French artist Grgoire Guillemin must have a thing for superheroes. How else could you explain his past two sets? He first caught our attention with his remarkable retro series (which he calls “Exercices de Style”) and then he intrigued us when he used Illustrator and Photoshop to create what looked like paper-cut works. His latest digital set is called Smooth Heroes, and this time he's taken a very cool, minimalist approach. For some, love how he gives us the illusion that our superheroes are smoothly streaking across the sky.
When asked how this set differs than the rest, Guillemin tells us this: “For me, it would be rather an evolution. More personal than the “Exercices de Style,” in these works, I try to represent a subjective value of these heroes. The solitude which stands out in all of them – the power (Iron Man), some strength and some anger (Thor), the mystery (Batman), the thoughtlessness (Spiderman), or still the sadness (Silver Surfer).
“The idea is to represent superheroes with the minimum of forms, the most suggestive and to handle them like illustrators of the 1930s as A.M. Cassandre or Loupo. All this by playing on ‘chiaroscuro' (light-dark), evoking the isolation of these superheroes.”
