Lisbon-based artist Joana Vasconcelos has certainly jazzed up this helicopter. The particular aircraft, a piece of art entitled Lilicoptère, is Vasconcelos' interpretation of what Marie Antoinette would have chosen for her personal travels if she were alive today. The base of the piece is a Bell 47 helicopter, and the artist decorated it, inside and out, with ostrich feathers, Swarovski crystals, gold leaf, industrial coating, dyed leather upholstery embossed with fine gold, Arraiolos rugs, walnut wood, wood grain painting, and elaborate gold braided trimmings.
According to the artist statement, the piece "draws on the rich, glamorous and bold aesthetics of the royalty of the late Ancien Régime in order to suggest a metamorphosis from machine to animal; a return to the origin and to the inspiration that motivated the realization of man's dream of flying." The modern installation, a part of the artist’s 2012 solo exhibition at the Palace of Versaille, sat in strong juxtaposition against the ornately decorated, 17th century room. Regardless of the time period, anyone finding themselves a passenger in this fancy aircraft would surely get a kick out of riding in such ultimate and over-the-top style.
Portland, Oregon-based photographer and visual artist Jim Kazanjian is like the M. C. Escher of architectural photography. His art pieces appear to be photos of some of the strangest looking buildings found in the weirdest locations, but the reason the images are so dreamlike is because they came from Kazanjian’s mind rather than the real world.
Each piece is what Kazanjian calls a “hyper-collage.” The artist creates them using a large collection of photographs found on the Internet — a collection that currently contains nearly 30,000 images.
Kazanjian then takes tiny bits and pieces from these photographs and, using Photoshop, blends them into photo-manipulations that don’t really have anything to do with the original photographs. A proper camera is nowhere to be found throughout the entire creation process.
Some of the “photos” are actually the result of combining more than 50 separate photographs into a single bizarre scene.
Each piece is very unique, and is the result of a certain degree of chance. Kazanjian slowly browses through image after image, and looks for ways certain elements could be fitted together into a coherent scene. He might take some windows from one photo, a door from another, and a waterfall from yet another. As a result, each piece takes on a completely new direction than any of his other pieces.
Here’s a selection of images showing some of Kazanjian’s dreamlike architectural creations:
