Beejoir
Based between two distinctively different cultures, Thailand and the UK, Beejoir draws on these differences to create powerful and distinctive work that references popular culture, the ‘super-brand’ and current global issues. He shot to fame in 2007 and has been gaining in popularity ever since.

Originally concentrating on paintings, prints and stencils to convey his messages; he has recently been setting the world on fire with his humorous yet incisive sculpture work.

Beejoir’s best known works include LV Child, Turin Scam and his dripping spot paintings. He works with painting, printmaking, sculpture, photography and stencils as his mediums. Contrasting visual elements and saturated colours make his work accessible and eye catching. One step beyond and the familiar, comfortable frame disappears often leaving the viewer immersed in considerations regarding the ultra-violent nature of the shiny happy people, the unsustainable way of living we are buried in and a huge feeling of guilt.

He has sold to hip hop artists, alphabet list celebrities, Royal family members and regularly has sell out shows in cities around the world.
United Kingdom/Thailand – b.1979

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How & Nosm
How and Nosm (Raoul and Davide Perré) are identical twin brothers known for their large scale murals and fine art that adorn city and galleries’ walls around the globe. Their initial signature style of red, black, and white-based imagery with the addition of grey and pink gradients is instantly recognizable and commands attention through the impressive size and the intricate detail. Initially the color palette was limited for practicality but instead became a distinct calling card and formal choice that has allowed these artists to push their style to a new level. In recent years the brothers have experimented and have added a few more colors to their palette.

Born in Spain, German in heritage, and residing in New York since 1999, their influence appropriately extends internationally. Whether you visit South America, Europe, Asia, or cities around the U.S. you will be likely to encounter their work. Commissioned and facilitated, they have become sought after artists, an ironic progression, where the outsiders have become insiders and are currently redefining what constitutes public art.

In 1988, the twins first encountered graffiti as young teenagers. Skateboarding and tagging were the influences until the aerosol can was first introduced and the range of colors and options seemed endless. The traditional letterform art of graffiti writing was learned and they earned their stripes painting names on trains together in the early ’90’s.

The closeness between the brothers is inspiring. They finish one another’s sentences much like they continue their lines on mural walls and studio work in sync without hesitation. One ends and the other begins, their complicated yet effortless contours twist and turn like a three-dimensional maze. There is a flow present that is part of this process that allows their individuality to merge for a unified statement. Something that seems essential for artists who work on a large scale.

The limited palette and complicated compositions in all their work is visually mesmerizing but once the viewer is over the magnitude of the accomplishment, the activities within the artwork keep you coming back for more. Their stylized characters often reflect everyday life as well global issues.
As you peel back one layer, another story is revealed that further complicates the message and meaning. A world that appears complex treated with respect, it’s as though a mirror is being held up to society, a dizzying effect that requires patience and time to unwind.

The aerosol can is paramount in all their public works and is the essential ingredient they use to raise this imagery to new levels. Precise execution and determination is what has driven them and has led them into the world of fine art. Their style is essentially who they are as artists and people as a grittiness is hidden beneath levels of thoughtful design and bold form.

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WK Interact
WK (aka WK Interact) was born in 1969 in Caen, France. He has lived and worked in New York since the early 1990s. WK is interested with the human body in motion, his paintings of figures frozen in a flight of movement reflects this infatuation. The artist’s unique process involves a technique of twisting an original drawing or photograph while it’s being photocopied, resulting in the monochromatic palette and streamlined moment-in-time appearance of his finished work. WK site-determines his placements by finding an appropriate location first, then his imagery is chosen specifically with a concern for encounters in an urban environment or “interactions” (as the artist indicates in his pseudonym). In the late 1990s his images began appearing on building facades in downtown Manhattan, complimenting the constant stir of bodies and the perpetual motion of contemporary urban life in the fast-paced city.

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Kai & Sunny
Kai & Sunny (born 1975 and 1977, respectively) are a UK based artist duo. They both graduated from the Epsom School of Art in Surrey, United Kingdom with degrees in Art and Design. They have collaborated with author David Mitchell, designer Alexander McQueen, artist Shepard Fairey and have won numerous accolades, including a 2012 D&AD Design Award, a 2015 LIA award and a 2019 Addy award. Works by Kai & Sunny have been exhibited internationally at institutions such as Haunch of Venison and are included in the Victoria & Albert Museum Print Archive Collection.

Past exhibitions include Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles; Stolen Space Gallery, London; Haunch of Venison, London; the Southbank Centre, London; Pertwee Anderson & Gold, London; Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles; Jonathan LeVine Gallery, New York and Colette, Paris.

Currently their work embraces the concept of change; flowing deconstructed landscapes are continuously moving taking you from one place to another. Creating dynamic movement through line and color shifts representing a driving action or force. The lines in the works push and pull each other as if caught in a state of flux whilst other areas are free and exude speed and energy. The process is a methodical building of thin intricate lines upon each other. The result showing powerful kinetic compositions while a delicacy remains. The lines can change your perception of the shape while the foreground and background invite you to float in-between the two.

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Mark Drew
Mark Drew is an Australian artist based in Tokyo since 2009, and co-founder of China Heights gallery (Sydney, AU). His artwork revolves around pop culture references, 90s rap samples and the visual side of music.

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Sergio Garcia
We, as humans, are naturally drawn to the unorthodox. I have always enjoyed the use of the unconventional as a base for my artwork. I enjoy creating art that people can relate to and that stimulates the creative subconscious. Not only to create an emotional relationship between art and viewer, but to conjure up questions of how and why. It is this desire to create a connection with the viewer that fuels my creativity.
My passion is creating a perfect balance of light and shadow. Light is the core of my artwork. Without light there is no art. Without art there is no life. Amen, brother.

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Alex Face
Patcharapol Tangruen, also known as Alex Face, is a well-known and influential graffiti artist in Thailand.

Alex studied architecture at Bangkok’s King Mongktut Institute of Technology. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree on a Department of Fine & Applied Arts. An interest in architecture led Alex Face to explore and wander the streets and alleys of Bangkok for abandoned buildings, buildings that he eventually used as a canvas to develop his street art and where he could express himself. He then created Alex Face, a character with an aged, disillusioned child’s face wearing animal costumes. Through his graffiti, Alex Face especially attempts to create a link with the urban population, the underprivileged of Bangkok and the provinces. He now includes images of penguins that have since become famous into his graffiti.

Alex consider himself as an artist with a social conscience. His current signature, a quizzical smoking baby who looks wise beyond his years at first glance cute but all the time worrying about the future of the world. The baby idea was inspired by the birth of his daughter. “The first time I saw her she looked angry or worried” he told me. It made him why she looked like that, causing him to reflect on the life she had ahead. “I thought are you not happy to be my daughter? Are you not happy to be in the world?” Ultimately this world changing personal event had caused Alex to consider the future and in particular to take stock of the changes happening in his own country, the country in which she would grow up.

He draws the baby with a third eye, as well: “I believe in the spirit, that is how I grew up, I feel the spirit” he says. The third eye in his drawings represents another dimension “it’s something that we can feel but can’t see with two eyes so I add the third eye which can see what we can’t”.

He lives in Thailand.

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Shepard Fairey
Expanding on the legacies of artists such as Keith Haring and Andy Warhol, Shepard Fairey’s practice disrupts the distinction between fine and commercial art. A major artist of the street art movement, Fairey rose to prominence in the early 1990s through the dispersion of posters, stickers, and murals, related to his Obey Giant campaign, which yielded an international cultural phenomenon. Fairey’s iconic poster of President Barack Obama was adopted as the official emblem associated with the presidential campaign and encapsulates a number of recurring concerns in the artist’s work, including propaganda, portraiture, and political power.

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Tim Kerr
Tim Kerr (born 1956) is an American musician, visual artist and photographer.

Kerr was born March 11, 1956 and raised in Texas, now living in Austin, Texas. His first art award was winning a fire prevention poster contest in elementary school. He moved to Austin after high school graduation where still resides with his wife Beth. He earned a degree in painting and photography at the University of Texas in Austin and studied the latter with Garry Winogrand. Tim was awarded a Ford Foundation Grant while at UT.

Tim’s art is included on album covers, posters, skateboard graphics, and advertisements. A book devoted to Tim’s art has been reissued through Monofonus Press.

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Okuda San Miguel
Okuda’s distinctive style of geometric harmonies emboldened with intense colors can make his artworks feel like they’re from a parallel universe.
In his work, rainbow geometric architectures blend with organic shapes, bodies without identity, headless animals and symbols that encourage reflection in artistic pieces that could be categorized as Pop Surrealism with a clear essence of street forms. His works often raise questions about existentialism, the universe, the infinite, the meaning of life, and the contradictions of society’s false freedom, showing a conflict between modernity and our roots; ultimately, between man and the same.

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Ludo
Born in the suburbs of Paris.
Around 30 years old.
Continues to live and work mostly in Paris.
Studied art in Milan.

The work of Paris based Ludo, often called Nature’s Revenge, connects the world of plants and animals with our technological universe and “quest for modernism”. It speaks about what surrounds us, what affects us and tries to highlight some kind of humility.

Drawn with the precision of botanical illustrations, Ludo’s new order of hybrid organisms is both elegant and fierce. Armoured vehicles spawn stag beetle horns; carnivorous plants bare rows of hunting-knife teeth; bees hover, hidden behind gas masks and goggles; automatic weapons crown the head of sunflowers; human skulls cluster together like grapes.

Ludo’s work aspires to jolt us out of a longstanding collective denial: despite repeated natural disasters, we refuse to acknowledge our own fragile state.
Humanity’s reign on this planet is a dangerous and fleeting illusion.

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Ferris Plock
Ferris Plock is a San Francisco-based artist who lives within the city with his wife, Kelly Tunstall (Plock’s partner in the artistic duo KeFe), and son Brixton. Plock brings a dedicated focus to his work that is paired with a wild sense of originality. Through a variety of mediums including acrylic, watercolor, spray paint, India ink, gold or silver leaf, and collage Plock creates highly detailed works, often character-based paintings on wood panel, that combine contemporary pop culture with the aesthetic of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblocks. Widely-accomplished and with a diverse range of artistic interests, Plock has created illustrations for many high-profile clients, has been involved in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and abroad, and also served as the 2010 SF Recology Artist in Resident.

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Jeremy Fish
Jeremy Dan Fish, born in Albany New York, 1974.
“At first glance, Fish’s images seem to be rooted in an alternate world — a world where gnomes travel via saddled dachshund-back and birds of all nations hatch adorned with the heads and hairstyles of every human stereotype imaginable. The bold, precise outlines give his ideas an immediate impact, but it’s the aftertaste that really cuts deep. Everything comes with a story. I have never known Jeremy to create something without a reason for it to exist and an accompanying tale. His pictures are built from the simplest ingredients, ingredients with which the everyman can identify. I’ve been around the world and met a lot of “artists” who eat, shit, and breathe inside a bubble of self-aggrandizement, armies of yes-men at their sides ready to toot the bugles for every flimsy “breakthrough” they put forth. Jeremy Fish avoids that typecasting by boiling his intentions down to their most elemental forms: he makes pictures, he makes a lot of them, he makes them for himself, he makes them for the people, and he makes them from the heart. I am proud to say that I look up to him. You should too.” –Aesop Rock

With a degree in painting and a focus in screenprinting Jeremy’s education and work experience has lead to a career as a fine artist, and a commercial illustrator. Finding a balance between exhibiting his work both across the US, and internationally in galleries and museums. while maintaining a presence designing skateboards, t-shirts, viynl toys, album covers, periodical illustrations, murals, and sneakers. The artwork is mainly about storytelling and communication, told through a library of characters and symbols. With an emphasis on finding a balance with the imagery somewhere between all things cute and creepy. Jeremy is based in North Beach aka little italy, and has lived in San Francisco for the last 20 years.

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Mike Giant
Birth, Upstate New York, 1971. Drawing. Cycling. New Mexico, 1979. Heavy Metal. Skateboarding. Punk Rock. Hip-Hop. First Job: McDonald’s. Scotland, England, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, USSR. Honors Graduate, 1989. Thailand. Architecture Student At University Of New Mexico. Dishwashing Jobs. Raves. Lorelei. Stop Eating Meat. First Tattoo. Think Skateboards, SF, 1993. Dharma. Angi. London, 1998. Adult Bookstore Employee. Computer Animation Job. Start Tattooing. First Tattoo Shop Job: East Side Inc, NYC, 1999. Newskool Tattoo, San Jose. The Skullz Press Founded, 2000. Everlasting Tattoo. Track Bikes. Brooke And Leia. Tattoo 13, Oakland, 2002. Plum Village, France. Stay Gold Tattoo Founded, Albuquerque. REBEL8 Founded, 2003. Manifestations Book. Australia. Eternal Book. Megan. El Salvador. Amsterdam, 2008. Skullz Press Store, SF, 2009. Los Angeles, 2013. Boulder, 2014. Lauren. Motorcycling. Right Here. Right Now.
Currently resided in San Diego, CA

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Faith XLVII
Liberty Du, who is widely recognized as Faith XLVII, is a South African Multi-Disciplinary Artist.

Her journey into art began on the streets of South Africa in 1979, as a young graffiti writer taking on the name Faith47 (the number being a reference to her grandmothers numerological theorem). In 2006, Liberty began on a nomadic journey which has brought her to create works in 39 countries and, in 2017, saw her relocating to Los Angeles, USA.

Her evolution from street artist to a multi-disciplinary artist has created a fluid yet solid bridge into the contemporary art world. This explorative approach has led her to develop a broad range of artwork. This ranges from immersive new media installations and hand-sewn wall tapestries deconstructing notions of value and place, to sculptural bronze works investigating hierarchies of power, paintings and a variety of fine art prints.

The thread of Liberty’s practice can be traced from abandoned structures, landmark 20 story buildings to museums and galleries all the way through to intimate site-specific installations.

One can observe in Liberty’s approach evidence of her own personal quest, which in turn brings to the forefront much larger concerns of universal social and political complexities. Through the use of these various mediums, Liberty finds a unique series of poetic tones that lend their voice to her expression. There is a longing for a deeper connection to nature, and a resurrection of the divine feminine. There is too the active investigation and questioning of the human condition, its deviant histories and our own inherent existential search.

This all serves to imbue her narratives the ebb and flow between pain and contemplation, imploring us to examine our place in the world.

Today, her artwork can be found in the several private and public collections including: Universal Studios in Los Angeles, Lighthouse Properties in Philadelphia and the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation in South Africa,. She has shown at the Calais Museum of Fine Art and the Bernard Magrez Foundation in France, Mana Contemporary and the Brooklyn Museum, both in the USA.

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Hush
Formally trained for five years at the Newcastle school of art and design, HUSH took to painting after years spent working as an art director in the Far East. His work translates directly from street to gallery; recent sold-out shows include Fatales at Lazarides, London, Unseen at Corey Helford, Los Angeles and Sirens at Metro, Melbourne. His collaborations include a range with luxury watch brand Hublot and he was featured in The Independent newspaper’s 2008 list of “Twenty Up and Coming Artists.”

Hush’s unique style, recognisable through its focus on the female form set within backgrounds filled with an expressionist’s freedom of layering and colour. The serene balance of traditional painting is combined with a messier passion, influenced by Western traditions of action painting and graffiti, culminating in a harmony that feels surprisingly natural.

The artist’s mark-making bears the distinct aesthetic of tagging, bringing the rough texture of street art into each piece. Swift gestural marks underlie splashes of paint, looping through lines and over bright combinations of colour. With an in-depth technique that includes painting, screen printing and spray-painting, Hush creates work that instantly draws the eye in and holds the viewer’s focus. Patterns ranging from geometric repetition to florals that conjure up images of royal tapestries and delicately decorated vases are not solely confined to the background but often take shape, forming graceful fabrics. In some works these shapes appear solidly, while in others the central figures are only lightly delineated from the waves of pattern, body and background blending, as if they are sinking into the colourful composition itself.

HUSH has exhibited extensively across the globe for the past 15 years, including galleries in Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, London, Basel, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin.

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VHILS
Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto (b. 1987) has been interacting visually with the urban environment under the name of Vhils since his days as a prolific graffiti writer in the early- to mid-2000s.

His groundbreaking bas-relief carving technique – which forms the basis of the Scratching the Surface project and was first presented to the public at the VSP group exhibition in Lisbon in 2007 and at the Cans Festival in London the following year –, has been hailed as one of the most compelling approaches to art created in the streets in the last decade.

This striking form of visual poetry, showcased around the world in both indoor and outdoor settings, has been described as brutal and complex, yet imbued with a simplicity that speaks to the core of human emotions. An ongoing reflection on identity, on life in contemporary urban societies and their saturated environments, it explores themes such as the struggle between the aspirations of the individual and the demands of everyday life, or the erosion of cultural uniqueness in the face of the dominant model of globalised development and the increasingly uniform reality it has been imposing around the world. It speaks of effacement but also of resistance, of destruction yet also of beauty in this overwhelming setting, exploring the connections and contrasts, similarities and differences, between global and local realities.

Vhils grew up in Seixal, an industrialised suburb across the river from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and was deeply influenced by the transformations brought on by the intensive urban development the country underwent in the 1980s and 1990s. He was particularly inspired by the way city walls absorb the social and historical changes that take place around them. Applying his original methods of creative destruction, Vhils digs into the surface layers of our material culture like a contemporary urban archaeologist, exposing what lies beyond the superficiality of things, making visible the invisible and restoring meaning and beauty to the discarded dimensions buried beneath.

Since 2005, he has presented his work in over 30 countries around the world in solo and group exhibitions, site-specific art interventions, artistic events and projects in various contexts – from working with communities in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to collaborations with reputed art institutions such as the EDP Foundation (Lisbon), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Barbican Centre (London), CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), or the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego), among others. An avid experimentalist, Vhils has been developing his personal aesthetics in a plurality of media besides his signature carving technique: from stencil painting to metal etching, from pyrotechnic explosions and video to sculptural installations. He has also directed several music videos, short films, and one stage production.

His unique approach and artwork have been garnering critical acclaim around the globe.

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Emek
Emek graduated with a Major in Art, and a Minor in Unemployment. His first poster commission was done immediately after the L.A. riots/uprising of 1992, for a unity rally and concert held on Martin Luther King Day. “On scratchboard, I depicted an image of Martin Luther King Jr., rising above a concert crowd. No copies of this poster remain, but it does hold special meaning for me as the seed of my career”.

In Emek’s posters, psychedelic ’60s imagery collides with ’90s post-industrial iconography. To this collision of the organic vs. the mechanical worlds he adds humor, social commentary and fantasy. Even in the smallest details there are messages. All of Emek’s artwork is originally hand-drawn and then hand- silkscreened for each actual concert or event, usually in limited editions of around 300.

You can order one of these before he becomes really famous, or really homeless. So far, his unique visual style has graced music posters on a diverse musical spectrum, from Blues legend B.B. King to the Beastie Boys. He has painted album covers for Neil Young and Pearl Jam as well as for many punk and alternative bands. He was invited to exhibit at the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame “History of Rock Posters” exhibition and has been featured in national and international magazines. As you read this, his work is permanently displayed in Hard Rock Cafes… Over the last decade, Emek’s work has been shown in galleries across the United States, in Berlin, London and Tokyo. In December 2007, Billboard named the top 25 rock posters of all time. EMEK garnered 3 spots on the list, the most of any single artist.

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