Weird and Wonderful

I think that something needs to be weird in order to have real beauty. – Carine Roitfeld

This week we all have the opportunity to share our weird and wonderful images in the challenge! I am sure you have some in your archives that would fit the bill – or why not go chasing new ones?

I will start out with one of my favourite artists, Salvador Dalí. I was fortunate enough to visit his home in Figueres some ten years ago. And, I was not disappointed. More of strange architecture – this autumn when visiting Denmark, we came across a gigantic cone in the forest. I am quite sure it hadn’t fallen from one of those trees…because you could go inside it to admire the construction.

This summer I finally got to visit the ARoS museum in Aarhus, Denmark. The building itself is a piece of amazing architecture and inside you will find some amazing art.

The Australian artist Ron Mueck’s sculpture Boy has become one of the landmarks of the Aarhus Art Museum. Measuring 4.5 metres in height and weighing in at 500 kg makes it impressive, but also rather weird – and wonderful. He looks so real. Displayed all over the museum entrance hall are the gigantic crochet sculptures by Portuguese Joana Vasconcelos: Valkyrie Rán.

So far, artists, architechture and art – but then there are also more natural, but still somewhat weird, phenomena –

– like The Sand-Covered Church, also translated as The Buried Church, the names given to a late 14th-century church dedicated to Saint Lawrence of Rome. It was a brick church of considerable size, located 2 kilometres from Skagen, Denmark. According to Wikipedia, the last half of the 18th century the church was partially buried by sand from nearby dunes, and the congregation had to dig out the entrance each time a service was to be held. The struggle to keep the church free of sand lasted until 1795, when it was abandoned.The church was demolished, but the tower was left as the only part of the original structure still standing.

Finally – of course it is possible to make things and places even more weird and wonderful than they are in reality…here I have played around with the Nik collection and photoshop. The installation of mirrors is real.

Special thanks to Patti for her Street Art – a much loved theme for both participants and readers! It’s been a joy to see how much good street art you have beautifully captured! Now we are looking forward to seeing your weird and wonderful images too. Please link to my original post, and be sure to use the Lens-Artists tag. Stay cool and careful navigating out there.