8 Surreal GIFs That Will Ignite Your Imagination

“As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.” André Breton, known best as the founder of Surrealism, referred to this line by Comte de Lautréamont as the single phrase that perfectly describes the phenomenon of Surrealism. The surrealist artists painted curious and often disturbing scenes that lacked logic. With photographic precision, they created bizarre juxtapositions of everyday objects placed in unexpected settings. By adding an element of surprise to their artworks, they aimed at re-creating human dreams to resolve contradictions between reality and dreams.

Hungarian Artist Bill Domonkos follows in the footsteps of the surrealist masterminds who rocked the art scene in the 1920s. He makes otherworldly animated GIFs altering, editing and reassembling public domain images. The artist takes advantage of special effects and digital art objects to create a feeling of absurdity and to elicit the ineffable, the sublime. As the results, the loops of motion incorporated into archival photos will have you hypnotized.

Each of his GIFs are open to interpretation as the gates of hell – for the sinners. If you take his seemingly wacky artworks seriously, you can find quite a few subtle metaphors. Let’s take a look at some of them and try to analyze them – no matter how pointless this endeavor may seem, it can be fun!