(Click image to enlarge) Nails & Feathers, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 96 x 72 inches (244 x 183 cm
Shay Kun creates wildly strange landscapes that intersect somewhere between hallucinogenic visions and slightly disturbing surreal dreams. The artist is showing new work at the BUIA Gallery this Friday evening. The exhibit, Nails and Feathers, “depicts visions of that world by juxtaposing pristine, idyllic 19th Century Hudson River School like landscapes with contemporary figures and scenarios.” Like this painting featuring UFC legend Chuck Liddel aka the Iceman, decapitated in the middle of a tripped out autumn forest. The brawler is depicted “in a triumphant wide legged stance bursting with energy and victory as an atomic bomb mushroom cloud replaces his head,” apparently a signature style of the artist. But there’s more:

Completing the Iceman interplay, a massively oversized, seemingly pasted-on butterfly traverses the Iceman’s rope as though it were a tight rope, slowly approaching him in a hint of disaster to come. In the left foreground, a shrunken down heavily armed soldier waits aside his jeep watching the scene, perhaps waiting to intercede?

Perhaps. Or he’s just waiting until the effects wear off. Nails and Feathers runs until November 15.