stevenson.snaps

Jérémy Tourvieille is a graphic designer and photographer from Paris, he moved to Switzerland in order to finish his studies in Geneva. Always being drawn to graphics after seeing pieces in galleries and museums, he later became a graphic designer and then created his own fonts after finding another passion, in typography.

He found his inspiration from contemporary art, some being found on sites such as Pinterest and Behance.

When I first came across his work, I found myself instantly intrigued. The lines and the circles give the images a sense of depth, personally I think it can symbolise identity quite well; the circles in the second image could mean the different layers of identities as everyone goes through a time in their life where they experiment to try and discover who they truly are and to me, this piece showcases that.

The first image can also show that, due to the serious facial expression which almost looks like a hurt expression.

The majority of his work have a similar theme; black and white whilst a single part of the model’s face becomes one of the main focuses, usually the eyes.

However some of his pieces involve similar themes, bold text is placed over the top to gain more attention, as the colourful font stands out easier as the images are black and white. This makes the text the main focus, but the fact that the text is slightly jumbled rather than being in a line makes it a little harder to read causing the reader to piece it all together.

He also has some other advertisement using a different theme but also keeping it similar at the same time, it still has the black and white and still has the bold lettering but it has some other effects. The black triangles almost form a mask over the top half of her face, once again linking to identity; a mask commonly being used to hide your face, meaning she could be ashamed of who she is or who she is becoming.

When you look closer to the image, you see the black triangles are multiple layers of her face as you can only just make out the eyes, which also helps link it to identity as it could be her masking her true identity with fake personas.

Colette Fu was raised in New Jersey,  graduating with a degree in both French and literature however it wasn’t until she switched courses as she ventured to China. Here she discovered her passion for storytelling and photography, she moved back to the United States where she later earned a MFA in photography.

Once relocating in Philadelphia, she began to truly explore her passion. Colette then taught herself how to create pop ups after becoming fascinated by them and later received a Fullbright Fellowship in 2008, allowing her to create her art based around the Yunnan people which later inspired her “We are the tiger people” series which goes in depth about their culture; their food, traditions and the religious aspect of it.

Colette has also done work for Vogue China, Canon Asia, Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) and also designed China’s largest pop up book. Colette also teaches classes locally and even abroad.

Alma Haser is a German artist who specialises in portraiture due to her background in fine art. Using her knowledge on photography and collages, she combines both techniques to create abnormal shapes using a printed image of a person’s face. During 2010, Haser finalised her Photography degree and has won several awards throughout the years; including The Magenta Foundation’s Bright Spark award in 2013.

She did a series using these 3D pieces to place them over the face creating a set of unique and abstract pieces.

The series, Cosmic Surgery was originally meant to be called “Cosmetic Surgery” as she said it appeared as though the subjects had undergone plastic surgery, however Alma had a habit of talking very quickly and her dyslexia caused her to mix words up. Although it was a mistake, she liked the name for it and even said it fitted the theme as they all look like they’re from another world.

Some of the shapes seem a lot more complex than others, some have only a couple of sides creating a softer look to it whilst others have a larger amount of shapes causing the image to gain a very jagged and almost threatening look.

Another one of her series of artwork is called “Pseudo” which is possibly one of my favourite pieces she has done. It isn’t something I have ever seen and yet I am so fascinated by it. None of her pictures are identical, they may have a similar theme but they have different colours, shapes and a completely unique aesthetic overall.

Alma said that she is in a constant search for new ways to shape her work and new ways to explore to expand her knowledge, she also said that the majority of her finished pieces are usually done accidentally but only after many hours of experimentations.

Alma’s most recent series was named “Within 15 Minutes” where she created several 1000 piece puzzles with impressive attention to detail. What makes it even more impressive is the fact she did this all by hand, presumably taking up an incredible amount of time. The end result definitely being worth it.

Aldo Tolino is an Austrian artist who attended the University for Applied Arts where he received a PhD after focusing his research on art, games and media theory. Although he is known for his incredible artwork, he is also a philosopher; he is currently working on a book which contains some of the techniques he has explored before such as sculptures, paper folding and textures.

Aldo is best known for using digital art to create disproportioned portraits, most commonly using a person and creating a distorted sculpture of their face. He does this by printing a portrait photograph and folds it repeatedly, taking it apart and then folding it all over again in order to get the piece he had envisioned, then photographing the end result.

The piece shown above is called “Faust als Marionettentheater” a piece based on the Salzburg Marionette Theatre which was originally founded in 1913 by Professor Anton Aicher. On his website there is a quote by Gretel Aicher, where she talks about her passion for marionettes, “What then is the fascination of a life with marionettes? Is it the pleasure of performing? The appeal of mastering an ‘instrument’ to the point of virtousity?” she later said “the transformation of one’s self?” which makes me believe this piece is based around finding your own identity.

Portraits aren’t where his pieces end, he does landscape pieces where he does a similar thing with the portraits but it has pictures of lakes and mountains compacted into one piece.

This piece is called “Mother” which is a motherboard which is generally found in microcomputers. This piece shows his knowledge on this topic and being able to transform it into a work of art.

Personally, I like a lot of his pieces such as the one above. It is abstract and quite easy on the eye compared to some artist who do a similar theme, they have big, bold colours that can sometimes really clash. His pieces have so much depth to them as they might seem like a distorted portrait but later if you read, they have such fascinating meanings.