Surrealism Today

Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

Alegorical

Waone (Interesni Kazki) Drawings

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Waone is an Artist / Muralist from Kyiv, Ukraine.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The main goal of my art is to find out who am I and explore the outside world.
Viewing through the lens of the creative process gives me the possibility
to shift the focus away from the vanity of common life and tap into stranger invisible world, the origin of the entire existence…

It was a long way started back in 1999 when I stepped on the streets with a spray can. During the next 18 years, I developed a fairy tale visual language, a visual storytelling with a transcendental ethereal form of contemporary muralism.

Inspired by the old master’s art I continue my evolution, I like to imitate the esthetic of antique book illustrations and old engravings in my murals, canvases, and drawings.

During the last 2 years, when street art became a mainstream, I decided to shift my focus on studio work, now contemporary and fine art scene looks more appropriate scene for my art.

waone.net
instagram.com/waone_interesnikazki/
waone.net/store/

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Get Out, Atlanta, Sorry to Bother You, and The Afro-Surrealist Film Movement

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Add “Sorry To Bother You” to the mix and there appears to be an Afro-Surrealism resurgence in Black cinema.

"Get Out" Movie Still

Surrealism is the 20-century avant-garde artistic and literary movement that sought to stir the creative potential of the unconscious mind position seemingly irrational imagery adjacent to one another. Artist Salvador Dali is among the most respect of that era.

Surrealism in film draws upon many of the philosophical principles as in the art world, using shocking, irrational and absurd imagery to challenge conventional reality. American filmmaker David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive are each considered among the best contemporary examples of this technique, while Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling were said to have each incorporated some surrealist ideals in their works.

First coined in 2009 by New Jersey’s Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka, Afro Surrealism focuses on the present day experience of African Americans as interpreted via artistic endeavor.

Read the full article at theshadowleague.com

What is Afro-Surrealism?

Afro-Surrealism or Afrosurrealism is a literary and cultural aesthetic that is a response to mainstream surrealism in order to reflect the lived experience of people of color. First coined by Amiri Baraka in 1974,[1] this movement focuses on the present day experience of African Americans. Afro-Surrealism is based on the manifesto written by D. Scot Miller, in which he says, “Afro-Surrealism sees that all ‘others’ who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist…” The manifesto delineates Afro-Surrealism from Surrealism and Afro-Futurism. The manifesto also declares the necessity of Afro-Surrealism, especially in San Francisco, California. The manifesto lists ten tenants that Afro-Surrealism follows including how “Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past,” and how “Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it.”

Via Wikipedia.

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Nicolas Gadbois Surreal Landscapes

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Artist Statement: Real Life Surrealism

My surreal paintings are taken from scenes in everyday life that have a quality that is strange or otherworldly.  For a number of first wave surrealist painters emptiness was a significant feature in the art. De Chirico and Dali both drew heavily from scenes expressing existential void.  My work focuses on the altered landscape and cultural emptiness. Photographs I take are the basis for the paintings. I choose dead malls, places left behind, and blank billboards for my subjects.  Colors in my work are pushed to reference emotions, climate change, nuclear reality, and artificial life. Rather than illustrate things and landscape in a Disney like fantasy way I paint scenes from real life that already appear surreal.

nicolasgadboisart.com

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Frank Moth

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About Frank Moth

Frank Moth creates nostalgic postcards from a distant but at the same time familiar future. He makes digital collages and compositions with specific, distinctive color palettes, in a critically acclaimed style that is immediately recognizable. Frank Moth was born in Athens in March 2014. He exists as an artist and as an alias for the two people that hide behind him. He has been featured in many publications worldwide, such as Huffington Post US, as well as Buzzfeed and MTV Greece. His work is currently showcased around the world in many galleries online

Artist Statement

The compositions are mainly human-centered. The presence of the human element is obvious, yet perpetually incomplete. There’s always something missing, interrupted, or covered. The face, for example, is usually covered and many times it’s not even there, so as to not surrender its vulnerable introspection, insecurity, and psychic truth without a fight.

Depersonalization/Derealization

In many of Frank Moth’s works people are pictured gazing upon themselves and their own lives on Earth from some distant point in outer space. The perspective of all things always seems to be on a strange verge, between a dream and an urban daily life.

The smothering failure of man to define and refine happiness today within geographic, temporal, and material {technological and consumerist} bounds, is repeatedly alluded to through the use of old, manipulated paper ads from decades past, as well as old fashion magazines.

Revision/Revival/Rebirth/Insecurity

Many of the artworks feature a subtle expression of companionship or the silent, solitary, obsessive search for it {the people usually have their backs turned and there is a hint of movement in the scenery}, combined with the surreal size disproportion and the disturbed relation between man and his environment/surroundings.

Obsession/Music/Pixels/Architecture

This is an attempt to create harmony between people and their surroundings, however imaginary, by using the eternal elements of colours, numbers, simple geometric shapes, symmetry, and subtraction, as well as universal words and concepts like “love”, “together”, “forever”, “never”, “infinity”, “why”.

Frank Moth

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Deborah Stevenson

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About Deborah Stevenson

Deborah Stevenson was born in Washington, DC. She grew up in Tokyo, went to high school in Baltimore, and got her BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She lived for many years on the West Coast, and returned to the East Coast, where she lived in Brooklyn, NYC until 2015, when she relocated to the coastal town of Belfast, Maine.

Artist Statement

My first medium is oil, and I have been a painter for nearly 30 years. I began composing collage pieces in earnest 5 years ago, working with material in magazines, books, newspapers, etc. My influences include the pioneer collage/surreal artists: Braque, Ernst, Hannah Hoch, Joseph Cornell, Magritte, to name a few, as well as the German Expressionists in all media. Other influences in visual media include masters in film and photography, both contemporary and classical

A life-long interest in Eastern philosophy and Jungian psychology have contributed to my fascination with allegory and symbology. Themes that recur in my work express metaphorically my exploration of concepts of power, beauty, the Feminine, and mysterious archetypal conjunctions.

The work arises in an ‘automatic’ way; I do not set out with an objective or goal in my mind when I sit down to make something. The images compose themselves spontaneously as I mix and move the masses of paper around on the table in front of me. I feel as though my eyes and hands facilitate the ‘arrival’ of the pictures that I make. More than anything else, the process requires of me that I pay attention, and to be in a receptive state, so as to be ready to capture the dialogue.

https://www.saatchiart.com/deborahstevenson

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