Steff Plaetz & Will Barras

RESEARCH ON STEFF PLAETZ AND WILL BARRAS IN RESPONSE TO THE DEEP, HULL

Steff Plaetz is an artist and illustrator who began painting in Bristol, inspired by his nomadic lifestyle and the sciences and industry, nutured by a childhood surrounded by 80s sci-fi and urban life. Working as a commercial illustrator and storyboard artist, he combines these representational skills with painting techniques to create works which have been exhibited internationally.

Will Barras was born in Birmingham but movd to Bristol to study graphic design where we first met with Plaetz and Duncan Jago, who together went on to create Scrawl Collective with founder Ric Blackshaw, now known as 'Kin Art. 

"There is a fluidity and energy in Will's work that, although constantly changing, has always existed in a world entirely of his own making. His figures appear to be in a state of perpetual metamorphosis - caught for a brief moment between one manifestation and the next. always at the mercy of the swirling forces that surround them. From his early scanned and reworked doodles through to his recent, rich, mixed media work. Will has mastered every medium with a dynamism constant in all his work." - Felix Braun. author of "Children of the Can"

His work typically captures the sprawl of metropolitan life, in a profoundly surreal
and dreamlike state. Proportion and anatomy are forsaken for fluidity and vibrant washes of colour. Perspective bends away from the camera as if through a fisheye lens, causing the scene to warp away from the retina of the viewer, and making the edges of the scene seem distant and secret.

Older examples of his work are less illustrative and take on a more painterly quality, but still maintain their fluidity and the rich personalities of their subjects, such as in this 2012 piece (left) , 'Janice taking care of business'.

I became aware of their work through Moosey, as in our early stages they collaborated for 'Near Future' (see below video); one of the gallery's debut exhibitions and have continued to work with us since.

 

On the whole I found their collaborations to be somewhat overworked, such as in the video, and think they could've benefitted from stopping and adding the details at an earlier stage on the canvas. However there is one collaboration in particular between both artists that I have always found very powerful, and which I am focussing on for this research.

When thinking about the silhouttes of fish in the Deep, the colours and way light bent and reflected down through the depths, I was instantly reminded of this series.

Juxtaposing manmade and natural silhouttes, particularly those of satelittes and high level human engineering, the works in part propose the ignorance of one world to another, yet tied together by Barras' fluidity they also suggested a deep interconnectivity and the passage of cause and effect.