Artist Filip Hodas has an ongoing series where he explores the decaying remnants of pop culture icons. These include Futurama’s Bender, Pacman, Hello Kitty, and many more. The icons are beautifully rendered as robotic-like droids or machines, but long since dead, and decaying amongst swamps and abandoned fields. Covered in moss, dirt, and graffiti, Hodas lovingly creates a world that feels dystopian, but also peaceful and calm.
Check out more of Hodas’ work on his Behance page.
In a grim yet horrifyingly accurate portrayal, artist Hannah Rothstein beautifully creates dystopian future versions of classic National Park posters. The designs for the 2050 versions are set next to their classic counterpoints, showing the devastation that very well may occur unless we start waking up to the realities of climate change. And our very horrible president isn’t going to be doing any favors to our parks, in that regard. Rothstein is selling her work in poster form, with 25% of profits going to climate related causes.
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” -Aldous Huxley
National Parks 2050 is a call to action. Drawing upon the classic National Parks posters, this series shows how climate change will affect seven of America’s most beloved landscapes. In doing so, it makes climate change feel close to home and hard to ignore.
Mike Winkelmann’s art is impressive for both its detail and its dystopian, strangely creepy design. His work has a throwback quality, with some of the subjects looking like they came straight out of Blade Runner. Others showcase a stranger, eery organic nature, but told with a high-tech paintbrush. Regardless of how his art makes you feel, the scope and skill of his portfolio is impressive.
Digital painter and illustrator Alex Andreev has a way with floating objects, otherworldly lands, and moments of strange emotion. His work is both very quiet and very disquieting.
Trying to categorize or summarize the genre of Alex Andreev’s (previously) digital paintings is nearly impossible. Part science fiction, part dystopian future, the scenes are equally disturbing and beautiful, his characters inhabiting a world Andreev tells me is deeply influenced by Soviet-era literature, music and movies. Based in St. Petersburg, Russia he works primarily with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint and relies only on a small selection of brushes and colors to create each illustration, meaning there are no special effects or 3d-rendering of anything. Andreev recently published an art book, A Separate Reality, which is available through Blurb.com.