If Pippi Longstocking and Ingmar Bergman had a love child, it would be Mia Mäkilä. The Swedish artist scours our nightmares for inspiration, painting haunting childlike demons that would even make Tim Burton weep. Makila is particularly known for her Boschian (Hieronymus Bosch) style in her mixed media works, and she is inspired by movie directors such as Terry Gilliam, John Waters and Hitchcock, as well as 13th-17th century artists like Pieter Bruegel the elder, Hans Memling and Lucas Cranach.  She is also involved in the European Lowbrow Art Movement.

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On first look you may just think the work of Japanese artist Kazuki Takamatsu are simply CGI models under the X Ray machine, but on closer viewing you realize that the works are in fact gouache (the method of mixing watercolor pigment with an opaque white pigment in a watercolor vehicle). Takamatsu mixes traditional and modern techniques, from one hand he uses gouache, hand painted monochromed based objects whilst from the other hand he uses “Depth Map” a technique where every pixel on the object is a shade of gray that is proportional to its distance from the object looking at it. The match of these two techniques give a real sense of surrealism, dark fairy tale computer workd and astonishing depth.

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As a digital media artist based in Germany, the portfolio work of Jann de Vries is extensive, but it is his deconstructed collage works that particularly stand out. He takes existing photos from various fashion journals and magazines to create a new reality, hence the name Wirklichkeit, translated as Reality. This should entice you to check out the rest of his portfolio.

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Los Angeles artist and musician Marnie Weber taps the dark side of Brother Grimm (if that is possible) with her photo collages and costumes. Using a semi-regular cast of costumed animal and human characters, Weber shares the dark wonderland of her subconscious. Over the span of 20 years her series of videos, collages, sculptures, music and performances elicit the uneasy vulnerability and eeriness conveyed by classic folklore tales.

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House of Holland T-shirt design

London based illustrator and stylist Sophie Stephens has a humorous and unique take on today’s fashion and celebrities and no one is spared. Her t-shirts for House of Holland feature illustrations of Brit darling Alexa Chung complete with pumpkin, the witch hat and ivy, Terry Richardson covering himself with a prickly cactus, and Luella, looking rather provocative with arms up and bare chest. Even her final year guerilla art campaign project, entitled ‘Style makes me Sick’ pushed the boundaries. Stephens infiltrated Topshop changing rooms everyday with  illustration saying “No More Heroes”, challenging what we think is fashionable and making us rethink how we put celebrities on pedestals. She is a force to be reckoned with! Stephens has done work for various magazines including Love, Fact and Know Magazine, and collaborated with Julian and Noel from The Mighty Boosh to make flyer.  Her thoughts, work and ideas can be seen on her blog: http://blackpendiaries.blogspot.com/.

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Samantha Zaza is a self confessed “compulsive sketcher, tea drinker, nomad”. She is also a fantastic graphic artist as her amusing Coup series demonstrates. The series is a selection of colour pencil drawings of pigeons “with Napoleonic complexes”.  Zaza moves around between Istanbul and San Fransisco, she blogs and she exhibits her drawings at Studio Gallery on Polk Street in San Fransisco.

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Cigarettes are to Brian Viveros‘ chicas’ lips as heavily mascara’d eyelashes are to their eyes — absolutely necessary and essential to their fetish-fueled rebellious masochistically hedonistic lifestyle and look. Black eyes and bruises, blood and bandaids, cigarettes and scissors,  bullets and bustiers, tights and tattoos, flowers and fingers, military and mickey mouse — love her lust her, she’s far from lackluster with the most luscious of lips. There is an obvious sense of self-destruction and pain in these gals but instead of it hurting them or rendering them vulnerable, they do it and take it with utmost bravery and pride. That’s just how they live.

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One can say without a doubt that Swedish artist Linnea Strid’s forte is painting water in a way that confuses the onlooker as to whether the piece they are looking at is a photograph or a painting. Strid must have studied water in so much depth [mentally, visually, and physically alike] that she knows it inside and out. It seems as if she knows all of its characteristics and behaviors like one would know their best friend. Linnea knows when it moves, how it moves, where it moves, why it moves, and in turn truly moves all people that view her work.

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An air raid bunker in Berlin was constructed in reinforced concrete in 1942 during the second world war, for the German railway company. In 2003 Christain Boros bought the bunker and commissioned Realarchitektur to design a place for him and his family to live in and house his collection of contemporary art. The existing spaces seemed appropriate to be used by the art and artists represented in the collection. On each of the five floors a route connects the eight major rooms and the surrounding sub spaces.The strict symmetry and uniformity of all spaces created a general feeling of disorientation. The building was separated from its urban context by post war additions such as walls, loading bays, an elevator tower and outhouses. So austere and cold, but incredible. Since 2008 it has been opened for the public to view (by appointment only) his collection of artworks, including the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas. Much more information about the conversion and extension here.

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Each summer, for 4 summers now, 3 months at a time, Ryan McGinley and friends have traveled across the United States shooting photographs of their journeys.  For this series, Moonmilk, the crew find themselves in caves, some of which have never been touched, stepped inside, or documented before. McGinley’s style evolved from documenting his friends in real-life situations towards creating settings where the situations he envisions can be documented, and this series the real focus are the dramatic caves and tiny bodies that almost become one with the surroundings. McGinley is youngest artist to ever receive a solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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Helmut Smits (1974) is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His FLAMMA work is a set of 8 different IKEA products with which you can start a fire, using the fire arc technique.

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Photographer Danny Treacy recovers discarded clothing he finds lying around in lonely places such as streets, car parks and waste ground. He then re-stitches, re-fashioned: re-modeled into junk monsters – uncanny suits that he wears in life-sized portraits in his series Them.

They belonged to the unknown, the anonymous, the lost, the drunken and looming out of the black background the faceless figures evoke urban warriors, mythical beasts, distorted creatures. It seem that something that happened to its former owner emanates from each piece of fabric, making the attire all the more haunting.

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Hamburg-based photographer Patrick Runte recreates scenes from old school videos games in his Oskar Schlemmer-inspired Jump ‘n’ Run series. Pacman, Space Invaders, Pong, and more are all composed in real life situations where Runte has set up  depictions of the video games. This is what Runte has to say about his real world counterparts he created: “The work is inspired by Oskar Schlemmer and his idea of the ‘Triadic Ballett’ and the term ‘Streetplay’”, Runte explains. “I wanted to compile old video games, which are based on simple geometric forms and make them able to be experienced / felt by the human body.”

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Todd Selby is an incredible photographer who goes inside the homes and studios of artists, designers and creative personalities and makes photo essays of their lives and belongings. He then gets them to answer some questions about themselves on a handwritten note which is then scanned in so the viewer learns more about the subject. If you have ever wanted to step inside the house of Peaches Geldof, or Mark ‘The Cobrasnake‘, of writer Tom Wolfe, here is your chance. It is an amazing insight to the lives of these people, and it suddenly makes you feel incredibly comfortable with the mess and clutter in your own home. Satisfy your inner lifestyle voyeur and have a look at his website. These photos are from the studio and home of Pauline Forster and Toby Penrose at the George Tavern in London.

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Artist Justine Lai cheekily explores humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents of the United States and subverting notions of authority by painting herself in intimate sexual encounters with the Presidents in chronological order. These artworks in her Join or Die series could be viewed as controversial but she approaches the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness.

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