It has been an exciting year for the art world. The most recent Hiscox Online Art Trade Report expresses that 56% of art buyers and 65% of online art platforms believe digital art transactions are here to stay. We will certainly continue to see these numbers go up and artists will continue to benefit from being in digital galleries.
4ART Exhibition offers beautiful, inspiring, and impactful art in the virtual collections that artists choose to make public. With 4ART World Award, hundreds of visual artists participated to expose their work to a broader audience, and create their virtual galleries with 4ARTechnologies.
Here you have the 10 favorites of collectors, art historians, and visual experts who were part of the jury.
10. Akelo – Andrea Cagnetti
Andrea Cagnetti – known as Akelo (from “Acheloo”, Greek waters divinity) – is an Italian sculptor, designer and goldsmith.
Akelo’s Kinetic Art introduces the concept of movement inside the work, freeing the creations from the frame or pedestal. It also allows further emotional and perspectival involvement of the viewer in the artistic creation.
9. Jose Carlos Casado
Jose Carlos Casaso creates installations alongside sculpture and painting through both traditional and new three-dimensional technologies. He artificially constructs images that display superficial signs of reality. His usage of digital media reveals uncanny alternatives.
Jose Carlos Casado’s work focuses on universal experiences such as birth, fear, and sex, and the blurry boundaries between our imaginations and the outside world.
He considers himself an experimentalist, driven by a thirst for new ideas and the new artistic forms necessary to express them. His first works with augmented reality were shown in 2011 at “The Real Fake” at William Paterson University, New Jersey. The exhibition included both gallery works and virtual three-dimensional sculptures around the campus that audience members could experience only by using their phones while walking around the campus. It was one of the first art shows to exclusively feature the work of artists working in three dimensions with experimental film and video.
8. Roxana Ajder
Roxana Ajder creates with the aim of deepening the way in which the complementary opposites feminine – masculine interact. Over time and history, gender relations have shaped the lives of women and men, and naturally their artistic creation.
The basis of her artworks is inspired by the practice of social nudity, known as nudism or naturism. Freedom from the many constraints and taboos of civilization is achieved by placing her characters in an indefinite space or in a natural setting (beaches, forests, swimming pools). Her images are put together from fragments that come from cutouts from magazines, online sources, or from her personal photo archive.
Roxana assumes the role of an intermediate tool between reality and painting. Her technique aims to obtain a monotype effect, characterized by the expressiveness of contours and colored brushstrokes. Her style reminds the viewer of neo-expressionism.
7. Adrian Lis
Adrian Lis made the transition from classical to digital art in a short amount of time. His intention was to research the expressiveness of the human face in different digitally processed forms.
His intervention on the human figure by changing facial expressiveness through linear paths or other methods is a new exploration in his works. His aim is to convey a state of mind that imprints the character from the outside to the inside, so that what appears becomes part of the internal expressiveness.
The visuals detach themselves from the physical form and reconstruct it. The artist adapts and exaggerates linear and geometric paths with each change of facial expression.
6. Valentina Kozyar
Valentina Kozyar works in the direction of figurative abstraction, and has absorbed the traditions of the best Ukrainian art schools: Odessa and Lvov. The unique flavor, richness and depth of content in her paintings arise due to her experience and training.
Valentina’s work allows the transmission of spiritual values: it is a journey to the horizon and to creative labyrinths, where the viewer asks questions and looks for answers. Valentina defines creativity as a form of meditation, therefore her paintings draw a path of knowledge, where she is looking for answers to eternal life questions.
5. Damola Adeyemo
Damola Adeyemo works within African and aesthetic traditions, especially Yoruba culture. His style of painting is unique. Within a few years of practice, he has become a master of his craft by creating paintings and drawings featuring geometric shapes and light effects.
With intense colors and well executed rounded and oval shapes, the viewer experiences Damola Adeyemo’s discipline and dedication to portray the beauty of his surroundings.
4. Ufuk Yilmaz
Ufuk Yilmaz is a graphic designer, photographer and visual arts teacher. Recently he has been working as a teacher in Istanbul and continues his personal art projects while doing a master’s degree in art education.
His work is based on two principles. Firstly, that architecture shapes people’s relationship with nature. Second, that architectural forms have become universal, defined by the functionality of modernism rather than being a reflection of cultures.
Ufuk creates compositions with these forms on a surface that represents nature. His work explores the reflections of humans’ relationship with nature, which is reshaped with an architectural perspective, taken from our universal visual memory.
3. Sayaka Asai
Sayaka Asai is fascinated by the “accidental beauty that comes naturally”. Producing her own patent for a special design technique during college, she creates works using ice to dye cloth. This special method granted her the third Place in the 4ART World Award Competition.
She started her career as an artist in Paris after graduating from college and currently is based in Tokyo, holding solo exhibitions in Japan and overseas, as well as participating in art fairs.
In addition, she provides costumes, collaborates with other artists, and is currently researching new ways to incorporate AR and virtual technology into her ice dyeing works. In October 2020, she was selected as one of the 100 artists of the ReA! art fair.
2. Sinnéad Bunn
Sinéad Bunn was awarded second Place in the 4ART World Award. Her work predominantly focuses on portraiture and self-portraiture.
The setting, positioning of the models, and costumes seen in Bunn’s photography is inspired and often clearly reminiscent of the Dutch Golden Age. Her images often indulge the warm honey colors or the cool blues often favored by artists of the Renaissance.
Sometimes the viewer can find disturbing themes in her pieces, which subtly address current issues in society. Sinéad Bunn is also a professional ballerina and her models are predominantly dancers, as they can shape their bodies and pose in unusual and interesting ways. These collaborations with movement artists help Bunn create a unique style of portrait photography.
1. Jason Engelbart: Artist of the Year
Jason Engelbart was selected as the Artist of the Year by the jury. He is a contemporary artist whose digital abstract works make use of a compelling and distinctive aesthetic. The artist deals with reflections of his personal feelings, experiences, and a meditative affinity with the universe to create his ‘neo-paintings’.
Engelbart’s group of works THE JOY OF BEING are inspired by the opulent paintings of baroque artists from Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, to Guido Reni and Johannes Zick. He is fascinated by the playful use of light and color, the flowing forms and the extraordinary opulent aura of these Baroque works. On an emotional level, Engelbart is particularly affected by the spiritual and mythological scenes in the ceiling and wall paintings of this artistic epoch.Jason Engelbart lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. His works have been shown in numerous national and international exhibitions, such as Amory Art Weeks New York, Art Basel Miami, Swiss Art Expo Zurich and more.
We want to congratulate these artists once again and look forward to seeing their work in the Virtual Galleries of 4ART Exhibition App very soon!
About the author:
Paulina Lara Franco
SUPERPOWER: beat the blank page’s fear
Paulina is grateful that since high school she has had the chance to express herself in both communication and theater????. Her experience in communication has been mainly developing content strategies for education and startups.
The best advice she received was from her great grandmother: “happiness is easy.”
