zackis: Indoor Street Art by Paul Baines

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Indoor Street Art by Paul Baines

Posted: 09 Feb 2011 04:43 AM PST

Kevin Van Aelst is a visual prankster, like a Marcel Duchamp who's eaten too much candy and is on a mad sugar rush. He has fun with his audience, sharing the delight he feels for visual metaphor and trickery. I can't help but laugh at some of these works but for all the right reasons, Van Aelst has an uncanny knack of producing works that inspire many artists to be ask "why didn't I think of that?". His pieces aren't for the most part what I would call 'desirable objects', some include foodstuffs which will have by now decayed, but again I admire the methodology. After all so much of contemporary art including street art and digital media is at the very least ephemeral.

He records his artwork as photography/prints and his collection provides something of a portmanteau of Van Aelst's subconscious desires, fears and all that lies between. I am a regular lucid dreamer, I remember most of my dreams. I have to admit that at least in some small way, I share his view of reality as a theatre, a spectacle of perception, a trick of the mind. Take a look at some homegrown surrealism for yourself…