SNV
SUPERNOVA
MCBESS “I wouldn’t recommend trying to make it as an illustrator to anyone”: straight-talking McBess
ZSOLT HLINKA
Looking for geometry and symmetry obsessively in each composition.
PEZ
I don’t think I have a sort of mission because I’m an artist.
Ă?NDICE
Illustrators PEZ McBess Steve Cutts
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .
Photographers KATERINA PLOTNIKOVA McBess Steve Cutts
San Francisco, U.S. 7203359492 supernova@gmail.com www.supernovamagazine.com
2 SUPERNOVA
SUPERNOVA 3
PEZ Illustrator
I don’t think I have a sort of mission because I’m an artist.
PEZ Inspired by Graffiti & Pop culture, Pez is an illustrator and painter from Nantes (France). Illustration is a very powerful communication tool.
It goes straight to the point and can be very harsh sometimes, even more than words in my opinion. The best example I can think of is press cartooning, which I’m very fond of. I’m sure press cartoonists have a great deal of interesting things to say but they aren’t promoted enough—at least in French medias—because their message is too strong, sometimes too violent. We prefer promoting that singer’s new album similar to the hundreds that came before...
A bit like press cartoonists I like to hint messages with my work. The example that comes to my mind is a recent one I created for the 2014 World Cup. I did a piece criticizing the money that revolves around football, drawing Brazil’s favelas being crushed by a massive wad of notes. I don’t think I have a sort of mission or something because I’m an artist. I’m just adding messages to my work because I like it but I’ll never force myself if I have nothing to say.
I don’t think everyone can and should include messages in their work. You have to get a sort of maturity to be able to do so. Until recently I’d only design purely esthetic pieces but my work is increasingly carrying a strong message and I think I’m enjoying it... Sometimes the message is very clear and sometimes I let people read into it whatever they like. My designs are more and more famous, in the last year or two everything has been growing at lightning speed. I suppose it’s mainly because I waited enough time before showing my work out there. I waited to get enough maturity.
I think the risk with publishing your work too early is that people get bored of what you produce and they won’t listen anymore the day your work gets a real value. If I look at my work 6 years ago, I’d say it’s bullshit. I’m not very proud of that work, to say the least. But I practised, I got better by getting feedback from my friends and family and once it was good enough for me, once I was proud of what I was producing, I decided to release it. For me it’s the best way to proceed. I’m glad it worked!
Sometimes the message is very clear and sometimes I let people read into it whatever they like. 4 SUPERNOVA
SUPERNOVA
5
MCBESS Illustrator
McBess’ monochromatic style is what set him apart when first starting out. Heavily influenced by mid-century cartoonists like Max Fleischer mixed with contemporary shapes and a mischievous tone, his work is detailed with longlimbed characters devoid of defined wrists and ankles. “My style started as an unconscious thing. Like everybody when I first started drawing, I was just ripping off people whose work I really liked,” he explains. “It’s like a bad recipe where everything is off. But then you start to concentrate and – this is going so poetic which I fucking hate – but you have to try and put yourself back into the shoes of your sixyear-old self,” he says. “Where nothing else mattered and you could be drawn to a piece of plastic or a symbol and make a whole world out of that.”
“The smooth lines and curves are much nicer than on Illustrator. I hate Illustrator, it’s so cold.”
MCBESS
“I wouldn’t recommend trying to make it as an illustrator to anyone”: straight-talking McBess 6 SUPERNOVA
When French illustrator McBess (aka Matthieu Bessudo) started drawing it was a way to combat his boredom from the 3D computer-based work he was doing at the time. “I would draw on paper and it became more interesting than the computer, so I kept drawing instead of doing my actual work,” he tells me after his Offset talk a couple weeks ago in Shoreditch. “Eventually I decided I wanted to leave but turns out they wanted to fire me anyway!”
Working on Photoshop more often than pen and paper now – “The smooth lines and curves are much nicer than on Illustrator. I hate Illustrator, it’s so cold.” – McBess’ work is focused around three main themes; girls, food and music. “Food is really fun to draw because it never takes the same shape,” he explains. “If you type ‘ribeye’ into Google you’re not going to get the same piece of steak in each image. I try not to look at references when I draw, I like to do it like kids do where you have a certain way of thinking about an object.
“I’m actually really bad at drawing realistic things, like I can’t draw buildings. If I was to start drawing now it would be horrendous. I have to construct my illustrations, lay bases and foundations. It would be boring if I just drew from life.”
SUPERNOVA
7
STEVE CUTTS Illustrator Looking at these illustrations, it’s hard to ignore the pitfalls of modern society.
STEVE CUTTS This Is What Modern Life Really Looks Like, According To An Illustrator
F
rom a trio of humanoid robots operated by cats, to a crowd of zombies too preoccupied with their cell phones to look for brains, to an overweight man in a shiny car being hoisted by a group of skeletal laborers — the graphic works are just as captivating as they are hard to look at. Gluttony, sloth, greed; all the sins of contemporary culture are on display, wrapped up in expressive drawings that prompt viewers to chuckle, scratch their heads and pray for the future of humanity all at the same time.
I
In an email interview with The Huffington Post, London-based Cutts explained that the main focus of his illustration work is the “unquestionable insanity” that infiltrates the systems governing our daily lives. “We live in a world where it’s extremely hard to compete in our market ethically, and producing something without exploitation of people or enviHe pairs his heavy subject matter with ronment seems impossible,” he noted. “So people bubblegum backdrops and figures compromise on values and rationalize it somehow, seemingly stripped from an episode because otherwise you have to break with society.” of “The Ren & Stimpy Show.” The resulting images amount to Cu- And this kind of compromising can look pretty tts’ take on modern society — bleak. “to be taken with a pinch of salt, sure,” but “based on truth in one way or another.”
llustrator Steve Cutts has a rather morbid fascination with “the more broken aspects of life.” His artworks, brightly colored and meticulously detailed, tend to revolve around poverty, corruption, greed, social media, consumerism, dependence and drugs ... just to name a few.
“I’ve made a few pieces about mobile phones and social media, but this isn’t to say those things are necessarily bad in their entirety,” 8 SUPERNOVA
SUPERNOVA
9
KATERINA PLOTNIKOVA Photographer Stunning portraits with real animals.
KATERINA PLOTNIKOVA Meet The Photographer Who Uses Real Animals In Her Dreamy Portraits.
M
oscow-based photographer Katerina Plotnikova takes pictures that would rouse any viewer into this sort of digitised disbelief. Yet she uses real, live animals in her photo shoots, resulting in photographs that would turn even the most savvy city-dweller green with envy. Using the help of professional animal trainers, Plotnikova is able to create the shots you see below without immense danger to herself or her models (both human and animal alike).
In an age where digitally manipulated models grace the covers of magazines with impossible perfection, and a time when it only takes the swipe of one’s finger to ‘filter’ what would have been a mundane photograph into luminescent colours or a brooding black & white, it is hard to believe that any extraordinary photograph isn’t simply the outcome of a combination of clicks and keys.
Who are the photographers whose work you admire? KATERINA: My favorites are, of course, Tim Walker, Annie Leibowitz, and Adam Smith.
“Of course they are real! The fox, for example, is a real domesticated animal.” 10 SUPERNOVA
KATERINA: My life revolves around two things — photography and travel. However, my travel experience is not too extensive. Last year, I travelled all over Russia, from Moscow to a remote Sakhalin. This year, I visited a number of South East Asian countries. My big dream is to travel around the world, and see all the corners of our amazing planet. SUPERNOVA
11
ZSOLT HLINKA Photographer
“Neither the moment exists without permanence, nor permanence without the moment. >> (Hinka, 2015)”
The eye of the one who loves photography has the incredible ability to change everyday life into something completely fascinating, photographers and photographers get our attention focused on some moment of the past. Zsolt Hinka is a photographer from Budapest, Hungary, who took very good care of his transforming eye to create his Station series. This, as its name says, was developed inside a subway station. Zsolt wanted to leave a record to demonstrate the various facets that a single space can have.
“To expose the stillness, the movement, the dynamism, the ephemeral and the permanent”
ZSOLT HLINKA
Looking for geometry and symmetry obsessively in each composition.
The Station photo series shows stillness, motion, standing time, volatile moment parallel, creating a harmonious unit with each other due to the cleared geometry of these photos. A stronger contrast is tensed within the strictly constructed, unmovable unit, but the definite lines of still building parts and disembodied blurring of running vehicles give
12 SUPERNOVA
them their true meaning right next to each other. At the same time here and anywhere. At the same time in the past, present and future. Watching the Station series photographs, you may be able to feel it better: neither the moment exists without permanence, nor does permanence without the moment.
Focusing on architectural forms, playing with perspective and symmetry – the main characteristics of my work frame the project Reflection of Emotion as well. But in addition to the above, the photo series involves a new feature by showing people and representing their relationship in a surreal space.
As if they were each other’s reflections, the couple stands, moves towards each other, looks around and looks to each other changing their shadows. Although this twosome dimension is beyond reality, the static compositions imply stillness so the unit of the two people seems indestructible in this reflected world. The photographs attempt to represent a stable and harmonic emotional bond, raising the question: are we each other’s reflections in a relationship?
SUPERNOVA
13
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ Photographer
“The Queen gave career advice”
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ “The power of the body of the work; it has such a weight, a story.”
Sharon Covert resides in Tinton Falls, NJ not too far from her hometown along the Jersey Shore. Brought up with a musical background she taught piano lessons for over 20 years before studying and practicing photography as an art. Sharon has been publi“As I get older I understand my role in it all,” Leibovitz tells me. “The power of the body of the work; it has such a weight, a story.” 14 SUPERNOVA
shed in Adore Noir Magazine, SHOTS Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, The Hand Magazine, The Long Way Home, Float Magazine, Shadow and Light Magazine, Stubborn Magazine, and in The Sun. She has been in numerous juried art shows and exhibitions across the U.S. and is affiliated with Arcangel shed Images and Image Brief. i n Adore Noir Magazine, SHOTS Magazine, F-Stop Magazine, The Hand Magazine, The Long Way Home, Float Magazine, Shadow and Light Magazine, Stubborn Magazine, and in The Sun. She has been in numerous juried art shows and exhibitions across the U.S. and is affiliated with Arcangel Images and Image Brief.
NOVA SUPERNOVA
CONTACT Name Phone Number e-mail Country
United kingdom Mexico Canada Japan Colombia Spain States
www.supernovamagazine.com
SUPERNOVA
15
16 SUPERNOVA