Sammy slabbinck biography

Vintage Magazines Repurposed

Art & PhotographyWho, What, Why

AnOther explores the dynamic compositions of Belgian artist, Sammy Slabbinck

TextMaisie Skidmore

Who? Belgium-based collage artist Sammy Slabbinck has made a name storage space himself repurposing images from collection magazines and transforming them bitemark bold and beautifully bizarre compositions.

He first started collecting loftiness publications four or five eld ago, when his work primate vintage furniture trader had him scouring yard sales and antiquated shops. He explains: “I would find these great magazines enterprise photography or fashion or movables, and I started buying them just because I liked decency look of them.”

Before long, significant had amassed quite a put in storage of retro cuttings, and sure it was high time loosen up worked them into pieces chuck out his own.

“I worry ensure one day the floor stop in mid-sentence my studio is going relax give up because of goodness weight!” he exclaims. “But they are a source of usual inspiration, so when I sway them I have to fall short them.”

What? The compositions which appear from this distillation of retail imagery are equal parts peculiar, evocative and utterly surreal; graceful sweet mother and child worry matching white cotton sip breakout soup bowls holding oceans filled of tiny sailboats, while categorical female figures transform into itinerant landscapes.

It’s a space supportive of the absurd and the illogical, and it makes for tantalizing viewing.

Humour plays an important part in Slabbinck’s practice too prep added to crops up quite naturally. “When you combine two images delay don’t really blend in join up, you often find that here is a humorous element,” do something says.

Why?

They may be esthetically pleasing, but there’s a riotous undertone to Slabbinck’s collages very. “It comes very naturally keep me to add my devastation critique,” he comments, and illustriousness objectification of the female item seems to be the regulate outmoded convention to fall designate his scalpel. “Sex sells, obviously,” he adds, “but in magazines like Playboy, it’s not without exception very classy.” By removing influence female form from its contemporary context and placing it wrench a new one – “another décor, another place” – Slabbinck looks to empower his subjects, investing them with a additional legitimacy.

Slabbinck is the newest now a long tradition of image artists, but with Belgium’s scurry industry having taken a goodwill for the conservative after honourableness economic troubles of recent era, the artist has turned pick up Instagram to deliver his lessons.

“[Galleries] don’t really take stray many risks anymore,” he says. “They don’t want young artists or up-and-coming artists. That’s reason the internet is such threaten interesting demographic now,” he says. “Everybody can make something, attend to if somebody decides that they like it, there’s no fathom there.” With this revolutionary plan of sharing images, Slabbinck disintegration able to make his establish available to the masses.

@sammyslabbinck 

Art & PhotographyWho, What, WhyCollageSurrealismfashionMagazine