Issue V
As a kid, I loved watching horror films. Nothing gave me greater joy than watching Freddie Krueger slash teen victims with razor-edged claws or witnessing zombies eat the hearts of those who couldn't run away fast enough. These films brought a sense of joy, fear, disgust, intrigue, and pleasure all at once. I knew that the stories were rooted in fantasy and that the chances of me dying at the hands of a zombie were unlikely, but that never kept me from popping the movies into the VCR and getting lost in the stories.

My early childhood fascination with horror films does not stray far from my interest in "The Grotesque" within art. Themes of repulsion and attraction can be found in almost every period of art. Whether imagined in Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century hallucinations of heaven and hell in "The Garden of Earthly Delights" or unmasked in Tracy Emin’s brutally honest and intimate sculpture “My Bed,” documenting the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown, conceptions of non-classical beauty—at once both seductive and transgressive—have long been envisioned.

For Issue V, we examine the current state of the grotesque within contemporary art and music, whether it is manifested through content, imagery, material, or practice. Like carnival mirrors, these works can reflect unsettling visages, though a strange attraction can still be found in their unconventional appearances. Ultimately, the grotesque can be seen as the quintessential cultural catalyst, igniting the sparks of consideration, debate, and intrigue, and thereby propelling society forward.

104 pages, full color, perfect bound.

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