upcycling experiments

Re-directed Art

This term was coined by David Irvine to refer to his overpainted thrift shop art pieces. The idea is usually to take banal, bad, or kitschy art found in thrift shops, yard sales, and flea markets, and to paint new, usually absurdist elements into them.

Although this is usually seen as a joke and a novelty, there is a tradition of modifying found art in the avant-garde, including the various moustache-on-the-Mona-Lisa works associated with Dada, surrealism, and pop art.

Artists have been known to overpaint other works to create canvases that straddle figurative impressionism and the abstract, as in Elisabeth Neumann’s overpainting of a thrift shop reproduction of Goya’s Nude Maja to the point where it resembles a J.M.W. Turner seascape or an abstract expressionist work.

Jigsaw Puzzle Mashups

Tim Klein, among others, discovered that jigsaw manufacturers often use the same cut patterns for multiple puzzles. He mixes parts of one puzzle with parts of another to create surreal mashups.