Surrealism Today

Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

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Abstract Surrealism

Ruedi Eichenberger

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Ruedi Eichenberger is a Swiss abstract surrealist painter whose atmospheric landscapes straddle the boundaries of the symbolism and the abstract.

 

Artist Statement

Wallpaper patterns, plasterwork or just doodles have always animated my fantasies. I’ve recognized paintings in them and lost myself in the surreal world. Back in my childhood, those were the first contacts with surrealism.

When I was going to school, I used to draw doodles and sketches into my school books. It often started with a simple line that got embellished, shaded and like that everything found its place. One after another.

Letting things create themselves is an important step in my working. I start working without any plans, I let it arise. I don’t work with deadlines, the painting is finished when everything is its right place and I’m satisfied with the painting. I often only realize what it represents when I’m finished.

My goal is to represent the tremendous expressiveness of nature through my paintings. The power and strength of the wind, the dryness of the ground and even the humid air before a thunderstorm. In my eyes, nature is the mightiest of all artworks.

That’s when I combine nature with opposing motives. Surreal elements arise and join in.

First, the canvas is worked on with acrylic followed by multiple layers of oil paint. I mix the surreal and abstract with the intent to create an atmosphere.

I see my paintings as a window, through which you can glimpse another world.

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Sofia Crespo’s Neural Zoo

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This is Neural Zoo, a zoological & botanical collection of nature that doesn’t exist imagined in collaboration with a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network).

Sofia Crespo is an artist with a huge focus in bio arts and technologies. One of her main interests is the way organic life uses artificial mechanisms to simulate itself and evolve, this implying the idea that technologies are a biased product of the organic life that created them and not a completely separated object. On the side, she is also hugely concerned with the dynamic change in the role of the artists working with machine learning techniques.

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Marjorie Darrow

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Gateway to the Subconscious

Artist Statement

The main theme of my work has always been the connection and synergy of all living organisms. It’s symbolic of the delicate balance and inter-dependency of life. I see these interconnections as a perfectly choreographed dance where each element is singular, yet part of the whole. It’s a simple and timely message, and my hope is that the viewer recognizes this in my artwork and takes with them a sensitivity and awareness of all life forms on the planet. My art is a process. The physical act of drawing or painting taps into my creativity, and there are always new discoveries and surprises. I view this process as a gateway to my subconscious because it’s not analytical. It’s completely intuitive. I typically begin with an initial inspiration, such as an ancient bristlecone pine tree, or an exotic orchid, or even the structure of a single cell. Sometimes this initial inspiration is representational, and at other times it may become abstracted, or so stylized as to appear surreal. From that point on I trust in the creative process to lead me. I start every painting with a detailed drawing. The act of drawing is where most of my creativity happens. It’s like a stream-of-conscious where each new element leads to another, and the connections between them evolve – sometimes with surprising results!

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Harvey Goldman

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Harvey Goldman is an American artist and educator.

Goldman’s work in the field of animation can be cataloged under the categories of experimental film and visual music. Goldman’s work has been displayed in film festivals worldwide, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Corcoran Gallery of Art the White Box Museum, Beijing, China, and MuVi4, in conjunction with the Fifth International conference; Synaesthesia: Science and Art, Alcalà la Real, Jaèn, Spain. His animation “Sabinium” was created in collaboration with composer Ken Ueno. “Brahmanda”, “Enigma” and “Passaddhi” have been created in collaboration with Chinese composer Jing Wang.

Uriel

Uriel, the prophet of poetry, prince of presence, the archangel of the sun, propounds a new troublous truth and suffers the slings and arrows of the celestial Czars. The tumultuous times are upon us. Oh, Nicolaus Copernicus, transcendental historian of heliocentric geometry, forgive us, absolve us, evolve us, if you can.

The “visual music” collaborations of Jing Wang and Harvey Goldman attempt to produce a synesthesia-like experience. The audience is encouraged to “see” the music and “hear” the visuals. The imagery and audio components are constructed without hierarchy, a true melding of sound and image.

Ouroboros

 

Produced and conceived by Jing Wang and Harvey Goldman

Glints of light, passing of shadows, the choreography of perpetual existence sets the stage for this Delphian ballet. The impenetrable flow of life’s rhythms, their Sisyphean inceptions and cessations are punctuated with eternity’s ephemeral modulations. The transmigration has begun, the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning.

The “visual music” collaborations of Jing Wang and Harvey Goldman attempt to produce a synesthesia like experience. The audience is encouraged to “see” the music and “hear” the visuals. The imagery and audio components are constructed without hierarchy, a true melding of sound and image.

Biographies

Jing Wang

Jing Wang, a composer and virtuoso erhu artist, was born in China. Ms. Wang has participated in numerous musical communities, as a composer and a performer of diverse styles of music. Her compositions have been selected and presented in China, Spain, France, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, Romania, Russia, Australia, Japan, Argentina, and throughout the United States. They have also been recognized by the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and Electro-acoustic Miniatures International Contest Spain. She was the winner of 2006 Pauline Oliveros Prize given by the International Alliance for Women in Music and has been awarded the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship, and the Omi International Musicians Residency Fellowship. As an active erhu performer, she has introduced the Chinese indigenous erhu into Western contemporary music scene with her wide array of compositions for chamber ensemble, avant-garde jazz improvisations and multicultural ensembles. She has also successfully performed erhu concertos with several symphony orchestras in the United States. Ms. Wang is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where she teaches electroacoustic music, composition, and music theory.

Harvey Goldman

Harvey Goldman has created critically acclaimed work in the fields of ceramics, digital imaging, animation, and music. He is founder of the Digital Media program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Goldman’s work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Iota Center for Experimental Animation, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Everson Museum of Art, Decordova Museum, Currier Museum of Art, and the Crocker Art Museum. His animations have been screened throughout the world including, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhon Museum, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the White Box Museum, Beijing, China. His interests include gardening, storytelling, world music, sound exploration, language development, writing systems and basketball.

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The Art of Mark Hopkins

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Mark Hopkins Surrealism

The landscapes of Mark Hopkins are as gorgeous as they are mind-bending. Hopkins’ surrealistic techniques include playful visual distortion, juxtaposed symbols, and abstract surrealism in combination with a mastery of the craft of painting.

The first painting in the gallery above shows the Buddha hovering in the air in an archetypal temple. The scene is calm. Juxtaposed with this peaceful imagery is the ‘fallout shelter’ symbol on the tiles of the floor. The repetition of this symbol in an otherwise serene environment startles the viewer. It invites us into the work with Hopkins to reflect and process. Other symbols (which you’ll need to discover for yourself) further add the complexity, ambiguity, and depth of this image.

Hopkins’ gorgeous contemporary surrealistic paintings are both profound and ineffable.

Mark Hopkins Artist Statement

My paintings consist of elements assembled into stories or into ‘mood-scapes’. I place the recognizable into the supernatural as a way to invite a viewer to co-create a narrative from their understanding of what’s in a given composition. There is content, for sure. But it is flexible content or perhaps it is ‘content under construction’. Why? Perhaps it’s because I want more out of a work of art than straight representation can offer. My work adjusts to mood, current events, individual personalities, and to itself. It is possible come away with a different interpretation with each viewing. Bang for buck.

There are a few things I hope to say through the oeuvre of my work; That the Earth is precious, time is precious, life is precious, that our mind is amazing, that history is way more profound than we think, and that there are mysteries lurking which can provide insights into who we are, why we are here, and how ‘it’ all works. Graham Hancock calls us a people who have forgotten our past. My paintings both acknowledge and challenge that: We are finding what we forgot – awakening and reconstructing our past – but we might want to hurry.

I hope my work pleases my audience. I hope they play with it, enjoy the quirks, the color, and find it satisfying.

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