It’s the Dada and Surrealism issue!! Watch out for that flying fish and wry sense of fun and fury …
How we love the absurd, nonsensical quips, quotes, and poems of current artists working in Surrealism
this is how our selected writers responded to the topic …
Is this a dream? by Resident writer Michaela Hall…
The Dada and Surrealist creative movements of the early Twentieth Century are some of the most captivating and popular art movements to the present day for their ability to expand the imagination and transport viewers to a new world of the unknown. The nonsensical nature of Dada that plays with readymade objects we’re familiar with and obscures them away from their meaning leads the mind perfectly on to the subconscious nature of surrealism that plays with our deepest conscience and desires to blur the worlds of dreams and reality. With these approaches to contemporary artwork still very much present, when Dada, Surrealism and the contemporary collide – we are left with a true explosion of spectacle.
This is certainly the case with Japanese architect turned artist Tsuyoshi Tane’s 2014 installation, ‘Light is Time’. In this awe-inspiring work, Tane works with the humble everyday Citizen watch and elevates it into a space that is almost galactic and dreamlike, something completely unrecognisable. Just like those readymade objects transformed in the Dada movement, the watch is turned into a whole new experience. The glimmer of infinite reflections and orbs of light is created by the presence of 80,000 main gold watch plates suspended in the pitch-black space for the viewer to journey through. At certain presentations of the work, there was also a giant clockface projected onto the floor which viewers walked over, creating an unusually magnified experience of the clockface. Either coincidentally or uncoincidentally this is also a nod to the depiction of the great surrealist master Salvador Dali’s use of clocks in his paintings, often melting and distorted.
Tsuyoshi Tane, Light is Time, 2014.
While Tane takes a rather pleasant approach to the dreamlike state the viewer experiences in his installation, some other contemporary artists use the nonsensical inspirations from the Dada movement and the dream (or rather nightmares) of the subconscious to create works that are disorientating, confusing and otherworldly. British animator, artist, and composer CYRIAK does exactly this. Known for his surreal and ‘bizarre’ compositions, CYRIAK plays with the invention of a place the viewer could only possibly see in their dreams, something strange, intriguing, and baffling. In his animation ‘Circle World’ which is six minutes long, the viewer is greeted with bears dancing and morphing into other objects before we eventually witness a whole new landscape morphing and continuously transforming, the video is fast, unforgiving, addictive and the whole time the viewer doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. The artist describes the work as “a journey through a magical world that is eternally creating itself” a blur of adventure and confusion. Similarly, in ‘Kitty City’ that CYRIAK describes as a “Surreal feline-themed odyssey” we witness giant dinosaur scale kittens taking over their moving and morphing cityscape with wavering buildings and tiny roads. Something we all agree, we will probably never see outside of a surreal daydream or hallucination.
‘Kitty City’, CYRIAK.
While Tsuyoshi Tane and CYRIAK may be completely different in their approach to the unknown, the elevated everyday familiar into something completely new and the creation of something that is other worldly. What can undoubtedly be agreed is that both artists personify the contemporary Dada and Surrealist master, managing to capture something which can only be captured from the mind and the subconscious. Both awe and confusion simultaneously float around the viewer’s mind when they come across Tane’s glittering installation and CYRIAK’s chaotic animations, we want to know more but also don’t quite know what we’re looking at, asking ourselves, is this a dream?
‘Circle World’, CYRIAK.
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Submitted by
Name: Ana Djukanovic Miljkovac
Instagram account - @anamiljkovac_art
Title - RETROGRADE MERCURY
Description
In addition to the dissonant tones, which I try to explain astrologically, the sculpture RETROGRADE MERCURY creates confusion in its very essence. There are ecstatic mouths that are part of the terracotta sculpture. Then flowers and eggs, erupt from the mouth and nape. Finally, instead of the part of the skull where the brain should be located, there are bizarre women's shoes.
Bio - Ana was born in 1967 in Niksic, Montenegro
they have a Doctor of Art, Fine Art, Faculty for Art and design, Belgrade, 2013, and have had 17 solo exhibitions and many group exhibitions and participated in biennials and group exhibitions in Montenegro and abroad. their practice is paintings, installations, objects, and sculptures of different materials. Currently lecturing at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niksic, and the co-author of four textbooks and three teacher’s manuals.
Mercury retrograde
or
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Submitted by -
Name: Richard Kitchen
Website - https://richkitch.wordpress.com/gallery/
Instagram account - https://www.instagram.com/richardkitchenart/
Description - This is a dreamlike hybrid of two separate poems: a bit of alchemy and some digital manipulation. Both involve a journey, and the physical text has gone on a journey too. The result reflects the importance of signs, symbols, and mystery (the unknowable and/or the absurd) in each one. [N.B. This exists in landscape orientation too if required]
Bio - Richard Kitchen is a British artist and writer who has taught literature and theatre in the UK and Spain. In 2020 joined a working studio and gallery in York, where he instituted community events and a mentoring scheme for young artists. He is also a freelance editor and an interest in text informs much of his work. Richard’s practice is fuelled by drawings, paintings, photography, and poetry. His collages are influenced by the impact of time, nature, and people on the environment. During the lockdown, he based a series of drawings on rubbings made in and of interior spaces. “Even the monster was beautiful to Frankenstein”. He is a co-founder of Navigators Art & Performance, a fluid collective of cross-disciplinary creatives which presents theme-based exhibitions and events in and around York.
Title - Crack'd
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submitted by -
Name - Peter Devonald
Website - http://www.scriptfirst.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/peterdevonald/
Bio - Peter Devonald is a poet and screenwriter living in Manchester. 2022. Selected for The Poetic Map of the Reading project and the Chronically Online/ Culturable/ Layered Onion Group Show. Also published in haus-a-rest deconstruction, Dwell Time Press, Tales of the Underbanks (3rd in the award), Bolton Breakdown: reawakening, Heaton Post, Cheadle Post, Didsbury Post, and 20 publications in previous years. 2001 Heart of the Heatons best poetry winner. Multi-award-winning screenwriter including Children’s Bafta-nominated. 150 festival screenings. Formerly senior judge/ mentor Peter Ustinov Awards (jmmys)
Description - Multi poems with multi meanings --- or meaningless words strewn on the page --- as you consume the piece let taste decide. In the Dada tradition, the first poem on the left column is entirely random from finds from all of my work -- only the first letters have some contrivance. The second column is randomly heard recipe abstractions, whilst the third column is created from noise, memories, heartbreak, and shadows: Bon appétit. Enjoy. Eat my words.
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