Surrealism Today

Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

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Franc Kaiser’s Industrial Ecosystems

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Franc Kaiser is a self-taught Swiss painter residing in Shanghai, China. Franc paints with acrylics on cardboard substrates. Each painting starts with an idea and sketch, and the composition is then penciled on a cardboard. The paintings progress in several stages, from a build-up of basic values with acrylic paint to detailed layers, which can take days or weeks. The finished paintings are signed and varnished.

Franc often paints ugly cats, in a realistic depiction, with 10% surreal elements thrown in the mix. He is inspired by the feel of 1970s sci-fi illustrations. He feels that the paintings are a necessity for him – visual motives, ideas, and messages pop up manifold throughout the day, and he needs to paint them to cleanse his mind. He tends to explore the ruthlessness of biology whilst avoiding any romanticizing of nature. Although he is a foreigner living in China, Asian or Chinese design elements are rarely found in his work – the subjects express just that “fish out of water” allegory. His daily feeling and experience of living in a different, alien culture and context reflects in both fascination and fear, opportunity and shortcomings, and brood behind the surface of his paintings. Franc’s first international exhibitions were at the Corey Helford Gallery, Los Angeles, at group shows in 2020 and 2021. Currently he is preparing for a mini-solo show with the same gallery, opening in August 2021.

If we cannot be free, we can at least be cheap.

All paintings are acrylics on cardboard, 2020 and 2021

Franc Kaiser

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.

instagram.com/soficrespo91
twitter.com/soficrespo91

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

Chris Boyko Abstract Surrealism

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Chris Boyko paints bizarre, strange, and unusual works. Each painting represents a hidden reality from the artist’s subconscious. These representations skirt the boundaries of surrealism and abstraction. Form and shape emerge from the paint. Nearly recognizable and figurative, yet remaining alien, beyond reach, ambiguous. Shapes or sculptures resemble figures or images found in wisps of smoke or clouds in the sky.

In Boyko’s worlds, weird alien figures (like goop) reach out and clasp each other. Are these are psychic, metaphorical structures? Crystalized memories? Microscopic organisms? Or alien landscapes? The viewer’s mind stumbles for answers… but finds weird ambiguity, and their own subconscious revelations reflected back at them.

 

Artist Statement

The subconscious is constructed like a giant web, which as a whole creates an individual. If one were to examine each individual piece, they would realize it’s composed of multiple ideas, memories, and feelings which are constantly shifting. It’s this shift within our subconscious that changes our perception of reality. It’s why each of us can respond differently to a multitude of situations.

Using automatic painting techniques, my mind enters a meditative state. As I begin to follow the strings of the subconscious web, the organic forms develop within the painting. One form leads to another, like a trail of thoughts. It’s as if my mind and the paint are in sync with each other. As I explore my own mind, gaining an understanding of myself; I’m also gaining an understanding of the forms.

boykoart.com
instagram.com/boykoart

APPETITE

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APPETITE is a story about a journey into the belly of the beast. It was originally inspired by a painting by Yagama and her poem “I Am Hungry. The APPETITE teaser video, is a standalone surrealist work of video art and gives a glimpse into the world of the longer 15 minute film. It has been shown at Kino Movimento and Cell 63 Gallery in Berlin. The final film will be directed by sisters Yagama and Ilina Perianova, who have recently collaborated on the Eat Me! (https://www.facebook.com/EatMeTheFilm) short musical film and the fairy tale Snegurochka.

Photo by Dian Zagorchinov
Photo by Dian Zagorchinov

Photo by Dian Zagorchinov
Photo by Dian Zagorchinov

 

APPETITE focuses on the theme of hunger and examines the need for connection that exists in our oversaturated consumerist society. It presents an absurdist allegory of our reality as the digestive system of a mythical rabbit. The journeys of a simple black and white animated hero through it lead the viewer on a grotesque, humorous trip resonating our own issues of desire and excess.

The film’s team is looking for like-minded coproducers and team members. Find out more about the project and connect with them at https://appetiteproject.wordpress.com/ and https://www.facebook.com/appetiteproject/

Here is an extract from the poem “I Am Hungry” by Yagama:

Dinner has commenced
the exquisite glitter of candelight caught
in the mercurial silhouettes of fine cutlery.
No slurping here.
The delicate boullion, though made of the past
is the noble colour of amber.
Spoons are gracious and receptive, like Mother
Then it hits you in the main vein anyway, of course
Knives cut through everything at stake
raw blood drips from empty spaces
Forks aristocratically poke at emotions
appetizing bits of veiled messages brought to the lips…
and the chewing –
you’d think they swallow the pieces whole,
so refined their mouth movements.
But their teeth are sharp.
The salad of confusion sprinkled with apathy
doesn’t excite anyone
but then again, we choose the healthy option.
Forgotten pieces of landmines explode between our teeth
This food is giving me nuclear decomposition.
I am glowing like a lightbulb…