bastard blog

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.

Braun Publishing just published Chris van Uffelen’s Re-Use Architecture, a 408 pages bulky book with amazing images and descriptions of recent and notable re-use architecture projects.

To the bastard store project by studiometrico, on the refurbishing of the old Cinema Istria, the book dedicates a four page feature with Giuliano Berarducci’s photographs.

Available from today at bastard store – of course – for € 78,00.

A bunch of new and old interesting books has just arrived at the bastard store; among them Everything That Creeps.

Elizabeth McGrath, LA angel-faced artist, collects in this book some of her most creeping, bloody and repulsive creatures.

An irriverent sculptress who has created a fantafreaky world, populated by odd and freaky characters meant to be hung on your wall or to be displayed on your nightstand (she has her beloved dead and stuffed chihuahua on hers).

On the one shelf on which you put your childood relics, next to Goldrake, you could also put a McGrath’s sexy doll with bloody legs, or some drunk miniature insects or, if you really love animals, a chopped hare head.

The deep-dark iconography of Elizabeth shocks, amazes and amuses, her sculptures are full of truculent details and they evoke disturbing atmospheres “a la David Lynch” but thanks to the wise mixture of kitsch, irony and horror they come out excessive yet refined.

Here’s a video recently featured on Boing Boing tv in which David Pescovitz meets Liz McGrath.

Hmm… I would describe me as an artist who tries to inject human pathos into robots. Trying to breathe life into robots. That’s what I do. At least I try to. […]”

That’s what Eric Joyner thinks about himself. He is a californian artist, author and main character of “ROBOTS & DONUTS“, the last arrival at bastard’s Bookstore.

All the drawings inside this book portray improbable robotic scenarios: robots shooting laser beams against mega killer donuts, pirate robots, robots fighting on a ring, space candy but also romantic robots in bucolic contexts. An amazing visionary collection of pure surreal Pop Art…

The curious selection of more than 50 titles that you can find at the Bastard’s Bookstore, has nothing to do with  classic fiction, we decided to give room to  photography, design, graphics and illustration, music, street-art and obviously skateboarding.

P.S. I’m Ambra and I’m the newbie at bastard store. I work here with Edo paris and I answer to mailbox/gtalk store@bastard.it