The disturbing aesthetic of Chris Cunningham

Sometimes opportunities are presented that are too good to miss, which is why we do today we take advantage of the collaboration between Chris Cunningham and Supreme to tell you who Chris Cunningham is through his works and his poetics.

The British director began his career very early, at 17, in the world of special effects when he left art school to work with Pinewood Studios where at that time he was working on one of the most iconic horror films, Clive Barker's Hellbound: Hellraiser II.

Thanks to this experience he works with David Fincher and is later contacted by Stanley Kubrick for the Artificial Intelligence project but it never sees the light. Until 1995 he works for the 2000 AD Comics for which he realizes a number of the Judge Dred comics, but from there onwards things change radically for the English director. He began his collaboration with the label Warp Records directing the video Come to Daddy by Aphex Twin (headliner at last weekends Club to Club 2018 festival in Turin), receiving several awards also for the work done with Squarepusher and Portishead.

Cunningham's work has explored various forms of expression in addition to music videos, for example his genius has found fertile ground on which to proliferate by creating works of absolute cult status like the spot for Play Station "Mental Wealth" for which he won the D & AD Award - Television & Cinema Advertising Crafts: Special Effects in 2000, for Levi's, Gucci and Telecom Italia starring Leonardo Di Caprio.
He worked with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry and in 2005 he published Rubber Johnny, a sort of mix between a videoclip, video art and a photographic portfolio with the soundtrack of Aphex Twin. An absolute masterpiece unique in its kind, which has been the subject of the artist's collaboration with Supreme released yesterday.

Defining Cunningham's poetics is simple, solid and strong form and thematic continuity. The assembly is synchronous thanks to the technique called Mickey Mousing which consists in synchronizing the actions on the screen with the sound effects and the accompanying music that follows point by point the visible action on the screen. An explorer of the technological society, he analyzes its merits without forgetting the defects but underlining the importance of primordial human emotions.

A visionary director who focuses his research on the contamination between biological and technological, exploring the few biomechanical worlds and its ability to get into the reality of hybridization and contamination, at all levels, makes Chris Cunningham one of the reference directors of our time.

Below a series of iconic works by the British director, good nightmares to all: