Pentusha

antiopia:

Sunset on Giza

Marasmius haematocephalus

Panus fasciatus

Leratiomyces sp. / Found in Booyong Reserve, Booyong, NSW

Mycena chlorophos

Cyptotrama aspratum or Gold tuft

Schizophyllum commune

Hairy mycena

White Mycena

Mauve splitting waxcap

Marasmius sp. / Marasmius haematocephalus

panus lecomtei

To think any one of these lifeforms exists in our galaxy, let alone on our planet, simply boggles the mind. Photographer Steve Axford lives and works in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales in Australia where he spends his time documenting the living world around him, often traveling to remote locations to seek out rare animals, plants, and even people. But it’s his work tracking down some of the world’s strangest and brilliantly diverse mushrooms and other fungi that has resulted in an audience of online followers who stalk his work on Flickr and SmugMug to see what he’s captured next.

Axford shares via email that most of the mushrooms seen here were photographed around his home and are sub-tropical fungi, but many were also taken in Victoria and Tasmania and are classified as temperate fungi. The temperate fungi are well-known and documented, but the tropical species are much less known and some may have never been photographed before. Mushrooms like the Hairy Mycena and the blue leratiomyces have most likely never been found on the Australian mainland before, and have certainly never been photographed in an artistic way as you’re seeing here.

It was painfully difficult not to include more of Axford’s photography here, so I urge you to explore further. All photos courtesy the photographer. (via Awkward Situationist)

The photographer Xavier Lucchesi doesn’t use a camera to capture his portraits; instead, he penetrates the human body with an advanced x-ray machine, revealing organs, arteries, and bones. The artist adds color to the medical images, highlighting the intricacies of the human body in electric blues and deep, bloody reds. For Luccesi, the act of seeing is active and passionate; a passing glance is insufficient, and to truly view another truthfully is to dissect and peel away exterior layers.

Lucchesi’s portraits are perhaps those of our deepest human core: when our superficial features are stripped back, a more primal self emerges. Lucchesi’s sitters are laid completely bare; though they might pose or strain, their bodies betray secret inner worlds and open them up to a profound vulnerability. A triptych presents a man in three stages of undress: clothed, then nude, then uncovered and unprotected by skin. As he lays with his arms crossed, the x-ray bears down on him, and he becomes increasingly naked, at the mercy of our eager, inquisitive eyes.

As we reach new levels of intimacy with our own bodies, they reveal themselves like brightly colorful and graphic foreign roadmaps; red blood vessels line the figure like highways, leading to pale geometric bone or grassy green lungs in either direction. Like an intricate maze of machinery or a small, delicate cityscape, the miraculous pieces of the human being—the flesh, the lungs, the ribcage— function autonomously, just beneath the surface of our gaze. Take a look. (via Design Boom)

The post Colorful X-Rays Show The Shocking Intricacies Of The Human Body appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Paul Robertson is an Australian animator and digital artist who is known for his pixel art  used in short films and video games. He is mostly known for Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game and the recent release, Mercenary Kings. Apart from his seasoned career as a game designer and movie creator, Robertson has been recently spotted on Tumblr with these GIFS.

His interest in inserting flashing neon colors, geometric shapes, Japanese character animation, and 1990′s computer imagery, deems his work as heavily influenced by the Seapunk/Vaporwave aesthetic.

The post Video Game Designer Paul Robertson Creates Mesmerizingly Entertaining GIFS appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

samwanda:

♥ ♥ ♥

For the Surrealist digital artist Alex Andreyev, reality gives way to the nightmarish and imaginary; his grotesque urban landscapes are dominated by giant spiders, snakes, and eyeballs. Much like the world of The Wachowshi Brothers’ 1999 film The Matrix, Andreyev’s dreamscape is dystopian, seemingly operated by frightful machines that lurk in dark alleyways and within murky, polluted puddles. Like Neo before the rabbit hole, the artist sits at his computer, delving into his nightmares in search of psychological truths that transcend the laws of reality and escape the revelation of daylight.

By maintaining a graphic comic book aesthetic, Andreyev’s images compose a suspenseful, quick-paced narrative; clearly rendered with computer technology, his subjects appear like online avatars, their experiences symbolic of the human condition without directly mirroring it. Like the Surrealists Odilon Redon and Rene Magritte, the digital artist uses the image of the eye to subvert reality; as eyes wearing grotesquely tall top hats chase a helpless man down a dark, dank underground, we viewers are made to perceive our own eyes as villainous, to assume that what they record might not accurately reflect the world around us. Another sketch presents a man slicing his eyes open with a razor, the implication being that to truly see and to understand, we must endure pain and strife.

In this realm where the inner eye takes precedence over superficial vision, a wondrously dark and lonesome creative space begins to emerge. The spider, a symbol which harkens back to the work of Redon in particular, is used here perhaps to represent the isolation of introspection and of the endlessly complex imagination; as a man retreats into his computer, an arachnid nests in the darkness next door. Similarly, man and beast walk alone in the rain. Take a look. (via TrendHunter)

The post Nightmarish Illustrations By Alex Andreyev Are Straight Out Of The Matrix appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Premiere website builder Made With Color and Beautiful/Decay team up each week to bring you some of the best contemporary artists and designers using Made With Color to build their sleek websites. Made With Color helps artists create well-designed and mobile/tablet responsive websites in a few minutes without having to touch a line of code.This week we are excited to share the work of Zidekahedron who created his portfolio site on the Made With Color platform.

The intricate drawings and illustrations of North Carolina based Chris Zidek A.K.A Zidekahedron are ultra-detailed explorations into the unknown. Rather than looking at art history or pop culture for inspiration, the majority of Zidekahedron’s inspiration results from reading non-fiction. Quantum physics, sacred geometry, astrophysics, cosmology, ancient forbidden archaeology, and theories of an advanced human past all come together and collide in his stippled and patterned worlds that live within the pages of his sketchbook.

Expanding about his work he states:

I’ve been creating my own mythology based on these studies, specifically focused on how creation functions on a macro and micro level, how pyramids were constructed, and how life is truly created, usually with sacred geometry acting as the underlying blueprint. My demigod characters act as the answer to most of the oldest questions we have. They range from the size of a subatomic particle, to 150 foot tall pyramid construction workers, to 50,000 mile high planetary architects/demolishers.

The post Made With Color Presents: The Intricate Sketchbook Drawings Of Zidekahedron appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Kim Jong-un, originally posted by @harleyjohnson92 on Instagram

Kim Jong-un, originally posted by @jacob_skyler_allen on Instagram

Vladimir Putin, originally posted by @miss1718 on Instagram

Muammar Gaddafi, originally posted by @fabiankytir on Instagram

The world of fan art knows no bounds. Television shows like Game of Thrones and Sherlock have countless drawings and paintings dedicated to them (and the celebrities that star in them), but what about world dictators? We’re talking Putin, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, and more all with colorful drawings, paintings, and even homages made from donuts.

Some of these images are just ridiculous, like Kim Jong-un riding a dolphin over the beach (in a background that looks as colorful as a Lisa Frank illustration). Others are more serious attempts at portraiture, like the work of Amsterdam-based artist Michele Boccamazzo. He mixes pen, ink, and watercolor in realistic renderings like Bashar al-Assad. “Some of them are just born with a silver spoon in their mouth, some believe in their vision of a better world and some are just status seeker (or social climber) with a smart politic career.” He writes.

With the atrocities suffered at the hands of these men, they hardly seem like candidates for fan art, so perhaps its best to peg some of these images as satire. It makes looking at these works even more bizarre than what’s already pictured.  (via Lost At E Minor and Vocativ)

Xi Jinping, originally posted by @geweigui on Instagram

Osama and Gaddafi soda, originally posted @ericlovesbusiness on Instagram

The post The Bizarre Fan Art of World Dictators appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

Oakland based artist, Brendan Monroe, creates bizarre compositions that feature imaginary ‘moving’ landscapes and faceless, alien looking creatures that resemble the human body. Monroe takes inspiration from the study of science and his interest in existentialism and self-discovery.

His characters, often portrayed in purple and reddish hues, find themselves in these  multilayered, remote landscapes that present themselves as chaotic, or always in motion. The stringy, cool colored worlds precisely double their existence as a wonderful yet confusing space. Monroe is also interested in presenting his funky characters the same way he does his landscapes, as intricate forms that are always in motion.

We can take Monroe’s aesthetic and conceptual approach as one that tries to visually explore what it means to be human in a world that is contingent upon the variety and complexity of our actions, state of mind, or simply the passage of time and the progress it brings with it.

Each is a way of looking at and figuring out life. It’s that human question of what and who we are, how we are here. I also like the emotion and feeling of discovery and also the solving of a puzzle that was not known before. I lean in the direction of sciences I think mostly because I was raised that way, and I like to do my own investigations and draw conclusions.

The post Brendan Monroe’s colorful paintings explore the process of becoming who we are appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.

© Osher Partovi

Биография нидерландского скульптора-кинетика на удивление логична и гармонирует с его творчеством: выучившись на физика, он спустя некоторое время переходит к занятиям живописью, а в 90-е начинает свой долгострой Strandbeests, о котором и пойдет речь. Существующие на стыке инженерии и искусства, смешивающие и меняющие местами эти понятия, состоящие из пластиковых трубок, бутылок, нейлоновых ниток, полиэтилена и скотча, напоминающие инопланетных насекомых и одновременно остовы морских чудищ, воскрешенных больным некромантом, — таковы создания Тео Янсена. Они продолжают дело Татлина и его орнитоптера, стопошагающей машины Чебышева, так и оставшихся на уровне идеи животных на солнечной энергии Мандзони, изобретений да Винчи, древнекитайской игрушки и всего кинетического искусства середины прошлого века. Но, в отличие от последнего, в котором само движение становилось искусством и порой заканчивалось заложенным в программу саморазрушением, животные Янсена борются за существование и облечены в сюрреалистическую форму, жизнеподобны, а не просто представляют собой гудящий, крутящий, вертящий собственными частями бессмысленный механизм.

Так, первое поколение прибрежных чудовищ не могло выжить и пяти минут без его заботливого присмотра, а последующие постепенно обзавелись множеством полезных мутаций. Щупальцем, которое разворачивает их в сторону от моря. Легкими из обычных пустых пластиковых бутылок, воздух в которые закачивается тоже не самыми сложными велосипедными насосами во время ходьбы, и не дающими им не «умереть» в штиль. Своеобразным якорем, который они, как сваю, вбивают в землю при приближении шторма. И даже пусть и простым, но мозгом.

А из рукотворного — на военную технику, особенно на корабли, линкоры и авианосцы, эти гигантские плавучие инсталляции, в которых все, композиция и изгиб каждой линии, подчинено практическим задачам. Рядом с ними любое искусство — декоративно, а любые дизайнерские тренды — смехотворны и мимолетны, как бабочки-однодневки. Функциональностью обусловлено и строение ходячих скульптур Тео Янсена: вся их конструкция служит выживанию, и при этом они производят впечатление избыточности и сновидчества, будто сошли с полотен Дали прямо в песчаные марсианские моря Брэдбери.

Несмотря на всю кажущуюся рациональность творений Янсена, все их существование сводится к одному истертому спортивному девизу: движение — это жизнь, и они, как и всякое искусство, иррациональны. Пусть они чисто теоретически и могут служить человеку, не тратя драгоценные ископаемые ресурсы. Пусть сам Янсен не без тщеславия называет способ их передвижения переизобретением колеса, более совершенного и проходимого. Оставив это на совести художника, лучше подадимся в заманчивые дебри альтернативной истории и представим себе невозможный мир, который мог бы окружать нас сегодня, если бы когда-то так и случилось и вместо простого колеса человечество пошло бы по пути «сороконожек».

Именно в «доколесную» эпоху возвращают нас механизмы Янсена и рисуют нам заманчивую альтернативную реальность, в которой наука и искусство сцепились и катятся клубком не в приступе немотивированной агрессии (пусть и сливаясь для глаза воедино), не желая оттолкнуть и победить друг друга, а в порыве спонтанной страсти, сшибая все на своем пути и переворачивая мебель, толчками проникая одно в другое и превращаясь в четырехрукое и четырехногое единое целое.

Но вернемся в опостылевшее настоящее. В чем действительно сходятся искусство и наука, так это в глубинной основе, в следовании природному порядку. Но если науку скорее интересуют общие принципы, искусство обращено к конкретному. Так, даже копия копии несет на себе отпечаток художника, черты его индивидуальности; повторение же любого научного эксперимента всегда дает идентичный результат — на то он и научный. И, казалось бы, спроектированные на компьютере, а потом собранные вручную скульптуры Янсена отвечают этим же требованиям, но, с виду и в сущности одинаковые, они, как ни странно, различны. Будет преувеличением утверждать, что они обладают личностью, но что индивидуальностью, диктуемой переменчивой погодой, — с осторожностью, но можно говорить. А впадая в романтическое дурновкусие, можно назвать ветер их душами.

Любой предмет на холсте или просто в пространстве музея — это новая информация о нем и о мире. Искусство — вот настоящая дополненная реальность. И когда наша планетка превратится в выжженную пустыню (а это лишь вопрос времени), тогда настанет их час: чудища Янсена придут нам на смену, но не чтобы двигаться к какой-то цели, воздвигать цивилизации и строить будущее, а чтобы бессмысленно блуждать, будто в сомнамбулическом состоянии, вдоль кромки высохшего моря, замирать и оживать со следующим порывом ветра, никуда не стремясь, ни на что не надеясь, а просто существуя. Ибо только искусство — вечно.

invocado:

vortex | via "Chrissy Lynn"

For award-winning photographer Oliver Grunewald, the medium of capturing images offers the ability to document, share, and investigate the natural forces which shape our world. Grunewald, along with his partner, journalist Bernadette Gilbertas, travel the globe, focusing on natural wonder, which for the French photographer offers, “…a pretext for immersing himself in the world as it was in the early days of its creation, and his patient quest for the magical, ephemeral light that best underscores the wild primitive side of nature pays off.”

As part of a massive body of work focused on volcanic activity around the world, Serfdom of Sulphur Night, offers some of the more intense photographs taken at the Kawah Ijen Volcano in Indonesia. Grunewald explains the genesis of the series, “For over 40 years, miners have been extracting sulfur from the crater of Kawah Ijen in Indonesia. To double their meager income, the hardiest of these men work nights, by the electric blue light of the sulfuric acid exhaled by the volcano before climbing up to the top of the volcano with their heavy charge.” (via myampgoesto11)

The post Oliver Grunewald’s Unbelievable Photos Of Volcanoes At Night appeared first on Beautiful/Decay Artist & Design.