Christian rex Van Minnen’s Fungal Portraits
With an Old-World, malady painterly flourish Christian rex Van Minnen creates creepy, surreal portraits using vegetables, fungi, and animal carcasses. The similarities to the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo is immediately apparent; unlike Arcimboldo, however, Van Minnen shows no desire to render realistic visages. Using only the barest of draped cloth, and sometimes a hat, he lends his piles of detritus just enough shape to appear human, thereby making them appear that much more alien; their eyeless faces sprouting tendrils and clumps of tumor-like, vegetative growths. In that regard they are more still-life than they seem at first glance; more a window into a separate dimension than an optical illusion.
[via Cool Hunting]
June 16th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
These are so badass. Thanks for posting, Ross. (I’m a hopeless nerd for fungi.)
June 16th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Oddly, I was just reading Stephen J. Gould’s essay “A Humongous Fungus Among Us” this evening. For fungi nerds and adventure tourists to Yuggoth:
http://jimmyluxury.com/HumongousFungus.htm
June 17th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Van Minnen just got himself a new devotee. Excellent stuff!
June 17th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Those look like denizens of Wayne Barlowe’s version of Hell.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Definitely one of my favorite artists!