Reviews

Artist images & texts: Nihil
Artist music: In Slaughter Natives
Titel: Ventre
Features: Hardcover, 17x25cm/7×10“, Book 115 pages, CD 39:18 min
Contact: www.nihil.fr
Purchase: www.nihil.fr/shop/artbook

Nihil’s work has been accompanying me for several years now through the hidden valleys of a remote art taste. The French photographer and picture manipulator has always been a welcome guest in our mental asylum for a reason  – his works conceal something that only comes to light under the most extensive physical effort in a genre, characterized by darkness and despair: elegance! Sublime poses burst upon grotesque wrenches here, graceful silence upon seething menaces. And the pictures always seem to lack something. The iris in the eye. The expression of the face. The hairs on the heads. White surfaces where secondary habits expect primary sexual characteristics. This lack of physical identity puts his figures into the fleshless light of saints and martyrs. Because they suffer. This is the last remaining expression which cannot be taken away from them. Heavily depressing and wonderful at the same time.
The dark, brooding soundscapes of the industrial band IN SLAUGHTER NATIVES of the enclosed audio CD are integrated perfectly between the full-screen refined pages. A perfectly successful cooperation of two masters of dark art. And finally, to draw a line between the two unholy covers of this publication, Nihil provides us with reflective, dark stories for our restless sleep, all of which confidently float between dark dignity and menacing doom. An amazing artistic synthesis!!

Art book trailer (youtube)

In Slaughter Natives – As my shield OFFICIAL VIDEO (youtube)

SRBGENk – Bloodblister IV Unknown Cults
Softcover A4, 68pages, english/japanese
Contact: http://sweetrubberberry.sakura.ne.jp/
Purchase: artscum.org shop

Probably the best known incarnation of the Japanese attitude “Kawaii” – which I immensely adore – is undoubtedly young girls. Although in Japan there are also “cute” dustbins, traffic signs, shopping trolleys, sex toys and so on, the beauty i.e. “cuteness” of the female appearance is increased to iconic proportions in the Japanese world of art and therefore basically present. And here in particular, wild excrescences are becoming more and more prevalent, to tailor new, absurd facets into this beauty’s dainty face. SBRGENk has chosen an especially radical way. Many of his portraits of young Japanese girls and women show the actually
opposite side of “Kawaii:” Violence. And it’s not the supposed domestic violence which grows, for instance, in the blue eyes of Trevor Brown’s works – here are heads flying. But no matter how bloody things are (and yes, there is also a lot of undamaged stuff), the ubiquitous beauty of his models is always preserved and remains always in the centre of his talent as a painter. This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with splatter films and glorification of violence; rather a completely new form of aesthetics is created out of the struggle of the two poles “cute” and “des-
truction:” an undestroyable and superior beauty. And admiration. At least mine.