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Psychædelights: I Create Surreal Illustrations

This is an ongoing series of mostly psychedelic, surreal or oneiric illustrations I’m working on.

I got started on that outline-heavy style while working on a moving commission for Wil Kristin via Dreame, “It’s OK To Just Be”, being the words of wisdom left by a hippie father to his son. Going for a vintage psychedelic french comic style – also, I’m French! – inspired by the like of Jean Giraud (Moebius), I went on with through various themes, beyond the usual mix of psychedelism, sex and mysticism:

– “Tu me soûles !” & III Graces got infused with feminist concerns, as the former is showing an intoxicating and most probably harrassing guy, and the latter is all about body positiveness and acceptance, as I realised how all the women I cared about were quite deeply affected by body standards and expectations.

– Åphantasia is made after a real mental illness, aphantasia, which describes people who can’t form an image in their mind, which I took further with the story of this woman in the future, harvesting psychedelic mushrooms and smoking some extracts to no avail, as her mind is deprived of any form of imagination and cannot hallucinate.

– “I’ll Be What You Need Me To Be” is about quantum physics, as sometimes it feels that, wave or particle, matter is playing with us as to what is its nature, if there’s any.

– In both “The Weight Of Lies” and “ParaShift”, there is a fear about how the continued corruption and lies of the government and corporations might just make us end into dystopia where both social and environmental aspects go from bad to worse to shit.

– “You Can Only Take So Much Freedom” is about the fascinating mix of a god complex facing transhumanism in the genetic department, and the incapacity for some people to even think it could be normal or good that we actually (cautiously ?) tame that new power of directing our own evolution.

And the icing on the cake is that little GIF, shown at Pictoplasma Festival’s opening party in Berlin last May: it was made for a staring contest that happened for real, but also first as an unwinnable game putting you versus the woman on the GIF. Good luck not looking away before she does!

More info: jaen.art | Instagram