Contemporary Surrealistic

About

Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 and scattered by the Second World War, but its methods never went away: chance, automatic drawing, collage and the conviction that dreams can be pictured. Artists working in this vein today rarely call themselves Surrealists, yet the resemblance shows in morphing bodies, impossible rooms and ordinary things placed where they do not belong.

Glenn Brown copies paintings by earlier artists from reproductions, stretching and discolouring them until the figures seem to melt. John Stezaker cuts and splices old film stills and publicity portraits into single, unsettling faces. Roger Ballen photographs staged scenes in South Africa crowded with wall drawings, animals and marginal figures. Marcel Dzama's drawings and films are populated by masked dancers and costumed characters, and Inka Essenhigh paints fluid figures that seem half cartoon, half myth. Penny Slinger's photo-collages of the 1970s placed her own body inside dream narratives.