Surreality check

Surrealism has another heir. Using humour as a visual tool, Sammy Slabbinck (Bruges, Belgium) choreographs compositions that meditate on the absurdity of popular consumerist culture, both past and present. Cut up, redistributed, playing with exaggeration and proportion or placed in reverse context, juxtaposing modern ideals with traditional states of mind. Often witty but at the same time foreboding and dark, Slabbinck's deft hand creates a unique signature that makes each collage unequivocally his own. Mangled, contestable, reversible. His retro-futuro collages with cut-outs from vintage issues of Playboy and Paris Match, hang in galeries in London, Chicago, New York... ; they are used as album covers, among which You want it darker by Leonard Cohen, illustrations and digital prints, and have featured in The New Yorker, The Telegraph and Der Spiegel.