Dystopian fantasies of apocalyptic architecture, Jim Kazanjian‘s unsettling images may look like hyper-real paintings – such are their intricate surrealism – but, with an archive of over 25,000 high-resolution photographs at his disposal, Kazanjian’s darkly arresting illusions are in fact digital manipulations of found images. Some 50 or so comprising each painstakingly created image.
With American “weird fiction” authors like H. P. Lovecraft as his inspiration, the wickedly talented artist says how he’s “intrigued with the narrative archetypes they utilise to defamiliarise the familiar”, and – in using Photoshop as his means to defamiliarise our familiars – he manages to create his own fascinating visual works of fiction. Utterly unique in style, and utterly haunting in subject.
