Chad Davis reviews Mattijn Franssen

Mattijn Franssen is a multidisciplinary artist from the Netherlands.  He works in oil paintings, music, illustrations and photography but is primarily known for his photographic montages of surreal and fantasy enviroments.  A number of his surreal/fantasty photomontages are either illustrations of emotions, such as fear and patience, or a narrative where he and his cat are the main characters in need of traversing a land of imaginary creatures and bizzare locales. 

Unlike most surreal artists, either painters or photographers, he tends to not go down the path of eerie or overly dramatic for the enviroments and the sybolism, but rather more playful and engaging to the viewer.  As if the locations are somewhere that you would want to go and venture to as opposed to shy away.  His superb technique in forming the composites is what really sets apart his fantasy imagery from the majority.  Rarely will you find any faults in a seamless transition from a giant fish, to a castle on a hill. 



The majority of his imagery does hold a narrative that is up for interpretation to the viewer, they do not forcefeed a symbolic idea nor do that fall on the line of being completely nonsensical.  He wants the viewer to find their own stories to go along with imaginary creatures and daydream adventures.  When it comes to the content of the characters many seem to show up many times, for example his cat and himself, it is almost impossible to not want to create some type of correlation between each image as if they are all relative to a journey or experience without an end.