These days, just about anyone can alter and collage various elements into a scene using digital technology like Photoshop. But artist Sandy Skoglund has been producing surreal imagery for decades – without the use of a computer. Skoglund can spend months assembling a single elaborate set for photographs that are strange and enchanting.

The installation artist meticulously furnishes these tableaux, often painting most of the elements a single shocking hue. Then, layered on top of these monochromatic background are incongruous objects in a contrasting color. Bright orange goldfish float in the air against a blue bedroom, blue leaves take over an orange home and black squirrels take over a yard that is entirely coated in Pepto-Bismol-pink.

“The origins of my interest in mixing natural and artificial rise from my being a spectator of myself as I behave in the world,” Skoglund told interviewer Luca Panaro in Italy in 2008. “I see myself naturally attracted to some very artificial things, almost as if my life depended on it. If I try to talk myself out of being attracted to these things, but then I am lying to myself and full of miserable conflict.”

“By these things, I mean delicious cookies to eat, fragrant creams to put on my skin, or exciting fabrics or colors to wear. To me, a world without artificial enhancement is unimaginable, and harshly limited to raw nature by itself without human intervention.”

They’re vaguely anatomical, looking like microscopic views of cells, bacteria or organs. Some resemble giant udders, while others are big soft organically shaped cushions that hold you like a womb. No doubt about it, Ernesto Neto’s ‘Anthropodino’ installation at the Park Avenue Armory was a tad unusual; C-Monster called it “mom’s pantyhose gone fantastically amoebic”.

Stretched around a skeletal wood frame is what seems like acres of mesh fabric, suspended from the ceiling by nothing but weights and counter-weights, and filled with spices like citrus and cloves. The theme here is ‘comfort’, and visitors making their way through the bewildering maze are tempted – no, beckoned – to lay down on squishy surfaces and relax for a while.

While some see the fleshy shapes as maternal and others as erotic, the exhibition is meant to seduce, and Neto, of Rio de Janeiro, goes directly against museum etiquette by making his art intentionally tactile. Inspired by the sensual culture of his home country, Neto wants viewers to feel free to look, touch and smell – but the artist is also motivated by a drive to infuse his works with humanity.

“The whole anthropodino idea considers the human being in a scientific way, not only as an individual or as a part of society, but in the sense of an organ,” Neto told Art in America Magazine. “In society, the human being must be an organ or cell. So this is a cell. The drawing of this piece depicts a cellular structure — mytochondria with ribosomes and membranes. This piece acts as a center of energy for the people who move around it.”

“I assume the position of anthropologist as a human being. I am interested in the animal that exists in us — the monster, the dinosaur, the imaginary. It’s weird because the dinosaurs did exist — archeologists dig up their bones to prove it — but there is still something imaginary about them because we’ve never seen them. I was thinking of imaginary animals when I chose this title, and about this image of the bones. These structural joints that hold the piece look like bones. They hold the piece up. “

‘Anthropodino’ inhabited most of the 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall for several months in summer 2009 and sadly is no more, but you can see lots of photos on Flickr.

What could be more personal and human than a cast of your head – made from your own frozen blood? The human body has been used as a canvas for all sorts of art, but perhaps more interesting and rare is the use of human body parts as artistic media, from sculptures made of hair, bones and fingernail parings to plasticized corpses in dynamic poses. These 12 artists have made human body art that is often controversial and sometimes surprisingly poignant.

Marc Quinn

(images via: art news blog)

If you’re going to do a self-portrait, why not go all out and make a sculpture out of your own frozen blood? That’s what sculptor Marc Quinn has done – every five years since 1991 – using a mold of his head and a whopping 9.5 pints of blood drawn over a period of five months. Quinn’s 2006 version of ‘Self’ was purchased by the UK’s National Portrait Gallery for over $465,000.

Andrew Krasnow

(images via: the independent)

It’s been called horrific and gruesome, but is Andrew Krasnow’s controversial skin art really a sensitive reflection on human cruelty? The artist creates flags, lampshades, boots and other everyday items from the skin of people who donated their bodies to medical science. Krasnow says that each piece is a statement on America’s ethics. “The objective was to express my concerns about the war and that it would not be conducted in a way that was moral and ethical,” he said. “Since that question wasn’t permitted in a museum, the work became more complex, with all the inherent contradictions of what it means to be an American or, for that matter, to be human.”

Gunther Von Hagens

(images via: body worlds)

Perhaps no artist using actual human flesh as his chosen medium has gained such renown as Gunther Von Hagens, the man behind the “Body Worlds” exhibition of plasticized human corpses. But for all the outcry regarding Von Hagens’ supposedly “disrespectful” usage of human bodies, there’s just as much fascination. Von Hagens invented plastination, the method of replacing water and fat in human tissue with certain plastics, preserving them for study.

Francois Robert

(images via: francois robert)

Francois Robert’s fascination with human bones started with an unusual discovery: an articulated human skeleton hidden inside a presumably empty locker that he purchased. Realizing the potential for artistic expression, Robert traded in the wired skeleton for a disarticulated one so that he could arrange the parts into shapes and designs. Since then, he has created a haunting photo series called ‘Stop the Violence’ that uses the stark-white bones on a black background to illuminate the inhumanity of war.

Anthony-Noel Kelly

(images via: anthony-noelkelly.com)

British artist Anthony-Noel Kelly followed in the footsteps of many artists before him, including Michelangelo, when he closely studied human body parts for his work. But unlike those artists, Kelly illegally smuggled human remains from the Royal College of Surgeons and used them to cast sculptures in plaster and silver paint. Kelly was found guilty of this unusual crime in 1998 and spend nine months in jail. The sculptures can still be seen on his website, anthony-noelkelly.com.

Kai-hung Fung

(images via: the daily mail)

CT scans are typically only interesting to health care practitioners and the patients whose bodies they portray on film, but artist Kai-hung Fung manipulates them into stunning artistic images. Lungs, arteries, vocal chords and ear canals are just a few of the body parts that Fung – a radiologist himself – has scanned into a computer, intensifying the color but otherwise not manipulating them in any way.

Linda Jones

(images via: wcax)

How would you feel if a relative of yours took bits of your hair, stitches from an injury, even catheters and other medical equipment and used it to build a creepy “family photo album?” Artist Linda Jones of Vermont turned such objects into an exhibition at Burlington’s Firehouse Gallery, shaping layers of wax, x-rays, teeth and even bits of flesh into abstract art. Of the show’s content and theme, gallery Curator Chris Thompson remarked, “Why do we simultaneously want to preserve life, modify our bodies, extend life, but at the same time, find the actual act of it very disturbing?”

Tim Hawkinson

(images via: flying out of this world)

Tiny and delicate, almost diaphanous, this little bird skeleton at first seems remarkable simply because it is so well preserved despite the fragility of bird bones. But those aren’t bones at all – they’re the fingernail clippings of the artist, Tim Hawkinson, carefully arranged into the 2-inch-tall sculpture.

Wieki Somers

(images via: herald sun)

Seemingly carved from concrete, the sculptures of Wieki Somers look weighty and hyper-realistic despite their lack of color. But these everyday objects, placed on beds of what looks like sand, are more organic than they appear – they’re made from human ashes. Somers uses donated remains and a 3D industrial printer to create art that questions our attachment to inanimate objects. “We may offer Grandpa a second life as a useful rocking chair or even as a vacuum cleaner or a toaster,” she told the Herald Sun. “Would we then become more attached to these products?”

Kim Do

(images via: oddity central)

You (probably) don’t mind wearing a sweater made from the wool of a sheep, so why not wear a dress made from human hair? Kim Do of Vietnam created this bizarre masterpiece from 1 million meters of human hair gathered from 54 different people, dyed and sewn together, with lighter brown hair creating the shape of a dragon on the front. It even comes with a matching hat, perched on the model’s head like a matted bouffant.

Huang Xin

(images via: the telegraph)

If a dress made from human hair wasn’t quite strange enough, another artist paid tribute to U.S. President Barack Obama with a sculpture made from – yes – hair. Hairdresser Huang Xin celebrated Obama’s visit to China  by molding a mini hairy Obama sculpture using hot glue and tons of dyed hair.

Kittiwat Unarrom

(images via: inventorspot)

The lone mention on this list that isn’t made from actual human body parts gains a spot merely because the realism of this work is so shocking. Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom has disgusted and intrigued many a passer-by with his “human body parts” on display, butcher-style, hanging from hooks and laid out like choice cuts of meat. The thing is, Unarrom’s works aren’t actually the spoils of a serial killer, or garnered from human donors. They’re actually made from bread, but you would never guess by looking at it – which is why they make such great gag gifts.

Centuries ago, there was very little garbage, but the little bits of this and that buried in the ground are now fascinating visual clues to a life long gone. Trash today is much easier to find – especially in the urban jungle of New York City, where it’s hard to walk ten steps without seeing litter on the ground.

But artist Justin Gignac still sees stories even in the ubiquity, and is out to prove that with some clever package design, Manhattan’s refuse can be art. Gignac sells plastic cubes of trash from the Big Apple for $50 a pop.

“I sell garbage. I scour New York City streets picking up trash. After filling bags with subway passes, Broadway tickets, and other NYC junk, I carefully arrange plastic cubes full of the stuff. Each box is unique and won’t leak or smell. The cubes are then signed, numbered, and dated, making them perfect for anyone who wants their own piece of the NYC landscape,” Gignac told Geekologie.

To some – especially New Yorkers – Gignac’s work seems a bizarre testament to the fact that there’s a buyer for absolutely everything imaginable, no matter how worthless it may seem.  But to those for whom New York City is a far-away, almost mythical modern metropolis, it could be a strange little slice of a life totally unlike their own.

It’s a little bit Andy Warhol, a little bit street-corner-junk-hawker and a whole lot of kitsch, but it’s clearly a hit – over 1,200 NYC Garbage cubes have been sold to buyers in 25 countries. And, after all, perhaps part of what collectors of these strange gems are paying for is a public service: that much less trash on the streets of one of the world’s most magnificent cities.

Dark, strange and rife with symbolism: the Sodom and Gomorrah series by Italian artist Alessandro Bavari is a lot to take in. Bavari, a classically trained artist who has sought to combine painting and photography for many years, created the series exclusively in Adobe Photoshop, considering computers to be “like a brush, palette or darkroom”.

Inspired by Italian and Flemish art of the Renaissance era, the Sodom and Gomorrah series evokes the frightening religious imagery of Hieronymus Bosch. Bavari pairs the digital works with verses from the Bible, including the Epistle of Jude: “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”

“I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matter, objects, landscapes and architecture,” Bavari explains on his website. “Materials that I have accumulated and catalogued of things photographed in museums and on the street, on trips outside Europe and on brief afternoon outings.”

“Materials presented in this imaginary journey, the journey which launched me into the metaphor of these two forbidden and damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of everyday life.”

“I have imagined these two cities as a kind of amusement park for visionaries, where my gaze is neither accusing nor benevolent, but simply amused and curious, open to taking in as much as possible. An enormous freak show designed with kitsch and geometrical rationality, like that of crib, where one can get lost, and scrutinize an intimate daily life as hybrid as it is metaphysical, and then find one’s path, perhaps to get lost again.