Russian artist Dudnikova Eugeniya has an outdoor series where she fills natural knot scars in trees with miniature works of art. Her paintings are scenes of exploration and action, and she lovingly fills the tree scars with the colorful art.
It’s a simple project, but adds color and emotion to the surroundings, and we have a feeling the trees don’t mind so much. Via Behance:
We’re quite sure you’ve never seen a classic, 1972 Lamborghini Miura SV like this before. Artist Fabian Oefner is known for his series called Disintegrating, which dramatically shatters cars into thousands of pieces.
His previous pieces, however, dealt with detailed scale models, not a full-size, complex car. This time, he had the opportunity to ‘explode’ a friend’s beautiful, iconic Lamborghini, suspending thousands of pieces on black threads, and photographing the dramatic composition. It’s a beautiful and impressive undertaking. Via the artist’s website:
These extravagant paper masks are part of the Grec Festival of Barcelona, which includes theatre, dance, music and circus. The intricate colors and expressions showcase a great skill, and we like the range of ages showcased. This collection is from Lobulo Studio, a London-based design shop. Really fun stuff, via Behance:
We love when painters take their craft and put a humorous spin on what otherwise seems like a traditional art. These paintings by Toni Hamel are a great example, using an historical look and feel, but spinning them to be satirical and oddly funny. The 40’s style paintings showcase humans interacting with animals and other subjects, either in the absurd or quasi-absurd. We see workers carefully placing stripes on a white horse to become a zebra. In another, we see a boy at the end of a dock, seemingly taking his iceberg for a swim on a leash. In yet another, we see a dustbowl farmer with a supremely out of place My Little Pony. It’s these absurd moments that give such character to the art. The paintings are part of the series High Tides and Misdemeanors. Part of a showcase at Talon Gallery in Portland, Oregon.
Duane Michals once said:
“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody’s face in a photograph”
With that in mind, this series of faceless portrait photography by Andrea Torres Balaguer succeeds in feeling both provocative and coy, composed yet also lighthearted in it’s paint stroke addition. The richly colored clothing and backdrops adds a sense of sophisticated depth to the imagery, while the emotional void of not connecting with a subject’s face make it feel distant and opaque.
That a portrait photograph should only tell you a one-dimensional narrative is something that Michals has worked his entire career to challenge. Similarly, Balaguer’s images are shrouded in mystery and ambiguity — it is up to the viewer to interpret who the woman is, what kind of life they lead, where they may come from and so on. This preoccupation with mystery has remained a constant in Balaguer’s photography — her past work being dominated by the subconscious and the limits of dreams. Balaguer’s background in fine arts also greatly impacts her work. ‘The Unknown’ and ‘Moon’ are expertly framed; the composition of colors and positions adding meaning and depth to her photographic approach.
Stamps are a great window into culture, famous events, and historical works of art. Generally we see old stamps in collections or on post-dated envelopes, but when used in art pieces, they can become exceptionally expressive. Take this fun and creative series by storybook illustrator Diana Sudyka. Her creations made from gouache, ink, and watercolor are fanciful and expressive, using very old stamps as either the focal point of the pieces, or blended in perfectly with the scenes. In one, a 1952 Queen Elizabeth stamp makes the face of a walking figure in a forested scene. In another, a black panther stalks it’s prey, as a stamp with a castle on it creates a background for the painting. The work is thoughtful yet playful, and it’s clear Sudyka had a lot of fun creating the series.
“I let the stamp inform the subject matter and color palette. It’s a very intuitive process. The stamp is really just a stepping off point to get my imagination going.”
Artist Janet Echelman makes huge, dramatic fiber art, hung in public spaces, and lit to create bright, beautiful organic sculptures.
Made of colored polyethylene fibers that have been knotted, the carefully woven sculptures become beautiful nets, undulating and flowing with warm colors. If you travel through San Francisco, one of our favorite examples of her work hangs in Terminal 2, transforming the space into a modern gallery. Below are examples of her work from all around the world, often hung over public squares, or over waterways.
“These netted works bring softness to the scale of the city,” she said. “They are soft counterpoints to the hard edges of buildings, offering proof that we can interrogate the status quo – that the assumption that cities must be formed from hard materials and straight edges can be changed.”
When you think of a 3D painting, you might think about the way the paint strokes are slightly raised from the flat canvas. With this series of extraordinary paintings by Chris Dorosz, you’d be wrong. His work takes 3D to a whole different level, suspending individual strokes of paint on string, creating a truly dimensional work of art.
Seen from an angle other than straight-on, his work appears like abstract squiggles and daubs. But when viewed from head-on, the portraits appear, almost like magic, aligning to create a beautiful, almost traditional abstract impressionism style. His work is on display at the Muriel Guépin Gallery in New York. Via Colossal:
From the artist, on his interpretation of the paint drop:
“a form that takes shape not from a brush or any human-made implement or gesture, but purely from its own viscosity and the air it falls through, as analogous to the building blocks that make up the human body (DNA) or even its mimetic representation (the pixel).”
If you follow surreal posts on Instagram (we do!), you’ll see a number of great posts by @trashriot, a collage artist from Philadelphia. Their work is epic, showcasing outer space merged with vintage photography that includes nostalgia and Americana, like kids jumping into lakes, women smiling in their evening gowns, etc. Powerful and fun work, showcasing the versatility and beauty of collage. Make sure to check out our own Instagram account as well, for other posts that feature surrealist work at @mossandfog
Rodrigo Pinheiro takes famous works of art and creates collages with modern photography and settings. This series is part of his design collective, called Paste in Place. Some of them work better than others, but the result is nonetheless visually arresting and interesting. Via FeelDesain:
South American folklore and mythology play a big role in Olaf Hajek‘s poignant and colorful portraits. The work is complex and filled with life, both literally and figuratively. Characters carry hair and beards overflowing with birds, flowers, monkeys and the like. The acrylic on wood paintings are beautifully flat and matte, versus shiny oil paintings. The work is timeless, we wouldn’t be able to tell if it were produced recently, or eighty years ago. Lovely collection, via Colossal:
In a clean and bright photographic series by Alain Delorme, he explores the bike couriers in Shanghai, and the extraordinary loads that many carry on their bicycles and carts. The huge payloads are comical in size and subject matter, but showcase a side of Shanghai that is increasingly rare these days, as China rapidly turns into a 21st century superpower. Strangely beautiful work, via Fubiz:
Per Kristian Nygård has a striking and dramatic installation at NoPlace gallery in Oslo. Grown weeks earlier from grass seed, the living sculpture called Not Red But Green is a great juxtaposition of form and texture. Via UrDesign.
A collection of snowy, frosty landscapes. Looks freezing, right? Well, not so much. The images are taken with near infrared photography, which alters the landscapes into bright and strange places. On first glance, you could be fooled. But the bottom image is so obviously hot and sunny that your eye finally makes sense of the scene. Click the images to see them in detail. Via Shutterstock:
Reimagined by food stylists, these Bauhaus-inspired creations are deliciously minimal. Via FastCo Design:
‘fore!’ by allan teger as part of the bodyscapes® photographic series
Carrying on the awesome miniature work of “Big Appetites“, Designboom has a great look at the nude landscape photography of Allan Teger. Funny, poignant and full of form, his work brings the naked body into a dramatic light, albeit one of golfing greens, sledding hills and train trestles.
Self-taught American photographer Allan Teger has sent designboom new images from his body of work ‘Bodyscapes®’, with a series of black and white photographs depicting miniature scenes on the nude body mimicking various landscapes. The images are not double exposures and uses no digital manipulation, only small scale figures arranged on the naked form to illustrate predominantly outdoor activities, where a belly-button may act as a lake or a sculpted derrière as a mountain.
Teger was initially trained as a psychologist, with the Bodyscapes® concept evolving from his teaching as an academic counselor. Teger would lecture readings on tao te ching, the bhagavad-gita, books by ram Dass, carl rogers, huxley, watts and others. The notions of altered realities, subjective reality, and mystical consciousness became part of his artistic understanding.
Teger describes the development of his work:
‘I remember the moment that the idea for bodyscapes® came to me. I was thinking that the shape and structure of the universe repeated itself at every level and suddenly I had the image in my mind of a skier going down a breast. This was it – the universe repeating its shapes – a body looking like a mountain. It was also an example of two realities coexisting. The picture could be seen as a landscape and it could also be seen as a body. Although they were different, both perceptions were right at the same time. I knew instantly that I had an entire series of images waiting to be captured on film.’
The ongoing project started in 1976, with the set updated regularly to this day, most are shot with a medium format mamiya RB67 and either tri-X or t-max film.
‘sailboat couple’
‘sailing’
‘tubes’
‘shark’
‘two riders’
‘train’
‘diver’
‘lovers’
‘golfing the rough’
‘dolphins’
‘fishing’
‘bikes’
‘high wire’