Markéta Kosinová

Marcelo Pinel has long been exploring themes which fascinate the inner child. His works translate archetypes, mythologies and spirituality into vivid animations, actualizing how humans have expressed the inexpressible across millennia.

In a future world under the lizard rule, humans are no longer around to bow down to them. In cooperation with the brand Křehký for the Křehký Mikulov festival, annually showcasing the finest Czech glass, porcelain and wood design, we've envisioned a fragrant and lush post-civilisation world where free-roaming agamas socialise around the prettiest remnants of human activity. Welcome to another Swarm Production creation – Tomorrow's Heirlooms.

Despite all our modern sensibilities, our minds still play tricks on us when it comes to the darkness. Shapes begin to swirl and half-materialize, uncanny threats breathe down our necks from the murkiness – and we feel silly after we flip the light switch. But what if the entities are really there? This editorial was sparked by our fascination with Lukáš Spilka's Full Moon collection and was brought to life via the talent of photography duo Shotby.us.

“I build with the knowledge that art can be used as a protopian influence to help the advancement of technology and design.” Amanda R. Teske, or Tesxe for the art world, is a digital designer with passion for product design, AI, wellness biohacking, biomimetic research and tech optimism towards the future. She might also have created a new aesthetic genre of elven mecha-futurism. A truly captivating in-depth and interview with the artist continues below.

SWARM Mag is a family with roots deep down some rich, dark, fertile places. We like to sift through the hidden, shiny onyx sands of up-and-coming creativity to dig out whatever is thriving down there and bring it to you. But how did this peculiar chemistry happen? In our newest editorial, you finally get to meet the SWARM family face to corpse paint.

“Without flowers, treaties would not be signed, oaths would not be kept, the spirit of mutual cooperation would just... disappear”. In exploring the societal dimensions of plants, Jakub Jansa’s short film, created to mark the occasion of the Czech Presidency of the EU Council, plays on the tropes of today’s political activity to underscore the inherent absurdities in its discourse.

Floryan Varennes’ suspended assemblages of medical plastic, stainless steel and jewelry explore a history of violence as a means to strengthen the soul. Their abstract shapes and motions are accompanied by a curatorial text that swirls in tune with the creations, all for you to immerse yourself in today’s SWARM MAG installment.

Robert Roest’s paintings of candid dog snapshots play with the absurdity that new media sometimes deliver, emphasizing the uncanny, unexpected aspects of visual technologies. Without clinching to a particular style, the artist instead suits his tools to the tasks at hand, and in this insightful interview explains the backstory of the images of loving pets turned demonic.

Harry Appleyard’s engraving-like 3D images rise streaked with hued reflections to show an “unassumingly crucial underside to an otherwise unmarred look at the world.” In today’s article, Harry discusses his inspirations that led him to his creative process that resembles a digital archaeology.

“Maybe there is a little bit of a dog in me too.” Andrew Tseng, Amsterdam-based illustrator, visual artist and occasional clay sculptor, brings to life warped, spilling shapes in drawings that feature canines more often than not. Read about his love for four-legged companions, and his designing techniques and approaches in the exclusive interview below.

Combining intuitive lightness and material mastery, the Israeli-based duo of Merav Kamel and Halil Balabin open our new theme with their collaborative work. Along with touching on the benefits of their creative, organic process, we are provided with a peek into their recent project that in painting and sculpture provokes our pattern-seeking tendencies.

It's 2022. We are tired, you are tired. Let's get comfy and look at animals videos on YouTube. For the opening theme of this year, we have chosen to find joy in the patterns, softness, lives and brilliance of non-human animals. The article is accompanied by tailor-made animation and art by Roberta Curcă. So, we are asking: WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?

What makes for a great font? What to look for in one? And do we even need new types? The duo behind Heavyweight, the renowned Prague-based type design service, answer these and other questions to the letter, offering a unique and well-founded perspective into the field of typography even for the uninitiated.

“I do believe that VR has the potential to host some of the best art and cultural objects the world has ever seen.” Interdisciplinary artist Samuel Capps creates virtual landscapes and objects that might seem familiar in a dream but that fail to be identified once you wake up. Enjoy an interview with the artist.

Czech artist Lenka Glisníková mainly focuses on photography but uses it as a foundation from which she overarches several other expressive media, such as sculpture, performance, installation or digital manipulation. Her exploratory works often touch on how the constantly expanding presence of technology in our lives shapes our day-to-day reality.

A soft cave, a robot dog and harmonious solitude... Mit Borrás’ vision of the future is one where technology returns humans to a primordial, ritualistic state, ultimately merging with nature, transcending that dichotomy claiming tech is somehow separated from our souls. The HEAVVEN exhibition develops the Cycle even further, so delve into the curatorial and authorial texts to this Ship of Theseus.

Can our memory be corrupted by art and should the viewer take bigger responsibility for how they perceive said art? Michele Gabriele's distinctive artworks try to feel the borders of the gap between the art piece and the perception of the ones that observe it.

When you encounter the vibrant, mesmerizing audiovisual works of Czech artist Jan Matýsek, which often accompany his immersive tongue-in-cheek installations, you feel immediately drawn in as if by ritualistic incantations intended to put you on the cusp of an almost trance-like state.

Enter Heim Group, the fashion and visual designer brand, and their recent collection concept oscillating between the sacred and blasphemous. “...Angels chirping, they whispered that a person is able to rise to the level of god only when the devil overcomes them.” Strap up and step in, for the divine may yet be the future.

The objects Audrey Large crafts carry an ever-evolving aspect and aim to challenge our perception of surfaces. Exclusively for SWARM Mag, the French, Rotterdam-based artist wrote a series of in-depth insights about her most loved and intricate bodies of work, heavily influenced by American researcher Jane Bennet who centers her investigations around “vibrating matter”.