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Month: October 2019

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Larval Mysticism: The Art of Alessandro Sicioldr

The ethereal, uncanny paintings of Alessandro Sicioldr have an almost religious beauty. Mystical and intriguing, the melancholy languor of the somberly dressed figures that populate his strange, surreal, desolate dream-landscapes – those pallid, ascetic faces with their opaque and vaguely serene expressions, gentle enigmas all – sometimes partaking of the substance of nightmare with the disturbing contrast between black garb and death-white skin – evoke classical works, medieval spiritual richness and symbolism. Combining traditional techniques with modern aesthetics, these splendid paintings are technically realistic but have a haunting surreality and a high degree of dark imaginativeness.

There are translucent, cocoon-like souls in the skies, multitudes of faces looming titanically above the main subjects, milky luminous streams of souls or spirits, shrouded tiny figures of the seeming dead (or merely transfigured, in the sleep of metamorphosis), a plurality of eyes, faces above and below water… I think of those strange groups of diaphanous beings with opalescent flesh as larvae, an archaic term, larva meaning ghost-like or masked in Latin, which oddly fits due to their rather grub-like reminiscence. These are visionary and hallucinatory, their delicate foreboding, weaved of both gossamer and grave textures, itself a form of beauty. The sense of lostness of individuals in vast grim landscapes also reminds me of artists like Zdzisław Beksiński. Subtle but quite striking, Sicioldr’s work is of the type that is the most appealing to my imagination and so lingeringly lovely for me.

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Carbonized Forest

The eye that was open on Friday.
The portent and the portent’s flensed hide. Ribbons of flesh
swarming downward. Like a school of leeches
deserting some unlit cataclysm.
And a briary phantom there, Stygian, erect.
Saying, here is the untranslation of the world.
Mounted on a spire of form.
The disembarkation of abyss. Fragmentary sputtering.
And what you thought were dark whiptails of illumination
were bristles from a shaved bear
being milked for bile in a rusting cage. Nested
among the mesh of soft translucent sounds
fallen from your lips, the
vestiges of someone’s breathing.

{by Forrest Gander}

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Sigil Studio

Sigil, the rawly beautiful jewelry brand of Seattle-based designer Anita Arora, is inspired by primal, powerful landscapes. Rare minerals sourced in faraway, desolate, and magnificent places such as Tibet, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands are fused with hand-forged metals which seem to have grown into the mineral structure. Ghostly, smoky stones vary with strikingly colorful stones reminiscent of the Northern Lights and black volcanic rock. Rugged and talismanic, they have a wonderfully organic feel.

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I built a self outside my self because a child needs shelter

{She gave me a birdcage for my bird, I think
I might have loved her a basket
full of beautiful poison berries}

Gala Mukomolova’s Without Protection is a heady draught: it is disjointed hallucinatory image, weaving mythology of the fearsome Baba Yaga with vignettes of chaotic frenetic modern life. Mukomolova uses the English language in an unpredictable, splendid way, bending it to her will, her witchlike power. This compact collection is infused with strange color, both violent and tender. It reaches deep into me. Sometimes almost ugly, not always delicate or shrinking by any means, it is a censer of potent fragrances to my overfastidious brain.

Excerpts after the cut.

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Crafting the Hierophanies: Moon and Serpent Jewelry

Handcrafted by Istanbul-based artist Göksu Şimşek, the delightfully whimsical and spooky offerings of Moon and Serpent Jewelry Design draw inspiration from her diverse interests in the occult, witchcraft, alchemy, esoterica, mythology, museology, antiquity, and the 16th through 19th centuries. Gnarled, earthy, fantastical, enchanting and lovely, these pieces speak of poisonous flowers, mandrakes, the mythical chicken-legged house of Baba Yaga, Victorian mourning, sigils and talismans, old woodcuts and engravings, and a myriad of other spiritual and historical artifacts. They remind one of the power of raw pagan religions as well as the highly ornamented and enameled affectations of the 18th and 19th century. The macabre beauty of her creations is also wonderfully wearable, not seeming cumbersome at all.

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