Last night saw the launch of Matt Mignanelli’s The Paradigm show, at Recoat Gallery. There was a fantastic turn out and even Matt’s parents, brother and girlfriend flew over from NY for the launch. Very cool and down to earth people and it was a pleasure meeting them.

The attention to detail, vibrancy and life in his paintings really took me by surprise and I recommend you head over to see these paintings for yourself. The exhibition runs until May 2nd so if you missed the launch, there’s still time. You can also buy his work at Recoat’s online store. A full interview with the Recoat owners, will also be coming later today.

Photos by Alex Martin

New York artist Matt Mignanelli is in Glasgow for the first time, getting ready for his latest exhibition, at the Recoat Gallery. We Can Never Stop contributor, Alex Martin, headed down to take some photos of him preparing for Friday’s launch and to find out if he’s loving this fine spring weather we are blessed with.

Matt’s work is pulling a lot of inspiration from energy, pattern, light, and emotion. He is exploring the relationship between nature and structure, which is relayed through his use of geometric shapes juxtaposed against organic forms. The vivid palette in which he is working from, is influenced by the neon nightscapes that populate his home town urban environment.

Be sure to swing round on Friday the 2nd for the launch at 7pm (here’s the map). Seeing these paintings in the flesh and his large scale installation, is highly recommended. Myself and Alex will be there documenting the launch, and sniffing around the free bar. If you want some chat or would like to say hello, then don’t hesitate to join us!

Emilia Weber, co-founder of Letters From The City, got in contact to share with us her beautiful work. This charming quarterly zine, features anecdotes, short stories and pieces from local artists. When reading you can’t help but reflect and acknowledge the qualities Glasgow has. For me, as it’s been written by people not originally from Glasgow, it captures a sense of appreciation, interpretation and observance that the natives sometimes miss. The next issue is out in April, read on to hear what Emilia had to say and also, how to find one of these limited gems.

‘Letters From The City; An Illustrated Glasgow Philavery’ is a Glasgow based creative arts quarterly that was conceived and created in the summer of 2009 by Lewis Irvine, Emilia Weber and Charlotte Wainwright over a kitchen table strewed with Rubicon cartons and tobacco packets. We decided that we should stop talking about the exciting things we wanted to do, and actually do them.

We knew there were other magazines dedicated to Glaswegian writing or art or photography but nothing that brought all of these together, so we decided to create a space in which people could have their photographs, drawings and musings inspired by the city published. We wanted it to be affordable and beautiful; accessible to anyone.

We had all moved here from other cities and although we were aware of our ‘foreign’ status in Glasgow, we hoped that us choosing to move here and loving the city was a good enough reason to create this. Our boundless adoration is complemented by all of our fantastic contributors who bring their own personal views, connections and portrayals of the many faces of this city to the magazine.

The A5, forty page magazine is filled by submissions from miscellaneous Glasgow artists, many of whom we never meet, and by obliging friends of friends. We also give the middle of the magazine to a Glasgow based art graduate and they exclusively compose a centrespread for us, accompanied by a piece outlining their feelings about art and what keeps them in Glasgow. After a lot of trawling through shops and smiling sweetly, the magazine is now available to purchase from nine independent retailers around Glasgow, including Monorail, Volitaire & Rousseau and Aye Aye Books in the CCA (a complete list can be found on our website).

Our fourth issue is in the making and will be in the shops on the first of April. As always, we are looking for contributors, and their pretty musings about these windy streets, their overheard conversations, their hidden histories, their loves and losses and anything else anyone wants to share with us. Your words and pictures about the city we live in and the city around which our lives revolve.

Photography by Alexander Martin

This piece is by Parisian artist Honet. I’ve been a fan of his work for the past 6 years. The clean lines, vector style artwork, simple choice of colours, gothic tales and melancholic characters have always captivated me. His photography from hidden Paris and urban exploration adventures are real eye openers too. Very rarely does he release work, but you can buy some of his t-shirts at the very excellent sixpack.fr store.

Was anyone fortunate enough to go to his exhibition, La Danse Macabre, in Glasgow back in 2002?

It’s been a while since a site update-sorry!

Image Of The Day, is by Glasgow stencil artist extraordinaire, Klingatron. Bear, like all his pieces, is made by layers and layers of intricate and complex cut outs. Peruse his work at his site here and you can also view him in action in this video. The concentration, commitment and attention to deteail is mind boggling!

Conzo got in contact, to remind us all that the start of the fantastic Secret Wars European competition, will be kicking off tonight in the Sub Club. Some of Glasgow’s finest street artists, will be battling against the might of Sweden. Kicks off at 10pm, with nice tunes and beers, tickets are £6/£7.

Difficult to not include a piece by collective, Good Wives & Warriors. This is from their exhibition in Copenhagen. They will be holding their Fun Occult exhibition, tomorrow night at Recoat-see the post below for more info. Hope to see you there!

Gallery opening for Good Wives & Warriors exhibition, Fun Occult, at Recoat Gallery

Good Wives and Warriors is the creative partnership between Becky Bolton and Louise Chappell, who met while studying at the Glasgow School of Art.

Rebecca means ‘good wife’ and Louise means ‘warrior’. They have been working together on collaborative projects for the last five years and have recently been featured in Taschen’s Illustration Now Volume 3, IdN ‘The Illustration Special’ and have produced work for Adidas, Swatch and MTV. They have also exhibited wall paintings in Europe, South America, the USA and Australia. They are currently based in London.

‘Fun-occult’ will be a collection of their drawings and a large scale mural drawn on the windows of the gallery exploring the aesthetic symbols of pseudo-science and religion using a playful and light-hearted approach.

Pop down tomorrow night, between 7-10pm, for the opening. Recoat always put on a good night, and this should be no exception!

Conzo is an artist based in Glasgow with a bold, rude style. Checkout his Behance folio here-the brand id for Cookie Scotland, in the south side, is brilliant. You can also follow his blog here.

Excellent!

Recognise this place?

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