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 […]
Category: Horror
The End is Nigh: 10 Post-Apocalyptic Movies in 2016–2017
From the Book of Revelation, to Y2K, to the supposed end of the Mayan calendar in 2012, it is fair to say that people have long been fascinated by the “end of the world.” This is part of our linear, fatalistic, religious, and/or increasingly nihilistic thinking: If everything had a beginning, then everything has to […]
The Aesthetics of Horror: 10 Visually Striking Nightmare Movies
Horror is one of the most—if not the most—popular movie genre the medium has ever known. Iconic villains such as Freddy Krueger, Leatherface or Jason Voorhees murdering their way through a high body count of luckless victims has ensured the genre has stayed largely in the mainstream, but the history of horror cinema is full […]
Dark Fantasy and Industrialism in Stefan Gesell’s Otherworldly Portraiture
Stefan Gesell is a Munich-based photographer who composes breathtaking images that shock and seduce the imagination. Mixing dark fantasy imagery with industrialism and science fiction, Gesell uses his experience as a former graphic designer to tell elaborate stories using the lens. Dark, confident, and even tortured figures confront the viewer with tremendous strength, each seemingly […]
Dark Paranormal Femininity: Photography by Nynewe
Nynewe (Michaela Knizova) is a photographer based in Luxembourg who creates ghostly self-portraits capturing what she identifies as “dark paranormal femininity.” In a multi-part series titled “Agast Atera En,” Nynewe documented her travels around Europe using creative portraiture. Posing her body in dark rural landscapes, she acts out original hybrid mythologies, drawing on archetypes and […]
Creepy Canada: 10 Horror Films from the North
Despite its picturesque views of mountains, sun-kissed prairies, and deep woods, Canada has a reputation for being a bizarre and scary place. In 1971, Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye argued that the main trend (or symptom) in Canadian poetry was “a terror of the soul” invoked by the vast and unfeeling landscape.[1] While critics have […]
10 Morbid Sculptures Brimming with Death and Body Horror
Note: Contains violent content. Melting flesh, living corpses, and mutating organs: there are few things as unsettling as wildly degenerating bodies. In the wake of twisted films that characterized the science fiction and horror of the late 1970s and 80s—Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” for example—the journal “Screen” coined the term “body […]
Portraits of Fear by Magdalena Pacewicz
“I still feel fear, but I like to smile,” writes Magdalena Pacewicz, describing the ambivalent subjects of her ghostly overlay photography. Based in Wroclaw, Poland, Pacewicz mixes digital technology with traditional media to create black-and-white portraits, melting together facial features with ghoulish eyes and lipless mouths. Seeking to dive deep into the human psyche, Pacewicz […]
Grotesque, Beautiful Life: Sculptures by Russel Cameron
Note: Contains images that may be considered graphic and disturbing to some readers. Russel Cameron is an American, self-taught artist from Brooklyn, New York, who creates sculptures that are grotesque and profound in their representations of life. With skin-like textures and shapes similar to human body parts, each creation looks deformed and unsettling, devoid of […]
Death and Fantasy: Paintings by Takato Yamamoto
Note: Contains nudity. Takato Yamamoto paints gothic scenes that resemble erotic nightmares. He calls his work “Heisei Estheticism,” drawing on the tradition of Japanese woodblock prints and infusing them with images (often violent and sexualized) inspired by modern manga. Recurring motifs include sullen-faced women bound in ropes, rotting corpses festooned with vines, and bloodied vampires […]