art – Page 2 – Mitchell Pluto

Dialogue with the Invisible Muriel Gabilan

I had the desire to paint and draw very early on but I didn’t practice much because I didn’t have any confidence in myself.
I was not attracted by academic drawing, I was self-taught and I did not know how to draw.
It took me a long time to find my way, I had to hold on, experiment, let go and everything went better when I understood that I should no longer try to have control but welcome the unexpected and appropriate it.
Then began a dialogue with the invisible

Then I use pencils, gouache or pastels to give shape to these presences that appear in the material.
For the black and white drawings, they are made with charcoal and black chalk in automatic drawing.

I work with fluid materials to begin with, such as water, ink and watercolor, because these mediums are particularly conducive, as far as I am concerned, to revealing the beyond appearances, they help me to cross borders and to access parallel worlds.

Concerning the cyanotype technique, it is an old photographic printing or reproduction technique, I use it to make multiple prints in limited series of some of my drawings: it consists in putting on a sheet of paper a chemical product which is sensitive to light, one puts on the sheet a negative of the photo which one wishes to reproduce (for me a negative of my drawings which I prepare myself), it is necessary to put it then in the sun a few minutes then to pass the sheet under water and there always appears in blue a reproduction of the drawing drawn from the negative. I particularly appreciate the blue obtained with this technique which is close to the dreamlike world.

My inspiration can come from everyday things, I like to look at where appearances fall and see the magic in a realistic environment.
I am for example very inspired by tomato slices, when I cut up tomatoes while preparing food I marvel at what I see inside each slice, I find the tomato particularly inhabited by a wonderful world, hence the origin of my Tomato Heart drawings.

I also made a series of drawings from photos of the surface of the river, these photos were for me like a freeze-frame of a story that the river tells or perhaps this river water is a bearer of memory, that of the countries and times it has crossed? So I drew from these photos to give shape to what I saw appearing.

Nature, women, animals or hybrid creatures, spirituality are the main sources of inspiration for my paintings, all set in a dreamlike universe.
As in tales and fables, my drawings try to give us back the sense of wonder and to open doors to a magical world where everything is possible

written by Muriel Gabilan

Egyptian Art Shahd El khouli الفن المصرى شهد الخولى

My name is Shahd El-Khouly and I am a Egyptian visual artist. I study psychology and art. Psychology is my passion. I spend most of my time with art, artists and studying psychology because it is a science that deserves every minute we spend reading and searching for it.

I also participated in many exhibitions. Which is being held in Egypt and I am currently participating in the International Surrealist Exhibition, the first part of which was held here in Egypt, and the next part will be held in France next year

وأنا فنانة تشكيلية مصرية مهتمة بالفن منذ الصغر. انا عمري 20 سنة. الآن أنا أدرس علم النفس والفن وعلموأنا النفس هو شغفي. أقضي معظم وقتي مع الفن والفنانين وعلم النفس لأنه علم يستحق كل دقيقة نقضيها في القراءة والبحث عنه. كما شاركت في العديد من المعارض. التي أقيمت في مصر وأشارك حاليًا في المعرض الدولي للسريالية، والذي أقيم الجزء الأول منه هنا في مصر ، والجزء التالي سيقام في فرنسا العام المقبل

written by Shahd El-Khouly

Shahd El khouli in The Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism /Maze of games and dreams /Alexandria

Shahd El khouli 2002 Cairo, Egypt

Omnivoyant Eye Theo Ellsworth

How do you put yourself into a trance or into a place that’s receptive to the subconsciousness?

I find the act of drawing in itself to be trance inducing. I first became obsessed with automatic drawing in high school because it felt like it would light up my brain and smooth out all of my anxious energy. It would literally feel like I was drawing my way out of a stupor and waking up to the strangeness of my own mind.

Drawing helps me reach that valuable state where I can feel awake and alert, yet simultaneously relaxed. I find that my breathing slows down when I’m drawing and time feels more fluid. It helps to have a quiet studio where I can go and disappear for hours at a time. I think of the imagination as a living thing that I have an ever evolving relationship with. If I meet it halfway and submerse myself in the creative process, I get to interact with and explore the subconscious and come back with artistic documentation.

What interests inform and inspire you?

So many things. I love outsider, folk, visionary, and ancient art. Whenever art is made from an inner need or impulse, I find it extremely valuable. I love children’s art. I have 2 kids and love watching the way their minds work. I love creative collaboration as a way to relate to another person’s mind and bring out something totally unexpected and new.

I’m interested in neuroscience and new scientific thought around the so called Hard Problem of Consciousness and Theories of Everything. I love to read. Especially speculative fiction, strange fiction, and comics. I’m hugely inspired by nature and spend a lot of time in the woods. Learning some carpentry skills is another thing that’s been opening me up to new art possibilities. Just sitting and trying to clearly see images or hear music in my head is an ongoing practice.

What role do you think the artist has in the 21st century?

The best thing an artist can do is follow their own unique impulse. Artists need to push back against the bizarre human drive to homogenize everything. They need to reach beyond the inadequate systems we live inside.

I think diversity of culture and human expression is the most valuable thing we can cultivate as a species. I also think it’s important for artists to have an anti-cruelty stance. There’s so much cruelty in our history and baked into our systems. I think the artist’s role is to look unflinchingly at this and attempt to untie those knots. Art can be part of the antidote to the bad ideas that seem to cling to our brains and stunt our evolution.

Have you experienced Lucid Dreaming or any kind of encounter with cosmic consciousness?

Yes, I’ve had quite a few experiences that have felt outside of normal cognitive experience. Each of these experiences feel incredibly valuable to me and I’m thankful for them. Mostly I’ve regretted it whenever I’ve tried to describe them to people. They feel like something to internalize and hold close. It’s easy to discount things that don’t fit with the narrative of the everyday, so I try to think about those experiences a lot and not let them fade into doubt.

When did you create or discover your own archetypical patterns?

I started with automatic drawing, just letting my hand draw without knowing where it would go. Through that, a lot of patterns and imagery naturally began to emerge and I would just kind of follow that. Through years of working in this way and contemplating the recurring symbols, a lot of ideas and feelings started taking shape. Making comics became a way to explore that more actively by trying to unlock the stories and concepts that my drawings were revealing to me.

Has your work ever lead you to an experience of intuition or synchronicity?

Following an artistic impulse is in itself an intuitive and synchronistic experience. It adds an extra dimension to my daily life and when I have positive momentum in my work, I feel like that crosses over into my daily life and helps me see connections and meaning. Putting my work out into the world has also allowed me to meet a lot of people I wouldn’t have met otherwise, so in that way, I feel like dedicating myself to making art has allowed me to have important friendships that have inspired and helped me grow.

What do you like to cook?

I love cooking. I cook almost every night. I like to make enchiladas with sauce made from scratch. I like making sushi, jambalaya, grilled pizza, salmon. It’s just fun to work a kitchen and try to be efficient with all the different elements in play and it’s satisfying to serve up something good to my family. Cleaning up the kitchen afterwards is not as fun.

Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Montana. His previously published comics include Capacity, The Understanding Monster, Sleeper Car, and An Exorcism. The New York Times once called his work, Imagination at firehose intensity. He has been the recipient of the Lynd Ward Honor Book Prize and an Artist Innovation Award. He loves creative collaboration, cooking, and making family folk art with his kids. He is constantly making invisible performance art in his head that no one will ever see.

more info and books by Theo Ellsworth

_{Interview by Mitchell Pluto from SULΦUR surrealist jungle archive 15 OCT 2021}

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism in the Institut Français d’Egypte à Alexandrie

The certainty about our origin is in the bones. 21st-century Surrealism seeks universality while understanding the mind. We aspire to explore inner space together. From caves, dream temples, and pyramids of antiquity to the temporal lobes in our brain, our movement is a collage that devotes serious effort to be sympathetically aware of connections between ourselves and the collective unconscious.

_{Mitchell Pluto}

𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟮𝟲 𝘁𝗼 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝟮𝟬, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟮
Over the past forty years, in the Middle East and various places in the world, Surrealism was considered as a past artistic movement and confined to limited artistic icons. And yet, in the meantime, Surrealism was constantly evolving and developing its tools and philosophy to free human imagination, where the mental play of imagination through art and literature remains the most fundamental activity.

**photo of** *Ghadah Kamal Ahmed* by Mohamed al Kashef

In the continuation of the contemporary surrealist wave in Egypt and the Middle East, and after the International Exhibition of Surrealism held in Cairo from 15 to 19 February 2022 as the start of a round trip / Cairo – Saint Cirq Lapopie. Based on the wonderful energy achieved with its success, the idea of continuing the adventure in Alexandria was born from the collective work of surrealists from Egypt, France and all over the world.

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism – Maze of Dreams and Games which includes displaying a wide range of artworks, music, surrealist films, visual arts, and practicing surrealist collective games during the exhibition with workshops on collective surrealist creative techniques and games created from 1924 until today. In conjunction with the Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Exhibition in Alexandria, on June 15, the same events of the exhibition and workshops will be organized, as well as other events that will be hosted by art space and square simple garden In Budapest, the opening will coincide with the opening of the exhibition in Alexandria on June 8.

Mohsen L Belasy

“Drink wine and look at the moon
and think of all the civilizations
the moon has seen passing by.”
― Omar Khayyám

The essential for a Zen painter means a manner of being in the deepest sense and not, as for us, a manner of doing. For them it means fusion in the life of the cosmos…

Andre Masson

The 3 Echoes: Ghadah Kamal Ahed, Fairouz Eltaweela and Mohsen L Belasy

“I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”
― André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism

“I was interested in other spaces to do with forms drawn from non-Euclidean geometry and the idea of entering these spaces. These structures do not rely on the sense of space, as we know it. It is a space without limits and which transforms itself in time – a mutant space.”

– Roberto Matta, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist, April 2001

“the principle which controls magic, and the technique of the animistic method of thought, is “Omnipotence of Thought.”
― Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

― Albert Einstein

A brief sample of visual artist participants of Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Alexandria /Exhibition

Daniel O’Reilly Soundtrack Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism /Alexandria 2022

https://www.mixcloud.com/danieloreilly758/sonic-labyrinth-original-composition-created-for-the-international-exhibition-of-surrealism-22/?fbclid=IwAR06np4fJScEEiAjA5iy9kA8x8LHrFjpOJlNHRppY-NRJE-4KwFAelNfZk8

‘Masks of the City’ – La Sirena‘s contribution to the 15 minute smartphone film challenge for Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Exhibition. Shown in Budapest and Alexandria. Darren Thomas, Doug Campbell Tara King, Elliott H. King, Janice Hathaway, Irene Plazewska, Patrick Hourihan, LaDonna Smith, Christine Haller, Clém Gslr, Daina Almario-Kopp

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism
Freudian Slip: Interpretation of Dreams and a Labyrinth of Surrealist Expression
videographer by Maria Gyarmati
music by / LaDonna Smith and Daniel O’Reilly
editing by / Mohsen L Belasy
Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism—Freudian Slip: Interpretation of Dreams & Labyrinth of Surrealism
Budapest Surrealist Society
Echos du surréalisme contemporains افتتاح معرض جماعى عن الاعمال السريالية وعروض افلام

Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism Posters by Ghadah Kamal Ahmed

Patrick Hourihan Automations

An automatic drawing is the starting point for an image. A powerful sense of promised adventure arises and the process of freely transferring the drawing onto the canvas will trigger an opening of doorways to another world. Nothing can be forced and it’s similar to a two-way conversation with the developing image before me.

I have to listen and the process is always full of surprises. Constantly having a feeling of ‘otherness’, alongside a foreign/unknown part of me, comes forth as a flow of departing points.

Left ***Talking Heads***. Right ***Psychic Machine***

*Fantastic Duet* Acrylic on Canvas 90cm x 60cm

Surrealism was just part of a larger personal picture for me, with no aspirations of calling myself a surrealist …or anything else. But it strangely seemed to follow me.

Left *Dark Carnival.* Right *Optical Lab*

***Night Music*** **Acrylic on Canvas 65cm x 81cm**

Outsider art has a compulsive need to externalize an inner world with no ego and a wonderful innocence.

Drawings From Patrick Hourihan Dibujo Automático

**London -based Surrealist, Patrick Hourihan**. Paintings, Automatic Drawings, and Boxed Assemblages.
***photo David Caldwell***

Full interview with Antonio Rámirez / Translation by Gala Milla

Óxido Lento – Crítica y reflexión sobre un mundo erosionado

Zodiac by Oscar Barra

Oscar Barra was Born in Santiago in 1964, he studied Art at the University of Concepción, co-founder of Grisalla, an outstanding group of artists from the 90s and early 2000s. Mainly dedicated to painting, he has extended his creation to engraving, sculpture and the drawing. He currently resides between Concón and also maintains a workshop in Santiago.

Painting Gallery Oscar Barra

Oscar Barra was Born in Santiago in 1964, he studied Art at the University of Concepción, co-founder of Grisalla, an outstanding group of artists from the 90s and early 2000s. Mainly dedicated to painting, he has extended his creation to engraving, sculpture and the drawing. He currently resides between Concón and also maintains a workshop in Santiago.

The Visual Poetry of a Shamanic Cartoonist Alejandra López Riffo

Written by Miguel Ángel Huerta Zuñiga

Alejandra López Riffo is an artist whose work fuses the visual arts and poetry in a perfect way. Alejandra builds an imaginary bridge that results in the beautiful hybrid of visual poetry.

An echo very few artists achieve. Possessing a technique exquisite and clean. We are introduced into imaginary worlds where birds, figures, humans, trees make a moving pact.

Sensuality is not alien to the staging of this tremendous creator who with true mastery forges dream scenarios rarely seen in Chilean art.

Alejandra López Riffo has all the ingredients to achieve a high-flying work. I have no doubt that her extraordinary sensitivity directed fantastic beings from an outstanding and unique cosmogony

Alejandra López Riffo is a Visual Artist based in Santiago de Chile.
She started her artistic career at the Escuela Experimental Artística. She studied Graphic Design at the Metropolitan Technological University. In 1998 she graduated in Visual Arts, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
She has developed her artistic work by participating in various collective exhibitions and individual projects. In 2019 she received the second place in the XII Visual Arts Contest of the

Fobeju Foundation “Body and Place” Chile. Her participation this 2021 stands out with the First Place and winner of the “II Meeting of Women in the Visual Arts” and her Individual Exhibition “Listen quietly to what my drawings say” spread in Chile, Colombia and Mexico through the Group INTERNATIONAL MUA.
She participated in the “CAMELOT” Exhibition through ESGALLERY Colombia, Call for Contemporary Latin American Art spread in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina.
She currently participates in the International Exhibition Of Surrealism.
Cairo – Saint Cirq Lapopie.

Transformation of Matters Andrew Mendez

Psychic automatism by Andrew Mendez 2022

If the notion of compassion is missing, this leads to darkness.. forgiveness is the letting go. It opens the space for the surreal.

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is else where. What’s the need of a new manifesto if we have yet to meet the goals of the old one..

I live in balance with the Gods and they live in balance with me. The stone is compassion, not a matter what school. To know that it is. As it is, is to accept the idea. Do something about it , cause and effect… this is good alchemy.

Andrew Mendez 2022

Les Mystères François Cauvin

I find inspiration and magic in François Cauvin’s works. Many of his paintings can make the viewer more open to the mysteries of nature. This begins as a desire to remember our self while dreaming.

As a native of Haiti you grew up in a family of artists, musicians and poets. Who were they and how did they inform you?

Yes. I had many artists and musicians in my family. My uncles and aunts. also my mom was a fashion and dresses maker. My sister Marie-Hélène Cauvin is a visual artist too… but first they were musicians. Major influences included composer and virtuoso pianist Ludovic Lamothe and Occide Jeanty who was a composer, trumpeter and pianist.

Woman and nature are reoccurring themes in your work. what is it about those mysteries that inspire you?

Since I was raised by women, mother and sisters, I think it plays a role in my choice of painting them later I was initiate in the tradition of the Goddess of love.

How do you approach Haitian religious symbolism? is it based on traditional Vodou or your own formula to remember the universal self? or a little of both?

I think my work is based on the Haitian Vodou tradition. Since most of my work are from dreams of the spirits, messages from them. I do have dreams of my previous lives .

How would describe the relationship you have with the universal mind, dreams and subconscious process? how do you find images to paint?

The images are from dreams most of the time. The ideas sometimes comes from my mind which hold and received them. They are from a place that I don’t know. You can receive images and ideas without knowing its happening.

in your artistic interpretation what are the crossroads, twins and snake represent? is there one archetype you consider a guide?

What I can answer for sure is that the snake is my true initiator before I was an initiate in the tradition. I dreamt once about the crossroad Master. He was skinless dancing in the air.

*The Queen Mother, Goddess of the broken hearts/protector of the souls*
This painting shows clearly, the appropriation of the old myth of Isis by the Haitian Vodou from the Catholic Church dogma.

what writers have influenced you? what other influences changed your perception of the world?

I really love the South American writers and the magic realism school. Colombian novelist, Gabriel García Márquez. Guatemalan poet, Miguel Ángel Asturias. Cuban novelist, Alejo Carpentier. Haitian writers too that include Jacques Stephen Alexis, Jacques Roumain, Laennec Hurbon, Jean Price Mars and Villard Denis. I loved reading French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar… but what really influenced me was my past in the Haitian country side and Port-au-Prince. Also what my father taught me in that time about nature and plants.