Surrealism Today

Contemporary surreal, visionary and pop surreal art

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Stephen Gibb

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Artist Statement

I imagine a world where the visually rich language of fairy tales and nursery rhymes extends into adulthood. The traditional nature of this kind storytelling is best presented with visual aids; simple, straightforward text accompanied by fantastic illustrations. In our culture, this is a conventional part of our collective upbringing and experience. These stories often convey lessons, which are coded in familiar, symbolic language, and are likely where we first encounter metaphor and allegory.

We carry these symbolic codes into adulthood—like wolf equals bad, pig equals good. The narratives I deliver in my paintings utilize this common trove of visual references; however with more mature and timely messages.

The intertwined relationship between language and image has always guided me in constructing my artwork—using visual puns, symbolic themes and literal translations from words into paintings. Often the compositions and assemblies of characters seem to clash in a surreal incongruence, but on some level, they relate by a verbal association or some idiomatic commonality. My aim is to exploit these visual conventions and present something visually arousing with dynamic color and compelling content.

The level of “payoff” sophistication that the viewer “gets” from the paintings is relative to their own personal experience and history. There may be universal themes revealed, and there may be idiosyncratic dead ends. There is no correct reading of the images other than what the viewer extracts on their own. Even my opinion and the depth of what they mean to me may change from day to day.

Biography

Stephen Gibb lives and works in the small town of Amherstburg, in southern Ontario, Canada and maintains a second studio in Windsor. He earned a B.F.A. in visual arts from the University of Windsor and is currently represented by the St. Germain gallery in Toronto. Among the cities he has exhibited in are San Diego, Sacramento, and Hollywood— the hotbed of California’s Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism community. His work is collected around the globe and has gained widening interest since working on the album art for hip hop artist Trippie Redd.

Links:

facebook.com/bubblegumsurrealism/
instagram.com/stephengibbart/
stephengibb.com/gallery/

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.

Beth Hoeckel

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About Beth Hoeckel

Beth Hoeckel is a multidisciplinary artist and illustrator from Baltimore.

She earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied painting, photography, and printmaking— but her main area of expertise is in the medium of collage. Beth began her first widely-known series of collages in 2010, and has been a full-time freelance artist since 2012. Over the past 5 years her work has been exhibited around the world and published in many prestigious books and magazines.

Beth can currently be found creating collage and mixed media art for arts’ sake, as well as illustrating for a variety of clients including Rookie, Domino, The New York Times, and many more.

Beth Hoeckel Collage

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

Casey Weldon

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Casey Weldon crafts surreal, sometimes absurd paintings that play with the everyday and the otherworldly alike. … “Weldon gambols with the manipulation of scale and contrast to create otherworldly scenes, as though pulled from the cavities of the unconscious and its latent thread-like associations,” the gallery says. “The works alternate between moments of intense darkness and incandescent light, figuratively and literally. Saturated with lush color and detail, they are stylized by idiosyncratic palette choices that capture a range of brightness and atmosphere, from the intensity of neon to the lambent of dusk and the recesses of twilight obscurity.”

via hifructose
caseyweldon.com