A Gallery of Grotesqueries: A Visaul-Literary Cabinet of Bad Manners, Black Metal, and Sundry Monstrosities (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781909606654)

Plague towns, alien archaeology, runaway GM crops, fanatical dieters, corrupt property developers, insolent fare dodgers, pampered revolutionaries, Black Metal misanthropes, bureaucratic nightmares, and post-nuclear ruins where only insects remain-herein is a thirty-year archive of grotesque imagination, collecting book covers, album covers, satirical illustrations, mixed-media monstrosities, and automatic drawings.

But this is not a polite collection of images with dutiful information about commission briefs, techniques, influences, and artist's statements. All that has been thrown out the window, replaced by literary vignettes that bounce off the images and proceed into modern derangement, social insanity, and terminal catastrophes.

Along the way we encounter fraudulent autobiographies, sub-atomic record labels, lost originals, jailed clients, tainted geniuses, obscure subcultural histories, and matter unsuited to establishment circles.

Known for cover artwork for bands including Troll, Tormentor, Dimmu Borgir, Ancient, Perkele, and others, Kurtagic's work has been exhibited in Caracas, London, Madrid, and Paris; featured by Creative Review; and included in Neil Aldis and James Sherry's Heavy Metal Thunder: Album Covers that Rocked the World. His work is subjectively beautiful, often funny, frequently bleak, and prone to going too far. Those who are sensitive, empathetic, and aim to be good people had best avoid.