First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 12, and soon our “Turn The Page: The First Ten Tears of Hi-Fructose” retrospective at Virginia MOCA, Scott Hove is an unforgettable name for his decadent, yet nightmarish “Cakeland” series that includes snarling ‘taxidermied’ cakes and elaborate installations. But his works are more than just a sweet experience. Hove’s use of dualistic imagery in the cakes’ fangs, horns and switchblades are there to add psychological depth and force the viewer to choose how to integrate the dark elements into the lightness of the cake. For years, the Los Angeles based artist’s primary goal has been to make the experience as “satisfying” as possible, which makes his latest project all the more savory.
Kim Yun Soo is a Korean multi media artist whose work spans from mixed media sculpture and installations to photography, but perhaps her most compelling work is an ongoing series of PVC footprints, dramatically transformed into surreal mountainscapes. Since 1999, Soo has been collecting the fingerprints and footprints of her close friends and acquaintances, recording their unique shapes and spirals and giving them a new dimension inspired by the natural world. Many of her works resemble a wave, where a single footprint ripples out into stacked shapes and contours, forming a sort of topographical map of their owner that she arranges in simple displays.
Austrian artist Klaus Pinter explores the potential of the space around us with his fantastical floating installations. Usually suspended in mid air, his giant artworks are at once light, fluid, soft, and mechanical. They are also incredibly bizarre, created using a combination of different textures and inflatable materials like plastic and nylon. Many who see his works describe them as curious flying machines and angelic cocoons, speaking to the artist’s ability to alter our perceptions, even the way we see famous landmarks from the Pantheon in Rome to the Seine waterway in Paris.
In the imagination of 1986, Frankenstein creatures made of sheeps’ skulls, spoons and scrap metal inhabit a world populated by steel flowers and paper birds. Georgie Seccull (aka 1986) is the Melbourne-based artist behind the fantastic installations, whose gigantic scale and raw aesthetic are reminiscent of prehistoric times. Using a combination of salvaged and recycled materials, 1986 builds installations with eccentric materials like computer parts and utensils for the wings of beetles. By merging organic matter like bamboo leaves, acorns and kumquats with modern instruments used in technology and mechanics, 1986 hurls forces of the past and future together to create otherworldly beings in the present.
To Japanese sculptor Toshihiko Mitsuya, aluminum foil is not just for baking. The artist has found a way to build shining sculptures and installations made entirely out of this unexpected material. His latest installation is “The Aluminum Garden”, a “garden” comprising of 180 smaller sculptures or as he calls them, “structural studies of plants.” The garden was designed specifically for Studio Picknick’s space in Berlin, Germany to coincide with Berlin Art Week.
First featured in Hi-Fructose Vol. 8, and soon, our exhibition with Virgina MOCA in 2016, Barnaby Barford builds vignettes and installations out of found figurines that he cuts up and reassembles. The objects he uses for his materials are some that most people would dismiss in their original form, but Barford’s art makes them relevant and alluring. For his latest installation, “Tower of Babel”, the artist’s process began when he cycled over 1,000 miles to photograph facades from each of London’s postcodes.