Beto Val’s Imaginary Zoo Is Open. Don’t Feed the Art or Question the Lemur!
If David Attenborough tripped on psilocybin and narrated a nature doc inside a Victorian cabinet of curiosities, you’d land somewhere near the world of Beto Val. The Ecuadorian collage renegade slices and reanimates antique engravings with the swagger of a taxidermist moonlighting as a surrealist DJ. Owls sprout pineapple heads. Lobsters grow tulips. A goat wears a robe of galaxies. Nothing makes sense, and that’s precisely the point. Beto doesn’t just remix public domain oddities. He rewires them. What began as a pandemic pastime spiralled into “The Great Book of the Imaginary Animal Kingdom,” a bestiary for the beautifully unhinged. Think Borges via Burning Man. Zoology meets dadaism meets a science fair diorama on acid. Maybe birds should have whale tails. Maybe fruit should think. Maybe we’re the weird ones. Whether hijacking your algorithm or haunting gallery walls like a Victorian prank, Beto’s work doesn’t whisper. It cackles, curates, and crashes centuries together with unapologetic glee. He’s a master of the meticulous and the madcap. Hide your encyclopedias and your taxonomies. Beto is coming for them in a velvet cloak made of moon maps.
What If Chromosomes Were Drag Queens? Parker Day’s Possessions Explores the Guts of Being Human
Parker Day’s Possessions is like if John Waters raided your subconscious, then embalmed it in drag and danger. Shot on gritty 35mm film with zero Photoshop and maximum attitude, it’s a 46-piece freak-chic parade of nude portraits - one for each chromosome - asking: what if your body was a costume, and your soul the drag act? The vibe is candy-coated horror: imagine Almodóvar bingeing candy and chaos reimagined by your local thrift-store dominatrix. Day shoots everything analog, straight in-camera. No retouching. Dust, scratches, blood? All welcome. It’s punk glam with a side of organ meat. Raised in a San Jose comic shop, Day studied at Academy of Art University before bolting to LA, where her ICONS series turned costumed identity into high-camp art. With Possessions, she dives deeper, into skin, selfhood, and the sacred absurdity of being. Her sets are velvet-draped selfie traps, her props are thrifted gold, and her subjects blur the line between performance and confession. This isn’t just photography; it’s a lo-fi exorcism. Parker Day doesn’t merely document people. She drags their ghosts into the spotlight, dresses them in a sequin boa, and dares them to strike a pose.
Nonlee’s Inkwork is Like a Garden That Knows Your Weaknesses
Nonlee didn’t grow up sketching skulls or planning her ink empire. She grew up in Guri, South Korea, a quiet city better known for orderly schoolyards than tattoo flash sheets. Art crept in sideways. First came fine arts, then came the needles, a sharp left turn into a world she hadn’t mapped out. Her early instincts didn’t vanish; they just found new surfaces. That calm precision? Still there. The obsessive eye for detail? Now blooming on skin instead of canvas. From her base in Seoul, Nonlee tattoos like a minimalist botanist moonlighting as a poet, with her fine-line florals inked like they’ve been pressed between pages since the 1800s. Her tattoos feel more like soft-spoken confessions than body art: part-herbarium, part-hypnosis. Orchids glow like they’ve been backlit by a Wes Anderson sunrise, while ferns curl with the poise of dancers mid-rehearsal. She’ll trace the arc of a leaf the way a short story reveals its twist: measured, precise, and a little sly. Her compositions invite pause, not spectacle, and reward those willing to linger. Some artists make declarations. Nonlee makes tiny, luminous conspiracies, inked where beauty meets subtext, and always with a knowing wink.
Neon Deities and Digital Ghosts: The Ever-Mutating Worlds of James Jirat Patradoon
Imagine a scene where anime villains, demonic saints, and chrome-soaked ghosts share cigarettes in a haunted arcade. Now picture James Jirat Patradoon drawing it before breakfast. From his Sydney base, James Jirat has carved out a reputation with hyper-saturated, myth-meets-manga illustrations that feel less like art and more like apparitions. It’s all glitch gods, neon-dipped spirits, and chaotic icons summoned in candy-coloured ink. His work has splashed across gallery walls, album sleeves, animated loops, and now, quite literally, human skin. These days, he tattoos full-time out of an inner-Sydney studio, channelling the same charged intensity into ritual ink. Only now, the visions don’t just stay on the wall. They walk out into the world. His style was forged somewhere between Thai ghost stories and suburban ennui, raised on a diet of drag bars, techno clubs, and a healthy distrust of daylight. He draws every day. He dreams in linework. True crime podcasts aren’t a guilty pleasure. They’re white noise for the restless part of his brain, a digital pacifier that lets the other half summon demons through his stylus without wandering off mid-incantation.
Harry Pye Is the Art World's Court Jester, Armed With Acrylics and a Winking Brush
If art galleries sometimes feel like beige waiting rooms for Very Serious People, Harry Pye is the guy sneaking in the back door with a glitter cannon, a joke, and 40 of his mates. His group shows are less exhibitions than creative uprisings: loud, lovingly messy, and full of punk-wired optimism. He gives them titles like It May Be Rubbish, But It’s British Rubbish, 100 Mothers, and Remember My Name. Part wry smirk, part unexpected gut punch. And somehow, they all work. He’s the curator as instigator, the painter as prankster, the zinester with a permanent marker and a bone to pick. His blog The Rebel, named after the Tony Hancock film, is an ongoing tribute to the idea that art should be scrappy, funny, unpretentious. And most importantly, for everyone. Whether he's collaborating with friends on paintings that zigzag across gallery walls, or hand-making zines that feel like postcards from a parallel pop culture universe, Pye’s world is gloriously chaotic and stubbornly joyful. If you’re looking for prestige, polish and hushed reverence, keep walking. But if you believe, like Harry, that art should be a bit of a riot, then you’re already in the club. Just follow the laughter and the smell of glue sticks.
Deanne Cheuk Leaves Design Breadcrumbs for the Visually Literate and the Slightly Possessed
Deanne Cheuk has been quietly warping the visual grid since the Tokion days: part typography, part telepathy, part beautifully controlled spiral. Years ago, I handed her the reins on a one-off mag and she returned it looking like it had been art-directed by a benevolent ghost with a stationery addiction. Custom fonts, page-wide doodles, layouts that looked like they’d been dreamt, not designed. It didn’t follow rules. It made new ones, probably while listening to Aphex Twin and sipping jasmine tea. She started out in Perth, where zines were Xeroxed and ambition had to yell over dial-up. Then came New York, where she somehow became a luxury-brand secret weapon while still making work that looked like it should be passed between friends with candlewax seals. Psychedelic type experiments, introspective felt-tip sketches, and graphic spells that bend the grid. Her portfolio reads like an illustrated diary from a stylish time traveler with a permanent Sharpie and no time for lowercase. The work doesn’t wave, it waits. If you’re paying attention, it starts to glow a little. If you’re not, that’s on you.
What Even Is This?
Neon Vandal is compiled, curated, and occasionally caffeinated by Zolton, co-founder of mid-2000s art-culture troublemaker Lost At E Minor. Think of it as the cousin that never left the art fair, stole the sharpies, and started its own cult. Still fringe-obsessed. Still algorithm-allergic. Still poking around for the bold, the bright, and the beautifully unhinged. We like our fonts hand-drawn, our artists unsupervised, and our culture with one eyebrow permanently raised. No ads. No pay-to-play. No snack-branded playlists pretending to be edgy. This is for the curious, the stubborn, and anyone who’s ever whispered “what the hell is that?” and meant it as a compliment.