We love the paintings by Philip Jones. The artist showed recently at VEGAS Gallery at a group exhibition curated by Anny Baranova.

‘It has become hard not to notice how worlds of Art and Fashion are so intertwined. Nietzsche wisely noticed that all life came down to arguments about taste. Susan Sontag provided us a definition on camp and its predilection to artifice and love for vulgarity. When speaking of fashion connotations in art mixed with references to sexuality, especially in figurative paintings, Philip Jones is the perfect example to elaborate on.
The work of Philip Jones fuses eccentric characteristics, dandyism, mythological and almost fairy tale-like symbolism. In series of works such as ‘Dandies’, he brings the viewer back into the epoch of Oscar Wilde a time when aesthetics, effeminacy and sexuality swirled around in a rather undefined cloud, distinctly sexually suspect, but never really daring to speak its name. Such extravagant mixes of symbols, hints of kitsch and ostentation echo works by Jeff Koons who uses a playful, toy-like and rather ironic approach in his art pieces. Bright and rich colors provide another dimension to the paintings, allowing the audience to indulge in its beauty. Whether we are looking at an object of sexual desire or a mythological character, we’re not entirely sure.
In his works Philip Jones brings us into the fairy tale of pure beauty and esthetic pleasure where each element of the painting turns the spectator into a child curious to find out the plot of the magic story. And Philip Jones knows how to do so in a very fashionable manner.’ text by Anny Baranova, excerpt from ‘Baranova’s Journal’

In April, VEGAS gallery will show brand new sculptures by the fabulous Dutch artist-duo Heringa/Van Kalsbeek

Chips with Everything

The exhibition is curated by Ken Pratt, the independent curator of London’s new Dutch Cultural Pop-Up Space - a centrally located white-walled gallery. The Space has plans for a broad programme of exhibition/display activities showcasing the best examples of Dutch contemporary art, craft, architecture, media, performed arts and design culture.

Ken Pratt is keen to show how the work of the three studios concerned, Baked Beans, Circus Family and Minivegas, can span both commercial and more ‘art’-based projects, blurring the boundaries between the two. The curator explains. ‘Drawing inspiration from the media-saturated world around them and making use of its techniques, the presented studios underscore a certain Dutch contemporary digital design tendency to make little distinction between the worlds of street culture and the aspirations of serious contemporary art, design or cinema. Skateboarding or the worlds of Japanese anime may mingle with multimedia design seriously informed by mid-twentieth century Dutch Modernism.’

Circus Family is an audiovisual design studio based in Amsterdam who specialize in motion design, animation, visual effects, and live action production. Launched in 2004, the studio has produced numerous short films, in-store presentations, music videos, documentaries, commercials and animations.

What started off as a platform of freelancers all working in the photography, film and graphic design world and with a mutual interest in the snow, skate and surf business eventually evolved into a full-blown design studio with clients such as Nike, Sony, Onitsuka Tiger and MTV Networks.

Minivegas works on commercial projects, such as a viral ad campaigns for Police sunglasses, Nissan cars and for the new Star Wars: The Clone Wars for Lucas Arts that’s just been released across all the gaming platforms. Luc Schurgers co-founder of the Dutch-British collective Minivegas explains, “The Star Wars project was a dream come true, as since we were kids Star Wars has been one of our favourite things. We’d never imagined we’d actually get to work on a project that would require us to rebuild the droids and AT-RTs! After an intense one-day shoot the real work began…We had to create, animate and render these robots true to the Star Wars nature.” There was a lot of consultation needed on what would be possible and what wouldn’t during the animation process and Minivegas often had to call on the one person at Lucas Arts who knew all the answers – known to the team as Yoda, after the wise old Jedi Master who appears in so many of the films. Baked Beans, a new visual effects and animation studio launched only six months ago in Amsterdam, handled the post-production. Another big project for Minivegas was an AIDS awareness campaign for French television.

On the art side, Minivegas have been working on interactive, more art-based projects. At first glance, ‘Johnny Rotten’ is black-framed vintage mirror, of the kind seen in many a stately home. However, this one is interactive - on the puce-pink screen a writhing worm with a robotic head whose eyes seem to follow you round the room. Dan Lewis from Minivegas explains how hidden in the mirror is camera and face-recognition software that has been trained to search out faces. As you draw closer to the mirror (and it recognizes a face more clearly), the robot becomes more aggressive - the head enlarges, the eyes flash red and flames of fire leap up from the mirror’s depths. Dan says that the robotic head was inspired by Luc’s memories of the graphic identity of Rotterdam Terror Corps, the city’s well-known gabber group whose hardcore live music rose to fame in the mid 90s.

‘Johnny Rotter’ first appeared at Art Rotterdam in 2009 and is currently being further developed. Dan would like to see it in a hotel lobby - its eyes following passing visitors and perhaps greeting them (or should that be spooking them) with a wry comment.

The exhibition is open Thursday to Saturday 12.00 to 18.00

The Dutch Cultural Pop-Up Space
40-42 Riding House Street
London, W1W 7ET

On Friday the 29th of January we did a presentation at the National Center for Computer Animation. We talked about a few recent projects, showed some CG robots and demonstrated our real-time graphics projects. It was nice to be back in Bournemouth, but I couldn’t believe that it was almost 9 years ago since I studied there. Time goes fast…

Vegas Gallery is proud to present the second exhibition in our brand new space on Vyner Street, London:
Peeping Tom, a group exhibition curated by Keith Coventry with works by 76 artists including Tracey Emin, Claire de Jong, Mat Collishaw, Michael Landy, Tim Noble & Sue Webster and Keith Tyson.

Lisa Yuskavage’s exquisite, romantic in an erotic way; fragile paintings echo Renaissance due to the effort she gives to the craftsmanship. Her compositions are vastly considered and thought through; there is no space for spontaneity and accidents in the final result of each piece. Yuskavage’s creative process is deeply influenced by Jocopo Tintoretto, Italian sixteenth century artist, and, of course, by Michelangelo: when preparing to paint, Yuskavage makes three-dimensional models of her characters in the piece. By doing so, artist is able to study the body from various angles in relation to lighting and other figures in the composition. Furthermore Lisa photographs the models and only then makes her sketches with ink, pencil or pastel.
Light is prevalent in her paintings and Yuskavage uses its qualities to set the mood in the scenery, which creates intimate and even innocent atmosphere so crucial to her works.
Slightly pornographic images are not portrayed as obscene or perverse and artist achieves that with use of soft almost pastel colors, playful mystery of transparent curtains or background landscapes (mountains, moon etc.) and almost cartoon-like character and their positions.
In her works, Yuskavage explores themes of female sexuality, romantic (hetero / homo-sexual) relationships and beauty. She aims to make the viewer see what is happening behind the closed doors of a woman.

text by Anny Baranova

Boo Ritson has an peculiar way of making her works where she involves models into the creation process of her paintings and applies materials right on their skin and clothes and take photographs of the end result. Such interactive process generates more life and character into her art works. Each work has its own narrative, chosen by the artist and usually involves motifs of American life and culture: diners, gas stations, American fast food such as doughnuts and hot dogs. Those elements echo road trips around America that artist is fascinated by.
Boo Ritson takes photographs of her models before the paint dries which creates the shiny glossy effect as well as gives artist little time for radical decisions that she often undertakes. In doing so, artist challenges herself and the process of creating each piece becomes a little game where the more decisions she takes to bring the work to life before the paint dries, the better. Each work takes from half-an-hour or over an hour.
Artists prefers to paint people that she knows and have worked with before as her creative process requires knowledge of physical bone structure and in what way paint will be applied. Therefore each creative process provides the artist with a ‘learning curve’.
Choosing the colour is essential to Ritson’s work and her predilection for bright colours is obvious, however recently artist became fascinated with applying white to certain parts of her models to give it the ‘unfinished’ effect. This gives her portraits a sculptural look and echoes marble statues.

text by Anny Baranova

When I think about my favorite artistic duo Pierre et Gilles my mind gets overwhelmed with excessiveness, glamour, eccentricity and queerness. Themes of sex, homoeroticism and male nudity are intertwined with Greek mythology, theater, iconography, Hollywood and Bollywood. There are French sailors, Russian soldiers, Roman saints and many more characters in the artistic fantasy world of the duo.
Couple’s photographs are camp-infused references to fashion, fame, pornography and anyone would recognize artists’ style in postcards, posters or books.
By reading about Pierre et Gilles I feel that their work and daily life are so mixed together where both carry a celebratory note and both echo emotions, sentiments, beauty and love. What I love about works by Pierre et Gilles is the irony, almost nauseating narcissism and tackiness that presents the world with new levels of kitsch.

-Anny Baranova