February, 2012
Nicoletta Ceccoli’s “Incubi Celesti”
These hauntingly beautiful, ethereal portraits of Alice in Wonderland-like figures clad in blue are from Nicoletti Ceccoli’s new body of work, fittingly titled Incubi Celesti (or “Heavenly Nightmares”). This collection is currently displaying at the Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome, Italy, until December 23rd.
Tags: alice in wonderland, cute/creepy little girls, innocence, modern fairy tales, nicoletta ceccoli, otherworldly, pop surrealism, rabbits, surreal, twins
“The Exorcism of…” by Anti Sweden
I love the movement in this video, the crazy, dark kinetic energy. This is one of the few films/”trailers” for fashion labels that I can truly say I like.
+ Directed by Marius Tharaldsen and modeled by Vilde Victoria Madsen + for design agency Anti’s newly launched black denim line, “Anti Sweden.” + Inspired by the Norwegian “culture of darkness” and the spirit of black metal’s aesthetics.
Tags: black metal, dance, fashion films, insanity, religious imagery
Reddened Mouths, White Masks, Hungry Fingers
These are ever-so-creepy installation artworks by Israeli sculptor Ronit Baranga
(via Acidolatte):
Tags: conceptual, installation art, masks, sculptures, surreal horror, teacups
The Propriety of Women: Riikka Sormunen
Riika Sormunen is a Finnish artist and illustrator based in Canada. Reminiscent of both Edward Gorey and Gustav Klimt, her works have an oddball, morbid sense of playfulness, and loose, childlike, highly stylized and expressive figures in surreal, flattened landscapes. Her use of color is bold, sophisticated, and brilliant. Drawing from the Victorian era and the stuff of fairy tales, and sometimes depicting women from the middle of the 20th century, Riikka’s paintings constantly subvert conventions and sexual mores in a quirky, ironic, frank, and personal way. Her style has a wide range and has evolved over time; the constant is that it is refreshingly different and exudes individuality.
Riikka Sormunen’s Website
Riikka Sormunen on DeviantArt
Tags: colorful, femininity, illustrations, modern fairy tales, retro, riikka sormunen, sexuality, swan, victorian, whimsical
Chris Berens – “Leeuwenhart”
Chris Berens’ Leeuwenhart exhibition is currently displaying at the Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle. These precious, glowing, softly translucent works have a surreal fairytale-land feel, and a unique look which comes from Berens’ singular method of using inks (as well as bistre, graphite, and parquet lacquer) on inkjet photo paper, and piecing the works together in a patchwork fashion in 1-3-inch pieces; some patches are suffused with a haze, while others are sharp to the point of photorealism. The overall effect has a lot of depth, layering, softness, and wonderfully dreamlike, gently bizarre qualities.
Tags: animals, babies, chris berens, deer, innocence, modern fairy tales, otherworldly, roq la rue, royalty, woods
“Lacrimosa” by Kevin Llewellyn
This is a painting I love from Kevin Llewellyn‘s exhibition at Kat Von D’s recently launched Wonderland Gallery:
Hypnotic Abstraction: The Art of Sougwen Chung
Sougwen Chung is a Brooklyn-based designer & illustrator whose abstract drawings are completely bewitching and entrancing. Mindblowingly detailed and intricate, these writhing masses, coiling infinitely upon themselves, have a sense of kinetic energy, and, though the shapes are abstract, also sort of a sense of being organic. Sougwen’s personal projects are simply amazing; see examples below.
Tags: abstract
Kate MacDowell
Kate MacDowell makes incredible works of art, akin to installation pieces, out of porcelain, a medium she chose for its “luminous and ghostly qualities as well as its strength and ability to show fine texture.”
Detailed and realistic, these pieces make loud and piercing statements about the troubled relationship between man and the natural world, but remain elegant and delicate. They “borrow from myth” (one example is this piece, titled Persephone, which references the myth of Persephone’s abduction by Hades to the Underworld, in which she mistakenly eats the seeds of a pomegranate he offers to her, thus forcing her to spend a quarter of each year in the Underworld – in MacDowell’s vision, the pomegranate’s seeds are actually pills, tablets with a neat little line down the middle); other sources of inspiration include “art history, figures of speech, and other cultural touchstones.”
The pieces are visual metaphors, or illustrated “figures of speech,” such as a pair of lungs with canaries inside them, or a dead rabbit containing a human skeleton. In MacDowell’s world, man and nature are grafted to each other, repeatedly, in surreal and subtly horrific ways. As she explains, often “aspects of the human figure stand in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world.”
Check out her work below, and be amazed. More can be seen on her Website.
Tags: anatomical-themed, animals, conceptual, environmentalism, greek mythology, installation art, kate macdowell, metamorphosis, political, porcelain, rabbits, surreal
Mmm…Galliano
I love, love, love John Galliano’s runway makeup. Often 1920s-inspired, it is dominated by bow lips, rosy contoured cheeks, just the thinnest of brows whimsically penciled in, and heavy shading in eccentric and interesting colors around the eyes that literally creates shadows, hollows, and a “bleeding,” “bruised” look. The effect is simultaneously macabre and playful, a pastiche of makeup for young widows in the silent era. I love the interesting mix of colors, the heaviness, the drama of it. No matter whether you find yourself really liking Galliano’s couture or not, the makeup is always innovative, elaborate, and striking, and that is part of the couture, creating a magic and mystery about it.
Tags: 1920s, amazing makeup, haute couture, john galliano, pierrot, runway fashion, vintage
A Sorta Fairytale: The Art of Chelsea Greene Lewyta
Chelsea Greene Lewyta is an illustrator and artist who deals in the stuff of nightmare fairy tales and tragedies. Her delicate, often sexually charged watercolors portray women whose brutalization and victimization (in short, trauma) is manifested in the natural world (in little creatures, deer, branches, woods) and in surreal distortions of their personal anatomies. The forest as metaphor for fringe existence, twisted psyches, and the modern rendition of fairytale imagery is again a strong motif here, as in DeerlyDeparted’s work (see the previous post). Her work depicts what she describes as “a great schism between the beautiful and the macabre.”
Tags: anatomical-themed, animals, deer, erotic, hunter/hunted, illustrations, modern fairy tales, surreal, trauma, woods
