Cute & Creepy, An Art Exhibition That Explores The Adorable & Twisted

Toddlerpede 2.0 by Jon Beinart

Dik Dik by Elizabeth McGrath

Hesitate by Kathie Olivas

Monday’s Child by Ray Caesar

The Cute & Creepy art exhibition at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts in Tallahassee simultaneously explores adorable and twisted. 25 artists are represented at the exhibition including Chris Mars, Laurie Lipton, Jon Beinart, Elizabeth McGrath, Kathie Olivas, Ray Caesar and many more. The show is curated by artist and educator Carrie Ann Baade and runs from October 14 to November 20, 2011.

To see beauty in the carnivalesque or macabre, in freaks and in monsters, is a matter of aesthetics. Most of us can agree on the artistic value of a Monet or Titian but this work is for a daring audience, an audience open to exploring the strange beauty and the ecstasy inherent in our culture’s aversions.

There is something that makes us uneasy when confronted by the weird or the unusual. Those who can appreciate both have come to anticipate and enjoy unexpected sensations. Work of this nature is not going to be an underground movement any longer: the grotesque is going mainstream.

images via Cute & Creepy