Based in Santa Catarina, Brazil, collage artist Marcelo Monreal’s work is going viral for his different take on inner beauty. His latest works cut open the portraits of celebrities in Photoshop, super models and other faces of pop culture that are otherwise stagnant, to reveal beautiful blooms underneath. Monreal’s use of floral motifs stems (no pun intended) from his first job as an artist, developing embroidery for a label factory. His imagery is in a similar vein to that of the spliced vintage photographs of Matthieu Bourel, covered here, and Rocío Montoya’s manipulated, experimental photos. While his subjects are uniquely contemporary, Monreal shares the same sense of bizarre humor that combines the morbid with abstracted glamour. As our society’s social pathos and obsession with celebrities grows, so do the blooms behind their faces in this ongoing series. Monreal says, “If the let loose from the rest of the body, which would be within? Well, to me, still I think that people have a little bit of beauty within them by more that this is saved and only revealed in rare moments. The result of this reflection gave rise to this series called: Faces [UN]bonded.”
