California artists Grady Gordon and Derek Albeck tag-team a series of ghoulish monotype/charcoal prints in their new show Sometimes I see you when you look at me like that. Gordon’s creepy, fear-motivated style blends with Albeck’s eye for the surreal in a collection of portraits that look like characters out of a Bruno Schultz film. In this unique collaboration, Gordon would start with a monotype print and then send it off to Albeck to add in the graphite portion. Gordon tells The Creators Project, “He had no idea what I was making and reacted organically to the imagery.”
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Each work appears to be broken up into sections that identify with either artist. The final product looks like a collage, pieced together with ready-made images. These messy and chaotic illustrations, however, fit together to create one coherent image in a sort of illustrative harmony: “I think most of all we were interested in how the two of us could utilize our different processes to create singular compositions. The process was fairly experimental but also very rewarding in the end.” Derek told us about their collaborative process.
You won't see a lot of color in either of these artists' solo works so it is no surprise that this collaboration is entirely in black and white. These uneven illustrations give us just enough to recognize certain facial elements like a mouth or tongue, or a set of eyes. Reminding the viewer that they are looking at a face. Gordan says, “I think the collaboration between fantasy and reality worked rather well and almost grounded the creatures in a uniquely believable existence.”
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