Sas + Colin: Colin Christian
Colin Christian makes larger-than-life sculptures of space-girls, aliens, and femme fatale creatures, in a style I dub cyber retro-erotic which takes influence from many different subcultures. Statuesque and cast in fiberglass and silicone, these cartoonishly exaggerated, indomitably perfect figures with piercing, gigantic, pellucid eyes, featuring campy titles such as Adventures on Planet Freud and The Callgirl of Cthulhu, are a sort of oddball mixture of his diverse inspirations, including “old sci-fi movies, pinup girls/supermodels, anime,” and “H. P. Lovecraft.” I find some of his work to be not to my taste, bordering on obscene or downright creepy (not to say disturbing), but these pieces below I do like. Also check out Sas’ art in the previous post.
Tags: alien beauty, bizarre, cartoony, cyber aesthetic, distorted bodies, doll-like, enlarged eyes, erotic, fetish, futuristic, life-sized, lolita-esque, monsteresque, pinup, pop surrealism, realism, retro, sci-fi, sculptures, sinister arts and crafts, space girls, strange beauty
Flora and Fauna: The Craft of Lorenzo Nanni
Lorenzo Nanni makes incredibly intricate, beautiful (often wearable) art, taking inspiration in an amazing way from organic forms and anatomical structures, reflecting a kind of gorgeous hybridization between animal and plant life, often replete with creaturesque tendrils seeming to infest as well as adorn the host. He creates his own breathtaking “lifeforms” from craft materials. I particularly love his Arteries, Veins series, the way that they depict details from anatomy as a textbook would, but in the startlingly tangible materials of his craft: felt, beads, embroidery. They look so visceral, so intricate, but remind us at the same time of their artificial construction, the biological juxtaposed with the inorganic.
Found via Haute Macabre
If you like this, also be sure to check out my post on Mandy Greer.
Tags: anatomical-themed, bizarre, conceptual fashion, flora, monsteresque, needle felting, sinister arts and crafts, visceral, wearable art
“Biojewelry”: Grow Your Own Bone Wedding Rings
Several years ago, Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott, design researchers at the Royal College of Art, and Ian Thompson, a bioengineer at King’s College London, teamed up to create wedding bands from bone cells extracted from five volunteer couples.
According to a BBC News article, “The scientists extracted the participants’ wisdom teeth to get at a sliver of bone that attaches them to the jawbone.” After extracting the bone cells for culture, “These are fed with nutrients and grown on a ‘scaffold’ material called bioglass, a special bioactive ceramic which mimics the structure of bone material.” It was a “long and fragile” process, but basically took place in the following steps:
The process
1. Extract bone chips from jaw. Rinse.
2. Place bone cells in ring-shaped bioactive ceramic scaffold.
3. Feed liquid nutrients and culture in a temperature-controlled bioreactor for six weeks.
4. After coral-like bone forms fully around scaffold, pare down to final ring shape and insert silver liner (for engraving).Harriet Harriss, one of the participants, says: “I love the idea that it’s precious only to us because it is, literally, us. It’s almost worthless to anyone else. To take something that is from myself and make it into something precious is a lovely thing and means quite a lot to me.”
Of course, there is more potential for this project than just offbeat wedding rings made from the beloved’s own bone cells. It could eventually be used to grow bone replacements for implantation, so that the bone required to, say, repair a damaged jaw, wouldn’t have to be harvested from a piece of a rib, or elsewhere in the body. “Dr. Thompson says he thinks it will be used in clinical practice, but not in his lifetime.”
via goetia on Tumblr
Tags: anatomical-themed, bioart, biotechnology, bizarre, bones, jewelry, sinister arts and crafts, weird science projects
Gorgeous and Grotesque: The Art-Dolls of Nita Collins
Nita Collins’ doll-sculptures creep me out and exhilarate me. Disturbing, beautiful, verging on the grotesque, delicately crafted, flawlessly executed, melancholically tender, realistic to the point of being unnerving – adorned with puckered scars, ragged holes in chests, and a panoply of peculiar, unique marks on their flesh that seem to have come straight from Nita’s imagination and heart – the tortured, sweetly exquisite bodies and faces of these dolls are a singular, constant mixture of provocative and moving. They are lovingly scarred, divinely imagined, different from any other dolls I’ve seen. Nita Collins has a unique talent manifest in these gorgeous, poignant art-dolls. Check out her blog here.
Tags: bizarre, dark fairy tales, distorted bodies, dollflesh, dolls, emotive, expressive, hauntingly beautiful, nita collins, realism, scars, sculptures, strange beauty, sweet/melancholy, trauma, virtuoso, visceral
Xooang Choi’s “Islets of Aspergers Type VII”
This is amazing.
From artist Xooang Choi’s 2008 Islets of Aspergers Type VII exhibition.
Tags: bizarre, conceptual, distorted bodies, flour-white flesh, installation art, life-sized, photorealism, sculptures, surreal, virtuoso, weird sculptures, xooang choi
Random image of the day
via silent-musings on tumblrTags: art nudes, bizarre, black and white, monsteresque, retro, sepia, surreal
Dream Machine [001]
I had this weird dream one night last week where there was something wrong with my chest — I felt it, and so my teacher said, “Go to the hospital, a doctor,” and when I went to the hospital I saw a group of doctors standing in front of me, and I went forward, bent sightly over, with my hand over my chest, holding it carefully, with a wounded look on my face, and I felt a slight pain, no more than a papercut or a dull tiny cut, though, really. It was like I was tenderly holding my wound like an injured sparrow held cupped in my hands against my chest. I was afraid of showing it to the doctors, like you’re afraid of opening your mouth for the dentist when you’re a child. I imagined, from outside me, I saw an image of myself with a big hole in my chest, punched right through the rib cage, right in the center, with my heart missing and only destroyed tissue there. (In true dream fashion, it was right in the center, not slightly off to the left, because I don’t think my subconscious takes note of these details.) But when I pulled my hands away and finally showed the doctors, it transformed into, or turned out to be, only a small wound near my collarbone, on my right side, that was thick and dark with blood already like a clotted rope.
The Fleshly Mirror
Down the Primrose by Victoria ReynoldsA few more of Victoria Reynolds’ meat-depicting oil paintings can be here.
Related posts:
Fine China Autopsy ArtTags: bizarre, meat, surreal, victoria reynolds
Takashi Miike’s "Imprint"
An hour-long surreal horror film called “Imprint” is Takashi Miike’s contribution to the Masters of Horror series. It takes place (vaguely) in 19th-century Japan, but everything is spoken in English, and it’s very sort of ahistorical; it’s much more about a modern aesthetic interpretation of the times that the story takes place in rather than any real historical basis. Based on a traditional Japanese ghost story, an older American man travels to an island, where a brothel is kept, in search of his long-lost love, Komomo, who he promised he would take away one day long ago. Once there, he meets a disfigured/beautiful prostitute who tells him the story of (and many lies about) her life and Komomo’s. The girl’s appearance/disfigurement reminds me a bit of Yotsuya Kaidan, one of my favorite ghost stories.
Tags: asian horror, bizarre, colorful, film reviews, surreal, takashi miike, torture
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