Focus: This Week's top 5 Artists to Watch
At a time where social distancing measures have left museums and galleries largely closed, digital art-making has taken on a heightened state of importance within the art world. Several art galleries and museums are commissioning digital-based projects, and digital exhibitions have been cemented as a status quo for much of this year. For this reason, I’ve chosen to share with you all some digital artists whose work I’ve found challenging, inspiring or provoking over these past few months.
Sayaka Katsumoto
Sayaka is an artist, filmmaker and anthropologist currently based in Berlin, Germany. Her work often explores historical events, primarily form the post-war period in Japan, including terrorism, cult movements and contemporary religious organisations.
Her work Peace | Lemon, 2020 has recently caught my eye, both for its aesthetically mesmerizing production and its sinister yet enlightening story.
Her work can be found: https://sayakakatsumoto.com/about
Chenyu Lin
Chenyu is a fine artist and filmmaker currently based in South Chicago. During quarantine, Lin made some exceptional works documenting in humorous style the process of decay, done so through the juxtaposition of the artist working from home alongside a time-lapse of a rotting banana.
Browning Banana, his recent work, can be found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az3KSdD9GG8
And his artist page can be found here www.alinalinalin.com
Celeste Mountjoy aka Filthyratbag
Filthyratbag is somewhat of an internet sensation who recently breached into the fine art world. She is a Melbourne based illustrator and comic whose amusing observations are regularly distributed to her large audience base through her Instagram account. Often rendering simple digital illustrations, her work is sure to spread joy, cynicism, hope and guaranteed humour.
Her work can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/filthyratbag/?hl=en
Tom White
Tom White is a New Zealand based artist, researcher and lecturer whose work examines artificial intelligence. His recent projects include Perception Engines and Synthetic Abstractions.
Tom’s eye-catching and sometimes mind-boggling work has been on my radar for some time. He investigates the ‘Algorithmic Gaze’, defined as how machines see, understand and articulate the world, by incorporating machines into his artmaking process.
His projects can be found here: https://medium.com/@tom_25234
And a deeper investigation into his recent projects can be found: https://aiartists.org/tom-white#:~:text=Tom%20White%20is%20a%20New%20Zealand%20based%20artist%20investigating%20artificial,of%20Wellington%20School%20of%20Design.
Orfeo Tagiuri
Last on the list for this round is Orfeo Tagiuri, a London based American artist whose cynical
and humorous performance works have been picked up recently by significant institutions such
as the Palais De Tokyo.
Tagiuri works as a videographer, performance artist and fine-artist, and his work has a comical
aesthetic which surreal and cunning underlying themes.
Some of my favourites include The Biggest Light Of All, 2019, which can be found here:
https://vimeo.com/319352399 and imagined/remembered sexual acts drawn with eyes closed, 2016.
Taguiri’s website can be found here:
https://www.orfeotagiuri.com/ and his
instagram is: https://www.instagram.com/orfeot/
See you next time!
Emerson Radisich is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Melbourne, Australia.