Abstract Surrealism

Ben Ridgway

Last Modified November 30, 2018 Leave a Comment

Ben Ridgway is currently an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University in San Francisco, California, USA. He has 15 years of professional experience as both a 3D artist in the video game industry and as a Professor. While in the games industry he helped to create games for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft console systems. Ben has been making experimental animations since 1992.
“My abstract animations investigate the metaphysical features of reality. They are designed to stimulate archetypal associations and invite the viewer to make personal connections to the visual and auditory experience without any reliance on narrative or spoken language.”

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Alan Brain

Last Modified February 8, 2018 Leave a Comment

Artist Statement: Now I am Surreal

I never expected to become a surrealist but here I am.
I started out about 25 years ago as a regular representational artist like most everyone else. My artistic journey has taken me through abstract expressionism to non objective painting. I gained a reputation as a geometric painter with a love to capture the feel of flying. I have made many paintings and never really cared about what box I was put in but when someone said: “you are a surrealist!” I was shocked.
No not me, not all those melting clocks and stuff, oh no. But yes! And I am loving it. I think Dali gave surrealism a bad name, but for me it works. I can express my feelings in an enigmatic way and it feels good to be a surrealist 🙂
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Andy Schmitz

Last Modified November 25, 2017 Leave a Comment

Andy Schmitz

Interview with Andy Schmitz

Surrealism Today: Recurring themes in your work seems to be skeletons and time. How do you think about them?

Andy Schmitz: In fact “skeletons” and “time” are some themes in my work. I think to become aware that everything will pass away and that all life is evanescence makes every little moment more valuable. This feeling should be transported in some artworks.

ST: Your work includes the use of pattern, repetition and refer to religious mandalas. Have these informed your work at all consciously?

AS: I am not a religious person. But of course I deeply believe that there is something beyond. Despite of that, some religious themes found there way into my artwork in my early drawings, such as: http://www.surreal-art.net/12 This was made in the time when I quit with the church … maybe it was my way to process this situation.

ST: What emotions do you feel when you work?

AS: When I draw a picture, in the beginning there is almost no emotion, it is more like a meditation which requires an “emptiness of the mind”, free from thoughts. Mostly I start in this mood and see what kind of drawing develops on the white paper.

When the theme comes into shape, the emotions and thoughts start to become part of the process and form the idea of the artwork to its finalisation. Quite hard to explain … I hope you can understand me.

ST: What emotions do you want your viewers to feel?

AS: The emotions of the viewers are almost impossible to predict. I hope that I can lead them into another world. A world of Imagination where they can just be curious like a child and leave everything behind which is rational.
Hopefully they reach this point just for one second while regarding a picture.

ST: How does architecture inform your work?

AS: In fact architecture itself has not found the way into my surreal pictures.

I plan to start a different episode of my work in future using different media.

Maybe I will do some architecture stuff, too. We will see.

ST: What concepts interest you?

AS: I like everything surreal and fantastic in art. Everything that emerges in the artists imagination and which can not be seen in real life. This for me is the most impressive kind of art.

Ryota Matsumoto – Variable Phase Opacities

Last Modified September 23, 2017 Leave a Comment

Those Who Affirm the Spontaneity of Every Event

The Reverberant Ambience of Interpretative Codes for an Ancient Artifact

The Indistinct Notion of an Object Trajectory

Surviving in the Multidimensional Space of Cognitive Dissonance

Rapid Gaze Polynomials Embedded in Infinite Variables

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
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Transition

Last Modified August 29, 2017 Leave a Comment

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.