Carlos Jiménez Varela, a visionary digital artist from Costa Rica, crafts a whimsical and thought-provoking universe in his series Lost & Found (Casual Surrealism). The digital collages blend absurdity with purpose, capturing a world where everyday objects assume grand exaggerated scales in peculiar settings. This curious approach invites a reinterpretation of forgotten or misplaced items, emphasizing their unseen significance. Through Varela’s distinctive lens, mundane items like keys or glasses transcend their usual dimensions, becoming monumental symbols of the transient importance attributed to them once they’re absent. His use of stock imagery from platforms like Pexels, Unsplash, and Pixabay underlines the accessibility of his materials, yet his compositions uniquely transform these ordinary pictures into extraordinary narratives.
The Lost & Found series extends Varela’s previous foray into Random Surrealism, demonstrating a refined focus on the theme of loss and rediscovery. Each piece is imbued with a sense of playful wonder, while also evoking deeper reflections on human habits and the sentimental weight we unconsciously assign to our belongings. Varela effectively merges humor with subliminal messages, prompting a re-evaluation of how society encounters and enshrines the ordinary. This art form, which sits at the intersection of digital manipulation and conceptual art, challenges us to ponder their connections with the physical world around them and question how space and scale alter our perceptions of value and significance. Varela’s work acts as a gentle nudge towards introspection amidst the comedic surrealism of oversized spectacles resting in cityscapes or comically large shoes floating on mountain tops.
This series of composites would be a follow up to my previous Random Surrealism series but a little more focused this time. It is inspired also by objects or things we forget or leave behind for a myriad of reasons. What I did was to give these objects a prominent presence through size or scale in relation to their context to symbolize the relative importance we give this things when they are gone. Most of the composites are made out of stock photos from well known sources like Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay.
Carlos Jiménez Varela
More info: Website, Behance, Instagram.
