Alberto Hartleben is known as “El Nawal” in the tattoo community. A Guatemalan native who has lived most of his life in Brazil. In 2021, he co-founded a private tattoo studio in Houston, Texas, where he currently resides and works. As a tattoo artist, he employs black ink due to its beauty and longevity. In […]
Category: Minimalism
While micro tattoos are not for everyone, there is a sizable global market for this work, with South Korean tattooists in high demand for their meticulous talent. Basil is another emerging tattooist who incorporates art and design elements into her geometric tattoos. A customer sends visual references (photographs of birds, flowers, or landscapes), and she […]
Previously working in a private art gallery in Prague, Mono (David Kejr) moved on to focus on his art-making and managing/touring with music bands for four years where he traveled and opened his horizons about life. His real start in tattooing only happened in 2013, when he inked his friends (i.e. exploring styles and techniques) […]
Lighthearted and colorful is the linework of Carlo Amen, a tattooist and co-owner of private studio Les Maux Bleus in Paris. His art is inspired by French Modernists and Spanish artist Picasso who spent most of his life in France. The 1939 cubist painting “The Weeping Woman” and 1949 line drawing “Dove of Peace” ghostly […]
To say Viktor Zabuga’s works are minimalist or simplistic is a total understatement. Chockful of short millennial musings, contemporary symbols, and clean linework, Zabuga’s works are the silent voice of the European youth subculture. The only thing remotely simple about the tattoos he does is the essence of each piece. These are the modern sentiments of […]
Swiss-based, second-generation tattooist Yashka Steiner has worked as a graphic designer for over twenty years, now less in the field and more focused on body art. “I don’t use a pen, I work against the machine,” states Steiner, who works similarly to former chess player Garry Kasparov—against the computer, meticulously thinking of every move, every […]
We featured the work of Okan Uckun in the past, but in the years since he has continued to create gorgeous tattoos. Formerly based in Turkey, he now works out of Bang Bang Tattoo in NYC. Minimalist tattoos seem to be all the rage at the moment (for example, see here), but Uckun distinguishes his […]
Stephanie Inagaki is a Southern California–based fine artist and metalsmith. Her charcoal drawings are dark, poetic fusions of self and myth, drawing especially from Japanese folklore. The female subjects—which are often representations of herself—merge with crows and supernatural monsters, their bodies transmuting into uncanny hybrids inscribed with ageless mythologies. A particular emphasis is placed on […]
Karina Marandijan (a.k.a., “daunhaus”) is a Moscow-based artist creating wonderfully weird digitally modified portraits. Her compositions are dark and surreal with a touch of fetish; piercings and wounds mark the body of the ivory-skinned alien-esque subject, creating a bloody contrast of innocence and suffering. The white backdrops resemble a sterile, laboratory-type environment, within which the […]
Kristina Varaksina is a Russian-born, New York–based artist known for soft-hued portraits conveying the quiet-yet-complex inner worlds of her subjects. We featured her work in the past—specifically, ethereal photographs of a red-haired model—but recently, Varaksina has shared “Anonymous,” a series referencing 20th-century surrealism. As the title suggests, these images are about identity and “the unease […]
