We’re always trying to process all this information, all these ideas and thoughts and stimuli—it’s too, much; we fail at it constantly. But what if the world presented itself to the eye and brain in ways that were more digestible, more like charts and graphs we read so easily? Ori Toor’s worlds are like that, dense, colorful images feeling like the world’s most beautiful infographics, emotion, form, idea crammed together in shapes that are fun and easy to parse.
Life itself is short, so it is no surprise that what is best in life often seems fleeting. Angie Kang suspends those gentle moments in soft, vibrant color, making mementos that melt the callouses from one’s heart.
There’s a lot about living that we don’t understand. And that lack of knowledge is scary. We try to fill that void with science, but all our equations and hypotheses often aren’t much better than the legends and myths our ancestors cooked up. And so those old stories endure, sometimes in unnerving ways, like when you’re sure you felt something move in the dark. Silvia Vanni makes those frightening things accessible, even cute, in part by connecting them to the universal, reminding us that no matter what you believe, no matter what you experience, you’re doing and feeling things millions of other humans have done and felt.
Thin lines and soft hues give Tamia Baudouin’s work a fragility that feels familiar—so often it can seem that we’re holding on to the lives we possess by our fingernails; so often it seems that all that we’ve worked so hard to build could suddenly shatter. Baudoiun’s worlds have that scarily liminal feeling of being on the precipice, but just like life, the work is also populated by bright anchor points: friends, art, love, and hope.
As a salve ourselves against the world, we look for ways to escape. Like the deco travel posters of the 20s and 30s, Deanna Halsall’s work graceful stimulates the romantic in us, and provides through its windows into possibility momentary release from the woes of reality.
We look at the mythologies that in the past were true beliefs and find them not so different from the religions of today. The faiths of tomorrow will probably be evolutions of the religions of today. Nathaniel Rueda’s work feels like one route that evolution could take, its beings possessed of a heft and gravity that feels almost divine.
Fantasies as ephemeral as spun sugar, and just as colorfully sweet, HsiaoYun Tseng’s work presents the fantastic and the beautiful in a manner that entices you to enter like Alice into a wonderland that is a lovely respite for the grey grind of the real.
The things that loom large in our collective imaginations populate Helton Mattei’s work like colonies of mushrooms, spreading explosively, dazzling the eye, and offering the possibility of transformative experiences.
Each of us has our own secret glow that we sometimes share with the larger world. Chloé Nicolay captures that glow, and flattens it, and shows just how special it really is.
The sensitive among us get a sense of spirit, while all the rest us see is flesh. Rafael Alejandro’s work seems to exist in a world of spirits, spectral forms gruing like jinn and unwell souls—each piece is dark, but by viewing through them, we’re able to see less darkly.
