By: Keith Estiler
studio visits
studio visits
When they first met in 2011, Yok and Sheryo’s artistic styles were polar opposites. Yok favored minimalist line drawings while Sheryo spearheaded a loose approach to illustrating characters. As they’ve tackled more and more projects over the years as a duo, they’ve developed a shared visual language that celebrates the wild handstyles of graffiti. Cartoonish figurations can be observed across their demonic cast of characters -- with an aesthetic that merges Yok and Sheryo’s personal experiences growing up in Australia and Singapore, respectively.
Now based in Brooklyn, the artists tell HYPEBEAST that they developed their signature styles during their teenage years in skateboarding communities. Yok says that his skater friends would ask him to draw graphics for their boards, having praised him for his clean illustration technique at the time. Those figures were inspired by vintage cartoons from publications such as MAD magazine and Mambo, as well as famed cartoonists like Robert Crumb. Sheryo echoes similar influences in her practice, but her characters are also inspired by pop-Satanism, weed culture and fast food.
What pedals their fascination for interdisciplinary artworks, however, is their joint interest in exploring new places and meeting skilled craftspeople across the globe. The pair travels frequently to Southeast Asia to discover niche handicrafts and learn techniques from local masters. One of their most memorable excursions was a 2011 trip to Jakarta, where the duo spent two months learning how to do Batik, an ancient Indonesian technique of drawing on whole cloth using a spouting tool called a tjanting. On another trip, they learned how to do Vietnamese ceramic painting. After we met, the pair was just about to embark on a trek through villages in Laos to learn the local style of weaving.
Ahead of their Laos trip, we paid a visit to Yok and Sheryo’s shared workspace in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood to get a closer look at their collaboration process, diverse artworks and upcoming projects.
Step Inside the Demonic World of Yok & Sheryo
Exploring the otherworldly artworks of the Brooklyn-based painter and sculptor.
Bushwick, Brooklyn
YokandSheryo.com
How did each of you develop your signature style?
Yok & Sheryo
Yok: When I first met Sheryo she was cutting out a sticker of a zombie and it had this cool style that I had a familiarity with already. We shared the same influences such as skateboard graphics and cartoons like Ren & Stimpy and old Looney Tunes.
Sheryo: We both were into vintage cartoons and illustrations from magazines like Mad, Mambo, and the artist Robert Crumb.
Did you have similar styles before you met?
Sheryo: My style is really wonky and really imperfect because I like imperfection. My lines were super wavy when I drew and his was kind of straighter. He would draw a straight line. Try to get really straight on the wall and spray can and I'll be like, "Yo. I'm just going to do it wonky." Because it's easier. It's done by hand.
Yok: I had a cleaner style. A bit more, I don't know, it was a bit more work and trouble to make the cleaner style and then I met Sheryo and she had this loose, wobbly, wonky style and I was envious of it and kind of adapted into that. It’s kind of like that new airbrush work that we've been doing. I kind of just embrace the looseness and the wonkiness of it in the conception.
Yok: I feel like it comes from traveling and it's one part island paradise, one part Brooklyn grimy graffiti, barbwire. The patterning really comes from traveling in Southeast Asia and looking at fabrics and Batik and things like that. And that's where the color palette also came from, the introduction of gold really comes from our first trip to Cambodia and seeing all the temples there. The temples have got this real high luminosity gold that we loved. We brought that into our work as well.
Sheryo: There's also a lot of humor I think and imperfection. We really don't take ourselves seriously and our art is like that too.
Yok: I was hanging out with a lot of graffiti artists and they were always spray painting and they were seeing my drawings and like, "Oh, you've got to come down. You've got to come down to the wall." They brought me down and I didn't want to go, and then I first picked up spray paint and I was addicted because it was so fun and easy and fast.
Sheryo: I first picked up paint when I was maybe 18 and I was still in art school, and it was a bunch of skater dudes that kind of adopted me because I'm a nerd and I didn't expect to hang out with cool guys. And then they were like, "Oh you to come down and paint a wall?" I'm like, "Okay." I didn't know what to expect. They just gave me a spray can.
I spent four hours on a really stupid chicken that I painted. It's still around in Singapore to this day and I'm just like, "Oh shit. I don't want anyone to know that it's there." Anyway, I was still pretty crap at it for a long time until I moved to Cambodia. That's when I think I could kind of be more creative without the constraints of money because it was cheap out there. Then I met Yok and he asked me if I wanted to move to New York and I said yes. When I got here I was like a kid in a candy store.
How did you guys meet?
Yok: I met Sheryo in 2011. I was on a trip to Indonesia and we met accidentally because I missed my flight back to Australia. A mutual friend who was living in Cambodia introduced us. I changed my travel plans to stay in Cambodia and we painted our first wall in 2011.
Sheryo: Yeah, someone recently told me that the wall we painted in Cambodia is still around. Well, it's got some tags over it, which is funny. It's like Khmer words. Probably says, "Do not piss here." Because the previous time when we first painted a wall there was already a “Do not piss here” sign.
Describe your styles now.
I was doing reverse painted acrylic polymer peel paintings for a long time, and those were hyper-detailed and all super hard-edged and super meticulous. It got to a point with that where I guess around like 2012, I wanted to start doing something more visceral and more painterly and less sort of slick.
At what point did the both of you get involved in graffiti?
Good advice is work a lot, experiment a lot, and see a lot of art. Find out who the artist is who you really admire and what do you like about their work, what can you bring into the work, but also how can you experiment with materials and make paint do something that's your own language. At least for me, that's always been really important to my practice.
“We get stoked about going to places like Indonesia and spend months learning how to do Batik and making other local artisan works.”
cj hendry
“We really don't take ourselves seriously and our art is like that too.”
Sheryo: Not as much as we like to. Now, we’re very busy with studio work and traveling to different locations in Southeast Asia.
Yok: Yeah, we’re busy finding places to do installations. It’s our new thing. We also travel often to learn niche handicrafts. We get stoked about going to places like Indonesia and spend months learning how to do Batik and making other local artisan works.
“There are elements of creativity in what I do but it's very process-focused work.”
Cj Hendry
Yok: A cool way that we progress and get better is to steal from each other. I would look through her sketchbook and be like, "Oh, that's really good. I'm going to copy it but do it in a different way and add a twist to it." And then she'll might steal from that and then add her a bit to it. We're constantly evolving our style by stealing, I guess, from each other.
Sheryo: Yeah. He's definitely better at drawing. But I'm the one with the more crazy ideas. We constantly steal from each other. When we first met and we were in touring around Thailand, we were eating lunch. We would have this game called you start, I finish and I would start a drawing and then slide it across the table and he would finish it. And that would happen many times without any judgment and pretty naturally and I think it all came out of that.
What’s the collaboration process like?
Sheryo: Yeah, I went to design school in Singapore. I would spend hours in the library just flipping through all kinds of design books and then drawing them into compositions. It helped me a lot, having that graphic design background. I think it's given me, us, an edge almost.
Yok: I went to design school in Perth, Australia. Yeah, definitely made me consider it a more on a professional level rather than just playing around, drawing. It made me think about composition in the line and pattern and how to bring them together in a complete layout.
Did you both study art in school? If so, what sort of lessons did you learn that you still carry today in your practice?
Yok: I moved here 2010 and Sheryo got here in 2012. I first lived in Alphabet City and just kept moving out to different areas as the rent went up. When Sheryo got here she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Williamsburg. After connecting, we painted 60 walls around New York City.
Sheryo: Yeah, I think it was like one wall a week. We paid for everything. It’s like having a billboard on the street in New York City. If you keep painting on public walls, people will start to take notice. For two years, we were eating shit bodega sandwiches. We didn’t really make money at all.
When did you both move to New York City? What were you doing creatively at the time?
Yok: I mean, we'd steal or find paint in the streets. Doing it as low cost as we could. We would also ride our bikes around the city and ask local stores if we can paint their walls. One person would say yes, and then we'd go paint it and then start the process all over again.
Sheryo: We’d also buy paint at Home Depot, all sorts of colors. We were spending all of our money on materials. I would usually let Yok ask the owners if we can paint their walls. If they say no, we’ll ride past the same shop and I’ll tell him to go back in there and ask again.
How were you funding materials for these wall murals?
Are you both still doing that now?
Sheryo: We usually have an idea of what we want to do, but then we don’t do any research because we never do research. It's more fun without research. We were sort of embarrassed because we’re coming in as foreigners and going to these regions with strong traditional customs.
Yok: We have a general idea and then when we land in that city, we just wing it. Jakarta is really well known for its quality Batik. After finding the best source that we could think of, we rented a motorbike, rode down to the village, and just asked 10 people until one person said, "Yes, you can come into our studio and learn from us." I think this sums up a part of our process is adventure plus learning, because this product you could never get from just being in the studio.
Are these projects during your travels planned beforehand?
Sheryo: Not so much, actually. We’re pretty easy going. I think it's more like the installations that we've been doing. Which is quite a new thing because there's so many moving parts to it and just talking to the contractors, the carpenters and stuff and just... yeah. Trying to project manage stuff.
Yok: Usually when there’s time sensitive pressure on a project it gets a bit stressful and we start butting heads.
Do you ever butt heads on projects?
Yok: We would look at our drawings and imagine how it would be great if they were worlds that you could go inside, touch and move around. That's where the installation inspiration came from, I guess.
Sheryo: It was kind of natural, really, a progression from 2D to 3D. Yeah.
What about installations are you both most fascinated by?
Yok: We’re working on an immersive installation at the Paddle 8 auction house at the Lower East Side of New York City. We’re creating this nine-foot wooden sculpture of a middle finger with Donald Trump’s tombstone on top.
Sheryo: It’s this pretty big basement spot. We are making sculptures as well as creating the upholstery and benches. It has a really dingy and dark vibe. It’s kind of a lounge room setting. It’s going to launch this coming fall season.
What are you both working on right now?
