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May I introduce: Ralph Lagoi

Artist Interview

I'm usually more into photo-art than illustrations or painting, but there are exceptions. The latest one being Ralph Lagoi. I've seen a painting of his series "Neon Heroes" and it was love at first sight. Chaos in flashy, poppy color just has to get you into a good mood. Only later I figure that he also does photography. I think artists that combine those two mediums, are the once which get to me the most. They offer two sides, and prove that combining these two skills can make their work even better. I talked to Ralph about his works and here are his thoughts to lava, love, Dollskill and David LaChapelle.

Describe your art in three words..
LOVE COLOR EXPLOSIONS

You work as an artist, and as a photographer, with what did you start?
For me photographing started later. I like to see photography as an artistic medium that can bring a lot of things together. For example one can put design and fashion into it and if you are good maybe even some madness :)

How does photography differ from your illustration work? What do you enjoy more and why?
A lot of my photography work involves illustrations or designed stuff as I oftentimes like to self design or customize the props, armory or clothing of my shootings. Capturing everything in a shooting is a great form of presentation and I love seeing a fantasy becoming real. With Illustrations you may not have the aspect and dynamism of a live shooting for example, some visual things can be archived faster or without budget questions and things don´t need to be bound to physicality for example In the end I hope to achieve a glamorous, wild, marvelous pop-tastic mix of fantasy!

What materials/techniques do you use for illustrating? It involves pencil sketches, scanning and re-drawing stuff, doing vector line work and digital colouring.

Can you live of your art?
Not yet.

What was the first work you actually got money for? Licensing some of my photographs. How important is color in your work, what role does it play and how do you choose the color scheme? For me color is most important as I love things to be vivid and colorful! So regardless of being an illustration or a photography I carefully select colors and contrasts while trying to mix and merge shapes and colours together in interesting ways.

Neon Heroes is a series of portraits, did you have any face in mind?
While I did not have concrete persons in mind I wanted the portraits to have a kind of rock star / superhero aura with inspiration coming from sci-fi heroes, Japanese monsters, Mexican wrestler masks and Egypt mythology for example.

Your Illustrations and even your photos look very comic like, very perfect and yet to perfect to be real, how would you describe this world your building up…
Pop, vixens, free, kitsch, colour, explosions, lava, love = fantasy crushes reality.

If you could choose a fashion brand to collaborate with, which one and why?
Many brands from "Dolls Kill" have cool stuff and I like their powerful clothes and that they are free doing there thing without being conform! Also Berlin based "Starstyling" has nice and colorful designs and uses interesting materials!

Who is role model, or someone who you appreciate for their work? Concerning photography it would be David LaChapelle for his timeless pop art photography works and Terry Richardson for being over the top and showing beauty in all shapes.

If you wouldn’t have to worry about a budget, what would you like to try out?
Without all budget worries one thing I guess I would like to try to make are large format photography panoramas filled in a overkill way with the excess of beauty in a celebrating way. I would want them to be a feast for the eye and mind and they should be oozing out with crazy great designs, lovable art, delicate details, out of the world models and unseen raw beauty. Looking at it would feel like free burning your eyes and mind with delight. Let´s go :)

Are you following certain trends in pop culture/art or are you trying to remain within you (already) very unique style? I do not follow trends but I am inspired by contemporary culture and try to stay open for new inputs. Of course I try to keep up a certain kind of unique style and while doing so I want to continue to celebrate visual pleasing sights and creative ideas and bring everything together in a fresh mix!

Aug. 29, 2013

Labels: May I introduce