Miss Bugs

Lolly Specimen Cabinet

2021

Miss Bugs was founded in the early part of 2007 in London, originally coming from a background in photography and graphics. Miss Bugs is a Bristol, UK based artistic duo known for their colorful and contemporary kaleidoscopic patterns of resin-encapsulated razorblades, drug paraphernalia, and pop culture icons which explore a common theme of society's obsession and consumption of social media and technology and how these innovations filter what we see. Working in partnership, they developed fast, spontaneous working methods, cutting and pasting existing images; ‘remixing and sampling classics’ in art to make new pieces with their own mark. Miss Bugs began in the early days making small scale works on paper, using screen printing with hand painted elements. They then scaled the work up, making life size cut outs of characters to place in situ on the streets of London. These were left in place to become part of the cityscape and recorded through photography. Their most recent works are larger scale pieces, incorporating laser cut planes of wood, hundreds of small component objects and poured resin. These pieces are time consuming and labor intensive, and a long way from the quickly constructed art pieces of the early days. Miss Bugs has always taken a broad and varied approach to creating work. The combining of materials and objects, alongside the way contemporary imagery can be collaged together, either by hand, through photography, or using a digital process is important to the duo. The focus of the work has always been the human form, as Miss Bugs’ interest lies in developing ‘characters’ to tell a story. Archetypal imagery from magazines, art history and films are used as a starting point, which are then cut, overlaid, and distorted to produce character-portraits with an arresting graphic look. The influence of collage and graphic artists like Hannah Hoch and Allen Jones can clearly be seen in the work. The layering and placing of color and pattern are also intrinsic to the work and is very much a hands-on element for Miss Bugs in the construction of the final pieces. Miss Bugs have exhibited in New York, LA, San Francisco, Paris, and London. Their artwork has been in several significant exhibitions around the world including- Art Miami 2021; The Saatchi gallery Permanent Collection; Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary 2022; Market Art & Design Hamptons 2021; Hamptons Fine Art Fair 2022; Echo Chamber, Miss Bugs, Mayfair, London, UK; Parlour, Miss Bugs, Brooklynite Gallery, NY, USA; The State of Art, Miss Bugs, ink gallery, UK; SASML ft. Faile, Swoon, Cave Gallery, LA, USA; Bingo Night at the Promised Land, New Image Gallery, LA, USA; The Lost Ones ft. Shepard Fairey, The Date Farmers...

Miss Bugs The Harley Street Cabinet, 2023 Multiple PU pigmented resin, polished stainless steel lolly stick and plinth in sliding door medical cabinet18 x 24 x 6 in (45.72 x 60.96 x ...

Miss Bugs Algorithm Chamber Prisms, 2021 Hand cast polyurethane crystal resin on wood and aluminum - with aerosol and silk screen 66.90 x 47.20 in

Inspired by nature and his 60 pet birds, Hunt Slonem is renowned for his distinct neo-expressionist style. He is best known for his series of bunnies, butterflies and tropical birds, as well as his large-scale sculptures and restorations of forgotten historic homes. Slonem’s works can be found in the permanent collections of 250 museums around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Whitney, the Miro Foundation and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Since his first solo show at the Fischbach Gallery in 1977, Slonem’s work has been showcased internationally hundreds of times, most recently at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. In 2017 and 2018, he was featured by the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the National Gallery in Bulgaria, and in countless galleries across the United States and around the world. His flair and admiration for far-flung destinations has been a staple of his life since childhood. Slonem was born in 1951 in Kittery, Maine, and his father’s position as a Navy officer meant the family moved often during Hunt’s formative years, including extended stays in Hawaii, California and Connecticut. He would continue to seek out travel opportunities throughout his young-adult years, studying abroad in Nicaragua and Mexico; these eye-opening experiences imbued him with an appreciation for tropical landscapes that would influence his unique style. After graduating with a degree in painting and art history from Tulane University in New Orleans, Slonem spent several years in the early 1970s living in Manhattan. It wasn’t until Janet Fish offered him her studio for the summer of 1975 that Slonem was able to fully immerse himself in his work. His pieces began getting exhibited around New York, propelling his reputation and thrusting him into the city’s explosive contemporary arts scene. He received several prestigious grants, including from Montreal’s Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Cultural Counsel Foundation’s Artist Project, for which he painted an 80-foot mural of the World Trade Center in the late 1970s. He also received an introduction to the Marlborough Gallery, which would represent him for 18 years. Hunt Slonem tends to embrace the ephemeral beauty of nature, a characteristic that brings a nurturing, spiritual effect to his creations. Throughout his extensive career as a New York artist, Slonem has favored the subject of exotic birds, rabbits, and butterflies. Lately, his compositions have consisted of flat spaces with simple forms pushed to the front of the picture plane. The artist creates exotic forms with expressive and highly textural brushstrokes that are full of intense color, loosely inspired by artists of the German Expressionism movement such as Ernst Ludwig and Emil Nolde. Henry Geldzahler, a scholar of Hunt Slonem, notes that of contemporary artists, “he particularly admires the work of Malcolm Morely...

David Salle OVERUNDER Portfolio of 5, 2021, (15/20) Archival pigment ink print, hand varnished 42 x 42 in

Hunt Slonem Summer Green with White Frame, 2020 Handblown Glass, Velvet, Ornate Wood Frame 27 x 17 x 9 in

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...

This contemporary piece from Danielle Krysa asks the viewer if beauty can be born from the wreckage of whatever each of our personal setbacks may be. The piece was created for Krysa'...