The work of Argentinean freelance illustrator Gaston Caba featured worldwide in many exhibitions, websites, international magazines and publications.
In 2005 he made up the “Ping-Pong Remix” project, a big collaborative project in which he invited +70 of the best illustrators/designers around the world to remix his ping-pong characters into original artworks. Soon he´ll launch his own fashion brand named “Gaston Custom” based on Hong Kong and distributed worldwide.
Saiman Chow was born in Hong Kong and moved to the USA when he was 15.
Despite his degree in illustration, Saiman Chow mixes it up by playing with a multitude of media, such as watercolor, acrylic, computer, and collage, while he successfully juggles exhibitions of his personal artwork along with a list of corporate design clients, such as VH1, MTV, Fuel, and Nike.
Influenced by comic books, cartoons, and Japanese pop culture, he translates his colorful talent into motion graphics on a variety of award-winning projects.
Despite his degree in illustration, Saiman Chow mixes it up by playing with a multitude of media, such as watercolor, acrylic, computer, and collage, while he successfully juggles exhibitions of his personal artwork along with a list of corporate design clients, such as VH1, MTV, Fuel, and Nike.
Influenced by comic books, cartoons, and Japanese pop culture, he translates his colorful talent into motion graphics on a variety of award-winning projects.
Marc Craste is a senior animation director working at Studio AKA in London. Before coming to the UK in 1998, Marc worked extensively in animation studios in Sydney and in Copenhagen. Marc has designed and directed many award-winning commercials including memorable work for Orange, Compaq, Lloyds Bank and the much-admired ‘BIG WIN’ spot for the National Lottery. His 12 minute debut short film ‘JOJO IN THE STARS’ won the 2004 BAFTA for Best Animated Short Film - alongside a host of other international awards. His latest half-hour animated short, completed late 2008 in between commercials, is based on the book “Varmints”, written by celebrated children’s author Helen Ward and beautifully illustrated by Marc.
AJ Fosik creates sculptures of wood and found materials with an irresistible uncanny aura. In a process of arranging hundreds of individually cut, varnished, and painted pieces, he handcrafts artificial creatures, reduced and abstract animals with an anthropomorphic appearance. Familiar cultural icons and traditions are re-configured, confronting the viewer with cryptic symbols from overlapping sources. In such a way, AJ Fosik asks questions about the familiar and the uncanny, the relationship of art and viewer, nature, culture and history.
With a background in illustration at Parsons School of Design, AJ Fosik has exhibited in gallery shows in New York, Paris, Denver, and São Paulo.
With a background in illustration at Parsons School of Design, AJ Fosik has exhibited in gallery shows in New York, Paris, Denver, and São Paulo.
The Mexican illustrator Charles Glaubitz lives in Tijuana, which allows him to teach at nearby San Diego City College across the border. His work is influenced by ancient cultures, history, myth, alchemy, comic, spirituality, mysticism and Mexican pop culture.
Many of his drawings, acrylic paintings on canvas, collages and installations refer to archetypical narratives of destruction, final struggle and new creation. His work has been exhibited in the USA, Mexico and Spain and published in Rolling Stone Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, Texas Monthly, Complot and Juxtapoz Magazine.
The Finnish illustrator and artist Klaus Haapaniemi embraces the pagan Mysticism of his native culture, but instills it with distinctly contemporary
Twist. Perhaps it is the very wilderness of the local landscape that invokes the vividness of Finnish folklore: the extremity of the seasons – the awesome, terrifying proximity of nature – conjures up a magical parallel universe populated by worms, demons, trolls and monsters.
Twist. Perhaps it is the very wilderness of the local landscape that invokes the vividness of Finnish folklore: the extremity of the seasons – the awesome, terrifying proximity of nature – conjures up a magical parallel universe populated by worms, demons, trolls and monsters.
The international WGSN trend analysis service has dubbed him as one of the most important rising stars in illustration and design.
Boris Hoppek doesn’t say much but this seems to be because he’s working all the time. He creates characters and creatures, which he recycles in a continual process of variation, as dolls, installations, animation and graffiti. His iconic “Bimbo” character, bluntly refering to the racist imagery of mistrell shows, has reached a level of abstraction that enables it to re-appear in art shows, street art interventions and multi-million car campaigns alike.
As the German zeit-geist magazin De:Bug proclaims: “his Klukluxklan, bimbos, cannibals and Hitler figures are for everybody to love, all the time and everywhere…”
Sci-fi plastic surgery vixens, computer generated nymphs, bambi’s, voluptuous peaches, and yet more bambi’s. Faiyaz Jafri’s work has an almost clinically engineered feel to it without it being cold or soul-less. It is this contrast between unnatural perfection and the fact that his work conveys a strong emotion that makes his work at times haunting but always strangely human.
Jafri’s art has attracted commercial clients and has shown at art biennial in Turin, Italy - the Aluminium Art+New Technologies in Baku, Azerbaijan – Seno Guerriero in Bondeno, Italy – Kernel Panic in London, UK and at the Totem Gallery in New York, USA.
James Jarvis graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1995. Since then he has embarked on a busy career creating numerous characters and fantasy worlds for commercial advertising and magazine editorial.
Indeed, Jarvis is perhaps best known for his plastic creations which have helped shape the infant, but growing world of designer toys and collectible figures. He is responsible for a large cast of almost 100 characters, now forever immortalised in plastic. Having previously designed figures for others, he co-founded Amos Novelties Limited which is now the exclusive base for all of his toy figure work.
Indeed, Jarvis is perhaps best known for his plastic creations which have helped shape the infant, but growing world of designer toys and collectible figures. He is responsible for a large cast of almost 100 characters, now forever immortalised in plastic. Having previously designed figures for others, he co-founded Amos Novelties Limited which is now the exclusive base for all of his toy figure work.
Japanese artist Risa Sato was born 1972 in Tokyo and graduated 1999 from MFA Design, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Besides her drawings and installations, she has gained international recognition for her unique Risa Campaign series, an ongoing communicative approach between intervention, performance and documentation. The various incarnations of her Campaign have lead her from Japan to the US, often involving huge, balloonish characters. The seemingly weightless volume of these anthropomorphic creatures and their simple, organic forms stand in contrast to the hard corners of the metropolitan cities they appear in and often seem like friendly parasites to the real, human body.
Protey Temen is a graphic designer from Moscow. Starting as a teenager with designs for a book about plants and a magazine on animals, Protey discovered his real passion in urban motives. Fascinated by the city at night, the aura of neon, street advertisement and logos, he follows a typographic usage of geometry and colours. His work is a wild mix of constructivism, Pop, industrial design, computer graphics and psychedelics. He has worked for various clients, collaborated with magazines such as Rojo, Un Sedicesimo, or Amelia and for the promotion of parties and social services.
W+K Tokyo Lab is about hybrid culture, developing new experiences that can only be created in Tokyo, fusing a global mix of music, art, visuals and other forms of expression with a uniquely collaborative approach.
As director of W+K Tokyo Lab, +cruz oversees the labels entire visual output from directing music videos and DVDs to art directing and designing its packaging and online experiences.
As director of W+K Tokyo Lab, +cruz oversees the labels entire visual output from directing music videos and DVDs to art directing and designing its packaging and online experiences.
W+K Tokyo Lab’s creative output spans a wide range of audio visual experiences including design, art direction and commercial direction across a wide range of media.
With a wide array of fashion, performances, public happenings and workshops, Andrea Crews from Paris has emerged as one of the most outstanding projects at the intersection of art and fashion. In interactive happenings, she involves the public to create their own haute couture and present it on the catwalk. Simply equipped with a sewing machine and raw textiles, Andrea Crews creates simple forms and abstract shapes that reinvent the relationship between the human body and its clothings. Besides giving an insight to their wide array of production, Andrea Crews will host a workshop where everyone is invited to transform the body into a new breed of characters.
Anna Hellsgård and Christian ‘Meeloo’ Gfeller are the brains behind Bongout, a graphic design studio which runs its own silkscreen workshop and gallery in Berlin. They produce handmade limited edition books and other multiples in close collaboration with artists. Joined by Kottie Paloma from San Francisco, who handcrafts his ‘Books on Tape’, they will host an open studio for everyone to experiment with papers, pens, tapes and a multi-toner copy machine.
Bastard is about cultural identity. What started as a book of designers, travelling around the world to capture the impact of globalisation, has mushroomed into exhibitions and happenings. Lars Harmsen and André Rösler bring a classic fairground attraction to Pictopia: the shooting gallery. Try your hand at paintballing white characters and take part in an evolving, colourful ritual.
