Rock Candy & Curiosities

by Ambra 16 November 2010

The bookshop of the bastard store is getting bigger. Among the new arrivals it’s worth recommending two titles.

Rock Candy is a collection of illustrations from one of the most interesting Pop Surrealism interpreters we have in Europe.

The superblonde Femke Hiemstra is indeed from Amsterdam, where she still lives and works. Her visionary works (twisted and a bit esoteric) picture surreal settings, mainly with animals, fruit, objects, flowers and antropomorphic distorted bugs handling opium pipes, kitchenware and other oddities.

The black and white collection of characters in Travis Louies‘s Curiosities is grotesque, fascinating and slightly surreal.

These works look like old pictures stolen from a 1900’s photo album or portraits of actors starring in old noir silent movies…nothing strange about that except for demon horns, ogre-like men, dozens-eyed men, while ladies expose sharp canines, tapered ears and charming spectral looks.