Far from being mere titillation, the vintage porn used as collage material in the work of Pierre Schmidt is transformed into highly imaginative, surreal, and psychedelic artworks. The Berlin-based artist, who also goes by the name Dromsjel, takes grainy and often dreamy 'found' erotic photographs, often of nude women, and manipulates them digital to the point that their bodies become distorted canvases. Equally beautiful and grotesque, the bodies and faces in Dromsjel's work melt, implode, sprout colors and flowers, or serve as portals into space. Other times, he removes all features from the subject's face, or makes two faces or bodies merge, combining the body horror explorations of David Cronenberg with the surreal colors and painterly gestures of Salvador Dali.Dromsjel tells Creators that he started out working in digital media with Photoshop and Illustrator, before progressing into graphic design. For a short time he worked at an agency, where he learned the craft before wanting to leave to concentrate on his own work."Quite early I started experimenting with vintage images to use in my digital collages, this progressed with finding old retro porn images through various online source material," says Dromsjel. "The photographs have the same visual quality I like to use in my style. The surrealism and eroticism go hand in hand as outer body experiences, a constant expression through my work."Continue reading on Creators.
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