Humorously horrific, colorfully grim, melancholically blatant, phantasmagoric and grotesque, to the point of looking nearly hallucinatory. The surreal paintings of Vukadin Filipović, a young Serbian artist, currently living and working in Vienna, are attractive and disturbing at the same time.

I stopped next to his works at Vienna Contemporary, and instantly dreamt away, wondering in the back of my mind: who are they, these creatures and those people? This cute doggie with terrifyingly empty blue eyes. This fluffy, soft beast with ridiculously long, bloody fangs. These young, exaggeratedly laid-back bohemian men; this elegant, sad woman with empty, red eye sockets. Where are they, and where am I?

So I decided to ask the artist himself.

Stephanie Lucchese. The Marble Faun. (Image courtesy: Stephanie Lucchese) Life starts with a woman. The Marble Faun by Stephanie Lucchese is a striking vision of transformation,...

In the busy heart of Buenos Aires, a child named Veronica was born. From the very start, she was enchanted by the city’s juxtaposition of grandeur and decay, where the monumental met the impermanent.

As Veronica grew, she became a seeker of fragments, gathering broken tiles from forgotten courtyards, shards of glass that glimmered like secrets, the remnants of stories left untold. The world spoke to her through these fragments, promising that within every crack lay a portal to new dimensions.

A symbolic triangle in the center of everything. The presence of the four and the square. The dominance of the green – the color of transition. The pinkish color of disgust. The trapped spirit in the form of a bird. Covered heads – like a symbol of losing freedom. The materialistic world with no chance for peace, the white flags are down. 

A mesmerising work by Ferdinand Dölberg. Should we scan it for the speckles of symbolism? Decode? Or just peacefully observe? 

There is a legend. Beautiful women lived as stars in the sky. Once in a while they descended to earth using woven chaguar ropes to eat fish caught by fishermen. Men discovered this and used birds to cut the ropes, trapping the celestial beauties on earth. So the women stayed. Not only they stayed, but continued weaving and passed on their heavenly knowledge to their daughters.

Clément Bataille’s art breathes a mystical, dreamlike tension, where sacred rites and childhood memories intermingle in silent figures and dark, reverent spaces. Each painting feels like a confined world barely holding its secrets, a reverent yet tender rebellion, both intimate and magnificent.

A historian by education, a painter and a ceramicist, Bataille likens his artistic process to the disciplined repetition of a mediaeval copyist monk. Influenced by Italian primitive art and Byzantine icons, his work often juxtaposes the structured beauty of these traditions with modern digital imagery.

Painting by Georg Baselitz. "Reiter Im Schnee" ("Rider in the Snow").

Moving through their studio, Kami Mierzvvinsk creates a story which each of us can interpret as their own: each brushstroke a quiet invocation, each canvas a portal to something just out of reach.

They paint from memory. But not from memories they could name. It is the memory of things felt but never seen, a whisper of the world beyond the senses, a place the soul had known before the body took shape.

A documentary photographer, Tahmineh Monzavi follows and captures the lives and realities of Iran: male taylors sewing bridal dresses; drug addicts, some of whom successfully go through rehabs, while most don't, continuing lives tinted by violence, addiction and poverty; a transgender woman in a threateningly, even deadly intolerant society.

The scary stories, the dark stories, the sad stories, some with a glimpse of light, all very real and intense.

Her eyes are green with the slightest shade of brown. And warm. 

Warm is her soft voice and the soft, cozy, tactile wall art that she creates. 

She is Vanessa Barragao, a textile artist from sunny Albufeira. 

In the spacious, white studio, full of air and light, I am welcomed by a friendly Catarina, who introduces me to Vanessa. 

It was not that long ago, Catarina tells me, that they moved to this new, big studio. The previous one was too small for Vanessa's art: her wall pieces need enough space and proper lighting to blossom with their full tactile, warm and gently-colored potential.