Beauty and the beasts

Long horizontal narratives, exploring ideas of man verses nature...these collaged images by Josh Dorman are subtle and layered...many of his works incorporate maps and contemporary collage materials...but the context is often ancient, aged and worn...setting up a juxtaposition between those elements we recognize and a time that feels foreign.

This uneasiness plays on the viewers emotions and sets up the imagery nicely....this piece explores the mass exodus of birds and animals from an every encroaching environment dominated by machines and man...scale is important in this work, extending the horizontal picture plane, pushing space back through tiny elements, gradually getting larger as they move forward into the space.

Pig Tattoo Taxidermy

Okay, these are some tough works to wrap your mind around...which is the main reason I decided to write about the work of Wim Delvoye, a Belgium artist...These were tattooed, live pigs that became art...the emotional relationship between a live animal and the owner...a decision to kill this animal for its skin or stuff the animal for its value...

Choosing to make art on an animal that is used as food, complicates for some, the idea of cruelty and making something beautiful but accomplishing this in a painful/cruel way...a unique concept and a challenging work, even for the most open of art connoisseurs...pushing the lines of acceptable forms of creation