GOT IT LIKE THAT

When Empty Kingdom put up their listings for the best artists of the last year I scrolled through that shit like a hungry lion smelling out its prey. Here are a few of my faves from the listings;

Bill Durgin is an american photographer with an intense fascination for the human form and the ways it can assemble itself. He works with incredible contortionists in order to give the impression that the subject is a sculpture.

Amanda Elizabeth Joseph is from America and specialises in paintings that I can only describe as beautifully disgusting; painting garish close-ups of sick, blemished individuals where the wounds have been replaced by sequins, sparkles and glitter.

Nick Pederson is an artist and illustrator from Brooklyn. In his collection of work entitled "Sumeru" Pederson attempts to illustrate the 'mental journey that is undertaken in Zen buddhist training and practice'. In his statement he declares; 'In Zen literature, the word ‘land’ is commonly used as a symbol for the ‘mind’, and through my images I have envisioned an exploration into the depths of this metaphorical ‘mind-world’. The narrative follows a spiritual quest as the storyline symbolically wanders through various states of consciousness and perceptions. My conceptual inspiration for this project is in the existential drama of searching for personal truth, and the main themes I am portraying are awakening and rebirth' 
They're just lovely to me. 

Loom by Polynoid is an animated short that shows a fly struggling desperately in a web before the spider comes along with it's fate. It's very detailed and completely captivating; I especially like how they animated the venom inside the body.

Kris Kuksi. I mean, wow. Really - wow. His sculpture work is just incredible. The initial piece that interested me was a war tank he had built, but it was a church. I then looked at more of his work and I'm just in love with it all. Like many artists that I love, Kuksi sees beauty in the grotesque. 

This is the church tank. In. Sane. 

I really do love them - they're like steampunk sculptures of ancient and traditional pieces of art. 

Bruno Dayan is a British born fashion photographer who has shot the likes of Cindy Crawford, Charlize Theron and the beautiful Audrey Tautou. His non-celebrity commissioned work is less well known but lovely nonetheless. 

How wonderful are the colours?

Also - my blogger account and I are mid argument, hence the unwanted changing of font and size of the writing.