May, 2013
Atoms and Thorns: Blown-Glass and Steel Sculptures by Graham Caldwell
via Colossal
Tags: abstract, conceptual, monsteresque, nature, sculptures, sinister arts and crafts, weird sculptures
Jana Brike’s “The Book of Taboo”
Jana Brike currently has a solo exhibit at ArtHatch in Escondido, California. Titled The Book of Taboo, this lush white-dominated, pink-tinged series focuses on prepubescent, androgynous girls and boys with milk-white skin and cherubic features, and portrays the theme of (yep, you guessed it) corrupted innocence. Lurid and twisted sexuality, eerie and sinister surreal imagery combined with the sweetness and purity of the diminutive figures, gambol and play in these portraits of children suspended somewhere between childhood and adolescence, between innocence and depraved malice. Jana Brike explains the influences behind these paintings here.
Tags: children, dollflesh, innocence/menace, jana brike, lolitaism, pop surrealism, sexuality, white
4 Most Highly Anticipated Movies
+ Melancholia
{I love Lars von Trier’s work, he’s one of my favorite contemporary directors, and his last film Antichrist (from 2009) was amazing. This movie looks to be potentially amazing as well. Starring Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with a role by Charlotte Rampling also, Melancholia can be described as a surreal psychological sci-fi film; the word “Melancholia” being both the name of the planet that’s imminently colliding with the Earth, and an apt term for the feeling and atmosphere of the movie. It promises to be intense, provocative, over-the-top emotional as Von Trier is known for; with a theatrical, sometimes even overly sentimental soundtrack. I love the surreal, beautiful image of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) floating down the river in her wedding gown holding her bouquet. It doesn’t currently have a U.S. release date, but I hope to see it sometime in 2011.}
+ The Tree of Life
{This Terrence Malick-directed movie, starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain, will be released on May 27. It’s one of the most beautiful movie trailers I’ve ever, ever seen. Vague and mystical, it doesn’t show us much of the story, but it’s incredible and moving. It splices together stunning images of outer space, nature on Earth, man-made structures like the ceiling of a church, and scenes from the childhood of the protagonist, Jack (from really interesting camera perspectives, too), in a kind of visual poetry. It seems to be about a man who’s grown up to be an astronaut (Sean Penn) and who’s reflecting on his upbringing and the lessons he learned from his parents, one of whom (the mother) represents the way of love and mercy, and the other of whom represents pragmatism and the way of the world. There’s a line whispered by the young Jack which expresses this tension, “Father…Mother…always you wrestle inside me. Always you will”; and his mother at the end saying, “If you don’t love, your life will flash by.”}
+ Sleeping Beauty
{This movie is written and directed by Julia Leigh and stars Emily Browning, whom I loved in Sucker Punch. It’s a surreal, visually elegant, and classy piece with an oblique fairy tale reference, described as a “haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious world of hidden desires.” It reminds me of both Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour from 1967 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. I like its air of mystery, anticipation, and stillness, and its almost-retro sense of elegance and preciseness. It looks like a rare gem. It’s released in Australia on June 23, but doesn’t yet have a U.S. release date.}
+ Martha Marcy May Marlene
{Described as “a thriller that shifts nearly imperceptibly between dream, memory, and reality,” with a bravura performance by Elizabeth Olsen (yes, the younger sister of the Olsen twins), this movie looks really interesting and like one of those near-perfect movies that come along once in a while. It’s about a young woman, Martha, who’s “haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia” after escaping from a cult. It gets a wide release on July 10.}
Tags: emotive, experimental, hauntingly beautiful, lars von trier, madness, nature, sci-fi, surreal, trailers
Pictures from Pyongyang
These images of Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea, taken by London-based photographer Charlie Crane and published in 2007, are beautiful but also unsettling. Staged, perfect scenes are displayed: empty train stations and restaurants utterly devoid of life, sterile and pristine; a single representative child, store clerk, or hospital employee standing blandly posed in the midst of these surroundings with completely neutral expressions. Food is set out on a restaurant table for people who aren’t there. These places feel vacated but at the same time inviting.
Tags: artifice, contemporary architecture, eerie, north korea, photojournalism
“A Monsoon Litany”
A Monsoon Litany by Luki for DEW Magazine
Tags: colorful, dark ethereal, fashion editorial, flowers, hauntingly beautiful, high fashion, makeup, nature, otherworldly photography
Cephalopod Love: The Art of Daikichi Amano
Daikichi Amano is a photographer who creates beautiful, grotesque, and bizarre images involving female human subjects and squids, eels, bugs, and other conventionally “repulsive” creatures, which are a tad reminiscent of tentacle fetishism, and always interesting.
Tags: bizarre, cephalopods, erotic, erotic horror, fetish, monsteresque
Space Oddities in Black and Silver: Erevos Aether’s “Gaping Void”
EREVOS AETHER’S GAPING VOID from KONSTANTINOS MENELAOU
+ Directed by Konstantinos Menelaou
+ Choreographed by Nathaniel Parchment
+ Photographed by Natalia Asimi
+ Jewelry design by Maria Piana
+ Design & styling by Erevos Aethervia Twisted Lamb
Tags: alien beauty, architectural fashion, avant-garde, avant-garde goth, dance, distorted bodies, electronic music, experimental, fashion films, futuristic, haute couture, high fashion, jewelry, masks, military/warrior chic, performance art, sci-fi, short films
Liliroze’s Colorful Dream Photography
Tags: art nudes, colorful, experimental, fashion photography, flowers in hair, hazy, masks, red, sepia, soft color, surreal, vintage
Andrea Galluzzo
{from Andrea Galluzzo’s Know Myself in All My Parts series}
Tags: art nudes, black and white, emotive photography, expressive, mystical, sweet/melancholy, symbolism
Poetry: “Nearer:Breath Of My Breath:Take Not They Tingling” by E. E. Cummings
nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting they tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.Querying greys between mouthed houses curl
thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,
the poetic carcass of a girl
- ee cummings
Tags: experimental, hauntingly beautiful, modernism, poetry, stream of consciousness
