Zoé Byland: Surreal Black and White Paintings — impeccably rendered with delicate and fine details

Swiss artist Zoé Byland explores the fantasy world tethered between, as she puts it, “idealism and trash.” She uses monochromatic palettes to create paintings depicting mystery, symbolism and comic art rendered in surreal fashion, and inspired by classic and cinematic characters. I don’t know about the ‘trash’ idea but I consider her work as amazingly beautiful, almost photo-realistic. The pieces, featured below, are strangely bizarre to some degree, yet they’re impeccably painted with delicate and fine details. Please scroll down and enjoy this incredible artwork!

 

 

Byland was born in Switzerland. She attended the F+F school for art and media design in Zurich and studied contextual painting at the academy of fine arts in Vienna. She lives and works in Vienna and Bern.

 

“I stage my characters in a world between idealism and trash. I am interested in combining opposites such as the old and the new, concealing and revealing, the construction and deconstruction of identity. I’m interested in timeless forms of representation, attributes like drama and mise-en-scène, and the subversion of viewers’ expectations. My paintings are narrative paintings, thematically dense and laden with symbolism. I want my “stories” to continue playing out in the head of the viewer. I do not want to limit my work by imposing rigid definitions of what it is. Rather, I want to interweave the lines between underground art and the high art canon.”

~ Zoé Byland

 

Starting tomorrow April 11th through May 23rd 2015, she will have an exhibition at Dorothy Circus Gallery in Rome. If you happen in the area, please swing by and check her out.

 

All images courtesy of Zoé Byland, and are published with permission.

To see more of her work, please visit her:  Website  |  Facebook