Surrealism Today

Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

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Sculpture

Surrealist sculpture attempts to make physical the mental, emotional psychologic worlds within. In the 1920s, the Surrealism movement began as artists and writers began to explore the inner world of dreams and fantasies and continues today.

Allen Linder

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Artist Statement

Whether creating sculptures or paintings, it is a desire to fall deeper and deeper into my imagination that compels me. A desire to be surprised to discover what I am actually dwelling upon in the often obscured parts of my being. I like to strip away at what arises in my vision until it makes a kind of complete sense although I may not understand it quite yet. I work until the image somehow resonates with my life and speaks of something that I actually know through experience. It must be real in my life to hold any lasting interest for me. I have sometimes thought that I am taking what is ordinary and extraordinary in my life and refocusing it through a lens of symbolic form. That way it can speak to me on all levels at once. I never think too long on a title for I simply call it what it is.

About

Allen Linder has been a nationally exhibiting fine artist for over 30 years.

Please direct all inquiries to lindersculpture@gmail.com

Biography

Thinking In Stone:

Employing the archaic philosophy and methodology of direct carving, Allen Linder sculpts contemporary artifacts—solid works embodying the present, extolling life and preserving the human spirit.

The act of carving and grinding away at stone, wax and bronze is an intuitive practice: ideas and images stimulated by life events emerge from Linder’s subconscious mind. The objects are a complete syntheses of his personal narrative and mythology, directly connected to the awe, beauty, joy and mystery of daily existence, namely the infinite possibility of experience and personhood. There are many narratives present; the work is left open and becomes a sort of spiritual fiction.

Linder “feels his way into form” in search of its center. His ideas play on a single scientific and spiritual metaphor: the need for resistance. The result of his process is hyperbolic sculpture in which content and form unite to distill existential thought using timeless, figurative gesture.

His sculptures explore physicality, the purity of material, and the construction of tactile, illusory awareness through his own psychological and transcendent reality. His work is at once somber and playful, comical and sublime, the posturing symbolic of life.

Links:

https://www.lindersculpture.com
http://www.facebook.com/lindersculpture
https://www.instagram.com/maninfreefall/
https://www.saatchiart.com/lindersculpture

“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

John Edmark – Blooms

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Much of John Edmark’s work celebrates the patterns underlying space and growth. Through kinetic sculptures and transformable objects, he strives to give viewers access to the surprising structures hidden within apparently amorphous space.

While art is often a vehicle for fantasy, his work is an invitation to plunge deeper into our own world and discover just how astonishing it can be. In experiencing a surprising behavior, one’s sense of wonder and delight is increased by the recognition that it is occurring within the context of actual physical constraints. The works can be thought of as instruments that amplify our awareness of the sometimes tenuous relationship between facts and perception.

John employs precise mathematics in the design and fabrication of his work. He does this neither out of a desire to exhibit precision per se, nor to exalt the latest technology, but because the questions he is trying to formulate and answer about spatial relationships can only be addressed with geometrically exacting constructions. Mathematical precision is an essential ally in his goal of achieving clarity.

Nature is generous and inexhaustible, rewarding curiosity with startling insights and an abundance of ever more beautiful mysteries. Through his work, John endeavors to share the joy of discovery with others in a continuing pursuit of the timeless patterns of change.

 
Learn more about John Edmark and his work on his Website, Instagram, or Facebook.

via Wonderspaces

Michael Joy

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Michael Joy is a surrealistic artist working out of Chicago. In three dimensional media he works with molding and casting, often bringing together contradictory and complementary objects. He also works with photoshop and digital collage. We’ve featured the sculpture below, but more work is visible at michaeljoyart.com with prints available for sale.

ST: You’ve spoken about being influenced by Magritte.
What other artists have influenced you or whose work you enjoy?

MJ: Well, I think Magritte really had the largest ‘start up’ influence on me, yet I don’t look at his work very much anymore. Cleary, I did absorb enough of his vibe to appreciate the visual language he developed. Some saw him as more of a cartoonist than a painter, but I enjoy how he could create paradox in a very simple looking image. I think it took a long time for Magritte to find his language and (in my opinion) was just getting started when he was in his later years. His expression of visual language was a great launching point for me to become seriously interested in making art. (My step father gave me a small book about Magritte just before I entered art school. His work was like witnessing a magic trick.)

Of course I enjoy other artists…some include Max Ernst, Pierre Roy, Alexander Calder, Duane Michaels, Man Ray, Steichen, Atget, Andy Goldworthy , Julie Taymor, Julia Margaret Cameron and many more Victorian photographers. Other surrealists can be too dark for me. I pretty much stay clear of the suffering and death type of art. It just doesn’t nourish me.

ST: What TV, movies, or books have most influenced you or are you enjoying now?
MJ: My latest book fascination was Codex Seraphinianus which I found deeply interesting and inspiring. What captured me about this book was that everything in it appeared to be new and original. I couldn’t trace any artistic origins of the drawings. I loved that it looked like a textbook from another planet.

I am a bit boring with TV and movies.. mostly enjoying PBS nature shows, documentaries and science stuff.

The past 6 months I have been on a bender with the Library of Congress’ photographic archives. I learned my image tolerance weighs in at about 3500 images per 6 hour sitting. There are literally 10’s of thousands of images from all over the world covering important events and historical architectural surveys. It is amazing. If all my tax dollars could go to the library of congress, I would be a satisfied tax payer!

Basically, I just pound through the images grabbing the ones my subconscious somehow identifies as meaningful, unique or convincingly moody. I don’t question or analyze my searches.. if I have a response, I copy the image so I can come back to it for more study later. For whatever reason, the process is working as have made nearly 100 new photo collages in just a few months. I love the immediacy of the process as opposed to the heavier time commitment sculpture making can require.

Regarding books, I recently enjoyed reading biographies about Nicolas Tesla and Harry Houdini. Did you know Houdini was a spy for the US government? And did you know that Tesla’s papers were confiscated by the government after his death? Many of which remain classified? Very cool stuff.

ST: Do you get inspiration from other sources such as music or theater? If so does this play into your work directly or indirectly?
MJ: I have to admit that I don’t appear to get direct artistic inspiration from music or theater, however, I listen to music throughout the day and when I am working on art on my computer. My Pandora stations are always stacked up with music from other countries or relaxing music such as Zen meditations, Native American flute or Gregorian Chanting etc. When I am sculpting, I listen to much more playful music such as french rap, swing, lebonese/Arabic rhythms, Belefonte’esque or hawaiin sounds. Any type of music that is upbeat or I don’t know what to expect next is somehow quite satisfying to me.

ST: Magritte was influenced by symbols and language. He could be considered a surrealist of semiotics or cognitive science. Your work shares some of those characteristics of word-play and creating something larger by matching and merging signs and symbols. Can you tell me about your inner process when you’re in your imagination playing around with concepts for potential works?

MJ: Embarrassed to say, I had to google the meaning of semiotics… Now I have a word for this stuff!

Well…typically my process consists of flooding myself with images from photography/history books and architecture and design magazines. When an image strikes me in some way, I save it either in print or remember it. After looking at enough pictures (and I mean A LOT of pictures), I have a subconscious library of images that is bouncing around inside of me just waiting to find its crisscross match. (I would compare it to a chef who has a refrigerator full of ingredients just waiting to be used. He knows how to cook, he just needs to decide what he or his guests are in the mood for.) For me, the visual connections come very quickly once I am calm and have set aside some time for artistic work. I wish I could make the art as fast as quickly as the ideas come forth!

Have you ever driven down the expressway and misread a billboard and made new words or phrases morphed from what the sign actually said? … a sort of lazy reading slur/blur that somehow comes out funny or new? Well, it is like that with images for me. My brain blurs shapes and components together in a watery kind of way. Perhaps it is because I have had so many years of manipulating shapes as a professional mold maker and have little mental resistance to shapes and textures that may appear to be incompatible or unrelated. I learned that for me, a texture is just a texture, it is not a separate or contrasting medium such as wood or plastic. They share a common denominator because I know I can combine, blend or unify them into a single new medium using mold making and casting techniques.

ST: You also have an interest in the design of antique objects. Do concepts of nostalgia play into your work or is it more of a visual preference?
MJ: I think this is more an aesthetic preference. When I was 30, I lived for 3 years (as a caretaker) in an older home that was extremely well made and filled with quality furnishings. I think the hand craftsmanship soaked into my art spirit in some way. I am attracted to hand made things and when they are well made, find them somehow calming. Perhaps that is why I like things from the Victorian age… they were largely handmade or at least made with simple processes and tools.

In addition to that, I just like giving new meaning to old things. It pleases me.