Tomorrow night (September 8th) in San Francisco, Varnish Fine Art will be hosting For Smoke & Mirrors, the debut exhibition by Ransom & Mitchell. The Bay Area-based duo formed by Jason Mitchell (photographer-director) and Stacy Ransom (set designer and photo-illustrator) will be putting new surreal photographs on display including a series on artist portraits that incorporate their imagery (Greg “Craola” Simkins – seen above, Scott Musgrove, Charmaine Olivia, Alex Pardee, and more). What may be mind-blowing to fans of the work is the fact that oftentimes what they think was created by photoshop manipulation was actually part of the costume and set design… Some of this is revealed on their behind-the-scenes blog Fake Believe.
They state – “Through a combination of cinematic lighting, theatrically-designed sets, and an illustrative approach that is inspired by the Italian and Dutch Master painters, we aim to create worlds that cannot exist (and quite possibly shouldn’t). In our show, we are presenting two unique bodies of work, consisting of fourteen cinematically themed tableaus, twenty seven artist portraits and two short films. For our narrative pieces, we have combined epic scenes of lush grandeur with uncomfortable emotional themes that address issue of obsession, consumption and longing.”
Via Creep Machine & Boing Boing.
