Sewp is a Toronto-based artist who works out of Holy Noir Tattoo and guest spots around the world. He is also an illustrator and street artist, and much of his tattoo art is influenced by these mediums. Known for his dark, mysterious, and often-erotic style, Sewp’s work is characterized by shadowy-faced girls with piercing white […]
Category: Weird
10 Photographers Capturing Beautifully Strange Nudes
In photography, much like other mediums, the nude body has been an eternal muse, acting as the site for creativity and the performance of human experience. While depictions of beauty and perfection have traditionally been more widely accepted (especially in our age of preened social media accounts), there is something to be said about strange […]
I Must Be Dead: Vibrant and Surreal Portrait Photography
I Must Be Dead (McKay Jaffe) is a Phoenix-based photographer creating mind-blowing portraits of unusual characters. Using body paint and makeup, he and the subjects construct scenes of fantasy and nightmare, invoking conflicting feelings of sensuality, intrigue, and unease. Subversive by nature—for example, Jaffe views being human as a “program,” wherein people are “designed to […]
Animals Being Human: Photography by Darren Holmes
In “Animals Being Human,” photographer Darren Holmes captures people in the liminal space between rationality and physicality—that is, between humanity and animality. The sets resemble something from a child’s room, with messily painted props and a general state of disarray, and the models—their bodies painted or cardboard-clad—embody an ambiguous playfulness that is both innocent and […]
Strange and Erotic Minimalist Tattoos by Curt Montgomery
Curt Montgomery is a Toronto-based tattoo artist currently working out of Holy Noir. He has garnered a lot of attention on social media, and it’s easy to see why; he tattoos fun, strange, and erotic scenes (often explicit ones) with few lines. Some of the designs featured here are the products of ideas his clients […]
Something’s Gone Wrong in Tattoos by Louis Loveless
Based in both London and Paris, Louis Loveless applies a comic book-style sensibility to his tattoos. Working almost entirely in black, stylized subjects, his dramatic pieces contemplate the horrors of life, the calmness death, and the false prophecies that we cling to. To convey many of these sentiments, Loveless uses glitches to fracture his subjects. This […]
Armin Blasbichler’s Taxidermy Designs Critique Consumption
Armin Blasbichler is an artist, architect, and educator whose studio explores designs built on “transgression and chance, conceptually and physically.” When he’s not making cross-shaped coffins and glowing nooses that spray water (both of which contain clever literary allusions), he can be found making works that critique unpleasant cultural trends, such as over-consumption in the […]
Neon Planet: Illustrations by Bang Sangho
South Korean illustrator Bang Sangho takes us on a psychedelic journey to a new planet—submerging our eyes and mind into the imaginary depths of the neon sea and black holes. Crater-headed humans are ticking time bombs in this world, as their brains erupt like volcanoes and revealing their insides as star-filled galaxies. “There is an […]
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 […]
Playfully Dark Surrealist Paintings by Jose Luis Lopez Galvan
The oil paintings of Mexican artist Jose Luis Lopez Galvan are guaranteed to make you look twice—once for shock, and the second time to soak in the potent symbolism. Combining the bizarre eroticism of Hieronymus Bosch with Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s low-brow critique of class issues, Galvan inserts his own contemporary style to produce a new breed […]