Tomáš Kovařík

“Everything is linked to the Little Mermaid”. With this as his starting point, the French artist Matthias Garcia navigates with his fine lines and seeping watercolors fairy tale worlds charged with eroticism and melancholy. Read today’s interview to learn more about his unique style, creative approaches, and love for mermaids.

Creepyyeha, the lingerie brand founded by Yeha Leung, specializes in tantalizing pieces made to measure and pleasure. We sat down with the designer to find out more about her beginnings and how her approach has changed throughout her career for you to read before ordering your very own pastel leather pieces.

Guille Carmona’s artworks transport to a dreamscape of sculpted, wet bodies waiting to be touched. The artist’s digital style is reminiscent of airbrushed paintings and draws on inspirations ranging from bodybuilding magazines to Japanese mythology in exploring the various flavors of contemporary queer masculinity. Read today’s interview to find out about Guille’s inspirations and what gets his creative juices going.

In her collections, Slovenian fashion designer Lucija Kejzar turns to her roots in a retort to contemporary fast fashion: opting for traditional tailoring techniques, textiles and details, she actualizes garments now only found in museums for the 21st century.

Having shifted from a comics book format to a more traditional approach to painting, Niklas Asker has taken to express with his art the mysterious elements of human existence. His masterful pieces touch on religion, spirituality and a sense of longing, and in today’s interview Niklas divulges his method and background that led to his current style.

The Czech designer Cindy Kutíková combines different crafts in expanding the conception of fashion design. Her thesis project, an outfit from 90.000 beads and 2.5km of thread, served as proof of concept for the interdisciplinary artist’s subsequent founding of a design brand. Today’s interview provides Cindy’s insight into the industry, her creative process and why she chose the traditional Czech format of glass beads.

The Iraqi-Slovak artist Karíma Al-Mukhtarová uses the techniques of embroidery and ceramics to explore a wide spectrum of topics. Be it the myriad masks everyone wears in a single day, questions of truth coded into body language, or even her complex heritage, the internationally acclaimed creator in today’s feature discusses the motivations behind her pieces.

Focusing on the subtle nuance in depicting a seemingly banal human experience, the Armenian artist Annemari Vardanyan covertly reveals the contact lines of clashing cultures. Using her signature eclectic style and drawing on her personal history, she explores the reality of living as a migrant who escaped a troubled homeland only to encounter the more abstract forms of global conflict.

Erica Eyres explores in her artworks the vulnerability of nudity and uncomfortable familiarity. Drawing from inspirations spanning old magazines and grocery store objects, the Glasgow-based Canadian artist then creates open-ended pieces that invite the spectator to create their own narrative. Read today’s interview to learn about Erica’s creative approach and her recent turn to ceramics.

István Hutter, the Netherlands-based Hungarian visual artist captures in his works the underlying inhospitability of supposedly friendly environments. Channeling his history with an anxiety disorder, he presents the Recreation series to express the gnawing sensation of crowded spaces – including in 360° VR. Among other things, in today’s interview he discusses his inspirations, narratives and the absence of arms of his characters.

French painter Théo Viardin’s works imagine a world where the only certainty is physical proximity between human bodies. Such a liminal space enables a reflection of the narratives and discourses that led there, and perhaps even how our contemporary life requires radically new imaginations and the questioning of certainties.

In reframing the industry’s superficial narratives of representation, Paris-based fashion designer Mehmet creates politically charged garments to reframe the contemporary image of migrant peoples. “We all claim for diversity, equality, and integrity, but just few people question the roots, and I wanted to be relevant in a time of ultra-passiveness.” Dive into her muses, inspirations and creative process in today’s article.

The Netherlands-based Ukrainian photographer Alex Blanco is a seasoned visual storyteller. Her 2016-2019 project is a utopian rendering of her parents in their home city of Odessa, “where the real overlaps with the surreal and everyone was born to shine”. Holding true to this notion, she created intimate and atmospheric shots that helped her reconnect with her family.

1989. China. Czechoslovakia. One meeting place – Moscow. Linda Zhengová’s photo series captures the artist’s complicated family history. Be it living under different communist regimes thousands of kilometers apart, the inherent cultural differences, or even their eventual separation, the KULISHEK series create an intimate narrative of a family forged and fragmented in a globalizing world.

Jean-Baptiste Janisset opens our Family Business theme with idiosyncratic sculptural compositions of the divine. The Holy Mothers in mother-of-pearl are dissolved and reimagined into new affects as “there is no more total form, identifiable or assignable, only this infinite swarming of symbols,” as Ingrid Luquet-Gad elucidates in the accompanying texts.

In the atmospheres of Jimmy Beauquesne’s artworks, there reside fantasies of the natural world, celebrities, and entities beyond language or reason. Let the French artist’s words and images in today’s interview mesmerize you into a dreamy sense of longing.

Daniel Drabek’s monsters are not for the sterile gallery wall: the Italian-Swiss visual artist’s creations find their home on posters, album covers, clothing and stickers, among other surfaces. Today, Daniel provides a glimpse into the role of spontaneously projecting memory into his art and reveling in the distortions that emerge.

“Many microbiologists argue that we should start thinking of humans as microbial ecosystems or multispecies collectives.” Charlie Spies’ Gutopia animations playfully and intimately explore the dividual on the backdrop of a late capitalist society still riddled with archaic stereotypes and rigid knowledge-creation processes.

In exploring what lies between individuals’ boundaries, Zu Kalinowska creates assemblages whose unlikely material combinations represent the merging of different bodies and their greater picture. Delve into the images and curatorial texts from her 2022 exhibition “Mortal Shell” and see for yourself just how much you allow otherness change your being.

Desires incompatible with a conservative society take on a unique form in Dae uk Kim’s artworks, expressing his yearning for beautification through the creation of “mutant” furniture and utile objects. Dive into today’s interview to explore the fascinating facets of his creative process!