Eat. Drink. Design.
Founded in 2007
Bjørn Lie is a Norwegian artist creating what he calls “Flamboyant Flowers,” a series he started at the beginning of 2023. He describes the series as “a vehicle for me to play and experiment with mark making, to appropriate and reassemble patterns and shapes from as many different sources of inspiration as possible.” The results are similar to botanical illustrations except they’re filled with trippy patterns and textures, creating over-the-top, otherworldly flora.
A lot of art, inherently, is about memories. Things seen and remembered, and then recorded through a medium, be it words, clay, or paint. In the work of Japanese painter agoera, it feels like you’re quite truly viewing a memory from his life, like a snapshot from a movie. Born in Hamamatsu-shi, Shizuoka-ken, Japan, and currently residing in Kanagawa, he graduated from Tama Art University in Tokyo with a degree in, surprising to me, graphic design. On the other hand, his sense of composition is spot-on, so perhaps it helped to set a foundational understanding. I find his work to be so lovely, little snippets of life captured in the dreamiest ways.
I’m such a fan of Salman Toor, I’ve written about his work many times at this point, and so I was happy to see that Art21 had created a video interview with him. Before this, I hadn’t actually seen Toor speaking, and it was fascinating getting to see him exist, and hear him talk about his work. He captures such an interesting world of queer friendships, as well as the stresses and anxieties of being queer in such a turbulent time in the US. Anyhow, I really like being able to see a glimpse behind the curtain of creatives and this is a really lovely profile.