Visual Art – Page 11

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Flowers and Insects: The Art of Toru Kamei

Toru Kamei’s lush works are reminiscent of vanitas paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries. His motifs are flowers with eyes, skulls, butterflies, and other creatures including bats and beetles. His masterful use of lighting and color brings a sumptuous glow to his illustration of death and decay. I love his juxtapositional imagery, such as the blossoms overflowing and spilling from the rib cage in almost obscene abundance, while strange, alien, seemingly sentient vegetation grows around it in the night, with its sense of still, mysterious hunger.

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Way of the Mystic

These images are from Burial Ground’s lookbook for Way of the Mystic, a jewelry collection inspired by “occultism, magic, spirituality, and a deep nostalgia for old New England.”

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The Somnabulist Bride: Paintings by Stephen Mackey

Stephen Mackey’s soft, dreamy, charming paintings are reminiscent of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century portraits. Animal-headed ladies and bow-lipped children pose enigmatically in idyllic, sumptuous settings, all enmeshed in an atmosphere of mystery, whimsy, and subtle eeriness. With an avid historical awareness and deft skill, Mackey creates little worlds within the edges of these paintings.

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Beyond the Dark Veil

Last Gasp Books has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their fall publishing season, the most intriguing offering of which is Beyond the Dark Veil.

{ Postmortem & Mourning Photography
from the Thanatos Archive
A compilation of extraordinary and haunting photographs
documenting the practice of death and mourning photography
in the Victorian era and early 20th century }

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The Anatomical Art of Pole Ka

The whimsical, wistful drawings of Paris-based artist Pole Ka have the pensive elegance of vintage anatomy illustrations, expressing the emotional and personal entanglements and intricacies of human beings, no less than the delicate structure and beauty of veins and arteries.

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Oneirica: The Art of Zakuro Aoyama

Zakuro Aoyama is a Brazilian artist who creates beautiful, intensely detailed graphite drawings with a vibe of macabre eroticism and romantic decay.

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Melusina

This stunning editorial showcases the extravagant, otherworldly headpieces of Jay Briggs.

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RIP Giger

Swiss artist H. R. Giger died yesterday at the age of 74. Characterized by his nightmarish, surreal, monochromatic, intricate biomechanical dreamscapes, he is most well-known for his creature and set designs for Alien. I’ve always liked the intense yet cold quality of his paintings, and the mystery behind them; they remind me of the sacred, esoteric rites of some ancient alien civilization, both profane and hallowed, sterile and salacious. We’ll miss you.