbles, a kind of spontaneous drawings typical of infants, just like it was for Klee and Dubuffet. In due course, just like it happened to them (well, perhaps not exactly like them), it became a more forceful approach throughout the years.

Which artists most affected your work? 

We get great inspiration from the surrealists, which often used the collage technique. There is a playfulness in their pieces, where everyday objects acquire dream-like features. That is endearing. We also look at the work of Kandinsky, whose abstract paintings have spiritual overtones. We spent hours meditating in front of them. Art must touch some life-long enigma or mystery. Otherwise, it is merely entertainment. Kandinsky represents the utmost value: the truth is that you cannot waste hours in front of something that is not clear, as one consumes most of the contemporary art energy in a split second.

How would you like people to engage with your work?

At first, we were reluctant to either sell our work or give it away. We felt it was a part of us, a testimony of our spiritual development. Our art is an organic creation; it works only live. At the opposite, when you see a photograph of, say, Jeff Koons, it might work even better than in a gallery or museum. That is why we decided at one point to show our stuff, to start a direct communication. It turned out that it wasn’t easy to build some response with the audience, because the visual offer out there is vast, aggressive, and overwhelming.

On the one hand, we feel that any response is better than an absence of reaction. On the other, fishing for advertising at all costs is tasteless, as one should learn to stay subtle and pure, at least because the scandal is so hopelessly widespread nowadays. Eventually, we decided to offer our art for sale. Nowadays we encourage people to buy it, we exhibit it and enjoy this daily.

Do you have anything exciting on the horizon? 

Everything excites us. We find living itself, not to mention creating new worlds, incredibly gripping. We scheduled a group exhibition in Belgrade for April, but due to the current coronavirus emergency, it seems it will going to happen later this year.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

We see ourselves on our yacht sailing the seven seas and getting better in the process of enjoying life as it comes.

–

Goran is finishing his third novel, and Marija is preparing her sixth performance.

Goran and Marija Gocic are currently part of stArt Amsterdam.

To know more about Goran and Marija Gocic, go here.

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We could translate this as a passion Chad has in picking historical and famous art pieces and reconsider its beauty.

He explores the inner sense of what we conventionally consider as beautiful, to look at our sense of self and community from another point of view.

As a student, Chad Wys shifted his time between literature and art history. He then went for studies in Visual Culture at the Illinois State, to deepen the critique of images and the philosophy of art with an interdisciplinary eye toward the ways we use signs and symbols to interpret ideas, as for words and images to communicate.

His approach to visual art is indeed experimental and challenging, as for his approach to the concepts he chooses.

Juxtaposing materials, examining theories and overlapping both theoretical and technical visual layers is what characterizes his language and core passions.

“Craft and critique—as verbs and nouns—are themselves my tools as well as my subjects,” he says.

His aim as a creative minded person is to twist comforts into curiosity and to focus on the process of reception, to not give anything for granted.

Sometimes his artworks are fun and meaningful, or introvert and abstract, yet he always strives to seek new approaches to old challenges.

To view more of Chad Wys’s works, go here.

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This said Mairi’s daily interest is to create engaging compositions pieced together with all the materials she collects, especially by juxtaposing a variety of media to best show the beauty of surface, space pattern, and color. Her style is narrative, she talks of places she finds interesting, unfamiliar surroundings and landscapes, quiet architectures and lifestyles of people they catch her eye.

Her approach may be defined as of a collage-painter, whilst still using pencils, scissors, glue sticks and photographs of her own. She is more of a mixed-media artist, although the art world, including Saatchi Art which she is represented by, places her in the painter’s section.

Mairi also sells most of her artworks, which can be found on her personal website. If interested you may find out more here.

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Media Kashani is a young Iranian woman (b. 1989, Tehran) currently living and working in Milan.

She’s been studying art all her life, starting from an art High School diploma with a Graphic Design pathway to a degree at the Tehran University of Art in 2012.

Media then decided, as many of her Iranian peers after the revolution, to leave her home country to complete her studies abroad. She opted for the painting school at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, city which warmly welcomed her, as she says. Milan is indeed a place where Media could explore her actual relationship with art as well as her capabilities and techniques. Milan is also where she understood the deep link with her roots and land of origin, which will become the essence of her artworks. What moves her to create art is an attempt to combine traditional crafts with a contemporary approach, and for this, she created a mixed media technique to ideally reach this goal. Media examined the conventional middle eastern arts to then focus her attention to a peculiar practice: the mosaic. Iranians, like many other middle eastern cultures, widely used the tiles to represent historical and religious events, inside monuments, mosques, and historical buildings, as wanted by their tradition. Nowadays, though, as Media teaches us, this is also a practice that one might find onto external surfaces, such as buildings or walls. So what Media felt the urge to explore was to turn this traditional procedure into something more contemporary. She created, for sure, a unique method which became her trademark.

ABOUT HER ART PRACTICE

In her most recent artworks, Media starts by choosing an input, such as a landscape or an emotion. She will then define a raw color palette to describe it better, to finally begin with her fascinating process. Media is indeed a sensitive and daring explorer, equipped with a right amount of patience. As we know that the final result appears as a mosaic, we are not sure of the procedure she undertook to reach that outcome. The canvas is not made of conventional ceramic tiles, yet of tiny pieces of acrylic, wood, paper, and glue. Onto a wooden base, she will start sticking small squared pieces made of paper and glue. These were initially a drawing she cut into small parts to then reassemble them onto the canvas to create a brand new abstract combination. The result is a stunning conceptual yet bold art piece. Her work recalls both a traditional craft and a modern vision, her investigation to feel attached to her roots while still researching for new paths.

Media is inspired by mosaic masters of Rinascimento as Michele Giambono and was strongly motivated towards this practice by Persian artist and professor Ali Panje Por. 

With her artworks, she attempts to share with a more intuitive and sensitive meaning, as she believes art is a valid key to better communication.

ACHIEVEMENTS

Media has already exhibited her works in a variety of shows and events. To mention the most important ones: ’59esimo Premio Internazionale Bugatti Segantini‘, 23 Giugno 2018; ‘Venti autentici oltremare’, premio arte Acqua dell’Elba, 22-26 Agosto 2017;  ‘Il profumo del mare’, premio arte Acqua dell’Elba, 27-31 Agosto 2018; ‘Premio Dino Sangalli’, Palazzo Bovara, 27 Giugno – 20 Luglio 2016; solo show at Union Club, ‘Tema nostalgia’, 4-24 Ottobre 2017; Accademia Mondo, World Accademy, novembre 2015.

To know more about her go here.

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Born and raised in Tehran (b.1978), Nooshin Zokaie currently lives and works in Milan where she finally fulfilled her artistic career. As a matter of fact, Nooshin initially achieved a degree in Mathematics and Economics in Tehran, although she has been painting all her life. She suddenly understood how art could entirely interest her when she undertook some sculpture and ceramic courses during university, and there her love for handy crafts felt satisfied. The decision of quitting economics to explore the art world came out quite frankly.

Five years ago she then enrolled in a Ba Hons in Painting at the Brera Academy in Milan, which she brilliantly ended in 2018. Her final dissertation was, indeed, the body of work ‘The covered City’. During her studies in Milan, Nooshin has been strongly supported by his teachers to explore and push her artistic talent, and today, she is busy researching and studying new techniques to improve her art flow continuously. She already participated in several group shows in Milan, although she revealed her ambition to hold a solo show. Nooshin is also currently working on some ideas on flower design and jewelry, to improve her craft making and build an always more consistent artistic awareness.

PAST AND PRESENT

After the war, started in 1980, the city of Tehran changed as fast as a flash of lightning, and young Nooshin had to combine the thick past and that immediate present into some random gazes she then processed into more tangible images. 

The deep bond for her mother country brought her to choose some specific and characteristic hue to define the emotion of lost land. For this, her artworks, belonging to the series ‘The Covered City’, have colors ranging from blue to turquoise. Blue is a natural shade you will always bump into while in Iran: the color of the sea to start from, as for the old monumental villas and the mosaics. Nowadays, though, Nooshin teaches us that blue is also becoming a dividing symbol. Tehran, like many other big modern cities, uses huge turquoise cloths to cover old historical villas which are more and more all becoming construction sites for modern buildings or to divide beaches into areas suitable just for men or only for women. So it comes naturally out that the color blue has for Nooshin a deep and opposite meaning of nostalgia and anguish, an intimate feeling she developed through a painting technique that perfectly reveals all these emotions. 

In the series ‘The Covered City’, Nooshin depicts wintery landscapes, highlighting the desolation of a city that has been deprived of its passion. Despite this, a fascinating feeling arises from her canvas, one of melancholy and beauty, an attempt to show how the soul of a country still lives under its thick covers. 

Ma nell’attesa del tuo svelarti, un giorno d’inverno, quando la neve bianca si posa dolcemente sul grigiore del tuo corpo, io ritrovo l’incanto del quel blu. Comunque tu sei sempre bella, anche con questi teloni blu. Il colore blu ti sta benissimo, sempre! / And awaiting for you to reveal, on a cold winter day, when snow kindly lays onto your body, I finally notice that enchanting blue. You are always beautiful, although if coverd in these blue cloths. The color blue suits you perfectly, at all times!

(Nooshin Zokaie / The Covered City)

ABOUT NOOSHIN’S TECHNIQUE

Her technique is a mixed media, obtained through the use of collage, photos, and textiles directly stuck on the canvas. Nooshin will then paint on top of the collage, to reveal a final layered, geometrical and abstract painting.

To know more about Nooshin Zokaie, go here.

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Joanne Hummel has exhibited at the Sid Motion Gallery, with DEEP END ECHO, a joint solo with Stephen Smith, in July 2018. She has also shown in 2017 Integration II, at the Resident Artist Saatchi Art Lounge, Old Truman Brewery, during Frieze Week London. These are just a few events to mention when researching upon Jo Hummel’s works.

She studied at Kingston University London (2001-2004) and Royal College of Art London (2004-2006). Her work has been included in satellite exhibition Afternoon Tea at the 53rd Venice Biennale with WW Gallery London, Jerwood Drawing Prize London 2012 and RA Summer Exhibition London and London Art Fair 2019. Joanne was long-listed for the Beers London Contemporary Visions exhibition and John Moores Painting Prize 2018, and also in recent years received a number of Arts Council Grants for the Arts awards for temporary installations and research residencies.

Works by Joanne Hummel are included in both public and private collections and she has a growing international collector base. Her work was featured in the Observer newspaper in an article titled ‘’Next Generation turns its back on Emin and Hirst’s conceptual artworks’ (May 201), and ‘Picking up a Picasso is one click away’ in the Times August 2013.

HUMMEL’S PRACTICE

“I set out with a phenomenological approach to making works in an attempt to understand states of anxiety and serenity in the realms of spontaneous decision making and predetermined systems. I run experiments where the process often determines the outcome and provides a safe arena for improvisation, a place where rational procedures can co-exist alongside intuition”.

Her approach could be defined as mixed-media, a talent where collage, paintings, and installations meet.

“Repetition and pattern is something that has developed instinctively as a way of eliminating anxiety from my studio practice. Its nature is cyclic and oscillates between order and disorder, uncertainty overpowering certainty and vice versa”.

The vivid messages of her artworks are hidden behind a geometry of feelings that moves continuously between quiet and noise. To Joanne, that’s the nature of human habits, a mixture of gesture which combined create all kind of social behavior.

JO HUMMEL website

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