‘Climbing Holiday’ (2017).
 
Welcome to the miniature world of Frank Kunert, where everything is a little topsy-turvy and nothing is ever quite as it seems like a stairlift that can fire its unlucky occupant out of a window like Mrs Deagle in Gremlins or a funeral plot disguised as a bedroom for two eternal lovers.

Kunert’s handcrafted miniature models are inspired by the history found in the “decayed facades of suburban houses” of his hometown of Frankfurt.

[S]ometimes when I’m out walking and looking at these houses it sets off a train of thoughts in my head, and then later something comes out of it which reveals itself as an idea which I can perhaps use in a picture.

This can often lead to a play-on-words which suggest to Kunert another reality like the hotel on a concrete pillar in “Climbing Holiday” or the cramped accommodation of “One Bedroom Apartment.”

[S]ince houses play such an important part in my pictures it seems obvious to me that I should occasionally refer to the way words are used in property advertisements. For it is precisely when they’re writing advertisements that people try their hardest to make language excite great expectations. The question is always: what would the writer or the speaker like to say, and what does the reader or the listener actually hear? And that’s where my play on meanings begins. And though the titles of my pictures don’t actually lie, they can nevertheless be somewhat misleading.

Though darkly humorous and surreal, Kunert’s miniature worlds contain a recurring motif: “our deep human desire for security and our fear of loss, as well as our anxiety regarding the transitory nature of life.” He spends days painstakingly creating his miniature worlds preferring a handcrafted “analog” approach rather than the hi-gloss of digital effects.

Born in Frankfurt in 1963, Kunert became a photographer’s assistant after leaving high school. He then worked for various photographic studios before becoming a freelance photographer and artist in 1992. Since then, he has mainly focussed his attention on the creation of his miniature worlds.

More of Kunert’s work can be seen here, while prints of his work can be ordered here.
 

‘Eternal Love’ (2014).
 

‘Flying High’ (2017).
 
More small worlds, after the jump…

‘Savor the Flavor.’
 
A snail sits on a popsicle within kissing distance of a man’s mouth as he willfully sucks out the confection’s chilly orange flavor. It’s an utterly disturbing yet grotesquely humorous image—a fragment of a nightmare, a half-remembered fear that causes a shudder of unease in the viewer. This is just one of the many strange and darkly fantastic canvases painted by Australian artist Beau White.

Since childhood, White has drawn or painted similarly absurd and uncanny images. He describes his art as “hyperrealist absurdism.” He claims no “grand vision or statement’ for his work, but rather wants to “paint silliness and weirdness in various forms for my own gratification and anyone else with similar inclinations.”

There is nothing particularly philosophical about my art in the conceptual sense. There are themes and narratives that are relatively simple and obvious, with the main focus being on the ridiculous.

~snip!~

Although I steer away from taking the subject matter in my work too seriously, I do spend a serious amount of time, consideration and mental exertion on my creative process. That’s where I derive the most meaning in my art; In the doing, not the discussion that follows.

One of his flagship pieces, “Thirst” from 2015, depicts a woman (his partner Isabel Peppard) covered in drying clay emerging from some dank undergrowth presenting a hideously huge shiny leech cradled in her arms. Artists like writers tend to betray their own emotions in their work. When White was a child he used to swim in the local creek that was infested with bloodthirsty leeches. It was a start of a phobia that has remained all his life. However, White prefers his audience to derive their own meanings and interpretations from his work rather than be told how they should or shouldn’t think or feel about it.

See more of Beau White’s work here.
 

‘Bloodthirsty.’
 

‘Feast.’
 
More of Beau White’s beautiful and dark art, after the jump…