Virginia Mori is an Italian artist who resides and works in Pesaro and Milan. Using BIC pens on paper, she draws visions from a Victorian-esque nightmare; young girls wearing dark dresses and long hair, accompanied by their shadowy animal companions, are witnesses of and participants in a number of strange situations. As it often happens […]
Category: Dark Art
Nightmares and Deep Emotions in Stunning Images by Diana Dihaze
Diana Dihaze is a Ukraine-based photographer and digital artist who manipulates her photos to reveal disturbing yet beautiful inner truths. Her images derive from the corners of her subconscious, arriving to her through dreams and nightmares. There is a surreal element of horror as nature and grotesque wounds cover the bodies of her subjects, all […]
The Essence of Skin: An Interview with Evelyn Bencicova
If you enjoy dark art, chances are that you’ve encountered the incredible work of Slovakian photographer Evelyn Bencicova. I’ve written about her work twice before, describing each photo as an “otherworldly vision” of beauty that “extends into the alien and absurd.” Born in 1992, Bencicova bought her first camera after she had eye surgery at […]
Rot and Transformation: Necrorealist Art by David Van Gough
I invite you to lose yourself in the hallucinatory nightmare-worlds of David Van Gough; between the fire-spewing man-lion and the devil wearing an American combat uniform, it’s entirely possible to stumble across an esoteric symbol or two (or three, or ten). Hailing from Liverpool, Van Gough is a self-proclaimed “Necrorealist” (emerging out of Leningrad in […]
Hidden Hearts: Creepy Hollowed-Out Dolls by Mari Shimizu
Mari Shimizu is an artist from Amakusa in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, who creates hollowed-out ball-joint dolls. Each doll is unique in that the contents of their eviscerated torsos reveal different elements of horror and fantasy. In a statement provided to Illusion, Shimizu explains how “We hide our hearts from our families and friends in order […]
Disembodied Rebirth: Charcoal Artworks by Aurore Lephilipponnat
Aurore Lephilipponnat is a French artist who incorporates Japanese Butoh dance into her charcoal drawings. Her visions often comprise of female or hybrid bodies who move gracefully across the page, suspended in various stages of life, death, and decay. In an interview with Artists of France, Lephilipponnat explains how Butoh is an art form capable […]
Exploring the Unconscious: Dark Photos by Peter Zelei
For Hungarian photographer Peter Zelei, there is no “black and white” when it comes to humanity; “I believe . . . we are a very complicated mix of good, bad, darkness and light,” he explained in an interview with Citizen Brooklyn. His photographs are filled with beauty and cruelty, with scenes and scenarios that simultaneously […]
Cake Fangs: Sweetly Lethal Sculptures by Scott Hove
Scott Hove is an LA-based artist who turns the ingredients of beauty and violence into colorful, snarling cakes. As part of an ongoing project called “Cakeland,” these sculptures explore “the process of re-integrating light and dark, [moving] from a false dualism to a true whole.” While the juxtaposition of sweetness and savagery may be the […]
Tenderness for the Dead: Sculptures by Berlinde de Bruyckere
The wax sculptures of the Ghent-born artist Berlinde de Bruyckere ask the viewer a question rooted in ethics: What does a subject need to lack in order to be considered a soulless object? They resemble the byproducts of a morgue, a slaughterhouse, or a taxidermist’s table, all of which are thematically linked as platforms of […]
Dreamlike Moments in Denise Kwong’s Creative Portraiture
Magic and human vulnerability find a peaceful crossroads in the photography of Sydney-based Denise Kwong. “I first used people in my photos to give scale to a landscape shot. Then, progressively, they became more a subject in the shot,” she told the Phoblographer. Each subject is expressed in symbolic, conceptual ways, often using the immediate […]