Nook

A Nook illustration looks like a single frame in a graphic novel, at a moment of high tension. His characters don’t linger or dillydally—the moment is decisive. These are characters that look like they have been caught; they are frames that precede violent imagery that we can only imagine. But those are just his personal works.

The Brooklyn-based artist is an art director at Süperfad, a collective of designers, directors, animators and illustrators that put an artistic spin on commercial branding. His talent for advertising speaks to his versatility as an artist. His latest poster, for Art Crank’s first New York show, features the bottom half of woman’s a body leaning on a bike. The blueness of the poster contrasts the homey mustard of the biker’s socks, which are perfectly placed in the center of the picture.

No matter whom the illustration is for, the artist uses sharp lines to heighten the corporeality of his images. You can see the contours of the biker’s knee under her socks; even the Sakura Spaceman’s starchy astronaut suit shows the creases and shadows caused by his bent arm. Though his images border on the absurd—a girl having a tea party with bunnies in a Laundromat, kids in monster costumes whose real teeth look like the monster costumes’ fake teeth—they are not without its subtle realisms.