Jim Nutt

Jim Nutt

Coursing, 1966, acrylic and collage on plexiglas

Trim, 2010, acrylic on linen

Jim Nutt is a founding member of the Chicago surrealist art movement known as Chicago Imagists, or Hairy Who. His pop culture influence is evident in his work. He often paints fantasy, characters, and political commentary.

In his portraits, he paints expectations of faces instead of actual faces.  His faces could be compared to that which a child would draw. He uses mixed media and collage. They could be classified as cartoon versions of people, kind of remind me of Ren and Stimpy. His flat areas of color bring to mind digital versions of paintings.

The shapes of his figures could be compared to John Currin.

These two paintings have over a 40 year span but elements of distortion and strange shapes remain constant.

Tomory Dodge

Tomory Dodge

Mar-Eye-Ah, 2010, oil on canvas

Weekend, 2005, oil on canvas

Tomory Dodge uses a variety of approaches to painting on a single surface. He wants to emphasize the immediate experience of painting via abstraction.

Some of his pieces appear to be smudges and lines in somewhat of a Cubist fashion, although others have a clear representational subject. His strong use of color and line suggest energy and movement.

He chooses not to fit into a preconceived notion of painting and has a hard time accepting the last marks as the last. He can be classified as an abstract artist who challenges representation with his unusual and energetic painting style.

Lisa Yuskavage

Lisa Yuskavage

Edge of Towners, 2011, oil on linen

The Smoker, 2008, oil on linen

Lisa Yuskavage is a figurative painter who works with themes of re-emergence. She is concerned with the immediacy of contemporary life. Her engagement with the human form is representative of John Currin.

Adjectives of her female nude include lavish, erotic, cartoonish, vulgar, and angelic.

Formally, she places her figures in front of rich, atmospheric skies, so as to appear to occupy their own realm. Her lines and colors appear dreamlike.

Cecily Brown

Cecily Brown

Performance, 1999, oil on linen

Skulldiver III (Flightmask)

Cecily Brown's works ARE representational, although at first glance appear to be sloppy Rorschach-like ink blobs. Her paintings have been linked to Abstract Expressionism.

She creates expressive oil paintings of slippery body parts entwined, engorged, and ecstatic that form kaleidoscopically in the mind. She rides the line of abstraction, figuration, and pornographic abandon.

Her subject matter mainly centers around sexual pleasure, often public acts. She makes viewers question what they see by hiding her images in lavish folds of oil paint.

Lesley Vance

Lesley Vance

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Untitled, 2012, oil on linen

Lesley Vance has a highly personal and contemporary approach to painting, revisiting the traditional genre of still life in the form of exquisite abstraction.

She creates self-made objects as source material for her luminous shapes against darkened backgrounds. She uses oil on linen and watercolors. Her wet-on-wet technique is visually interesting.

Her work could appear non-representational but I see figures in some of her paintings - proof that the viewer determines the subject.

Albert Oehlen

Albert Oehlen

Piece, 2003, oil on canvas

Mirage of Steel, 2003, oil on canvas

Albert Oehlen's paintings are neither beautiful nor seductive. Their self-consciously brutal surfaces seem to be corrupted from within, a perversion of the paintings they might have been. Link to Saatchi Gallery. 

He combines aspects of figural sexuality, mechanical distance, and painterly abstraction. It is possible to find representations of objects or figures in his mostly-abstracted works, although he exposes the limitations of both.

Formally, puddles and washes convey a refracted, dreamlike sensibility. He plays with depth perception and foreground/background relationship. Some of his compositions seem rushed and crowded, while others seem discouragingly bare.

Other works not shown here are mixed media on panel, inkjet prints, and collaborative works with other artists.

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

Dispersion, 2002, ink and acrylic on canvas

Julie Mehretu's work combines aspects of cartography, architectural drawing, urban planning, and abstract painting. She creates energetic compositions with interesting lines and colored planes. Her art has been called animated urbanscapes.

She layers materials like Mylar, vellum, and semi-transparent paper. In addition to painting directly, she sprays acrylic medium with an airbrush.

Rather than classical renderings of environments, she presents them in unexpected ways, sometimes symbolizing not real space.

Her work has been discussed in terms of globalism: each individual layer can represent views and perspectives.

Jane Callister

Jane Callister

Yellow Falls, 2005, acrylic on paper

Jane Callister challenges notions of representation through her unique paint application process. Rather than painting onto the canvas, she pours and drips paint and other materials. In addition to questions of abstraction vs representation, she also challenges figure vs ground, color vs line, content vs form, and personal vs political.

Visually they include hard-edged drips, lacy stalagtites, and melted ice cream colors.

Her earlier works include representations of human bodies, but in her more recent works they are only implied. Now, she includes off-the-wall additions to her canvases.

Fred Tomaselli

Fred Tomaselli

Untitled (Expulsion), 2000, leaves, pills, mushrooms, photo collage, acrylic, and resin on wood panel

Gravity's Rainbow, 1999, leaves, pills, photo collage, flowers, acrylic, and resin on wood panel

Fred Tomaselli works with a variety of unorthodox materials in an attempt to transcend the banality of our everyday world. His life in Southern California has had a profound effect on his work, as he looks for a spiritual transport to the idea of "somewhere else". He includes themes inspired by Disneyland, music and drug culture, and wilderness.

His works are very aesthetically interesting. At first glance they appear to be patterns of paint on a wood panel, but they're actually composed of pot leaves, pills, wings, stems, petals, and photographs. He then uses acrylic paint and seals it with resin. The unusual materials reinforce the concepts of his paintings.

Wilhelm Sasnal

Wilhelm Sasnal

Girl Smoking (Anka), 2001, oil on canvas

Soldiers, 2001, oil on canvas

Wilhelm Sasnal modifies reality by painting banal situations and objects in unusual compositions. He borrows subjects from art history, 20th century propaganda, and photojournalism. He explores modern concepts of beauty in his portrait series. The cigarettes in the women's mouths represent self-destruction. Many of his paintings are contemporary versions of Pop Art.

He paints in a way that you can clearly see the medium is paint.

Very similar to Luc Tuymans.