Christian Rex van Minnen
Taking Surrealism back to its roots, Denver-based painter Christian Rex van Minnen, riffing on Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s sixteenth-century portrait heads composed of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. Van Minnen’s takes a less direct approach, playing with finely-rendered textures and abstracted but visceral components that suggest organs, skin, meat, crustaceans, and plant life, but also including more literal elements like flowers, clothing, leaves, and silhouettes. The artist’s use of dramatic, one-point lighting adds a depth and creepiness to his work, drawing out the grotesque forms and surfaces.


Also by GERRY MAK
Bill Fick’s linocuts, silkscreens, and tempera painting
Chapel Hill-based printmaker Bill Fick makes awesomely grotesque faces and creatures with linocuts, silkscreens, and tempera paint. They have a vintage feel to them, as if the rotted remains ’50s advertising images have risen from the dead. Read more
Sarah Appleboum makes a neon felt and yarn explosion in your face and everywhere, the epicenter of which is in San Francisco. While you’re unconscious from the impact, you will dream of rainbow yetis, shamans, and soft revolvers.
Anointed Best New Band of 2009 by Baltimore’s City Paper, Sick Weapons embody basically what’s so great about this town — trash, and good times. They spit out sloppy, warbling, ear-piercing punk that’s more giddy than it is snarling, with frontwoman Ellie Beziat channeling Poly Styrene without being overly conscious of it. With songs like If You Love Me Take Me to the Hospital, The Prettiest Racist in Town, and Orgy on the China Train, it’s apparent these guys have their heads in a lot of unseemly places, but not up their own butts.
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In this rehashed age of flouro and 80s graphics, I was instantly in love with the simplicity of Emily Haines’ Knives Don’t Have Your Back artwork in neutrals with its nice typography. Read more
Seattle-based artist Justine Ashbee makes undulating, amorphous drawings by hand using paint pens to delineate the topography of imaginary forms and textures. Read more
As someone who thinks more about traveling than actually gets to do it [damn, it should really be the other way around], it was good to come across the latest batch of Wallpaper* city guides the other day. Living vicariously through the pages of the Berlin edition at least made my next choice of holiday destination that much easier. Read more
One of the most dynamic new acts to burst into our eardrums in years, Brooklyn’s Vivian Girls have just released their debut self-titled album, which combines Phil Spector-ish Wall Of Sound harmonies with fuzzy melodies, as reflected on this track, Where Do You Run To. We have it available for free download in the Music Download section of Lost At E Minor. Hooray! [psst, it's in the third column of the site]
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This café, cookie shop, ice cream place in Cobble Hill Brooklyn is all about flavor, aroma and family. Their cookies and ice cream are absolutely to-die-for, and the place is so well-designed, painted in vintage colors with old family pictures printed on the walls, that you’ll want to indulge yourself for more than just a few minutes. Try their Whoopies and Lucia cookies. They’re my favourite.
Damn, ten years of playing guitar in loud rock bands, and not once did we have a slamming moshpit like this. Banging heads is so, so fun.
We love the range of ultra-stylish ties created by New York-based designers, Ryan Sovereign and William Beck. They’re both graduates of the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Industrial Design and Sculpture respectively, and have been long time collaborators both musically and visually. Read more
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Scanners’ new single Salvation
I love this track by London based rock group, Scanners, which is off their latest album, Submarine. Having toured with acts such as The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Electric Six, and Juliette & The Licks, Scanners could well blow up in 2010. Figuratively speaking, not literally. No, that wouldn’t be fun.
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Creative advertising packaging
Despite the intentions of many, it’s not so often that advertising — as an industry — truly thinks outside the box. Yet, when executed well, clever eye-catching advertising actually works. It does. As these examples will attest to. Read more
There is not a medium that UK illustrator Lizzy Stewart cannot wrap around her little finger to make the most beautiful, whimsical images. Read more
Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
Diane Koss’ recycled bottle monsters
Check out Diane Koss’ amazing handmade stuffed monsters if you’re looking for a last-minute gift. Her mostly cycloptic creatures are fashioned from felt made from one hundred percent recycled plastic bottles. Read more
Created by graphic t shirt label, the-affair, and printed on beautifully soft American Apparel. Limited edition of 200.
We’ve just updated the Lost At E Minor iPhone app in the iTunes store with some new features. It’s a daily snapshot of the latest content from the site. You can download it now. Win? Well, it’s free. So you win, we win. Snap!
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