Taking Surrealism back to its roots, Denver-based painter Christian Rex van Minnen, riffing on Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s sixteenth-century portrait heads composed of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books. Van Minnen’s takes a less direct approach, playing with finely-rendered textures and abstracted but visceral components that suggest organs, skin, meat, crustaceans, and plant life, but also including more literal elements like flowers, clothing, leaves, and silhouettes. The artist’s use of dramatic, one-point lighting adds a depth and creepiness to his work, drawing out the grotesque forms and surfaces.

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