Natasha Adrastea – Fishes and tales and a fisherman’s daughter (2017)
To become truly
immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common
sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will
enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.
— Giorgio de Chirico (via blackshivers)
Musubu Nakai – Untitled (2012)
I really like this guy’s style. His compositions tend to be too busy but he has an interesting way of parsing things so that although his stuff is frequently overwhelming, it does surrender to a sort of implicit ordering structure after the initially dismaying over-stimulation.
Consider the variegated pointillism of the color here, the green red and blue of the wall, the complementary cover of the book from which the boy is reading. The subdued pink and blue of her skin; the blue of his shorts and the bluw in the pants of the person standing at the edge of frame. The red, blue and hints of green in the floor tiles.
I am, however, not 100% on-board with some of his content. The cat–which seems to be the way he inserts himself into his paintings and the young woman with her eyes closed are almost certainly a veiled reference to Balthus. (Which is very much in line with the work he’s done… notable projects include illustrating The Story of O and a lot of stuff that looks more or less like a cross between Sailor Moon and Alice in Wonderland.)
I don’t have a problem with artists depicting age appropriate sexual curiosity. Some of the aspects of this strike me as unsettlingly suggestive. The way she is naked and he isn’t suggested a sexual freedom, whereas he’s forced to hide his erection behind the book. It’s presented as a sort of seduction. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s problematic.
But what I find unnerving is the orderly type figure standing off to the side. As if this exchange is being monitored somehow? Which given what is shown–there’s no way to spin that in a slap on the wrist sort of way. I’m not going to say that this crosses a line but it’s definitely toeing it in a way that feels irresponsible to me, somehow.
Acetylene Eyes 