RE: PURPOSE

Block-coloured and seemingly ominous illustrations by Marta Moya bring us unto a relatable universe of distractedness and the fidgety mind.

Enjoy an exclusive SWARM Mag interview with Gosia Machon, the painter of brutally honest and bare watercolour, acrylic and oil paintings, coming to life on pure instinct and depicting landscapes as nature merged with our psyche.

Working with upcycled fabrics and pieces of existing garments, fashion designer Karolína Čechová creates striking, fluid and flowing patchwork pieces of soothing earthy colours.

In a series of vibrant photographic prints and GIF files arranged in a collage fashion, artist Ewa Doroszenko draws attention to the thin line between using social media filters and other digital tweaks to our appearance as a form of entertainment, and (subconsciously) yielding to beauty standards feminine-presenting humans were socialized to value.

Each time the Czech independent record label Genot Centre lets out a new release, it's a little audiovisual feast. This time, it's Euglossine's Blue Marble Agony that will grace the world in just two days time, alongside artwork by Lenka Glisníková and video teaser by h5io6i54k.

Andrej Dúbravský uses the unforgiving and irreversible alla prima technique on raw canvas to produce his works. Not only the medium he uses but also the objects and subjects of some of his paintings convey atmosphere clouded in smoke, mist, mystery and vague arousal.

Scene: a flat. Setting: a pandemic lockdown. Cast: a group of friends, artists and flatmates. Time: timelesness. Enjoy an essay by Vít Jebavý outlining how one can push out routines assigned to various parts of our living premises.

Welcome to the gossamer world of playful glamour by Lilia, Victoria and the MOVE team, a group of fashion designers from Moldova, who use silk and delicate paintings as their storytelling medium.

Greek painter Fikos strives to resurrect, with his egg tempera pieces or acrylic murals, the dead tradition, philosophy and motifs of ancient Greek and Byzantine painting.

“Tabula Rasa is faith. Tabula Rasa is.” TABULA RASA, an experimental theatrical troupe from Prague, breathes new life into scrap materials, old entities, thoughts hidden under the surface, and materials deemed useless and redundant.

An arachnologist turned full-time illustrator and teacher, Barcelona-based Emma Roulette guides us through her colour-by-the-numbers drawing style and ponders the meaning of borders and recent, newly-made rifts.

“Written for Swarm Mag in a bus from Prague to Chlumec nad Cidlinou. It was hot, too hot, and the couple behind me kept kicking my seat.” In his essay, Ondřej Trhoň views the act of writing as a way of repurposing and reinventing oneself.

“As if I could make the clothes a shelter, some dreamy, heaven-like space that one could just settle in.” Polish designer Pat Guzik and her namesake label strive to create pieces that are raw, playful, expressive and, most importantly, sustainably sourced and made.

Tekla Gedeon, a Budapest-based architect and speculative designer, presents “a parallel virtual world which performs environmental guardianship” where you can become an avatar forester and restore balance.

Using utopist ideas of radical ecological activism, the Czech artistic group Duna has created a mysterious black box transplanting the DNA of species on the brink of extinction into human DNA, getting us more in touch with the non-human animal world.

We interviewed Melichar Oravec, known to the world as a YouTuber, letsplayer, streamer and video-game content creator FlyGunCZ, about material and immaterial recyclation in the gaming environment. The interview is accompanied by eye-candy gifs and videos by German designer Franz Impler.

Romanian-Hungarian artist Botond Keresztesi produces one-of-a-kind, tongue-in-cheek paintings by merging multiple painting techniques, a collage of technology and classical artworks and the feeling of surreal, fever-induced dreams.

The iconic book The Secret Life of Plants became the cornerstone inspiration for Nela Britaňáková's video featuring recycled textiles, addressing the themes of flora in the age of anthropocene and the transcendental moment of a human merging with a plant.

“I get inspiration everywhere and all the time. Sometimes more, sometimes less.” Switzerland-based illustrator Luca Schenardi unearths the thought and creative processes in an exclusive interview for SWARM Mag.

Self-professed trash transformer, Polish fashion designer and painter Marlena Czak explores the perfect balance of sustainability, ready-to-wear, tailored-to-fit and unique artistic expression.