Divination and Delusion by Kris Kuksi Now Available

Kris Kuksi, the stunningly talented maker of intricate, grotesque sculptures released his first art book last month. Divination and Delusion weighs in at nearly 150 pages, each collecting the artist's beautifully rendered nightmares and detailing his inspiration. As I previously discussed here, Kuksi remains a highly original craftsman with an aptitude for sharing what torments him like no one else can. His sculptures are windows into a secretive world filled with awe, horror, and all manner of nasty little secrets: a devastating miniaturization of our own dark environments.

Death lurks around every corner in these works, planting its conquering standard on every soaring temple and industrial theme park created by Kuksi. Like hideous dioramas mapping long bygone civilizations (or those still to come?), his sculptures are charts of interstitial places we rarely see connected. The industrial-spiritual, for instance, frequently haunts Kuksi's cityscapes. If Hieronymous Bosch had lived several centuries later, complete with the same hellish visions, and traveled to India or Tibet to observe oriental mysteries, then he might have painted something akin to these works.

Kuksi, however, one ups even this alternate history version of Bosch. His meticulously carved and positioned terrors are born in three life stopping dimensions. Not two, although the book shows specimens of Kuksi delving in this lesser dimension as well. Leering skulls with mechanized augments peering down upon factory Popes give the impression they may look at you next. Emotionally charged re-imaginations of real and ahistoric emperors, from Rome to Napoleonic Europe, burst from their musty sepulchers, arriving in more post-industrial rococo splendor than their lost worshipers gave them.

Divination and Delusion is sure to be a powerful flare shot from Kuksi's elegant and numinous underworld. It's a product of his past successes, but more importantly, a new engine certain to drive these frightful and thought provoking visions into new territory. So, go ahead, impale your eyeballs on Kris Kuksi's ornate, reaper tipped lances. You just may begin to see what he has seen.

-Grim Blogger