Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix
McAfee Secure sites help keep you safe from identity theft, credit card fraud, spyware, spam, viruses and online scams
Ransom Riggs
The Imagined Futures of Alex Andreev
by Ransom Riggs - April 17, 2009 - 12:13 PM

Alex Andreev is a Russian artist. He calls his style “hermetic,” and while I’m not sure what that means exactly, his work is certainly compelling. Many of his paintings — computer-aided, I assume — seem to imagine this very specific urban future, in which humanity has adapted to a new life in the clouds after having more or less ruined, then abandoned, the ground. For instance, here are a cluster of skyscraping apartments, at once desolate and whimsical:

2.jpg

Another painting finds their tops, tickling the stratosphere:
7.jpg

… though a few bottom-dwellers still scrape by in shantytowns below the clouds:

33.jpg

Meanwhile, up above, subway travel has entered the next generation, tracks suspended with balloons …
3.jpg

… driven by creepy light-face-people …
4.jpg

… or alternatively, there are the suspended railcar skytrams, which look about as friendly (and heavy) as cattlecars but somehow manage to creep along high-tension wires in the sky:
17.jpg

Skytram traffic signals:
40.jpg

A lonely skytram stop (inspired, perhaps, by Magritte’s “The Empire of Light”):
8.jpg

Waiting for the tram to arrive:
23.jpg

And finally, high above it all, floating islands of tranquil suburban bliss:
34.jpg

32.jpg

« Previous Post   -   Next Post »
Comments (6)

  1. Cool stuff. 30 plus years on and Roger Dean’s legacy is still alive and well.

    posted by Tim on 4-17-2009 at 1:01 pm

  2. “Another painting finds [the skyscraping apartments] tops, tickling the stratosphere:”

    I believe those are ribs of a skeleton.

    –
    CEC-Q

    posted by Chas C-Q on 4-17-2009 at 4:10 pm

  3. “Another painting finds the [skyscraping apartments] tops, tickling the stratosphere:”

    I believe those are ribs of a skeleton.

    –
    CEC-Q

    posted by Chas C-Q on 4-17-2009 at 4:17 pm

  4. Awesome, awesome stuff! Haven’t seen imagination of this scope for a long, long time – will definitely be spotlighting this on my blog!

    posted by Dave on 4-18-2009 at 2:17 am

  5. Now you’ve deleted two comment’s I have left because you don’t want your readers to know this content was published at englishrussia.com a day before it appeared here.
    This is not the first time that a topic idea has been borrowed from their site a day later.
    ReCAPTCHA for this comment
    debates spurns
    That’s ironic

    posted by Hiro Protagonist on 4-18-2009 at 1:23 pm

  6. These tram stations look pretty cool and more importantly, harder for homeless people to find and urinate in.

    posted by David Gorcey on 4-18-2009 at 2:27 pm

Comment

commenting policy