Johan Van Mullem (Belgian painter born in 1959) persisted in his youthful search for wrinkled faces, seeking the beauty he recognized in an experience engraved on the faces and in the hands. Since then, the face remains the major subject of his work but over time reversing the imprint of it on his own face while these subjects seem to rejuvenate, disappearing or emerging in a halo of light in old-fashioned sfumato, offering the gaze an escape into the world of emotion, because Johan Van Mullem's work is an invitation for introspection, to a journey whose omnipresent emotional charge cannot leave indifferent as the depth is often dizzying.
Johan's work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in many important collections.
The superimposition and erasure of the very many smooth layers of the diluted inks further accentuates this feeling of inexpressible presence on the canvas. The self-taught mastery of the specific and unique technicality of his work because only executed in etching ink (an extension of his experience as an engraver) gives his work an additional exceptional character.
Complete artist, designer, painter, and sculptor, (but also poet and musician) Johan Van Mullem strives to create a multiple, diverse but absolutely coherent body of work offering links and bridges to all our senses awakened by this work that projects as much into the past as into a contemporaneity.
Show Notes:
- 00:00 - Being conscious of your work changing
- 10:04 - Finding meaning within the things we do
- 13:18 - Giving and receiving
- 19:24 - Living a life of intention
- 21:14 - The blessing of life
- 24:12 - “Do what you feel”
- 27:28 - Gratitude
- 31:52 - Adaptability within trials
- 32:45 - Johan’s progression within his body of work
- 36:48 - Investigating your personal values
- 40:27 - Relativity of good and bad
- 43:02 - Parenting
- 50:46 - Wrap Up
Mauro Martinez juxtaposes common pictorial forms from art history with the monotonous streams of online imagery that we, as an increasingly digital society, are so often subjected to. Skillfully utilizing metaphor, irony, and dark humor, Martinez’s paintings respond to the doctrines of internet culture, at once critiquing and mocking our relationship with contemporary imagery.
Show Notes:
- 00:00 - Introduction
- 04:09 - Humor and the Meme Paintings
- 07:53 - The Process of Self-Acceptance
- 10:46 - The Breakdown to a Breakthrough
- 11:43 - The Privilege Behind Social Media in Reaction to George Floyd's Murder
- 14:55 - Documentation Through Art
- 20:48 - Not a Provocateur with “Sensitive Content Series”
- 24:37 - Drug Addiction, Rehab, and Art Center
- 27:35 - The Loss of Mauro’s Brother and Using Painting as Healing
- 31:38 - Using Painting to Escape Drug Addiction
- 36:33 - Dark Humor and Past Trauma
- 39:14 - Next Stage of Career & Cancel Culture
- 42:47 - The View of Disposability Within Our Society
- 49:19 - Advice for Artists
- 53:05 - Wrap Up
Lorne Lanning is an American game designer, director, writer, and voice actor. He is co-founder and creator of Oddworld Inhabitants. He is best known for creating the Oddworld series including the games Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty. The next Oddworld game titled Oddworld: Soulstorm will be released on April 6, 2021.
Initially studying photo-realism and commercial illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Lanning soon attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California, where he graduated with a BFA in Character Animation.
Working as a Technical Director at TRW, Lanning later moved to Rhythm & Hues Studios in Hollywood, where he would later meet producer Sherry McKenna, who helped co-found Oddworld Inhabitants.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Lorne’s journey from fine art into developing video games
- The change of perception within art
- Perceiving the value of art
- Art as a form of commerce
- “Fragility of the perishable”
- The dark side of globalization
- Lorne’s passion for environmentalism
- The genesis of emerging technology in the late 80s
- The power of visualization and how to sell big ideas
- Making your own luck
- Lorne working for a military defense company
- Marketing yourself as an artist
- Following an intuitive pursuit
- Staying hungry within your craft
- Understanding “what your audience is eating”
- Being a talent vs. being a creator
- Finding business opportunities
- Video games
- Artists’s unique perception and ability to express that
- The symbiosis of engineering and art
- Compromising with a team while making a video game
- Understanding various subjects and adjacent industries
- Empathy within video games
- Game speak
- The impact of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” on Lorne’s storytelling process
- “Lo-brow access points to high art.”
- Emulating the player interacting with real-world objects.
- Self-publishing
- Oddworld’s latest release, “Soulstorm”
- The depth of character creation, controls, and tone of the story
- The new generation of gaming technology
- Systems of monetization within emerging technologies