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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.

Bonobo’s surrealist music video for ‘No Reason’

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With stunning cinematography (and no CGI), director Oscar Hudson pays homage to Japan’s social phenomenon of ‘Hikikomori’.
A dreamy, disconnected electronic beat plays as a Japanese teenager wakes up in his bedroom, visibly troubled at the thought of facing the day ahead of him. But there are tricks at play, as he walks through the door, only to find a replica of his bedroom ahead, and of him too, staring into the mirror. And then there is another, and another, till we see a series of bedrooms and the boy in it – only the room appears to be becoming smaller and more crowded as the boy gets bigger.
This linking of the psychological and the physical space plays as the perfect foil to British music producer Bonobo’s inspired number No Reason. Director Oscar Hudson mines the Japanese phenomenon of Hikikomori – when young people find themselves overwhelmed and end up as housebound recluses. According to the government, the number of hikikomori between the ages of 15 to 30 in Japan in 2015 numbered some 540,000.
The cinematography No Reason is inspired by the 2014 Oscar-winner Birdman. The vocals by Nick Murphy (also known as Chet Faker) contribute to the dream-like sequence and the feeling of overwhelming monotony. “We achieved the film using only in-camera physical effects and we designed an entirely new way of moving our miniature camera to get it to fit through the tiny doorways. Doing this film with CGI would have been a thousand times easier, but for me, it’s physicality and imperfections are what make it different, and, I hope better,” said Hudson.

Source: Watch: Bonobo’s surrealist music video for ‘No Reason’ is a visual treat (with a deeper message)

17 Mind-Blowing Surreal Artists you Need to Follow on Instagram

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Is your Instagram knee-deep in narcissistic selfies? Acquaintances you don’t dare unfollow? (It would be impolitic.) Motivational quotes by your in-laws? (Yeah, he just discovered multi-level marketing & thinks he’s an entrepreneur.)

We need to talk: you need to follow some artists. And before you think, “Ugh, I do, and it’s unbearable.” No, those are Artistes. You don’t follow these artists. So leave the Derrida on the shelf and have a seat because we’re going to show you some good sh*t.

You need weird art.

Call it what you want. Surreal art. Fantastic art. Lowbrow art. Visionary art. Psychedelic Art. Or just plain weird. It comes from the imagination of someone askew. And it makes you stranger. You need to follow these 17 mind-blowing surreal artists.

You need these surreal artists it in your Instagram. Otherwise, you may unfollow those annoying in-laws. So don’t have a rather awkward holiday next year, get some surreal art in your Instagram.

Following these mind-blowing surreal artists on Instagram will make your feed awesome.

John Brosio

Brosio makes terrifying paintings by juxtaposing mundane scenarios. 60-foot Chickens. Ominous tornadoes behind small towns in middle-America. Little girl with bats. Brosio’s unnerving paintings subvert our expectations. He plays with themes of pop culture, Americana, nostalgia and the unexpected in gorgeous, cinematic imagery. John Brosio Website. Our previous coverage of John Brosio on Surrealism Today.

Leif Podhajsky

You need to follow Podhajsky. Podhajsky’s face-melting, psychedelic art is some of the most powerful art being created today.

Podhajsky’s work is constantly evolving and surprising. Stare at a Podhajsky long enough, and you may become a Buddha. If you fall as in love with it as much we have, he has prints available on his website.

Leif is an artist and Creative Director. His work explores themes of connectedness, the relevance of nature and the psychedelic or altered experience.

via leifpodhajsky.com

Podhajsky’s work has been described as “striking abstractions of nature – mirrored vistas, engulfing waves, rippling, melting cosmic landscapes”

via (Leif Podhajsky on Wikipedia).

Leif Podhajsky’s Website. Our previous coverage of Leif Podhajsky.

Nicole Watt

Remember the last time you were out in nature? There was that well-tended-to area in the middle of nowhere. Nicole Watt shows us the creatures from the other place that live there. In her gorgeous, eerie sculptures, Nicole Watt creates the inhabitants from a magical realm. Watt’s strange creations tap into the tapestry fairy tales, mythology, and our shared cultural imagination.

Nicole Watt is an internationally exhibited self-taught mixed media sculpture artist living and creating in the wilderness of Southern Tasmania, Australia. Her exquisitely simplistic and emotionally driven characters blossom from a world long forgotten; a world hidden in the shadows of imagination where the wind blows wild, the trees groan with ancient secrets born from the whispers of the fae.

via mahlimae.com

Casey Weldon

Casey Weldon paints amazing pop-surrealist paintings. If you’ve ever thought to yourself: “This cat would be cooler if he could shoot laser beams from his eyes,” then you need to follow Casey Weldon. Weldon tripled Steve Buschemi’s awesomeness by doubling his eyes. Casey Weldon’s Site

Beeple

Beeple is a visual and video artist producing mind-blowing art and eye candy. (And producing amazing music videos and more.) His success is also a testament to the power of the internet. With an internet connection, we truly are free to live anywhere if we produce great work and share it. Beeple makes awesome art. Everyday.

Beeple is Mike Winkelmann. He has released hundreds of extremely popular live visuals under Creative Commons. In 2007 Mike also began working on an ‘everyday’ series that continues to this day. Over the last 8+ years he has produced an image from scratch every single day and uploaded it. These images are viewed by 100K+ people daily and have inspired hundreds of other artists to start their own everyday projects.

via Beeple-Crap.com

Mathieu Saunier (Khan Nova)

Khan Nova (Mathieu Saunier) is a french digital collage artist. His Retro-Sci-fi surrealist collages explore the past, future and feature figures with a wide range of ethnicities. Juxtaposing epic desert landscapes, clouds, larger-than-life figures, pyramids, and design elements, Saunier creates a sense of beauty, power, and magic. Saunier chases infinity.

French digital collage artist Mathieu Saunier, who goes by “Khan Nova,” creates compositions as colossal as his name suggests. Inspired by visions of the future from previous decades, Khan Nova fuses together elements of past narratives with current conversations to create otherworldly conjectures. Such images as men and women in vintage ski clothes posed in front of sleek buildings echoing the Great Pyramids of Egypt convey the spirit of Retro-Futurism, in which the contemporary viewer experiences the excitement past generations held for a hyper-modern future.

— via Khan Nova on hifructose.com

Khan Nova Prints. Our previous post on Khan Nova.

Rewinda Omar

Rewinda Omar’s brooding, black and white photography features figures against desolate landscapes. With a lyrical use of dark-clothed figures against these stark desert backdrops– her work somehow communicates more subconsciously than seems possible. Omar does not give us a lot to go on. Layers of meaning defy analysis. Words will not do justice to the magic found behind Omar’s metaphysical pieces. The work is highly spiritual, personal, and yet speaks to something profoundly universal.

Statement
Inspired by my personal demons.
Everyone is like a moon has two sides; The bright side and the dark side.
All the time every human only see the bright side of the moon because the dark side of the moon is invisible that always faces away from earth. This photo series is about the dark side.

Our previous post on Rewinda Omar. Rewinda Omar on Tumblr.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCNI3kBMYey/?taken-by=rewindaomar

Thomas Easton

Thomas Easton creates art juxtaposing the everyday with epic sci-fi/space visuals. His imagery has a retro feel and he cleverly sources his images from vintage 1970’s magazines that add a certain nostalgia to the work. Easton’s mind-bending collages are both elegant and sophisticated. A perfect addition to your quickly improving Instagram feed. Reasonably priced prints are available at society6.com, and will make any room in your home more creative and interesting.

Thomas Easton is a UK based digital collage artist. Lover of the surreal and abstract arts that bend the imagination and leave you thinking for a while. Writer, Musician and poet.

via Society6.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/BI4LmHiAwpb/?taken-by=thomeaston

Mark Ryden: The Godfather of Pop Surrealism

Mark Ryden should need no introduction. Ryden ushered in the Los Angeles Pop Surrealism scene by walking the sacred line between fine art and popular culture. His work is subversive. Everything is just-so. And darkly, gorgeously just-so. Yet the subject matter isn’t what “they” want you to see. Who are they? The meat industry. Virginia Beach Arts Commissioners, haha. 🙂

Blending themes of pop culture with techniques reminiscent of the old masters, Mark Ryden has created a singular style that blurs the traditional boundaries between high and low art. His work first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, “Pop Surrealism”, dragging a host of followers in his wake. Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation.

via  MarkRyden.com. Our previous post on Mark Ryden.

Agostino Arrivabene

Agostino Arrivabene was born in 1967, lives and works in Gradella di Pandino (CR) Italy.

Arrivabene’s approach to painting stems from his artistic influences Gustave Moreau and Odd Nerdrum. He follows traditional methods that include grinding his own pigments and the almost forgotten technique of mischtechnik. In mischtechnik, egg tempera is used in combination with oil-based paints to create translucent layers which, when laid over each other, refract light creating a sense of luminosity. This attention to the minutiae has resulted in Arrivabene’s paintings actually embodying a process of alchemical transformation, in which the physical matter of painting itself is transmuted into extraordinary light-filled visions.

via Cara Gallery

Agostino Arrivabene creates spiritual, surreal, occult paintings with a nod to the symbolists. Alchemists aimed to turn lead into gold: the seeker into the initiate– from suffering human to enlighted being.

Arrivabene seems to want us to have a limitless appreciation for the unknown, the hidden, the unknowable: the mysteries of the universe are unbounded. To have an appreciation of one’s own ignorance is paramount. Arrivabene’s paintings live in the liminal space between psychology and magic. They expand and make tangible the mysteries of the Western Spiritual Tradition. And in doing so, they are a reminder that while Newton was right, so too was Mandelbrot. Our minds are linear, limited, and ruled by reductive cause and effect and a bias towards narrative. But the world is messy, dirty, and with infinite causes, effects and unpredictability. The future and present are opaque. Arrivabene’s work creates a space for the mystery, the unknown, and the hidden.

Website. Our Previous Post.

Drømsjel

Drømsjel is drugs. His face-melting psychedelic illustrations should not be illegal. But a prescription should be required. Please view Drømsjel under a doctors’ supervision. You probably shouldn’t view Drømsjel at work, or if you have a heart condition. Side effects can include elevated awesomeness, weirdness, and loss of reality. Ask your doctor if Drømsjel is right for you. (Prints available)

Drømsjel’s artworks float freely between illustration and collage, traditional and digital. The artist splices vintage photographs of well-groomed ladies and gentlemen that evoke the standards of 20th-century propriety, turning them into bastions of surreal visions.

via dromsjel.de. Previous coverage.

Lara Zankoul

Zankoul is an emerging contemporary photographer. Her photography has surreal qualities.

Look at a Zankoul photograph for long enough, and you may become the Buddha; her work stares back from the abyss, and it is silent.

Lara Zankoul was born photographically in 2008. Driven by passion, she taught herself photography and started an enriching journey in the artistic field. During 2009, she completed her 365 project, a personal mission in which she committed on taking a picture every day in a row for a year. She has participated in several local and international collective exhibitions such as the ‘Women’s Art Exhibition’ in Art Lounge Lebanon in 2011 and the 3rd edition of the Festival Photomed in the South of France in 2013. Part of the Shabab Ayyam incubator programme, she was an award recipient at the 2011 Shabab Ayyam Photography Competition. In her solo show at Ayyam Gallery in January 2013, she presented for the first time, her cinematographic work, which was auctioned in April 2013 at Christie’s Dubai.

via larazankoul.com

Mariano Peccinetti

Mariano Peccinetti summons surrealistic, space-age visions from beyond time. Surrendering to juxtaposition, loose-association, and dream-logic, new realities emerge from beyond. I see a art movement of artists like Peccinetti, Thom Easton, and more, of artists creating amazing collage art and selling it on sites like Society6.com

Visual Artist & Musician (Collage al Infinito – Las Luces Primeras)

via Society6.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJhOBQAAoHX/?taken-by=marianopeccinetti

Matthew Stone

In Matthew Stones work we see visions of the future of art. We see three-dimensional paintings that the user can walk around in. We may be able to walk around in a virtual painting. No more screens. Holograms and connected contact lenses. Or maybe that’s not the point at all– perhaps Stone is showing use an alternate world that we can grasp if we could see the world as a shaman.

Matthew Stone

Optimism is the Vital Force that Entangles itself with and then Shapes the Future.

– via matthewstone.co.uk

Trash Riot

Terry Ringler, also known by his online moniker Trash Riot, is a prolific purveyor of the otherworldly. His work combines imagery taken from period photographs, vintage culture magazines, and what seems to be the best astronomy and geology images published by magazines like National Geographic or Scientific American.

Via kolajmagazine.com

Karen Lynch

Karen is an analogue and digital collage artist who loves to reinvent vintage imagery into surreal retro-futuristic landscapes.

Inspired by vintage photography, especially the colour palettes of kodachrome and ektachrome photography, Karen studied English Literature and Drama (BA (Hons) Flinders University of South Australia) and is drawn to the beautiful lines and shadows of expressionist, film noir and avante garde cinema.  Architecture, geometry and the incredible colours of nature are also frequent sources of inspiration.

via leafandpetaldesign.com | Karen Lynch Prints

James Jean

And, as with his Fables work, the paintings and illustrations are often suffused with a dreamy romanticism and lyricism worthy of Maxfield Parrish, even as Mr. Jean subverts those and other isms.

Via The New York Times

Surrealism Today

Surrealism Today! That’s us! Follow us to get introduced to more great artists. 🙂

Note: at least two artists we’ve featured that had a notable 365 (everyday projects). If you’re an artist just starting out it is a great way to push your work and get it out in public. At the very least after one year you will have a lot of work to choose from to put in your portfolio.

Zeitguised’s abstract, surrealistic, strange, video art

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Holy strange eye-candy Batman, what is that? NFW! WTF? It’s Zeitguised again, making magic. Pure, magical, computer generated abstract art. Delicious candy for your eyes. (We originally covered Zeitguised here in 2013.) And wow. It doesn’t get weirder than this.

Watch Zeitguised’s mind-altering videos with sound on. It multiplies the effect.

Geist.xyz

 

Animated Gif Stills:

AN EXPLORATION OF HANDCRAFTED ALGORITHMIC TEXTILES AND SURFACES

A Ghost in the shell,

>dancing the procedural revolution<.

Algo vs rhythm =
0% organic /
100% processed *
(*Olive, Rose, Mauve and Electric Blue).

Serving suggestions:
Grid wrangling like a pharmacist /
Authentic apparition sequence;

Fake hacks realism,
Small wonders:
Sympathy demons / Uncertainty artefacts

: Synthetic ecstatic aesthetic means
Extended PLAY
Station NSFW.
Incrementally yours,
ZEITGUISED.

– via Geist.xyz

 

Neural Groove

Synthetic constructions of shapes and structures that have a similar level of complexity as natural occurrences, yet follow rules that are manmade and artificial, and modelled by and according to human thought processes. Some are engineered from physical growth and distribution processes but altered towards a common design goal. The outcome was open in the beginning, so we would not produce something that we would know beforehand, to leave space to explore unknown territory. In the end the topic that crystallised from the results was the juxtaposition of simulated organic topologies and hard mechanic artefacts as they are known from technology production techniques. We produced synthetic spaces in which we invented rules and parameters that let those two formal worlds collide and interact and inform each other.

– via Neural Groove
 

Void Season

“Void Season” is a simulated fashion project.

Part dreamlike theatre, part lateral cargo cult hustle, a quick succession of bold garment designs acts as an ersatz runway show. In a minimal set of solid backdrops, radiant colors and oblique choreography second the exquisite design of costumes that have been entirely artificially generated.

A wealth of custom procedural surface detail emphasizes the uncanny rift between the realistic presence of the guises and the abstract vacancy of the digitized human movements.

– via Void Season

Void is the fashion of the future.
 

Comme Dec Organismes

The motion triptych shows an interpretation of what the initial concepts would have looked liked if they were not realised as a line of runway clothes but spontaneously realized themselves as autonomous life forms.

The concept was a result of a collaboration between Antonio Trecel-Diaz, Erik Madigan Heck and Zeitguised.

— via Comme des Organismes/
 

Christie Neptune Surreal Video Art: An Afro-Surrealist Sci-fi Future

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Christie Neptune’s “She Fell from Normalcy” Stills

Shadow of Self Series
Shadow of Self Series

Note On Surrealism, Past and Present

Followers of contemporary surreal art, and perhaps this blog, may forget that surrealism (and it’s precursor, Dada) were politically inspired art movements. Dada’s “anti-philosophy” developed in reaction to World War I. Surrealism became notorious for many reasons. One of these was affiliating itself with the Communist Party, and taking its time in distancing itself from this position after the realities of the Communist Party in Russia became apparent.

But a cursory look at this blog or the Surreal Art Tumblr might get the impression that contemporary surrealism is mainly eye-candy, fantasy, and escapism. Pop Surrealist Mark Ryden’s Meat Show being a glorious exception.

Christie Neptune’s Surreal Video Art

Today we’re pleased to present work by contemporary artist Christie Neptune. Neptune’s video art (below) uses surrealist techniques to explore issues of race, gender, class, and mental health. We’re excited when contemporary artists use the language of surrealism to look at complex issues. Neptune’s work doesn’t oversimplify, or fall into “bumper sticker slogan” or “refrigerator magnet” traps as political art sometimes does. No, that’s the currency of the 24-hour news cycle and the political machines: enticing us with easy answers to difficult problems, and infinitely repeating talking points. Neptune explores complex dynamics in this elegant, inspired, surrealistic video art and exhibition.

She Fell From Normalcy

In She Fell From Normalcy, Christie Neptune uses sound, installation, original writing and video throughout the gallery to build a world stripped of the limitations of race, gender and class. As subject, Neptune employs two females trapped in a sterile, white environment in which they are controlled by an unseen presence; it is only after a cataclysmic break in the system that the females are granted clarity and self-recognition.

Via Hamilton Gallery

She Fell from Normalcy continues through July 30 at Hamiltonian Gallery. For more information, click here.

In 1984, the author and Black feminist, Audre Lorde penned the essay, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” where a “mythical norm” was defined as “white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure.” Lorde wrote that anyone that exists outside of that identity lives on the margins of “the trappings of power.” In the exhibition She Fell from Normalcy,  artist Christie Neptune, counters those hegemonic idealizations described by Lorde through a sci-fi fantasy that centers around blackness, femininity, and a struggle with depression.

Neptune tells The Creators Project, “I deal with depression and it’s my attempt to reconcile that period. I developed this series of work that validates that experience in the African-American female. Depression is typically stigmatized in communities of color. It’s me speaking out and pulling away at those labels that limit my experience.” She adds, “You always hear this thing, ‘black people don’t get depressed that’s some white people shit.’ I decided to build up a mythical norm that is queued to Audre Lorde’s essay, where she describes how we are trying to live up to standards.”

Via Vice
Christie Neptune

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