True to its unwavering commitment of providing a blank canvas for artist expression, Volcom is proud to announce the continuation of the best-selling Featured Artist program. Spring 21’s artworks weave the thread of What a long strange trip it’s been, taking the inspiration of a mental trip referring to Volcom’s 30 years of existence as an exploratory medium for art. Featuring a varied selection of surrealist illustrations and graphic prints for both men and women’s ranges - by a curated selection of artists including Carlo Vivary Førtifem Freak City & Max Loeffler
Carlo Vivary is an illustrator hailing from Germany. Born in 1984 and growing up in a small village in east Germany, Carlo’s childish curiosity turned his hand to drawing – drawing his first grotesque face at around 3 years old. From there, his artistic style naturally evolved into an interest based in the surrealistic, dystopian, utopian, mysterious, and downright dark and scary. Becoming a father in 2011 was the catalyst for Carlos to get into serious drawing.
Starting locally, working with local promoters, bands and clubs as well as acquiring a taste for screen printing. Carlo’s inspiration has always been fuelled from his love of music and following his time playing as a teenager in punk bands he counts himself lucky to have worked with some of his favourite artists, including King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Oh Sees, Ty Segall, MGMT, Tame Impala, and Kadavar amongst others.
The gig posters and artworks he created for them led Carlo onto participating in gig poster conventions across the world from Mexico City to Hamburg and Barcelona to Austin. You’ll now find Carlo residing in Leipzig where he has started tattooing, and has co-founded Busy Hands collective with other artists – a collective grounded in subculture surrounding music, live gigs, posters, record covers and t-shirt designs.
Adrien Havet et Jesse Daubertes both started their career as graphic designers before to dedicate themselves to their love for illustration under the name Førtifem. Keen on Metal music, they've been working with this industry since their first projects in 2012, collaborating with bands such as Rammstein, Queens of the Stone Age, Slipknot or Gojira, but also venturing in other universes, such as publishing, advertising or fashion, proudly working with Volcom since 2017.
Drawing with four hands, from their union emerged a style between ancient engravings and modern tattoo culture. Gig posters lovers, they've exhibited in many music festivals as well as in exhibition spaces around France, Europe and Asia.
Freak City is an illustrator from Bordeaux born in 1984. Feeding on pop culture from childhood, today we see the main influences that have forged his direction, somewhere between American comics and punk aesthetics.
Having learned his trade in the underground scenes of micro-publishing and indie rock, he maintained his urgency and energy to define a personal universe, falling between retro-futurism and urban rock.
From his usual drawings in Indian ink or silkscreen on textile and paper, we can see now how this has evolved into sagas or volumes, as well as in the press, where he illustrates most of his ordered work (Le Monde, Newsweek, GQ, ESPN, Science, SoFilm ...)
Max Loeffler is an illustrator and graphic designer who is influenced by classic surrealists as well as retro science-fiction book covers. He likes to look below the surface of one-to-one visual translations, adding meaning and room for inference by wrapping his illustrations in the dense atmosphere of a surreal and melancholic parallel universe.
His urge is to translate and decipher what can only be felt, not directly seen, and to amplify this visually, particularly in his personal work. We are proud to introduce new works by Max Loeffler to the Volcom Featured Artist Series.
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