Strange Fascinations
Serena Simpson / Thomas Arthur Schaefer
September 4th - October 6th, 2023
Strange Fascinations is a two-artist exhibition featuring Serena Simpson and Thomas Arthur Schaefer, presented by The Artifice in Atlanta, GA.
Through taxidermy, assemblage, found objects, traditional craft, and constructed artifacts, Simpson and Schaefer explore the peculiar things people invest with meaning.
Simpson transforms animals and domestic materials into uncanny characters suspended between humor, nostalgia, and mortality, while Schaefer draws from secret societies, occult traditions, cults, consumer culture, celebrity, and ritual. Together, their works examine our attraction to objects, symbols, and belief systems that make the ordinary feel mysterious—and the strange somehow familiar.
Serena Simpson / Thomas Arthur Schaefer
Strange Fascinations brings together the work of Serena Simpson and Thomas Arthur Schaefer, two artists drawn to the objects, beliefs, rituals, and cultural artifacts through which people construct meaning.
Simpson's work occupies an uncanny space between tenderness and unease. Through taxidermy, vintage dolls, needlework, stained glass, handcrafted clothing, mechanical movement, and found materials, she transforms familiar forms into strange new characters. Animals assume human roles. Domestic objects become theatrical. Traditional craft practices collide with death, preservation, humor, and nostalgia. The resulting works can be charming and unsettling at once—objects that seem to possess histories, personalities, and private lives of their own.
Schaefer approaches fascination through systems of belief. His assemblages and constructed objects draw from occult traditions, secret societies, Freemasonry, Thelema and the O.T.O., alternative religions, cults, conspiracy, celebrity worship, consumer culture, science, and technology. Historical figures and organizations coexist with handbags, sneakers, household products, rockets, pharmaceuticals, and discarded objects. Symbols migrate between the sacred and commercial, suggesting that ritual, devotion, branding, ideology, and desire may not be as distant from one another as they first appear.
Throughout both practices, ordinary things become charged through transformation. A preserved animal becomes a character. A pair of shoes becomes an artifact. A household object becomes a reliquary. Symbols become systems. Consumer products become ritual objects. Humor exists beside mortality; nostalgia beside anxiety; absurdity beside sincere belief.
Strange Fascinations considers the human desire to imbue things with significance—and our attraction to objects and ideas that promise access to something beyond the ordinary. Whether through religion, consumption, superstition, memory, celebrity, craft, or play, we continually create structures that help make the inexplicable feel tangible.
The exhibition does not attempt to resolve these fascinations. Instead, Simpson and Schaefer invite us to linger with them: the beautiful, ridiculous, disturbing, mysterious, sentimental, and sometimes inexplicable things we cannot quite stop looking at.
GAH
Taxidermy, bone, vintage porcelain doll, and custom sewn clothing with metal base stand
17 x 10 x 10 in / 43.2 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm
$800
Pick Me
Taxidermy and ribbon on wood mount
3 x 3 x 3 in / 7.6 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm
$100
Rough Night For Alice
Taxidermy, custom sewn clothing, vintage porcelain doll, animal teeth, string, and stained glass in custom wood box
15 x 15 x 6 in / 38.1 x 38.1 x 15.2 cm
$1000
Dissociative
Needlepoint in vintage frame
9 x 7.5 in / 22.9 x 19.1cm
$40
Kings Blood
Needlepoint in vintage frame
10 x 8.5 in / 25.4 x 21.6 cm
$40
They All Have Scars
Needlepoint in vintage frame
12 x 6 in / 30.5 x 15.2 cm
$45
Ruedi
Needlepoint in vintage frame
11 x 9 in / 27.9 x 22.9 cm
$45
The Melvins
Needlepoint in vintage frame
11 x 9 in / 27.9 x 22.9 cm
$40
Childs Play
Needlepoint, taxidermy and needle in vintage frame
19 x 14 in / 48.3 x 35.6 cm
$300
It’s Not Stronger Then You
Taxidermy and custom sewn clothing w/ vibration based animatronics
17 x 11 x 11 in / 43.2 x 27.9 x 27.9 cm
$650
Metal Petals Bloom
Taxidermy and stained glass
20 x 6 x 6 in / 50.8 x 15.2 x 15.2 cm
$650
Oh Dear, Oh Dear
Taxidermy w/ wind up animatronics and music box
12 x 10 x 9 in / 30.5 x 25.4 x 22.9 cm
$850
Let Alone To Rust Alone
Taxidermy w/ wind up music box (Can’t Take My Eyes Off You)
9 x 9 x 11 in / 22.9 x 22.9 x 27.9 cm
$700
Let the Salt of the Earth Admonish the Water To Bear the Virtue of the Great Sea
37 x 28 x 4 in / 94 x 71.1 x 10.2 cm
$5000
As Above, So Below - 10 Bullets / Paradox Bullets (Marsyard Shoe 2.0)
16 x 14.5 x 10 in / 40.6 x 36.8 x 25.4 cm
$4000
As Above, So Below - Away Team / Home Team (Decades Redux)
16 x 14.5 x 10 in / 40.6 x 36.8 x 25.4 cm
$1500
The Project MKUltra Handbag
16 x 13 x 6 in / 40.6 x 33 x 15.2 cm
$2000
The Cult of Celebrity Worship (Juliette Lake Lewis)
Acrylic, iridescent acrylic, ink, and tissue paper on panel with construction barrier wood
24 x 8 x 2 in / 61 x 20.3 x 5.1 cm
$500
The Cult of Celebrity Worship (Jared Joseph Leto)
Acrylic, iridescent acrylic, ink, and tissue paper on panel with construction barrier wood
24 x 8 x 2 in / 61 x 20.3 x 5.1 cm
$500
The Cult of Celebrity Worship (Shia Saide LaBeouf)
Acrylic, iridescent acrylic, ink, and tissue paper on panel with construction barrier wood
24 x 8 x 2 in / 61 x 20.3 x 5.1 cm
$500
The Cult of Celebrity Worship (Megan Denise Fox)
Acrylic, iridescent acrylic, ink, and tissue paper on panel with construction barrier wood
24 x 8 x 2 in / 61 x 20.3 x 5.1 cm
$500
Dominus Obsequious Sororium
10 x 10 x 10 in / 25.4 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm
$500
You Are What You Eat (MON-87427-7)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-80200-7)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-89034-3)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-88017-3)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-00603-6)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-00810-6)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
You Are What You Eat (MON-00021-9)
Vintage salt and pepper shakers with frosted mirror in custom box frame
6.5 x 6.5 x 4 in / 16.5 x 16.5 x 10.2 cm
$200
Bohemian Black Eye
25 x 9 x 8 in / 63.5 x 22.9 x20.3 cm
$2000
Membership Into the Kingdom of Heaven
54 x 25 x 5 in / 137.2 x 63.5 x 12.7 cm
$5000
I’ve Tried My Best To Give You A Good Life
10 x 10 x 10 in / 25.4 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm
$500
Kundalini Rising
44.5 x 28 x 8 / 113 x 71.1 x 20.3 cm
$5000
Mystery of Mystery, In Her Name Babalon
48 x 33.5 x 20 in / 121.9 x 85.1 x 50.8 cm
$6000