Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film | Technology | Science | Culture)

Humans are vessels gifted with the ability to translate cosmic energies in order to express it creatively. Every creative expression has been motivated by some kind of inner voice. Creator Wave is designed to highlight the artistic momentum exerted by the human soul. Showcasing visual art from all types of artists – from the recognized and established to the relatively obscure.

Creator Wave Vol 6: Emek

www.emek.net

Emek is an artist who has established his imprint on the world’s modern musical culture for well over a decade. From concert posters from the likes of Tool, Flaming Lips, Dj Shadow, The Mars Volta and Beastie Boys– to album cover art for Neil Young, Grateful Dead and Erykah Badu’s New Amerykah series that she has been releasing over the last few years. With an aptitude for detail and technique along with a strong sense of modern culture and its ills, you find an artist with an arsenal far greater than normal political means. Emek is one of today’s premier concert poster artists, carrying the torch from the rich legacy of the 60′s and 70′s and their constant tradition to have the concert art as important as the live music presentation. This interwoven bond between art and music is a connection that has strengthened the aesthetic of bands for years, we can only be so lucky there are still many of these evolving artists in this field left. Emek was gracious enough to send us many images of his works, below is a few that we wanted to present into our series Creator Wave. It was extremely hard to slim down the body of work of pieces he sent me so we used quite a bit of selections for this Creator Wave entry. We thank him for his contribution to our series and to the arts. ~ Erik Otis

Bio on Emek:

Coming from a unique family of 5 artists, Emek has made his mark creating special limited edition silkscreen posters for live concerts around the world. Emek’ style thrives on attention to detail, coupled with layers of meaning in the artwork. His infusion of socio-political commentary into pop culture imagery has made his work instantly recognizable in the field. Emphasizing craftsmanship, his work is mostly hand-drawn in the tradition of the classic psychedelic posters from the 1960′s. Born in the 70′s Emek was also strongly influenced by the DIY punk flyers of the 80’s.

“I appreciate the creative freedom this medium allows me because the bands generally give me total freedom as long as I advertise the show info. I am allowed to dip into the recesses of my imagination and see what spills out onto the page. This allows me to be my own art director and I am able to experiment with different concepts and styles to keep things fresh. Today’s disposable culture paves the way for tomorrows collectable nostalgia…I’m just trying to make it interesting”

Over the last 2 decades, Emek has created hundreds of posters for some of the top alternative bands and events, like Radiohead, Coachella, Queens of the Stone Age, Tool, System of a Down, Jane’s Addiction, The Flaming Lips, to name a few, as well as album covers from Neil Young and Pearl Jam to Henry Rollins and Erykah Badu. Emek’s work has been shown in galleries across the United States, in Berlin, London and Tokyo and Belgium and Canada. He has been interviewed on CNN, featured in magazines and books.