Life, at the moment, can feel quite surreal, but sometimes we need to look at something even more out of the box to bring our feet back to the ground.
Which is why Absolutely Augmented Reality, by artistic duo Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song, is the perfect addition to your coffee table this summer.
Self-described 'photoexistentialists', the vivid photographic book fuses absurd humour and sleek surrealist photography with contemplations on metaphysics.
The photography is combined with a collection of essays from artists and thinkers amalgamating, philosophy, cinema and performance which draw inspiration from Asian cultures and consumerist symbolism.
Vostrikov and Song say: “Absolutely Augmented Reality is an introductory experiment in our investigation into metaphysics which creates a sense of exploration and melancholic intrigue. The book is more than just photography: it is aligned with a particular space and concentrated point in time in which it arose.
“In the language of modern art, it could be called ‘performance’ but we would like to give a broader definition. Absolutely Augmented Reality is more like an existential experiment, a collection of visually poetic statistics on the subject reflecting on the circumstances of the observed object. We’re photo-existentialists practicing anthropological symbolism. Existential truth has to be lived; it can’t be proven. That’s Søren Kierkegaard.”
To create the series, the artists sketched each concept followed by a refined orchestration of each narrative scene.
Click through the gallery above to see a selection of images from Absolutely Augmented Reality and buy the book here.
