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Michelle Concetta Surrealistic Collages

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Michelle Concetta is a creator from the US currently based in Saudi Arabia. Prone to escapism from an early age, she finds comfort in the one thing that grounds her to the Real—creating art and shaping her world to fulfill her aesthetic yearnings. Self-taught, her talents cover a broad spectrum, but of late contemporary collage has come front and center, refueling her passion for the medium. Her analogue and digital collages as well as her mixed-media photography have been featured in gallery showings, art publications and collectives in the US and internationally.

Concetta utilizes her own photography as well as found and digital imagery to create surrealistic collage that make unexpected connections between line, form, space, and color. She explores these relationships and aims to both engage the viewer in the spontaneous process of finding meaning within the visual landscape and arouse a touch of mystery—this synergy she ultimately desires to achieve is the driving force behind why she creates. In her work, she touches upon themes of spirituality, magic and conjuring, the exploration of the human psyche, confession, art as therapy, and the surreal.

Interview with Michelle Concetta

Surrealism Today: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Michelle Concetta: Growing up!? Still figuring out that bit. My younger years were fraught and I lacked the foundation and security to actualize but I have always been a creator focused on artistic expression. 

ST: What artwork are you most proud of, and why?
MC: The work I haven’t yet completed! It is a sign that I’m on the right path and the dream is alive.

ST: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
MC: The solicited kind. Because I’m open to it. 

ST: What is one thing they tried to teach you in school that you knew immediately was wrong?
MC: That boys will be boys. 

ST: Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?
MC: Lars Von Trier. I want to discuss the cinematic themes he explores.

Surrealism Today: Where is your favorite place?
Michelle Concetta: My dreams. Yes, I am a total escapist.

ST: Who are your biggest influences?
MC: Me, myself, and I. 

ST: What can’t you live without?
MC: The essential things invisible to the eye. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said something to that effect.

ST: What is your dream project?
MC: To create an exhibition of my project, I Only Wanted to Dream. Art, sculpture, interactive installations, and media combine to share a story of grief and trauma with the intent to move beyond victimhood through ritual practice.

Surrealism Today: What’s your favorite artwork?
Michelle Concetta: So many but a mixed-media piece created by Julia Soboleva, comes to mind. I will describe it to you. It features a behind with a hand pulling down black panties. On the left buttock it says “Being” and on the right cheek it says “Nothingness”.  I adore it.

ST: What is currently on your playlist?
MC: I haven’t been listening to much music these days when I am alone. I just returned with my guitar, which has been neglected for far too long.  I am planning on picking it up again and making my own music. 

ST: What are your last three Google searches?
MC: NFTs, Porto art scene, and the definition of bollard, which BTW is a British word for a post. 

ST: What gives you life?
MC: Love & Art.

Surrealism Today: What is your superpower?
Michelle Concetta: Empathy.

ST: What is your Kryptonite?
MC: Seeing people in pain.

ST: If you could visit any artist’s studio, whose would you visit and why?
MC: Natalie Huth, a Berlin collagist. She is an amazing artist living & working in an edgy, progressive city!

ST: What was the last thing you bought?
MC: A patio umbrella to shield my roof  from the scorching summer sun in Arabia.

Surrealism Today: What ideas are you currently pondering or questioning?
Michelle Concetta: Mortality and the question of making sacrifices in the moment for the future. 

ST: What do most people believe that you do not?
MC: That the older you get the harder it is to change. 

ST: What is one thing you believe that most people do not?
MC: That astrology is legit.

ST: What imaginary place would you love to visit?
MC: I visit them every night in my dreams!

ST: What is your favorite thing in the world, and why?
MC: Traveling with my partner and daughter when the stars align—it is a way for us to be together and share a love of exploration. That is, once I get over my initial anxiety and stress in preparation for travel!

ST: If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and why?
MC: Xeno and Oaklander, a synth and video duo. They are an experimental electronic band and really cool!  I would love to get out of my comfort zone and create artwork for their videos and/or album covers.

Surrealism Today: What is next for you?
Michelle Concetta: Keep on keeping on.

Website: drimartz.com
Social: Facebook | Instagram

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

Vincent Fink: Surrealistic Iterations

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Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store.

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Artist Statement

In the pursuit to better redefine modern surrealism, I often find myself indulging in the vibrancy of color and concise composition with flaring elements of Sacred Geometry. The same level of intense detail is implored in all of my work but this series attempts to focus on the singularity and realism of the objects in my visions. I want to convey the world through another dimension: To see the hidden geometry that makes up everything in the universe. My education in 3D animation comes back in a surprising way as I break down complex organisms into their most basic shapes much like polygon modeling.

Allowing myself to fully run free in my mind, I travel to any environment or vacuum my heart desires. I am traveling everywhere I want to go, so I can be closer to my dreams and become better at actualizing them. This project has been an awakening of my true self that needed all previous lessons to attain.

Iterations have proven to be my strongest vehicle for exploring my fascination with shapes and dreamlike imagery via oil and acrylic paintings on canvas and panel. Dreams represent a higher dimension of consciousness to me, documented by Edgar Casey to be a medium of infinite insight, problem-solving and premonition. It seems only natural for one to explore this realm of higher consciousness on a 2 dimensional medium with the higher spacial dimensions, where Platonic Solids, Archemedian Solids and other geometries seem to unlock a representation of the underlying structure of nature.

The work also has hidden implications to the impact of evolution and attaining knowledge, for better or worse. We yield so much potential with recent discoveries, but as a race, we seem to be struggling with the same concerns of our ancestors. Survival is an on-going theme in my work especially in the face of misused information. I’m concerned with the persistence of imbalance in a technological age that could unite the world in abundance. The artwork will definitely cause a lot of progressive thinking and discussion about the unification of art and science, power and knowledge, predator and prey.

My goal is to blend the surreal with the real. To walk the lines of what is a thought and what is a movement, and mostly, to reach a higher state of mind through art.

Biography

Born April 1st, 1984 and growing up in the ever-crowding greater Houston area, Vincent Fink is an award-winning contemporary surrealist & full-time artist working out of his Winter Street Studio in the Arts District where he tirelessly adds to a multitude of expansive projects. His first series, Atlas Metamorphosis, started in 2010 with vigorously detailed greyscale sumi ink drawings spawned from a lucid dream. Since then, his art evolves from his series of Sacred Geometry Surrealism paintings, called Iterations, to multimedia public art and installations including sculpture and animation. The subconscious, with its symbolic story-telling, has always played a part in his cultural narrative message.

Hand Crafted Tetrahedrons

After attaining a degree in Media Arts & Animation from The Art Institute of Houston, he worked as a graphic designer searching in life for a higher purpose, a direction with his artistic abilities, yet was extremely lost. Then one night, with a sketch pad by his bed, he dreamt his future and immediately awoke to record it. In his subconscious state, he saw the first completed piece that would establish his art career. This series became known as the Atlas Metamorphosis and continues to take us through the 4 stages of an other-worldly, gigantic god-like beetle’s evolution. Each stage of its life cycle is accompanied by a new cultural empire or era of civilization.

77: A Fleshy Facade, A Cryptic Charade

This series won him the Talent Call Award, The Big Show – Best of, as well as a Hunting Art Prize finalist, twice, along with many shows and articles online and in print, but that is just one hemisphere of this, now, activated imagination. His second, most prolific series of acrylic and oil paintings called Iterations also garners equal prestige and focuses on his love for surrealism and sacred geometry.

03: Survival

Editor’s Note: Vincent Fink’s limited edition prints are now available for purchase in the Surrealism Today online store.

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Vincent Fink Elsewhere on the Web

Alice Zilberberg – Meditations

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We have previously covered Alice Zilberberg on Surrealism Today.

Statement

In this series, Zilberberg creates animal montages as an expression of self-therapy. As an urbanite, functioning day-to-day in a fast-paced, built environment can be emotionally unsettling. The artist regrounds herself in the sense of calm issued by these animals. These creatures reinstate a presence, a tranquility, and a grander perspective. The works are an amalgam of many photographs from different locations around the world, put together seamlessly by the artist in post-production. Their minimal aesthetic is metaphorical of striving for simplicity. Rather than ruminating on the past, or hypothesizing the future, Zilberberg’s works invite a meditative state, encouraging the viewer to stay still and find happiness in the moment.

20 Questions with Alice Zilberberg

SurrealismToday.com: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Alice Zilberberg: I never had a specific profession picked, but I knew I was going to do something artistic.

ST: What artwork are you are most proud of, and why? 

AZ: I am very proud of all my works, as I know that even the less successful ones were part of the path to creating the top works, so I see all pieces as part of my work.

Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?

AZ: Salvador Dali. I consider him one of the greatest artists. I would’ve loved to have a conversation with him, and I have a feeling he would be entertaining company.

Where is your favorite place?

AZ: The beaches in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Who are your biggest influences?

AZ: Many of the baroque painters like Frans Snyder, and Jan Weenix. Of course, the surrealists: Dali and Magritte. I am also in love with the works of many contemporary photographers such as Loretta Lux and Jill Greenberg. I look at a lot of contemporary paintings for inspiration as well.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

AZ: There have been many lessons leading my way, however, the lesson to always be kind to others has always stood out. In my experience, giving to others is really valuable.

What can’t you live without?

AZ: Nature. I’m always planning the next trip to get a dose.

What is your dream project?

AZ: My dream project is always the one I’m working on currently. I don’t settle for less with my work. I do whatever needs to be done to get my current vision out into the world.

What’s your favorite movie?

AZ: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

What is currently on your playlist?

AZ: A lot of techno.

What is your last Google search?

AZ: Iceland travel August 2020.

What gives you energy?

AZ: 9 hours of sleep every night.

If you could visit any artist’s studio, whose would you visit?

AZ: I would go back in time and visit Frida and Diego’s house in Mexico.    

What was the last thing you bought?

AZ: Plant-based chocolate fudge brownie ice-cream.

What ideas are you currently pondering or questioning?

AZ: I’m currently thinking a lot about the state of the natural environment and its future.

What is your favorite thing in the world, and why?

AZ: My favorite thing is when I’m in a good state of flow with my work. 

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and why?

AZ: I would love to collaborate with a sculpture artist. I’ve always loved sculpture, and I’ve been thinking a lot about 3D artwork.

What helps you most in your work?

AZ: Maintaining my morning routine. I know the work will come when I have a schedule to work within.

What drives you to continue creating?

AZ: I always have ideas floating around that I am eager to try out, and I just know that they need to be created.

What is next for you?

AZ: I will likely continue to work with wildlife for a period of time, but I never know what can come up and inspire me.

Biography

Alice Zilberberg is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning artist, recognized by curators, collectors, and art patrons across the globe. Born in Tallinn, Estonia, and raised in Israel, she currently resides in Toronto, Canada. A graduate of Ryerson University’s Photography program, she began her artistic practice by painting: a verve which remains very much present in her digital works. The winner of numerous prestigious competitions, her accolades include 1st place titles in competitions such as the International Photography Awards, the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, and the Fine Art Photography Awards.

alicezilberberg.com
Alice Zilberberg on Saatchi Art

Arabella Proffer

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Series: Acids and Sugars

This series brings together my interests in botany, microbiology, space, disease, and the evolution of cells. I subconsciously explore the relationships between anatomy, biology, nature, and emerging sciences while creating from my own imagination. These paintings sometimes mirror personal metaphysical occurrences, and, at times, contain a slight nod to art history, such as hints of a baroque landscape or decadent still lives through distorted lenses. They are more virtual reality than actuality.

I delve into the practice and alchemy of oil paint dictating the direction, shaping aesthetic outcomes, and transforming emotional impressions as I go. Insects, flowers, human organs all come from the same process at the core, but within these works I am visualizing their fictional evolution at any given stage comes from instinct. I create my own fragile beings and nature within these little worlds; alien forms mesh with what might be seen under a microscope, or through a telescope. They are an artificial nature or a nature that is simply unknown to us, scientized and made more delectable. This is my biomorphic garden party.

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Manor House – by Arabella Proffer

Size: 10×10

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