For my Under the Influence artist, I chose Erik Johansson, a Swedish artist who uses photography and compositing to create surreal imagery and stories that seem impossible. His scenes vary in subject and composition, making it difficult to pick out similarities between them all. However, I was drawn to three separate projects of his that all had this recurring theme of reflections and alternate realities.
His subject matter varies between landscapes, everyday objects, and people; often combining all three. Thus, creating these convincing, but unrealistic stories and scenes through compositing. In the compositions featuring people as the subject, they are often the ones depicted bending reality. Others that just depict landscapes feature warped endless mind tricks or even two realities clashing into one another. In general, the possibilities are endless as Erik Johansson is using truly any type of subject and his imagination.
In terms of the formal elements of his work, the first thing that struck me was his highly rendered compositing. Nothing is blurred out or left for us to interpret, these surreal environments are detailed and in full view for us to experience. These different scenes have a range of tones and colors that match the environment in that specific story. For instance, Erik will composite several objects into a scene and uses his technical skills to blend and set these out of place objects into the environment seamlessly. This gives his work such a convincing effect that contrasts the impossible ideas he’s trying to express.
From my perspective, his concept for every work is to create a surreal or trippy scene that plays tricks on our eyes. His compositions leading our eyes all over the environment, trying to make sense of it all. I saw how he plays with reflections in these selected images and using them to his advantage to make alternate realities. I thought these pieces were a good starting point to do my own take on twisting reality. I also gravitate towards how high quality and clean his compositing is. I wish to take these elements and push my imagination to create playful and surreal scenes similar to that of Erik Johansson.
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