Thursday 17 February 2011

SO ME







^  Ed Banger Records
Art Director: SO ME
Justice, D.A.N.C.E


So-Me, A.K.A Bertrand De Langeron




'Portraits' Exhibition

"Fine art prints
Giclée prints on 100% cotton archival watercolour paper. Twenty-two original pieces, limited editions of five, signed and numbered by the artist.
$700 USD each plus applicable taxes, shipping and insurance."



"Portraits, will be the North-American debut for acclaimed French artist and illustrator So Me. This exhibition comprises a series of portraits done in So Me's trademark style, incorporating the vibrant colours and tongue-in-cheek references which define his work as Art Director for Ed Banger Records.
Like previous album-art designers such as Peter Saville and his relationship with Factory Records (Saville designed album art for Joy Devision and New Order), SO Me has found a way to make tangible albums relevant and worth while - a feat in today's world of digital music distribution. So Me provides the artistic and visual identity which accompanies Ed Banger Records' brand of music culture that has recently experienced tremendous growth - largely via the internet. So Me's work is often described as influenced by the iconic pop art of the 1960's, French comic books and graffiti, and contemporary iconography."


"In addition to creating album art, So Me has explored other channels of media. He has created award winning music videos for the likes of Kanye West, Justice, and DJ Mehdi, as well as prints, jewellery, and limited edition sets of t-shirts for H&M and Japanese clothing label Revolver. An aspiring comic book illustrator during his youth, the Paris-born So Me was influenced early on by skateboard culture, and was later affiliated with graffiti crews before gaining notoriety as a freelance magazine illustrator. He has worked for publications such as Collete, Arktip, Dazed, XLR8R, Clark Magazine, Sleazenation, and has created a Nike campaign for France."
http://www.studio.to/gallery.html




So-Me has an expressive, freehand style with hand rendered type and also, his images seem light-hearted. The bold, contrasting colours echo the fun mixture of font styles squeezed around each angle and curves. The words are squeezed into every corner, winding and bending, showing a lack of rigid grid structure and so reflects the artist's fun loving personality. He also changes his style of typeface for emphasis on certain words and uses words like 'waz' instead of was, making it quite cheeky and youthful. 
In this piece, the text is a commentary about the exhibition, marking his thoughts in quite an 'off the cuff' fashion, then rendered around the image. The combination of mustard yellow, deep pink and bold blue battle with the bombardment of black, thick outlines and type, on top of an off-white background, to make it visually striking.
His image making style, being inspired by comic books and pop art, is simplistic with high contrast and minimalistic highlights or shadows and large blocks of colour.
His use of white is a huge contrast to the bold, yet limited colour pallet in this piece, highlighting the whites of his eyes against the pink,emphasising how striking portraits tend to be, in that the viewer is first, naturally attracted to the eyes. 





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