383-386 - Bill DiMichele - USA

OM.2011.223-226 - Bill DiMichele - USA - Netherworld 1 through 4 - collage

I read Lord of the Rings when I was 12 or 13, and to me it was incredible, but it didn’t fulfill my wishes for a complete magical setting .Then the movie was released, and as amazing as it was, once again, it was missing something, the same kind of magical feel that the books were missing. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. My son had a ‘Lord of the Rings’ calendar, the kind with one small image per day. Out of this I first cut positive images, people, caverns, landscapes, warriors, etc. After that I began using the negative spaces, cut up heads, rivers, weapons, etc. The final results reach the edge of surrealism, with aleatoric wunderkinds and extraordinary creatures moving through the unknowable landscape. This is the magic I was searching for, and I’d like to share it with all with you.

Collage Statement:
Collage plugs us into the world beyond the world, a cut-up/arrangement of surfaces that point to the magical, the frightening universe of Surrealism. From the ink writers of Japan to Picasso, to Britain's Richard Hamilton, to Max Ernst, collage has been a way through the door of Surrealism, toward the space of the fantastic. This is where we find ourselves, at the doorstep of the interstellar, at the ladder of the mind. And this space cannot be tarnished, cannot be ruined, because it belongs to and only to those who use it.