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Seamless Collages Marry the Sweet and the Surreal

You won't believe these are handmade.
Images courtesy of the artist

Works by Ventral is Golden blur the lines between collage and painting—they’re just that seamless. Upon first glance, it can be hard to tell exactly what kind of art you’re looking at. And yet, despite the flawless merging of the combined images, the fantastical and evocative worlds he depicts are indeed hand-made collages.

"I once read that beauty is the chance encounter between a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table,” he writes. "I like this image, and also how literary juxtapositions can be conjured visually. It's a kind of disassociation, and I feel that collage can be an aperture to look at the world, through the psychological impusles of someone else."

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The first collage Ventral is Golden ever saw in real life was by surrealist Max Ernst, whose influence upon his work is clear. "It was from his fourth book Wednesday," he writes of that collage, "and depicted a human-bird hybrid stabbing the foot of a woman. Again there is a lot of psychological subtext to this image but initially it stirred in me a feeling akin to standing up too quickly. If collages can generate that without really saying anything explicit, then hopefully they can urge someone to pay more attention to small details and stories that are occurring in their environment."

Collages aren’t the only art form that Ventral is Golden works with—he’s also a designer and illustrator, and is launching a new project called Tiny Library. According to him, it’s "a way to display and exchange artist books, prints, trinkets, mix tapes, etc for free or small donations in way of other art works. I'm using cassette and vinyl carry cases as the libraries and placing them around Europe in eco villages, libraries, galleries and places that aren’t necessarily defined by their artistic content.”

He's taking submissions, and you can find out how to send your own art to Ventral is Golden's tiny libraries by clicking here.

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