If you are in New York City this summer, then make some time to see Head (July 10-Aug 11), an exhibit curated by Robert Curcio and D. Dominick Lombardi for Bosi Contemporary. Featuring the works of Christophe Avella-Bagur, Benedetta Bonichi, Richard Butler, Lori Field, Rieko Fujinami, Chambliss Giobbi, Ronald L. Hall, Nina Levy, D. Dominick Lombardi, Esther […]
Over forty years ago, Masahiro Mori, a robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in an essay that appeared in an obscure Japanese Journal called Energy, envisioned a possible response to robots created to be very like humans. He suggested that there would be a “sudden switch from empathy to revulsion as the robot approached, but […]
The aesthetics of the grotesque can be quite broad and far-ranging. The grotesque can be so subtle you miss it on the first interaction with a story, artwork, or film; other times, it’s so shocking that you’ll never forget the image having seen it once (and just once, you have decided, is enough). Then there’s […]
The grotesque is often used as a synonym for all that is dark, obscene, bizarre, and even gruesome. That is a rather lazy definition for an aesthetic that robs us momentarily of our ability to rationalize and categorize things. The truly grotesque moves us more into a sense of mystery — into the world of things that are now given […]
J. David Spurlock is an award-winning author, editor, illustrator, artist advocate, and pop-culture historian, who taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he also founded multiple scholarship funds. His many books include Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos, The Frazetta Sketchbook, Jeffrey Jones: The Definitive Reference, and How to Draw […]
Ruth Marten’s works on paper are a beguiling mix of the surreal and the subversive, and are often disarmingly funny. They are primarily interventions, or détournements engaging with 18th and 19th century prints and illustrations, to change and subvert their original intention or meaning. She works with Indian ink and watercolors, using her extraordinary draughtsmanship to […]
Taylor Lockwood is an American-born mycologist who has been studying and photographing mushrooms and fungi for almost 30 years on an amateur and professional basis. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other publications. Lockwood regularly travels the world, taking thousands of photos and videos of his studies to […]
You know the story. Little girl goes through the woods to her grandmother’s house. Little girl is stalked by ravenous wolf. Big bad wolf gets to the house first, eats grandma. Wolf gets in bed with girl, then eats her. This would be the Little Red Riding Hood of Charles Perrault (who published it as […]
Psychedelic, hypnotic, and with an obsessive quality about them which moves them well into the territory of the weird, Jake Fried’s animations are self-consciously retro, or as he himself describes them ‘retro-futurist.’ In his latest project, The Deep End, this retro feel is initiated by the soundtrack of static from an old record, and then […]
There seems to be an ever-growing trend to both humanize animals (particularly pets), to the point of giving them organic food and worrying about their health care perhaps more than our own, while simultaneously continuing our eradication of species that we don’t see as necessary (go research the blob fish). Jessica Joslin ruptures that binary […]