The 77th Volume of Hi-Fructose is here.

Julia Randall’s drawings are unexpectedly seductive, like a sudden whiff of perfume caught brushing past a stranger. The content of her work is not something our eyes are trained to scour for signs of sex, but we find them there anyway, hidden in biomorphic lumps of bubblegum and reflected in viscous, sticky fluids. Randall manipulates organic forms to allude to the pleasures of the flesh without rendering a single juicy thigh or muscular back. Instead, the forms she draws evokes something hidden in the nether regions of the mind…

Often spanning two or three feet in high, Julia Randall’s drawings are executed completely in colored pencil. The process is labor-intensive, but it allows her to execute a tight control over her marks, stacking the translucent layers of color to produce a three-dimensional effect similar to that of an oil painting.

Read the full article on @juliarandall1968 now on Hi-Fructose. ...

“In the Crash series, I didn’t want to make a statement about the danger of driving or war or anything, so I removed elements that might steer the drawing in that direction,” Teplin said. “Similarly, I use garish or happy colors to stay away from overly ominous statements of death and destruction. I’m also exploring how far I can sexually abstract my representational drawings.” Sexual abstraction is something Teplin has worked with in varying degrees. When asked why so much of his work is kid friendly, and what the place of innocence is in art, he just talked about sex.

He said even his rooms—including the ones shaped like letters of the alphabet in classic kids-book fashion—are really just an exploration of the inside-out, revealing nature of sex. And the cartoonish, innocent donut, well, “Donuts are mostly just butt holes.”

But whatever sexual tension and satire is buried in Teplin’s drawings there’s an undeniable childlike quality.

Read the full article in @steplin straight from the HF archives, now on Hi-Fructose. And check out his latest handmade firework Pentagon, Barbie and Supreme Court sculptures, as well! ...

Christian Van Minnen is very specific about the way he conjures his compositions—it’s a deliberate process, which paradoxically tries to steer clear of deliberation. When in painting mode, he prefers a stream-of-consciousness approach, as in true surrealism, while at the same time using technical devices which ultimately render an eye pleasing picture. It seems to be a delicate balance, of which he further explains, “My definition of surrealism is that it begins with automatic drawing or mark making. The emphasis is placed on physical action and expediency rather than intellect and planning. Maintaining connection to the subconscious in this way is a lifelong practice, not unlike meditation. This is kind of a fundamentalist view of surrealism, and I rarely practice it perfectly. It’s usually some combination of this automatic process and conscious interaction.”

He has perceptively broken this down into “the play between three points: one, intuition; two, counter-intuition creates a binary; and three, perpendicular creates a triangle, the ‘left field’ action, giving three general options in the creative act. My paintings look like a combination of these three.”

Gazing upon his immaculate craft work, we can’t help but wonder from what region of the subconscious his figures (whose features appear smeared and possibly disease ridden) have emerged. Did they drift in from a bad dream, or did they once walk the earthly domain until struck with a severe case of bad luck?

Read the full article by Zara Kand on @van_minnen now on Hi-Fructose. His latest solo is at @nanzukaunderground ...

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