Week #2 ('21) Art Appreciation

Welcome to my weekly Art Appreciation post, where I provide a list of some amazing album covers, single art, and random art that have come out within the past week. I’ll give you the artist/photographer/painter/magician’s name, as well as any social media or websites where you can go and check out more of their work. Click here to go back and see some other Art Appreciation posts.

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New year, new art. Y’all know I’m terrified of the ocean? I bet you didn’t, but now you know. Totally irrelevant besides the fact that the only piece I have for you is basically a picture of the most frightening animal I can think of right now (besides Humans of course but I’m not about to get all philosophical on you guys). I know none of this has anything to do with anything but if you take anything from this little blurb take this very important piece of information: I am deathly afraid of a shark being next to me.

Remember, use this post to follow and subscribe to these artists; they deserve as much recognition as the musicians they collaborate with.

Artist(s): ral_duke

Shark Report, by Monday Night & Big Kahuna OG

Something that ral_duke frankly is an expert at is taking completely unrelated images and slapping them together in a way that creates some pretty freaky imagery. Usually he is a face manipulator, photoshopping blobs of color (or another face) onto someone or something’s outward visage to give one the sense that what we should be seeing is inside of the picture, visually representing the dig that many of us art people have to do to find meaning in a picture. In the case of this piece right here that was done for the aptly named Shark Report, you can see that the shark is a main subject, being the clear base of manipulation, with what looks like some kind of movie poster with a luxury car stuck into the monsters’ gaping maw, as if to tell us that the exterior of the image is something to look past to find the inner beauty. Maybe this is something of a statement on the nature of the Mutant Academy themselves (of which Big Kahuna is definitely apart of, I’m not so sure about Monday Night though? Maybe someone can shed some light on this for me), saying that even though the figures can be presented as rough-and-tumble badasses, then can still come through with something more refined and modern on a project like Shark Report. I also appreciates that ral always goes for photos with heavy film grain, giving each of his pieces, no matter the subject or time period, this old-school and vintage look to them. Also I’m scared of sharks have I mentioned that?

ral_duke's Instagram

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