Lost AT E Minor

Beata Szczecinska

Splitting her time between the UK and her native Poland, Beata Szczecinska works under the name of Cityabyss and creates illustrations that are heavily influenced by the world of fashion, graphic arts, photography, design and modern cityscapes. Her works has been featured in publications such as Varoom Magazine, Computer Arts Magazine, Illusive 2 Book, Katalogue, Web Design Index, Castle Magazine, and Carpal Tunell Magazine, among others. Recently, she started a partnership with Warsaw-based art buying and production house, Alabama. [see also the work of French illustrator Sophie Toulouse]

Zdzislaw Beksinski

H.R. Geiger has nothing on Polish painter Zdzislaw Bekinski. The late artist’s obsessively rendered and nightmarish visions draw as much from Bosch and the Renaissance as they do from the surrealists while still capturing modern notions of death and terror. Read more

Tymek Jezierski’s comics and illustration

With its long history in poster design and with a younger generation of artists who grew up with both Eastern and Western European influences, the ‘new Poland’ is booming. I had a blast when I visited Warsaw about a year ago and met all the movers and shakers in design. My friend just sent me a link to Tymek Jezierski’s amazing comic works. They’re so fresh! The only problem I have with them is that I don’t read Polish.

Jaime Pitarch

Jaime Pitarch’s sculptures and installations made from found objects and discarded junk — furniture, clothes pins, kitchen knives, electric guitars, cocktail umbrellas — as well as video elements, are sort of 21st-century Dada pieces that defy gravity and rattle our conception of the physical universe. Driven by an incessant need to question reality after a traumatic attempt to save a drowning woman in 1996, Pitarch minimalist aesthetic belies the nearly tantric approach he has to his work. Read more

Kiss Shreds

Culture-jammer StSanders strikes again with his re-interpretation of Kiss. This is perhaps his best ’shred’ video yet, and honestly, I’d probably like Gene Simmons and crew more if they actually sounded like this.

Gravediggaz

Back in the ’90s, just as the gangsta rap phenomenon was winding down and hip-hop was fragmenting into its own subgenres, Prince Paul and RZA kicked off the short-lived horrorcore fad with their group Gravediggaz. At the time, the melding of dark, gothic themes with hardboiled rap seemed gimmicky and awkward, a strange extension of the early and awful attempts to bridge hip-hop and metal, but on closer listen, the now defunct supergroup was way more innovative than they were given credit for. Using horror imagery, crazed and off-kilter rapping styles, and genuinely creepy beats to describe life on the streets, Gravediggaz created innovative, complex, expressive music that was macabre yet socially conscious.