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
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
Flowers of Sickness: Marcel van der Vlugt’s “A New Day”
These lovely images are from Marcel van der Vlugt’s medical series A New Day. They depict the “flowers of illness,” so to speak, featuring nude women in hospital regalia (bandages, oxygen masks, bound limbs), among medical equipment, upon the operating and examining table, but simultaneously intertwined with, wearing, sprouting flowers, seeming somehow strong at the same time that they represent fragility and trauma, and suggesting that they are reborn, given new life in the midst of sickness and sterility.
Tags: art nudes, bandages, fetish, flowers, fragility, hauntingly beautiful, hospitals, injuries, medical-themed
Irina Ionesco
Irina Ionesco is a French-Romanian photographer who began exhibiting her work in the mid-1970s. Her photography is dark, dramatic, erotic, and strongly evocative of a vintage aesthetic. I see lots and lots of influence from the 1920s – from the lavishly ornamental tendency in portraits from that period, where female subjects are arranged in feathers, furs, headdresses, high heels, and assorted paraphernalia, along with the era’s makeup, and the overall “sexy/macabre” vibe and vampish aesthetic of the ’20s.
There was a lot of controversy surrounding Ionesco’s nudes with her young daughter as the model. More on that below.
Tags: 1920s, 1970s, black-and-white portraits, controversy, erotic, fetish, lolitaism, vintage, vintage undergarments
Una Burke’s Medical Armor
I’m probably the last person to blog about this since it’s made the blogosphere rounds, but I thought I would anyway, just for the record. This is Una Burke‘s “medical armor,” a conceptual collection of artwear inspired by prosthetic devices and medical braces and the process of healing from trauma, titled Re.Treat. The warrior-like body armor is reminiscent of medical corsetry, and also of wearing human flesh as a shield against psychological harm. The means of protection also become a means of entrapment, binding the body tightly. She cites a few of her influences as Hans Bellmer, Alexander McQueen, and Erwin Olaf. On her Website she states the pieces were made from “undyed vegetable-tanned leather which is reminiscent of Caucasian flesh” – I couldn’t help finding that last part a little funny.
Tags: avant-garde, collars, corsetry, erwin olaf, fetish, hans bellmer, historically inspired, medical braces, medical-themed, sinister arts and crafts, trauma, una burke
Precious Creatures: The Art of Ray Caesar
Ray Caesar is one of those artists in the Pop Surreal Movement whose work I’ve seen around for years and years. His medium is quite unique: 3D modeling. And if I were to sum up his subject matter in a few words, I would say something like subverted Victorian morals. His works most often feature young, prepubescent girls, often sexualized, deformed, outfitted with sea-monster tentacles, and in other ways altered from reality. The fetish Batgirl-esque mask is ever present. Women peer from behind fans in Marie Antoinette-style costume, hold parasols in Victorian garb, and sport ’50s-style flip haircuts. His worlds are bright and colorful, the girls vaguely menacing. Macabre and eerie, the works are set in the midst of delicately colored, floral Victorian wallpaper and lush, feminine interiors; the girls are surrounded by objects of taming and domesticity, but they show their teeth and their sinister side.
From Jonathan Levine Gallery Online:
“Working for 17 years in the Art and Photography Department of The Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, Ray Caesar documented things such as child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology, and animal research.Using a 3D modeling software called Maya, he builds models and wraps them in painted and manipulated texture maps. The models are set up with an invisible skeleton that allows him to pose each figure in a 3D environment. Digital lights and cameras are added to simulate shadows and reflections, completing the effect of a mysterious and strange alternate world.”
Some of my favorites of his works:
Tags: fetish, historically inspired, innocence/menace, pop surrealism, ray caesar, victorian
Doll Parts – The Art of Lost Fish
“Doll Parts” is the aptly named latest exhibition of Elodie/Lost Fish. Lost Fish mixes innocence with sexuality and evil in her precious, delightful illustrations. Uber-cute, teary-eyed tiny girls with a melancholy expression, bud mouths, hyperrealistic porcelain-white faces and rouged cheeks are the subjects of her painstakingly rendered digital art. Baby faces and symbols of childhood abound. There are murderous-seeming aristocrats, darling deformities of children, lovelorn cyborgs, and all the accoutrements of such precious beings, including teacups, cakes, ribbons, flowers, and pet creatures. They seem yearning, hurt, vulnerable, and wicked by turns. There are Lolita, fetish, and cyberpunk overtones. The resultant imagery is almost too cute for words: the epitome of innocent and corrupted dollflesh.
Tags: animals, babies, cute little girls, dolls, fetish, lost fish, pop surrealism, sweet/melancholy, victorian
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