We love: Bmd Design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bmd designConception graphique et direction artistique depuis 2001.

Le cliquetis des machines se fait entendre, l’odeur de l'essence pénètre dans nos narines, les lettres dansent et s'étirent, gorgées d’encre noire ou bleue, tracées par des mains expertes. Le travail de BMD nous projette aux États-Unis et en France, dans les années 1930. Pourtant, derrière ces trois lettres se cache Bruno, qui a créé son studio au début des années 2001. De sa formation de dessinateur de publicité à la fin des années 1980 au lycée Jolimont de Toulouse, le graphiste a gardé un amour pour le travail artisanal, celui d'avant l'ordinateur. Rotring, crayon à papier, cutter, colle, pinceau, roughs, composition manuelle, caractères au plomb... Travailler manuellement lui prend plus de temps mais lui permet de faire corps avec ce qu’il crée, de stimuler tous ses sens. Aujourd’hui, le fait main suscite un véritable engouement, et beaucoup de marques se tournent vers les valeurs qu’il véhicule. Authenticité, savoir-faire, retour aux racines, l'artisanat rassure et sécurise. Dans une société en crise marquée par l’individualisme et par des rythmes effrénés, le handmade humanise, comme un supplément d'âme... Des marques comme Nike, Levi’s ou encore Fuel Motorcycles ont fait appel à BMD Design pour sa capacité à intégrer les codes du vintage à une communication d’aujourd’hui. Logos, typos, pictos, Bruno fait et refait, trace, gomme et encre, poussant toujours plus loin sa quête d’un graphisme référencé. Afin de nourrir son vocabulaire visuel old school, il écume les archives françaises. Riches d’un patrimoine typographique considérable, elles sont sa principale source d’inspiration. Si l’ensemble de sa production respire les États-Unis, le travail de Bruno est résolument français par sa volonté de prolonger un héritage graphique. Ses créations regardent aussi bien du côté des lettrages sur porcelaine et des calligrammes d’Apollinaire que des archives industrielles qu’il déniche dans les brocantes et les bibliothèques. Constamment à l'affût des moindres signes ou indices typographiques, il les répertorie, les classe et les regroupe. C’est en passant ensuite par la main, par sa main, qu’il se les réapproprie.

 

We love: Bafefit

 

 

You can say this about Bafefit’s work: the black and white of his hand manage to contain all the colours with which it is possible to express the emotions». - Paris Match

This young talent, originally from Puglia, transplanted to Rome where he now lives and works. Bafefit’s works are characterised by his skilful use of the rapidograph: pen and ink which was initially created for technical drawing and which has been pushed to the extremes of its capabilities by artists. The portraits are of a world with a predominantly dark atmosphere and characters are caught between the thin line between life and death.

Bafefit is bestowed with an extraordinary inventive irony. He prefers to express his imagination working on late nineteenth century paper. The results are pictures capable of containing the narrative of real and living stories; placed in a particularly dark atmosphere congruous with the with the artist's vision. Skilled with ink, Bafefit is also known abroad, particularly in France, where he participated in the publication Métamorphose en bord de Ciel by Mathias Malziu, along with the artists Nicoletta Ceccoli, Ciou and Benjamin Lacombe.

Prior to his Paris exhibition, which opens its doors in May, over forty of Bafefit’s works will be exhibited in Mondo Bizzarro Gallery, in what is the first solo of “golden boy” of hyper-contemporary Italian art. This event promises to be exceptional and in addition to works on paper, a site-specific project will be presented. Quite the best way to approach the work of an original artist and visionary.

Bafefit was born in 1980.

His works have been published on 'DY' magazine (USA), "GRAB" and "Bang Art". His ink's works are often carried out on XIX century's paper bought at markets and antique shops.

 

We love: Andre De Freitas

Andre De Freitas and is a photographer and an illustrator.She studied in Full Sail University and got a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Animation. But oddly enough, the concept of stillness captured her imagination, and she focused more on illustration. Instead of just drawing, she tried to imagine myself taking photos of her subjects. That way the illusion of stillness would be a little more believable, almost like a photograph. After that, her insertion into the world of photography was almost based on instinct.

We love: Amelie

Respect to: Audrey Kawasaki

 

 

We are totally loving (and are ever so slightly creeped out by) Audrey's Skull!!

 

 

 

 

Audrey Kawasaki (born March 31, 1982^[ in Los Angeles, California) is a Los Angeles-based painter, known for her distinctive, erotically charged portrayals of young, adolescent women. Her works are oil paintings painted directly onto wood panels, and her style has been described as a fusion of Art Nouveau and Japanese manga, with primary influences like Gustav Klimt and Alphonse Mucha, saying quote “The merging of realistically molded faces and bodies against the contrast of flat lines and patterns is so stimulating to me.”

Kawasaki studied fine art painting for two years at the Pratt Institute in New York City, but left after two years without completing her degree. She has reported that several of her professors suggested that she should stay away from her particular style of painting nudes. She cites the emphasis in the New York art scene on conceptual art, an approach at odds with her figurative, illustrative style, as among the reasons she left.As of 2006, Kawasaki is considered a rising star in the Los Angeles art scene. In 2005, Kawasaki designed the cover art for Alice Smith's For Lovers, Dreamers & Me. In 2011, singer Christina Perri was tattooed with Kawasaki's painting, "My Dishonest Heart", by Kat Von D on an episode of LA Ink. Kawasaki has also been featured in several art magazines including Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz, and has started developing more commercial products such as phone skins and mint boxes.

(source-wiki)

Respect to: Utagawa Kuniyoshi

Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Spectre Invoked by Princess Takiyasha-hime
c. 1845

This triptych tells the story of the hero Ōyatarō Mitsukuni, who forces the evil Araimaru to the ground with his sword. By doing so, he drives out the giant skeleton spectre invoked by the sorceress Takiyasha-hime (on the left), and the enchanted palace Masakado collapses. Kuniyoshi’s masterful visual realization of the novel by Santō Kyōden (alias Kitao Masanobu!) already seems to anticipate the principles according to which images would be organized in modern manga.
F. Trikotin, La Tour de Peilz (November 1965)
Riese Collection #109

Taira Masakado was the rebellious third son of the Shōgun Taira no Yoshikado. In 939, after a lifetime of aggression and discontent, he finally declared himself shôgun, setting up a rival court in Kyōto. An expedition was sent out the following year and he was defeated and killed. According to legend, however, he left a daughter, Princess Takiyasha, to whom he had taught his magic and black arts, and who swore, upon her father’s death that she would destroy the ruling dynasty and be avenged. As she was preparing herself for this undertaking she was visited by a young warrior name Ōya Tarō Mitsukuni. Mitsukuni was loyal to the ruling clan, and had come to spy on Masakado’s descendents, but Takiyasha in her loneliness and fixity of purpose supposed that he had been sent in answer to her prayers to serve as an ally. To bind him in her service she made love to Mitsukuni, but all her blandishments were to no avail. When it became clear to her that he had no intention of helping her, that he was a spy and had discovered the secret of her plans for revenge, she realised that she must kill him, and summoning up all the magic arts at her command she tried. Mitsukuni remained resolute and undaunted and survived the ordeal. In this picture he is glaring fearlessly at a gigantic phantom skeleton which Takiyasha, a scroll of magic in her hands, as summoned forth. His sword is pinning down Araimaru, a surviving retainer of Masakado, perhaps now protecting his daughter. It was probably this very lack of fear, not disbelief, that rendered Takiyasha’s phantoms powerless, since all devils and monsters drink their power through our fear, and become, at last, insuperable. In showing Mitsukuni as a very young man, with his hair still tied behind in a pony tail, Kuniyoshi may have paid homage to the fearlessness and purity of youth, where an older man might have fallen to Takiyasha’s charms, or, failing that, become paralysed, and destroyed himself through fear.

Kuniyoshi’s immediate source was probably the kabuki play Yo ni Utō Sōma no Furugosho, a dramatisation of the Mitsukuni-Takiyasha story which was first performed in 1836, and was based in its turn on Utō Yasukata Chūgiden, a novel based in the life of Masakado by Santō Kyōden.
Reproduced in: Ingelheim catalogue, no. 95a.
Another impression is reproduced in Robinson, Kuniyoshi, pl. 43.

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