Recent Realism Paintings Of Fabricated American Landscapes By Alex Roulette.

above: Alex Roulette, Airborne, Oil on Panel, 26"x 37", 2010

I first noticed Alex Roulette's impressive realism with his 2008 painting, Summer (shown below), which caught my eye because I have a thing for pool paintings.


above: Summer, Oil on Panel, 36"x48", 2008

This past year, Alex had a solo exhibition called Fabricated Realism at the George Billis Gallery in New York in which the 2010 paintings in this post were shown. His work continues to have great aesthetic appeal and in 2010, Alex played more with unusual light sources and effects in his work. Sun flares, reflections, snowflakes and other natural and fabricated lighting replaces the strong shadows prevalent in his 2007-2008 work.

At Swim, Oil on Panel, 28"x 42", 2010:

At the Lake, Oil on Panel, 20"x 21", 2010

Badlands, Oil on Panel, 30"x 38", 2010:

Chopping Wood, Oil on Panel, 24"x 34", 2010:

Jump, Oil on Panel, 24"x 38", 2010:

Swing Set, Oil on Panel, 15"x 15", 2010:

Parking Lot, Oil on Panel, 20"x 21":

Windmill, Oil on Panel, 30"x 44", 2010:

Unknown Lights, Oil on Panel, 45"x 36", 2010:


The above paintings are represented by George Billis Gallery, New York

The artists statement about his recent work: "Fabricated Realism"

My current series of paintings depict fabricated American landscapes. The invented landscapes arise from archetypal citations of past and present cultural influences. Placing figures into these landscapes is an attempt to take advantage of the viewer’s natural ability to extrapolate narratives. By creating the paintings using a conjuncture of various photographic references, I continue to explore the distinctions between photographic and painted space. The disjointed nature of the source images, contrasting with the way they are realistically unified, take on a contingent sense of reality.

Inventing landscapes allow memories of places and events to be fictionalized. Coalescing unrelated photographs is done in a way comparable to the process in which the mind synthesizes images when recollecting memories or imagining new images. As opposed to culling images from an abstract memory bank, I utilized tangible sources, many of which come from the vast image resources our contemporary culture offers. The current expanding abundance of accessible images is allowing the imagination to expand the ability to visualize unseen places.


gallery@georgebillis.com

Born in 1986, in Columbus, Ohio, Alex Roulette now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. To see his fabulous work from 2009 and before, visit his website

Drill Baby, A Narratively Tattooed Infant From Jason Clay Lewis.

Artist Jason Clay Lewis, whose unusual work I have blogged about before when I featured his Drop Dead Gorgeous exhibit and his wonderful engraved bullets, has given birth to yet another compelling project.



His "Drill Baby" (the name of which is undoubtedly a nod to Sarah Palin's oddly foreboding rallying cry "Drill, Baby, Drill") is a lifelike infant tatted with the victims and the symbolic perpetrators of the horrendous BP offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.


above: Drill Baby and detail, Jason Clay Lewis, 2010. 18 1/4" x 9 1/4" x 6 3/4"

Made with vinyl rubber, mohair, oil paint, plaster and aluminum armature, the hyper realistic-looking newborn seems to sleep blissfully and innocently as the images on his body tell us another story.




The infant has artfully drawn tattoos of some of the tragic oil spill's most innocent victims - Pelicans and Seagulls - along with the clicheéd tattoo imagery of Koi, swimming in blackened waters, aligning his arms.




On his right inner thigh is a clipper ship (a recurring theme in Jason's work representing plagues), complete with floating oil barrels and an idyllic deserted island blackened by an oil spill. An Eagle or Falcon, in the midst of attack made, talons exposed, swoops in on the infants left inner thigh.



Least subtle, is the image of a religious figure (the Virgin Mary is another icon the repeatedly appears in Jason's work) grasping a dripping gas nozzle, the representation of the product that is at the core of the political, economical and ecological tragedy. Notice that the infant's nipple becomes her breast.



Jason Clay Lewis' work often combines fetishes and death with religious symbolism. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Jason Clay Lewis