Gina

German street artist Boris Hoppek does some pretty cool art pieces and installations; he paints with a whimsical, fun style.  He also does some really, really weird installations. If you go looking, you’ll find pictures of waves of smiling faces hugging and laughing, or a checkerboard tiled walkway with a piece of poop on every alternating square…lots and lots of poop. He also seems to have a love for a character of his that is loosely based on “black face,” so I think you can understand that when I say that the installation after the jump is NSFW, it’s honestly really not safe for work. His minimal comic art style is often either inspiring or sexual in nature (he’s a master of disparity), but that’s nothing all that new and surprising in the world of street art installations. Hoppek took the shape of the structure he was working on, matched it with the form and grace of female anatomy and a very large photo realistic print, with some surprising results for the passerby. (We promise there’s no poop after the jump.)

Justin Van Genderen gets hired to do a lot of advertisements and photo processing for big companies; his work often features paint splashes, light trails, and smoke effects. While most of those works are bright and exuberant, there’s something about his personal works that are darker and much more interesting to me. I’ve seen a lot of shoddily done photo manipulations in my days- lord knows Deviant Art is full of emo girls who spend hours carefully blowing out the contrast and slapping multi-hued butterfly wings on photos just this side of homegrown. Justin’s are anything but, with carefully created landscapes and environments that toe the line on the border of dark and slightly malevolent. Check out a gallery of his fascinating work after the jump.

As Occupy Wall Street continues, the emotions for everyone involved are running higher with each passing day. With the addition of veterans, solidarity statements from around the world, and other cities experiencing their own versions of the protest, we know this is a standoff that won’t end easily. Regardless of where you stand and how you feel about any of the participants and their actions, this incredible display is going to change the world we know. It’s one thing to see the thousands of amazing photographs of this important slice of history, but London artist Guy Denning has begun chronicling these world altering events in simple swirls of charcoal and conte. There’s a tremendous sense of emotion and movement in these incredible pieces, even though they appear hastily sketched on whatever was close at hand. Check a gallery of these dramatic works after the jump.