written October 29th, 2009 · 0 comments

Yesterday I went to the Illustrative Berlin show with my friend and saw some great stuff! Here’s an overview of the artists who participated (although all are not listed).

The first artist that caught my eye was CIOU from France, I think (her website is biography-less). The pieces she exhibited were so finely painted, I had to view the paintings so close to see some of the finest lines. She paints fantastical female characters with a bit of a punk/death/dark side to them. The canvases were initially covered with collaged newspaper that was varnished with a brownish yellow color and then the characters were painted over that. There seemed to be so many layers and the detail was fascinating. Such gems! Check out some other work of hers (images from her website):

Good Wives + Warriors had another piece I liked. The artists behind the production are Becky Bolton and Louise Chappell. It looked like they had used a combination of pens, markers and ink to do their detailed black and white drawings. The piece exhibited was a microscopic view of a natural looking yet imaginary world similar to this one:

Some more pieces from their website that I like:

Mario Hugo had this beautiful piece in the show, a personal project from 2007:

The two realistic portraits were so delicately drawn and I love the funny abstract characters, especially the tree man. Hugo has such a fine sense of line. The materials used for this are graphite, acrylic and china ink on found paper. Some of his other work I got from his website is below.

Roman Bittner had a super cool piece in the show. There were about 6 panels of white illustration board that had been carved by a fine laser to create drawings that were like snippets out of a comic strip. It was quite beautiful to see something with that much detail all in white and you could easily read the dialog because of the shadows of the cuts. There is nothing to see on his website right now. It’s under construction.

Some paintings (digital paintings I think), which I really enjoyed were by Christian Montenegro, an artist from Argentina. I actually found the pieces that were in the show on this gallery’s  website where his work was exhibited before. The characters he developed in these pieces are so fun and I am a huge fan of his color palette. I love the texture, layers and feeling of transparency and the geometry of his style. These reminded me of Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s portraits of the seasons from 1573. Here is his website for more information.

Vertumnus, god of the seasons by Giuseppe Arcimboldo:

Some other pieces of Christian Montenegro’s that I enjoy:

Diego Lorenzini’s beautiful sketches made an appearance at the show, which I knew from the Johanssen Gallery in Berlin (I saw his show there a few months back). He draws with what I think is a simple ball point pen and sometimes a pencil and he creates with those materials work with such an incredible line quality. You really have to get close to the drawings to see how fine they are and how he is able to graduate the weight and darkness of the lines. It is breathtaking. Beautiful beautiful stuff. Here are some examples from the gallery’s website:

There were a few nice pieces from Olaf Hajek, a German illustrator. I like the style of his paintings. There is tons of texture and motifs in his work, muted yet vibrant colors, and his characters are drawn so delicately and in a charming style. I found the following images on his website.

There was a book of Martin O’Neill’s work in the show. This was the first time I had ever heard about this collage artists and his work is fascinating to me. Being a crazy collage lover, I was just drooling over his pieces. He apparently has a massive collection of material for his collages that (maybe) all began when we was studying in Germany. Read this:

This sounds like heaven!!! Man I would love to come across something like that. I wonder how he’s gotten around copyrights. Obviously, when you find old photos, there isn’t any question, but images from ads, books or magazines…I wonder about all that. Check out his website for more info and images. Oh I love this stuff!

Well these were all the warm fuzzy feelings and names I brought home with me yesterday. I hope you all have enjoyed my finds! I am most definitely inspired:)