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Surreal art by contemporary artists

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Ryota Matsumoto – Variable Phase Opacities

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Artist Statement

Matsumoto’s artwork reflects the morphological transformations of our ever-evolving ecological milieus that are attributed to a multitude of spatio-temporal phenomena influenced by socioeconomic and built environments. They are created as visual commentaries on speculative changes in notions of societies, cultures and ecosystems in the transient nature of shifting topography and geology.
The artwork explores the hybrid technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, graphite, and photo collage) and digital media, manifesting the collective recognition of a multiplicity of epistemological viewpoints in all cognitive dimensions of spatiality.
The varying scale, juxtaposition of biomorphic forms, intertwined textures, oblique projections and visual metamorphoses are employed as the multi-layered drawing methodologies to question and investigate the ubiquitous nature of urban meta-morphology, the eco-political reality of the Anthropocene epoch, the advancement of biomaterial technologies and their visual representation in the context of non-Euclidean configuration. Furthermore, the application of these techniques allow the work to transcend the boundaries between analog and digital media as well as between two- and multi-dimensional domains.
His compositional techniques imbue the work with what we see as the very essence of our socio-cultural environments beyond the conventional protocols of architectural and artistic formalities, and that they conjure up the synthetic possibilities within which the spatial and temporal variations of existing spatial semiotics emerge as the potential products of alchemical procedures.

Biography

Ryota Matsumoto is a principal and founder of an award-winning interdisciplinary design office, Ryota Matsumoto Studio. He is an artist, designer and urban planner. Born in Tokyo, he was raised in Hong Kong and Japan. He received a Master of Architecture degree from University of Pennsylvania in 2007 after his studies at Architectural Association in London and Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art in early 90’s. Matsumoto has previously collaborated with a cofounder of the Metabolist Movement, Kisho Kurokawa, and with Arata Isozaki, Cesar Pelli, MIT Media Lab and Nihon Sekkei Inc. before establishing his office.
He presented his work for the 5th symposium of the Imaginaries of the Future at Cornell University in 2017 and currently serves as an adjunct lecturer of Transart institute, University of Plymouth.
His current interest gravitates around the embodiment of cultural possibilities in art, ecology, and urban topography.

http://www.ryotamatsumoto.com
https://www.facebook.com/ryota.matsumoto.718

“Pairing Similarities” by D.W. Martin at The Erie Art Museum

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“Quiescent” 20”x10”x7” Cast Bronze, Patia, Paint, Tin Base

 
D.W. Martin’s surrealist sculptures offer a different, enchanting view of the world at Erie Art Museum’s Holstein Gallery.

One of the advantages of visual art is its ability to capture that which is difficult to express in words.

Such is the concept of objective chance, a key element of surrealism. Writer Andre Breton is credited with originating it. Salvador Dali was perhaps its first and most famous practitioner. And here in Erie, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania art professor D.W. Martin is its standard-bearer.

The primary tenet of objective chance is its celebration of unexpected relationships and surprising juxtapositions — the combining of disparate everyday objects to create a mystical new visual language. Think of Dali’s dripping clocks hanging from trees, or how Rene Magritte toyed with scale and superimposed elements such as fruits and fowl into otherwise usual spaces and scenes.

Martin views the world in a similarly magical way in his exhibit “Pairing Similarities,” on display through Oct. 21 at the Erie Art Museum’s Holstein Gallery.

Read more [via goerie.com]

 

PAIRING SIMILARITIES: D.W. MARTIN
Holstein Gallery
June 30, 2017 – October 21, 2017

In Pairing Similarities, sculptor D.W. Martin presents a series of works in cast bronze and aluminum that couple parts of the human anatomy with inanimate objects, especially chairs. The pairings, odd at first glance, invite a deeper investigation of our relationships with the objects that surround us.

In conjunction with the installation in the Holstein Gallery, large steel fabrications are on view in both the wildflower garden and in the inner courtyard of the museum. These colorful structures integrate the structural qualities of elements from the built environment, such as electrical pylons and telephone poles, into gestural and often anthropomorphic images. Martin is absorbed by the sculptor’s age-old fascination with the human figure, and the way it is echoed in the mundane, ostensibly non-figural objects that surround us. Martin’s curiosity takes something ordinary from our daily visual noise and creates something extraordinary that we have never seen before.

David W. Martin was born and raised in Oklahoma where he developed an interest in drawing and silkscreen printing. After working as a commercial artist, Martin decided to pursue a BFA in printmaking at the University of Oklahoma and, in the process, developed an absorbing interest in sculpture. In 1987 he was accepted into the MFA Sculpture Program at Virginia Commonwealth University.

While actively exhibiting and selling his work through the gallery system, he began his academic career at Ohio State University as a studio arts technician for the sculpture and glass programs. He later relocated to Edinboro University of Pennsylvania where he has been teaching sculpture and 3D foundation for the past 18 years.

D.W. Martin currently resides and maintains his studio in Edinboro, actively exhibiting large outdoor sculptures in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, New York, Michigan, Indiana, and Tennessee. Since 2005, he has been affiliated with Flatlanders Gallery in Blissfield, Michigan. For the past 12 years, D.W. has exhibited his sculptures annually through the Midwest Sculpture Initiative, an artist-led program that organizes and supports sculpture exhibitions throughout the Midwest.

Source: The Erie Art Museum – Pairing Similarities: D.W. Martin

Artist Website

Donald Sultan

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The images… are really about the architecture in the paintings; they seem so massive and strong and permanent but nothing is permanent. The image in the front is very fragile, but it conveys the loaded meaning of everything that is contained in the painting.

–Donald Sultan

The Surrealism of Witness
Reviewing Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings exhibit

How to process the persistent horror that earth is being consumed by an unstoppable, self-inflicted inferno? Coping mechanisms… irreverence, nihilism, denial? If none of these sit right with you—if you prefer to fill your lungs with smoke and rot, squint through pollution and shadow, and submit to tragedy rubbernecking—we have good news! New York based artist Donald Sultan spent the better part of the 1980s creating his 59-work series The Disaster Paintings, twelve of which are currently on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. Though The Disaster Paintings are most known for depicting bleak, industrial, post-war America, the exhibition takes viewers on a comprehensive tour of apocalyptic atmospheres, all of them man-made, and most fiery: environmental, urban, humanitarian, historical, at home, and abroad.

via artseditor.com

About Donald Sultan

Donald Sultan’s large-scale still life paintings are filled with rich iconography—provocative objects, like bulbous fruits, set against a tar-black background. Although primarily classified as a still lifes, Sultan maintains that his works (despite their representational objects—flowers, lemons, eggs, buttons) are first and foremost abstract. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Sultan moved to New York City in 1975 upon completion of his advanced studies. He is recognized as a painter, printmaker, and sculptor, and best known for his large compositions made following a unique technique: in place of canvas, Sultan covers masonite with 12-inch vinyl floor tiles, from which he cuts geometric and organic forms. Sultan fills the negative spaces with tar or plaster, followed by a layer of paint; his resulting images are distinctively textured and equally balance the contrast of positive and negative space.

Transition

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By Joost Jordens and Mike Von Rotz

Transition is a virtual reality experience based on the music of Kettel & Secede. A metaphor for death, Transition takes you on a journey from one world into the next. This film was featured in the Kaleidoscope VR Film Festival.

Mike von Rotz and Joost Jordens are two fresh graduates from the Utrecht University of the Arts 3D Animation course. ‘Transition’ is their first production in the medium of Virtual Reality. They live in the Netherlands, where they are working on new VR experiences. You can find Joost on Vimeo or Twitter and Mike on Twitter.

Bonobo’s surrealist music video for ‘No Reason’

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With stunning cinematography (and no CGI), director Oscar Hudson pays homage to Japan’s social phenomenon of ‘Hikikomori’.
A dreamy, disconnected electronic beat plays as a Japanese teenager wakes up in his bedroom, visibly troubled at the thought of facing the day ahead of him. But there are tricks at play, as he walks through the door, only to find a replica of his bedroom ahead, and of him too, staring into the mirror. And then there is another, and another, till we see a series of bedrooms and the boy in it – only the room appears to be becoming smaller and more crowded as the boy gets bigger.
This linking of the psychological and the physical space plays as the perfect foil to British music producer Bonobo’s inspired number No Reason. Director Oscar Hudson mines the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori – when young people find themselves overwhelmed and end up as housebound recluses. According to the government, the number of hikikomori between the ages of 15 to 30 in Japan in 2015 numbered some 540,000.
The cinematography No Reason is inspired by the 2014 Oscar-winner Birdman. The vocals by Nick Murphy (also known as Chet Faker) contribute to the dream-like sequence and the feeling of overwhelming monotony. “We achieved the film using only in-camera physical effects and we designed an entirely new way of moving our miniature camera to get it to fit through the tiny doorways. Doing this film with CGI would have been a thousand times easier, but for me, it’s physicality and imperfections are what make it different, and, I hope better,” said Hudson.

Source: Watch: Bonobo’s surrealist music video for ‘No Reason’ is a visual treat (with a deeper message)