Issue 29 On Sale

Issue 29 of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine with Omar Ryyan’s incredible oil painting ‘Chrysanthemums‘ on the cover, is out now!

Due to the global effects of COVID-19, we have taken the decision to release this special 7th anniversary issue of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine in digital format only. At the time this issue was to go to print it was impossible to get our magazine to galleries, newsagents, bookstores, and homes all around the world due to shipping route disruption and closures globally. We have, however, made this issue easily accessible via direct download from our website, so you can access the magazine instantly via any of your devices, no matter where in the world you are quarantined. You can of course also access Issue 29 via the ‘beautiful bizarre’ app on iTunes and Google Play.

Inside Issue 29 Beautiful Bizarre Magazine we take a deep dive into the practice of cover artist Omar Rayyan. In our exclusive interview, Omar tells us how he got started in the arts, what inspires his work, and how he often uses the animal protagonists in his visual storytelling.

My choice of subjects comes from a need for a relatable visual shorthand to create the narrative between artist and viewer, this is probably why the fable style/ convention shows up with its animal protagonists and elements so often. Animal characters are more universal and can speak not only to the physical, but to the abstract emotional being as well. The tendency for fables to work on multiple levels also helps lend depth to the narrative, working as an entertaining children’s story, a deep moral lesson, or a thoughtful insight into the human psyche.

OMAR RYYAN

We also share in an intimate conversation between artist couple, Julio Reyes and Candice Bohannon, as they reveal what its like to live, love and create together.

I still have well meaning family members who see my career choice as a little nuts, so it is nice to live and work with someone who totally understands my strengths, my weaknesses, and my devotion to making art, and loves me for all those things. I don’t have to hide that part of myself that is totally a head in the clouds dreamer, and neither does Julio.

CANDICE BOHANNON

2nd Prize Winner of the INPRNT Traditional Art Award in the 2019 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, Victor Grasso: painter, thalassophile, seeker of knowledge and pursuer of dreams is a man of many faces whom chooses art as his navigator through this world.

Art is everything to me. Art is a friend, art is a chronology of history, art is a documentarian of nature, art is a teacher, and art is life.

VICTOR GRASSO

The 2020 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize is currently open and accepting entries, don’t miss out on your opportunity to get your work in front of the Editor-in-Chief of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, win a US$10,000 cash prize, participate in the prestigious Beautiful Bizarre Magazine curated exhibition at Modern Eden Gallery in San Francisco later this year, win advertising packages, see your work published in Beautiful Bizarre Magazine + receive global exposure, enter today! Entries close midnight 17 July 2020.⁣

For information on all Award Categories, the full list of Prizes, Entry Criteria and Jury Panel please visit www.beautifulbizarreartprize.art.

Feminist porcelain sculptor, Chris Antemann reveals that the male gaze, or rather the subversion of the male gaze is a theme closely explored in her work.

In my world, the female gaze is more interesting than the historical overuse of the male gaze. I love to position my female characters under the male gaze. I attempt to give them either the confidence to own it, to know that they are under it and are strong and unaffected by it OR to give the character the sense of humour to play back or to play to this male gaze. I also like to reverse the situation and put the female in the position to do the gazing.

CHRIS ANTEMANN

2019 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize finalists Annie Montgomerie and Marisa Veerman invite us take a journey back to our childhood through the use of two very different mediums. Sculpture Award finalist Annie Montgomerie‘s uses mixed media to realise her nostalgic aesthetic. The ‘children’ she creates come from an era of playing hopscotch or kiss chase in the streets of their hometown. Climbing trees and dirty knees, running home before dark for their tea. While, Photography Award finalist Marisa Veerman makes a conscious decision to conceal the identity of her muses through deliberate cropping, movement and blur, along with embroidering onto the photographs themselves, which allows the viewer to project their own memories and stories onto her young subjects.

We look into the slightly psychedelic, slightly absurdist Scottish artist Lola Dupre’s hand cut collages, and how they inhabit a newly reconstructed universe borrowing only the most vivid aspects of our present reality. Josie Morway shares how her overwhelming reverence for nature, and her impulse towards conservation and activism has influenced her life like paintings of the wonderful creatures of our world.

Josie Morway’s work calls us to take a second look, a closer look, not only at the canvas, but the world at large and our role as its guardian. To protect, to observe and ultimately, to change it for the better, bringing optimism to the forefront when it’s dark.

JENNIFER RIZZO

We feature Tomohide Ikeya’s intriguing black and white photography in stunning full page reproductions in Issue 29’s Lookbook, and delve into Jordi Diaz Alama‘s paintings where his figurative elements are pulled into focus by the disruption of the surface that surrounds them, each nestled within a landscape awash with red light and textural details or delicately peeled layers of pigment.

Six artists, Dawid Planeta, Kazuhiro Hori, Dewi Plass, Lix North, Daria Theodora, and Ritchelly Oliviera, working across styles and mediums respond to the same quick questions:

• What do you hope to leave behind in the world through your art?
• What do you think is the single most important piece of advice you have been given as an artist?
• Do you feel exhibiting your work is important to your practice?
• How does contemporary always “plugged in” culture influence your work?

While our editor-in-chief, Danijela Krha Purssey acknowledges in her ‘Letter from the Editor’ the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and shares her hopes that the result of this terrible time will be a transformative for us as a species. That we will finally realise our dependence on nature, and that part of our evolution will be to honour our home and the creatures that share this world with us.

The situation is truly surreal – I often feel that perhaps I will wake from a strange and frightening dream. But sadly this is real, in just 2 short months the world has changed completely. We can no longer visit or hug our loved ones, millions are infected, hundreds of thousands dead, and even more live in fear and isolation as the COVID-19 virus spreads across the world. We are all heartbroken!

Danijela krha purssey

Marina Eliasi, the director of amazing New York City gallery, Stone Sparrow NYC, shares what artwork she would like to add to her personal collection in this issues Curator’s Wishlist.

We discover some of our favourite wearable art brands, and share a collection of the amazing hashtagged #beautifulbizarre artwork from our social media community of over 1 Million followers!

Find this and so much more inside Issue 29 Beautiful Bizarre Magazine // June 2020, which showcases some of the best and most inspiring emerging and mid-career artists of our time.

Visit our online store and enjoy Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Issue 29.