Category: Weird

Alien Nation: Photography by Ekaterina Belinskaya

The award-winning (Russian-born, living in Los Angeles) photographer Ekaterina Belinskaya launched “Alien Nation” on Halloween—featuring alienesque demons, female-fetale robots and other bizarre characters wearing neon props and surrounded in black lighting. “Dark, beautiful and mysterious” is how she describes the images shot from her camera, the majority taken for the fashion industry and magazines such […]

Master of Brutality: The Transformative Tattoos of Valerio Cancellier

Valerio Cancellier’s journey as a tattooer started 20 years ago. His first tools were these; today using tattooing machines for his evolved large-scale, savage body-art style. He is not one to be reassuring clients through the intense tattoo process (that is like a ritual), one that contains much pain and blood and sometimes the person […]

A Stranger in Town: Dark, Symbolic Compositions by Shane Pierce

Shane Pierce is an artist from Missouri (currently based in North Carolina) who describes his life and art as “nomadic”—travelling, working in different creative fields, and populating his oil paintings with skull-faced suitcase-toting wanderers ( “‘a stranger comes to town’ type of theme,” as he describes it in a fascinating interview with Beautiful Bizarre). With […]

10 Extraordinary Banned Horror Movies You Have To See

Horror movies have always sort to push the boundaries of taste and decency. Since the birth of the genre proper, in the 1930s, select titles have proven a challenge to censorship boards and morality groups, who champion clean and wholesome entertainment. Can horror movies corrupt young minds? Can horror movies turn audiences into drooling maniacs? […]

Liminality and Bizarre Beauty: Doll Sculptures by Virginie Ropars

Virginie Ropars is an artist from Brittany, France. A degree in graphic arts led her to the video game industry, and afterwards she knew she wanted to make things with her hands. Her magical, feminine characters, made of fabric and polymer clay, hover in the liminal space between doll art, sculpture, and clothing design. While […]

Visceral Enigmas in the Art Work of Allison Sommers

“Pink viscera, heroic dogs, war detritus, barnacled crabs, and embedded nothings” are among the many curious images, both literal and metaphoric, that the Brooklyn-based art worker Allison Sommers uses to describe her creations. Across her portfolio, animals and human appendages unfurl and splatter into gleeful-grotesque jumbles of rot and metamorphosis, defying the confines of prescribed […]

Shadow-Filled Serenity and Terror: Art & Tattoos by Suhwan Bak

Suhwan Bak is a Seoul-based artist telling his “goth-gloomy” tales on paper and skin. In a style that brings to mind Tim Burton’s lanky-limbed characters and the ghoulish terrors of Edo-Period ukiyo-e, his world is anything but ordinary; cadaver-faced women linger alone, dressed in black and partially obscured with shadows and chaotic fine lines that […]

Macabre, Supernatural Digital Paintings by David Seidman

David Seidman is a Philadelphia-based artist creating gloomy, gothic, surrealist paintings. His imagination and dedication has gained him diverse and notable clients, such as Orbit Books and Wizards of the Coast (book covers), Zenescope Entertainment (comics), and Coheed and Cambria (backdrops for live shows). He’s a regular at Arch Enemy Arts, a gallery specializing in […]

We Die to Become: Interview with The Ljilja

“Everyone carries a Shadow. And the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” These are the wise words of the Ljilja, a mysterious Switzerland-based artist. She is referring to Carl Jung’s conception of the Shadow: the unconscious “dark side” of the personality driven by our more unenlightened […]

Exploring the Senses in Uncanny Sculptures by Ronit Baranga

Ronit Baranga, who we featured previously as part of our anatomical sculpture list, is an Israel-based artist creating uncanny body-part hybrids out of clay and porcelain. Shown here are works produced by the artist in the last three years. In addition to her brand of sentient kitchenware, Baranga harnesses the unseen emotions of different parts—i.e., […]