Angelo Musco's Humanscapes Reveal Dante's Inferno-like Scenes (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Angelo Musco's childhood story could arguably be a terrifying fairy tale. His mother gave birth to four children before him, each one bigger than the last. The Italian-born, New York-bred artist barely survived at a whopping 14 pounds, and was paralyzed on the right side of his body for the first few years of his life. To this day his work pays tribute to the surreal and mythical -- recognizing how nothing, even your own body, is ever familiar.

Some artists use the human body as a canvas, but Musco uses it as a medium. Bodies on bodies are layered into a piece as if they were a series of brush strokes. The floods of nude forms form new, twisted and mysterious pockets of life; sometimes the multi-headed beasts seem good, sometimes evil. Musco's living tapestries take the form of innocuous and breathtaking natural forms like birds' nests, honeycombs, ant colonies, spiderwebs. The nudes connect in harmony, forming chains of life. Yet sometimes the human bodies seem to writhe desperately in eternal darkness, looking like something out of Dante's Inferno.

Ovum

Tehom

Musco's epic works are infinitely complex. 'Ovum', for example, incorporated over 2 million bodies in the design. The wonder of these works is the simultaneous similarity and difference in the bodies: from far away they look like creatures swimming in the sea, yet up close you can still them as individuals displaying a range of emotions. See the utterly breathtaking works below.

What do you think, readers? Is this awe-inspiring or just strange?

Comments

[carnivaluv]

08:37 PM on 02/10/2012

Awesome! Thats so wild and cool.

[catsanon]

02:28 PM on 02/10/2012

Wow.

Just... wow. I'd love to see these in person, especially with plenty of time on my hands to really appreciate and absorb as many aspects of the imagery as possible, preferably with many separate visits to allow time for everything to sink in........ but I don't think I'd be able to live with any of this artwork on the walls of my own home. Even if I had a wall large enough, I suspect for me it'd be overwhelming on a daily basis... better to visit and enjoy it fresh with each viewing.......

[Gronkie]

01:09 PM on 02/10/2012

My first thought was "Not impressed." Then I viewed the slide show and the video and saw more of what was really going on here, and changed my mind. The two things that struck me the most were the meticulous gathering of thousands upon thousands of tiny nudes to form the strands that eventually make the larger picture. The final straw was the slide that showed a single work taking up the walls of an entire room. This is a macro artwork utilizing micro details. Very, very impressive indeed.

[WheresCarter]

04:30 AM on 02/09/2012

As beautiful as the web photographs are, to get the full impact of his work you must see it in person. These panels are very large and they literally suck you into the scene. It's the kind of art that you can appreciate at every distance and angle - and each time you find something new. If you have big blank walls in your home or office, you should pay a visit to the gallery in Chicago to see it - in the flesh. I did - and now I really, really want one.

[Emily Waddle]

03:26 AM on 02/09/2012

I think it's beautiful.

[staceysimmons]

12:22 PM on 02/08/2012

Brilliant and very creepy.

[Stephan Pickering]

12:18 PM on 02/08/2012

Shalom & Boker tov...when we have the spectacle of the whining apostate Shabtai Zisel / 'Bob Dylan' frantic for money...unable to formulate art without copying image-by-image that of others...memory failing and using lyric sheets to mask the fact he can no longer write...well, it is refreshing to witness Angelo Musco's kabbalism. Mr Musco joins H.R. Giger and Hieronymus Bosch in re-shaping our ontological authenticities. STEPHAN PICKERING / Chofetz Chayim benAvraham

[Tim Brazier]

09:30 AM on 02/08/2012

I've seen Angelo Musco's work which is truly inspiring and the YouTube videos show how painstakingly it is all put together.

[Blake Welch]

08:46 AM on 02/08/2012

At first, I thought this was just plain weird. After letting it soak in and seeing the meticulous amount of detail that Musco went through to make this happen however, it's quite an aspiring piece.