Sir Francis Bacon once said: ‘There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion’, and the work of Spanish street artist Aryz seems to embody this quote perfectly. His paintings and murals are stunningly ethereal, accessible, and beautiful, but also tinged heavily with a dark and unsettling surrealism.

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New Zealand designer Maree Horner likes to drop old donkeys into children’s swimming pools to trigger her subconscious process. In Furniture of the World, a human belly appears from inside a bucket; others rest in a suitcase, a box or bin. Her images are like modern Rubik cubes of male and female genitalia.

This fine example of ‘oddness in action’ is this photo of a guy named Hugo Ball elaborately reciting a poem called Karawane. Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, Tristan Tzara und Marcel Janco were the founders of the famous Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich (Switzerland) which is known to be “the cradle of dadaism”. Dadaism was a cultural movement that involved visual arts, literature, poetry, theatre and graphic design.

But the basis of Dada is nonsense! As a reaction to the political and social commotions after World War I, Dadaism was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down. It highly influenced Surrealism and paved the way for many later modern art styles.

Granada-born artist Paco Pomet bases his paintings on old archival photographs, interjecting silly, surreal, and absurd elements — skewed and stretched features, scale shifts, extra or missing limbs, or goofy pop imagery — commenting on the distorting nature of memory.

Drawing from art nouveau, classical mythology, and surrealism, Argentinian illustrator Santiago Caruso creates some of the most arresting images I’ve seen in a while. His illustrated version of H. P. Lovecraft’s short story The Dunwich Horror perfectly visualizes the late horror writer’s words.

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With the new Tim Burton movie right around the corner, the quirky, spooky paintings of San Francisco artist Michael Page are just the right fix to hold me over. With a muted woodsy world inhabited by puppet-like figures, and the endearing monsters that terrorize them, ‘ll most likely be dropping by for a Page fix even long after I get my fill of Coraline next week.

Glenn Brown utilizes the tactile and visceral nature of paint to create neo-classical and surreal works that reference the great renaissance masters as well as more recent artists such as Dali and Duchamp.

I really love the mystery in Brandon Boyd’s new artwork. Ectoplasm, the theme of his latest solo exhibit, is known in popular culture as a substance produced by physical mediums when in a trance state. But it’s not every day that spiritual Ghostbuster slime gets splashed on canvas. ‘It seems my fascination with the all things gooey and surreal has birthed into a dozen or so new paintings revolving around that touchy and occult fringed topic’, he says. Through alternating brush strokes, intermediate colours, exquisite lines and multiple mediums, Boyd fantastically communicates imaginative and energetic paintings that allow your spirit to escape into a wonderland of bliss. If you’re feeling keen, a portion of his art can be viewed on his website.

The work of Jennybird Alcantara is a trip, to say the least. This stuff is about as surreal is surreal gets. Think dolls, and animals, and plants, and insects, then mix it all up every which way and you’ve got the beautifully twisted paintings of Jennybird Alcantara.

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I’m really enjoying the beautiful work of artist Mike Bertino. Each piece is like ten stories crammed full of pop references and then wedged cheek-to-cheek into one glorious, colorful piece of surreal, eye popping goodness.

Wow! Rita Dianni-Kaleel’s artwork is like the dream I almost had last night, but never quite got there. It’s full of allegorical references and vibrant intonations. She studied at The Carol Cameron Studio and continued with the Drisi Studio Of Fine Art, Gerald Merfeld, Brookwood Studio and Koh-Varilla Guild. ‘Among her corporate and public exhibitions are Unilever, O’Hare Airport International, Time Life Building of Chicago, and Midway Airport’.

Returning to Hong Kong after graduating from The Royal College of Art inspired artist Mimi Leung to create the series The Hope and Struggle. Motifs such as disease, mutation and vomit help convey the tensions of life in Hong Kong and the need for self-expression. Her graphic style naturally lends itself to collaborations with musicians and has landed her work with Vice magazine. If that wasn’t enough to keep her busy, she co-founded an artists collective called ‘what they could do, they did‘. With an upcoming show in Edinburgh Festival, it’s well worth looking into.

The intricate, surrealist paintings of Australian artist Cameron Hayes recall the work of Hieronymus Bosch in scale and detail, but the actual style of his images draws a lot from children’s books and folk art. The cheerful and dreamlike quality of his pieces contrasts with the seriousness of the topics he engages — his most recent show at the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York tackles the impact of colonialism on his native country.

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God I love the work of artist Kelly Lynn Jones.  Jones creates a world of fantasy spaces, the kind of places you just want to crawl in and out of, relax in, explore.  These sparse, unpopulated settings call to mind a sort of Hopper-esque alternate universe. If I could spend even spend just a moment inside one of her paintings!  Her rough rendering on sparse white backgrounds do these settings full justice, properly lending themselves to the quiete, dreamlike feeling these habitats cultivate.  Having followed her work for some time now, I have watched Jones worlds become more involved, growing from individual spaces to entire communities.  I for one simply can’t wait to see what comes next.

Norwegian illustrator and designer Christina Magnussen studied at the Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo and Central Saint Martins in London. Of her work she says, ‘I’m currently very inspired by abstact forms and surrealism combined with hand drawings’.

Sander Rietdijk created these surreal and wonderfully creative new artworks — titled Odyssey — for a recent Slashthree exhibition.

On Friday, February 8th, Ad Hoc Art Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, will play host to a large group of both established and emerging artists from the realms of street art, pop surrealism, lowbrow, illustration, print making, and tattoo. Through this group exhibition, promising young artists will have the chance to exhibit side by side with some of the more established artists in these fields. This mixture will allow the viewer to experience a variety of styles and techniques rising out of this powerful New Contemporary movement in art. At the center of this exhibition lies the original artwork of Juxtapoz founder (and quite arguably the ‘father’ of this New Contemporary art movement) Robert Williams. Participating artists include: Aiko, Lisa Alisa, Jeremyville, and Genevive Zacconi.

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I wish I could remember my dreams more often. I wish the damn things wouldn’t go in one ear and straight out the other. Who plants them and why? And how come the few I recall are like tiny portions of an indie blockbuster, minus the credible acting and the killer plot twists. Sigh. Life is like a dream sometimes. And then you wake up. [illustration by Sam Weber]