April, 2013
Summer Spell
Summer Spell, curated by JL Schnabel, is currently showing at Gallery 309 in Philadelphia until October 20th.
Tags: art shows, fairy tales, modern fairy tales, sculptures
Alex CF’s Mythical and Nightmare Specimens
Alex CF painstakingly creates these cryptozoological specimens encased in bell jars and elaborate, gorgeous display cabinets replete with the paraphernalia, notes, and mementos of the scientific ventures that captured these exquisite specimens. He almost creates complete miniature scenes around the specimens: there are reliquaries, study cases, vampire slaying kits, portable bio-aetheric animation laboratories, coffers, and sarcophagi. The specimens are drawn from literary works, including Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Dante’s Inferno, H. G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and Chthulhu Mythos, as well as folklore and legend. The array of allusions to classical eerie fiction is delightful.
He reimagines and renders these cryptic, bizarre, mythical creatures and beings, sirens, faeries, mutants, succubi, devilspawn, atrocities against nature, resulting in specimens that are disturbingly lifelike and real enough to touch. They are repulsive and yet alluringly detailed. The displays also come with beautifully drawn illustrations, which are as fascinating as the specimens themselves.
Tags: alice in wonderland, anatomical illustrations, anatomical-themed, artifacts of the past, autopsy, babies, bizarre, chthulhu, corpses, creature, creepy, cryptid, cryptozoology, eerie, exposed anatomy, fairies, fairy tales, fleshy, gory, grotesque, hunter/hunted, illustrations, macabre, monsteresque, mythos, natural history, religious imagery, sculptures, sideshows, sinister arts and crafts, taxidermy, vampires, vials, victorian, vintage, visceral, vivisected, weird science projects
Deconstruction: The Art of Cane Dojcilovic
Tags: black and white, exposed anatomy, hauntingly beautiful, melancholy, prose poetry, realism, realistic drawings, surreal
New Work by Sarah Louise Davey
Tags: bizarre, ceramic, eerie, flora, grotesque, sculptures, visceral, weird sculptures
Gilding Primal Instinct: The Executioner
Gilding Primal Instinct‘s beautiful F/W 2012 collection The Executioner features blades, gauzy veil-like textures, and alluringly alien metallic masks and headpieces These pieces perfectly embody the mission to “create an aggressive dichotomy between subtle, elegant forms and vicious primal instinct [and] translate practices of ritual adornment into iconic character archetypes.”
Tags: alien beauty, avant-garde, avant-garde goth, black garments, dark romantic, fashion editorial, hauntingly beautiful, jewelry, mystical/feral jewelry, primordial, witchy
A Perfect Monster: The Art of John Dyer Baizley
Tags: (twists on) traditional art, animals, colorful, creature, grotesque, illustrations, nature, poster illustrations, realism, realistic drawings
