Happy was the day I stumbled upon the dark surrealist digital imagery of Erlend Mork. Mork’s work places suggestive and stylized elements next to passages of utmost clarity, all layered and at times effaced with washes. I am not saying anything new to note that these key elements of artistic surrealism echo the internal logic of dreams. Mork’s darker fixations also link his subject matter to what we discuss on the Daily Nightmare.
A skeptic would say it’s all just Photoshop and I admit, some pieces are more effective than others. I’m unlikely to make a digital believer of someone in a few words but if you are so interested, look at these pieces in particular:
For me, the cello – an instrument I’ve played as a amateur for nearly 3 decades – is the wordless voice of my soul. It’s ethereal, melancholy, gutteral, lonesome, joyous, graceful…each in turn. This piece nicely illustrates at least one grouping of my mental ensemble.
Everything sounds more serious in German, n’est-ce pas? I hesitate to comment on this piece, “The Fool’s Dream” because it might reveal too much of my own psychology. But is that young man dutifully collecting the nightmares of others, putting in canning jars their jarring dreams? Is this like my project here? Am I then the fool?
The mass of erudition, piled in an unbelievable space with a surface like an old photograph. Whimsical perhaps but show this image to any scholar or better, a failed doctoral student and observe the weary smile creases at the edges of their eyes.