NTB: art

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Very Disturbing

Patricia Piccinini

Piccinini’s sculptures deal with an extremely varied subject matter, including malformed motorcycles and bizarre hot-air balloons like theSkywhale. But this Sierra Leone native (now an Australian citizen) mostly creates sculptures that make you uncomfortable to look at photos of, let alone stand in the same room as. There are works like the 2004 pieceUndivided (pictured), in which a humanoid with back plates and baby animals emerging from its back cuddles a human child. It’s all the more unsettling its element of trust and affection, as if a child’s innocence is being cruelly used against it.Perhaps the highest profile credit Piccinini’s work ever received (if a less than auspicious one) was when, as Snopes.com reported, photos of her piece The Young Family were distributed online via chain email. Various lies were attached to the sculpture—for example, that it was a “malcat,” supposedly a dog-human hybrid being illegally imported into the USA. While people who forward chain emails aren’t known for their hardnosed critical reasoning, it’s still a tribute to Piccinini’s skill at manipulating fiberglass, silicone, and hair. Mark PowellAustralia seems to offer Poland legitimate competition in terms of inspiring horror artists, as Powell’s Melbourne pieces are some truly disturbing work. His 2012 show of “miniature environments where imaginary beings evolve, devolve, consume, excrete, multiply and decay” is shocking even in this fairly jaded day and age. His earthtone environments and textured creatures are appallingly convincing, and the body language of the figures is precisely designed to make the situations look more normal for them, and thus more believable for us.Like our earlier artists, the internet has not hesitated to steal images of Powell’s art and invent other contexts for them. The aforementioned SCP Foundation took the disgusting (but oddly homey) image above and made it part of a story called “The Flesh that Hates.” The popular short horror story “The Russian Sleep Experiment” also had that image attached to it, by creators of horror videos like this one. It’s no surprise that Powell’s dioramas made such an impression. While the other artists featured here made stomach-turning statues and demonic beings you can look at, Powell exhibited visions of hell you could walk through.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

30 Self-Portraits Drawn While the Artist Was Under the Influence of 30 Drugs

Bryan Lewis Saunders went in search of experiences that would affect his perception of self

bryanlewissaunders.org
Photo Credit: Bryan Lewis Saunders

April 4, 2014 |

Bryan Lewis Saunders likes to take drugs, both legal and illegal, and then draw pictures of himself. The results are strikingly different from drug to drug, and they vary from beautiful to grotesque, abstract and just plain bizarre.

An artist in his mid-40s from Virginia, now living in Tennessee, Saunders has completed more than 9,930 self-portraits to date (though not all under the influence of a drug).

He said he explored tragedy and social problems for a couple years, then switched to exploring sleep, pain and personality assessment—then drugs. He's most interested in the "things that are still a mystery to us all," he said in an email.

In 2012 Saunders told Wired magazine he'd decided to do a self-portrait every day for the rest of his life so that he "could die knowing that I tried to experience as much as possible when I was alive."

"All day every day, images and feelings of the world come into me and it’s inescapable,” he wrote to Wired. “So I thought if I did a self-portrait every day for the rest of my life, with no rules, the world and I could be more linked to my nervous system."

On his website, in an explanation of the "Drugs" portraits, Saunders writes:

"After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of self."

He devised an experiment in which every day he took a different drug and drew himself under the influence.

"Within weeks I became lethargic and suffered mild brain damage. I am still conducting this experiment but over greater lapses of time. I only take drugs that are given to me."

Saunders said in an email that, lately it's rare that he creates a new "drugs" portrait.

"I don't like all of these synthetic [drugs] they keep creating," he said. "It is rare that I'm offered something new to me nowadays."

But what he has completed already is stunning. Below are a few of Saunders' self-portraits on drugs:

Abilify/Xanax/Ativan (dosage unknown in hospital)