The Imagined Futures of Alex Andreev

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:

Another painting finds their tops, tickling the stratosphere:

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

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

... driven by creepy light-face-people ...

... 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:

Skytram traffic signals:

A lonely skytram stop (inspired, perhaps, by Magritte's "The Empire of Light"):

Waiting for the tram to arrive:

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