Infection
Anatomy of Heaven: Dino Valls
Dino Valls is a Spanish painter of exquisite, piercing surreal works which explore the human body as representative of the psyche, medical analogies, religious imagery, and sexuality. Beautiful and photorealistic, his paintings have a sense of classicism and an incredible technical virtuosity that will blow you away.
The figures often have a beautiful, heavenly cast to their faces, reminiscent of classics by old masters and medieval religious paintings. In these beautiful and disturbing works, the body is portrayed as fragmented, segmented, doubled, vivisected, deformed, and androgynous – both oddity and sacrosanct vessel. Body parts are displaced and represent the damaged state of the whole person. Scores of needles adorn the figures.
These images illustrate powerful statements about the way that the modern body is invaded, pried into, operated upon, examined, measured, and manipulated, making a commentary on the impersonal, objectifying treatment of modern medicine. There is often a disembodied hand taking hold of the subject in a possessive way, evoking the cold, clinical, authoritative touch of doctors, with sexual and sinister overtones. The surgery they perform on the people is symbolic and laden with dark meanings.
I love the genius way in which Valls uses anatomical symbolism and naked, human vulnerability to create such powerful, resonant images, and the way that he both perverts and glorifies the human form and human spirit.
Lots and lots of pictures below.
Tags: anatomical-themed, art nudes, classicism, medical-themed, religious imagery, twins/doppelgangers/doubles, vivisected
798 Art Zone in Beijing
When I went on my recent trip to China (that’s where I’ve been these last two weeks), I visited this amazing art district in Beijing called 798 Space or 798 Art Zone. Though I liked many other places in Beijing, it was my favorite, and even though 798 seems to be a pretty popular tourist site, it seems different somehow from anywhere else in the city. It’s so nice and quiet there, the aesthetic being minimalist and modern but really interesting, quirky, and quite beautiful, and the art is creative and right down my alley. I loved how we could just walk unobtrusively, stealthily into any lofty, white gallery and check out the art as we liked and go around; there weren’t many people around. It was like a giant First Friday, a fantasy one for me.
798 used to be an industrial area that many artists have since converted into an inspiring contemporary art community with loads of studios, galleries, and cafes. The military factory buildings built in the ’50s in a unique, Bauhaus-influenced architectural style, redesigned and reclaimed by the artists in the ’90s and 2000s, now house works of art and provocative exhibits. Their former status as factories and industrial buildings, in their modern incarnation, serves to give them a beautiful, original, rather than sterile quality. I’ve never seen such spacious and minimalistically majestic indie art galleries and studios. I loved it.
Found on Flickr; not my image.
Not my image
Not my image
A postcard and bookmark I picked up there.There was this amazing installation, “Tears” by Luan Jiaqi, in one of the exhibits. I now regret not taking a picture of it. Even though there were “No photos” signs all over the place, everyone seemed to be taking pictures, anyway. I sadly can’t find any of it on the Internet. If anybody knows what the hell I’m talking about and has pictures of this installation, please let me know. My description would only sound crummy and probably not give you any real idea of what it looks like. The closest comparison that I can draw is to the work of Jin Young Yu; it was a group of expressive, white faces hanging from the ceiling/floating in space, with “tears” streaming down.
It’s kind of ironic that I do this blogging thing, because I don’t feel that any of the art or images I like really need to be explained, or can be. Maybe that’s why I’m liking Tumblr so much.
Tags: 798, beijing, contemporary architecture, pop surrealism, weird sculptures
Royal Fairy Tales and Frail Dolls
Lily Bloodstained AKA Mon-artifice is an amazing young photographer who does the most fantastic self-portraiture. In her richly dark imagery, she takes on the personae of tragic and baroque, 18th-century aristocrats and the like, in flour-white makeup elaborated with ink ornamentation, and half-masks, often with the theme of mirroring, fragmented, or double images. Expressive, dark, and endlessly creative, she is a true inspiration. She embodies a sense of nostalgic melancholy, and her work, though deeply emotional, is always subtle and has a certain elegant quality. Here is some of her work below. I like so many of her images that it was hard to pick!
Lily Bloodstained on DeviantArt
on Flickr
on Darkfolio
on Dirty Angels
Tags: 18th century, baroque, historically inspired, lily bloodstained, masks, otherworldly photography, self-portraits
Angelspit: Larva Pupa Tank Coffin – CD Artwork
I know I post about Destroyx a lot, but I can’t help it, she’s my style icon and she inspires me endlessly.
Her and ZooG‘s band Angelspit is coming out with a remix CD, titled Larva Pupa Tank Coffin, in October. The title comes from one of my favorite songs off their previous album Hideous and Perfect, of which the first line is, “I was not born, I was hatched; from larva, to pupa; tank to coffin.”
The CD artwork has been unveiled, and of course I love it. Destroyx says, “This rich and elaborate work is inspired by Russian Constructivism, vaudeville theater, with a twist of late 19th-century Mysticism.”
Her looks for each of Angelspit’s albums have been so different! This one is rather “prettier” and less “alienating” than some of her other looks, but awesome as well. No one is able to transform themselves with makeup quite like Destroyx. Can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.
Tags: angelspit, CD artwork, destroyx, russian constructivism
Prosthetic Doll Leg
I blogged earlier about Marina Bychkova‘s doll creations. She sometimes tattoos her porcelain dolls with the most intricate and interesting designs. I’m just posting this, a doll leg painted as a vintage prosthetic, because it’s so cool.
This doll is based on the tragic literary figure Anna Karenina (if she had survived her ultimate suicide attempt with major damages to her body, consequently having to wear an orthopedic corset, arm brace, and prosthetic left leg). Images of the rest of the doll after the cut.
Tags: dolls, marina bychkova, medical-themed, porcelain, prosthetic
“The History of Love”
I love this passage.
“My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath.
The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised by how much it can take, all I feel is a quick sharp pain and then it’s over. Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney.
I don’t mean to make it sound like I’ve made a science of it. It’s not that well thought out. I take it where it comes. It’s just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I’m ready, this, for reasons I can’t explain, I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. The field where we used to play, the field in which everything was discovered and everything was possible. (We ran so hard we thought we would spit blood: to me that is the sound of childhood, heavy breathing and shoes scraping the hard earth.) Stiffness of the fingers is the dream of childhood as it’s been returned to me at the end of my life. I have to run them under the hot water, steam clouding the mirror, outside the rustle of pigeons. Yesterday I saw a man kicking a dog and I felt it behind my eyes. I don’t know what to call this, a place before tears. The pain of forgetting: spine. The pain of remembering: spine.
Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”
– from The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Eye-Love [001]
Mona Lisa Is Gone
DevonTags: anja millen, bandages, black and white, geisha-inspired, nick knight
Heaven by Felice Fawn
Two incredible images, titled Heaven and Purgatory, respectively, from Felice Fawn:
Tags: amazing makeup, art nudes, felice fawn, medical-themed, otherworldly photography, religious imagery, virgin mary, white hair
The Inner Kingdom
This is the video for the song “t” from music project iamamiwhoami (Jonna Lee). It reminds me a little of the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. She has the most expressive hands.
“I suppose the crowns…have something to do with autonomy and the inner kingdom.”
- Chris Con Askew, on religious imagery in his artwork
Another awesome music video, from Fever Ray:
Tags: crown, iamamiwhoami, music videos
Injured Children: The Art of Gottfried Helnwein
You probably thought this was a photograph when you first saw it (I definitely did); but it’s not. It’s an amazing painting by the renowned artist Gottfried Helnwein. His paintings are unbelievably photorealistic, and they often feature disturbing and provocative representations of children who are bloodied and injured, bandages wrapped around their heads: an allegory for innocence and trauma, emotional injury, the consequences of violence, abuse, and other scarring forces out in the world.
