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From Brad Pitt to Tommy Lee Jones – Hong Kong illustrator brings famous faces from Coen brothers’ films to life
Stephen Case launches exhibition featuring characters from Joel and Ethan Coen’s films
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Walking into the cool and cosy Swing A Cat gallery, in To Kwa Wan, feels a bit like you’ve gatecrashed a reunion of actors from the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Giant, exaggerated faces stare out from the walls.
There’s a young Nicolas Cage from the 1987 flick Raising Arizona next to Veronica Osorio from Hail, Caesar! (2016). On the opposite wall is an image of the Coen brothers’ muse Frances McDormand, from the siblings’ first film, Blood Simple (1984), while a big-lipped Brad Pitt (from 2008’s Burn After Reading) looks on in wide-eyed shock. A black-and-white image of Javier Bardem from No Country for Old Men (2007) looms large elsewhere.
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“I loved doing this one of Tommy Lee Jones,” says illustrator Stephen Case, pointing to a framed image of the actor from his role in the Academy Award-winning No Country for Old Men. “It’s pretty obvious that I’m a Coen fan,” he laughs.
So big a fan, in fact, that he has launched “700 Coens’”, an exhibition featuring caricatures from all 17 films by the pair, the “700” referencing his ambitious plan to draw that many characters – main and cameos. He has completed 30 so far.
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Research has involved watching all the films over 100 hours, including 1998’s The Big Lebowski (Case’s favourite), Fargo (1996), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2007) … the list goes on.
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