The anti-war stance and bleak outlook on the human condition isn’t exactly subtle in Al Farrow‘s sculptures, but if you’re going to be blunt about a statement, you might as well say it with flare and conviction, which is exactly what he does with his awesome body of work, particularly his Reliquaries series in which he builds churches, mosques, temples, and religious relics out of bullets and guns.

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These minimalist sculptures, arrangements, and paintings roughly constructed from simple materials by Noam Rappaport are pretty intriguing.

Holy cow, look at these awesome sculptures by Los Angeles-based artist Evan Holloway! So rad.

Loving the work of San Francisco-based artist Lauren DiCioccio who makes sewn and woven sculptures of things such as dollar bills, plastic bags, skulls, water bottles, and paper letters.

Originally from Basque Country in Spain, Jose-Maria Cundin moved to New Orleans in 1964 where he has spent the past four decades painting his strange and colorful abstract paintings and whimsical sculptures.

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New Orleans-based glass artist Carlos Zervigon creates sculptures that comment on the interplay between the industrial process and the natural environment.

Joanne Grune-Yanoff makes elegant, airy pieces using forms taken from the human body, casting them organic materials such as honeycomb, wax, and moss, and arranging them into poetic sculptural works.

Swedish artist Michael Johansson assembles piles of common, everyday objects into monolithic sculptures and installations, fitting all the pieces together perfectly like a game of Tetris. The resulting forms imply new functions while highlighting the cookie-cutter nature of our post-industrial world.

Dutch designer Lydia Dekker sells weird, handmade dolls, figurines, sculptures, and hats under the name Horriblesweet, which pretty much encapsulates what she’s going for.

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The child-like figures in Tommi Toija’s sculptures and installations have a certain Mr. Bill-like quality about them with their blank eyes and perplexed expressions.

Philadelphia-based artist AJ Fosik’s wooden sculptures look like Indonesian gods guarding an intergalactic temple built by time-traveling monks.

As children we all owned a Rubik’s Cube. Well, now there’s a modern version of the beloved puzzle: Cubicus. Instead of matching colours, you now have to put the cube together or create a number of intricate sculptures. All of which is a wonderful twist on an old favorite.

Al Farrow just did a show with me at the Martin Irvine Gallery in Washington DC. He builds religious reliquaries and mosques out of gun parts: AK47s and Uzis, in particular. They’re really beautiful. It sounds gimmicky but it’s actually extraordinary. The newer stuff that he’s doing is extremely time-consuming. His work is very meticulous, and the beauty of the craft is a striking contrast to how instantly and senselessly life can be taken.

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This website hosts a nice collection of quirky, sometimes mind-boggling, sculptures from around the world. There’s a certain Dali-esque feel to a lot of them – those surreal, dreamy hallucinations turned into a warped reality. I’ve always been a sucker for art that really catches you out for a few seconds, and these certainly do that.

Finnish artist Marja Hakala makes site-specific environmental art out in nature — parks, reserves, mountainsides — as well as in gallery spaces and interiors using materials she finds in the environments she chooses. Her repetitive forms impose human order as a sort of meditation on human absence. Just as Thomas Cole and J. M. W. Turner emphasized the puniness of humanity before God and the natural world, Hakala draws out the futility of human endeavors in a 21st century context.

The projects that self-taught German designer Heiko Windisch works on are varied, but his graphic illustration style remains unified, refreshing in the often jack-of-all-trades illustration business. He creates 2D and 3D art and sculptures called Dioramas for exhibitions, magazines, books, CD sleeves, T-shirts and print.

Drawing from his background in physics and psychology, Peter Jansen’s latest series captures sequences of human movement in space and time. These pieces are best described as ‘energetic spaces’, adding a dimension to works like Duchamp’s Nude Descending Staircase, which Jansen directly references in his sculpture by the same name. He’s yet to tackle Drunk Descending Staircase. I live in hope.

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The Kinz, Tillou and Feigen Gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition of recent drawings by Australian-born, Brooklyn-based illustrator Edwina White [above] and altered book sculptures by Brian Dettmer [below], in concurrent solo exhibitions. ‘Both artists breathe new life into the pages of found and vintage materials with a graphic sensibility that transforms them into unique explorations’. The exhibition opens on May 3 and runs until June 14.

If I had a third thumb, I’d give Kumi Yamashita three thumbs up. The Japanese artist creates stunning visual effects with lighting and simple forms, like letters of the alphabet, children’s blocks, and shoeprints. Yamashita finds the rare balance between beauty and brains.