The third Bizzarro Bazar Contest has ended, and once again the contributions have been many, original and completely extravagant!

Without further ado, let’s scroll through the special mentions right up to the winning works, which I really struggled to select given the overall quality of the works. Let’s go!

Let’s start with La marci who, inspired by my article on the flea circus, built one for herself.

(La marci: Instagram)

Sambuco bursts in with a bit of healthy rock’n’roll, by customizing an electric guitar. Gabba gabba hey!

(Sambuco: Instagram)

Paraphrasing Forrest Gump we could say: “Bizzarro Bazar is like a can of tuna: you never know what you’re gonna get.”
Lapeggiocosa finds it out the hard way:

(Lapeggiocosa: Instagram)

C.G. decided to depict an idyllic family scene: there is the branded umbrella, there’s me taking a bath, there is a VERY undressed young lady sunbathing, and a little boy who scurries off his jar of formalin . (The only euphemistic detail is those unlikely body-builder shoulders, as the only gymnastics I ever do is move books from shelf to table and back.)

Gloria Ramones De Lazzari alias Glokyramone, taking inspiration from the macrocephalous skull of my logo, imagined what kind of child he would have become if he had survived and grown healthy: “his notable defect would not have stopped him in the least from becoming a classic late-1800s/early-1900s little brat.”

(Glokyramone: Instagram)

Flavio Masiero told me that he had little time to work on his submission, because he had to leave for a trip — and what do you do when you have little time?
Of course, you make a collage on an authentic coffin lid!

(Flavio Masieroo: Instagram)

Chiara Scarpitta, known online as Kiria Eternalove, has written a delightful story inspired by the Punished Suicide, accompanying it with a drawing.
I find it moving that after more than a century and a half the story of this anonymous girl still touches many people deeply; you can read The girl with the sand-colored hair (in Italian) by clicking here.

(Kiria Eternalove: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube)

Milla, tattoo artist, created this poetic psychedelic brain.
I don’t know if the subtext is “Yeah, man, Bizzarro Bazar is, far out, like, you know, a fantastic trip, bro“, or “Bizzarro Bazar can cause severe mycosis“. But in both cases, it’s stuff that needed to be said.

(Milla: Instagram)

The contribution of Greta Fantini, both sensual and a little gory, has appeared censored on social media. Here I can finally show it to you in all its explosive… mammary charge.

(Greta Fantini: Facebook, Instagram)

Andrè El Ragno Santapaola, wundermaker and winner of the last contest with his “Bizzarroscope”, made a short stop-motion animation: this is what happens in a wunderkammer when everyone is asleep!

(Elragno’s Weird Stuff World: Facebook, Instagram)

The gifted painter and illustrator Chiara Olmi Rol gives us two beautiful and melancholic Siamese twins:

(Chiara Olmi Rol: Facebook, Instagram)

Conjoined twins, this time thoracopagus, are also the protagonists of this beautiful floral artwork by Pamela Annunziata:

(Pamela Annunziata: Instagram)

Emanuela Sommi, with a fantastic and refined collage, invites us to take flight on a bizarre hot air balloon towards unexplored shores.
Even though, to be honest, I would be a little hesitant to get on board, given the gorgonic hair and that not-so-friendly hyena.

(Emanuela Sommii: Facebook)

Chiara Toniolo decreed that mine is “a mind that must be preserved“, and so she literally put it under glass. She even included in her beautiful painting my cat, Barnum — who, as usual, seems completely untroubled. Bloody ungrateful little rascal.

(Chiara Toniolo: Facebook, Instagram)

Here is a classy mini title sequence for the blog, by Contu!

(Contu: Instagram)

The illustrator Matteo Moscarelli portrays me as some kind of creepy Cryptkeeper, inside a studio-wunderkammer that is a delight for the eyes.

(Matteo Moscarelli: Facebook, Instagram)

WINNERS

3rd Prize

And we got to the winners!

The third prize goes to Gaberricci. At first glance his work, a reinterpretation of a famous Banksy stencil, may seem simpler than many others. But the idea behind it is very powerful, and I’d like to quote the words with which the author presented it to me:

I make no claim of having created anything particularly “wonderful”, and indeed my homage to such an iconic work might seem a bit cheesy. But I wanted to create something more “conceptual” which, moreover, signals a continuity that seems clear to me between you and Banksy: you both explore the territory of the uncanny, in order to suggest how much the imposition of a ” normality” is an overbearing and deeply reactionary act. If it’s quite simple to recognize this revolutionary nature in the work of the artist from Bristol, I believe that it goes more “unnoticed” in your extraordinary work of exploration and popularization, which goes well beyond the mere “Here are some extreme curiosities”. It is this aspect of what you do (and for which I thank you) that I have tried to highlight with this simple image: a guerrilla, as the writing says, conducted by throwing wonders in our face. Which is something we need.

This comparison with Banksy is way too generous, but the resistance against the flattening power of the Norm is a theme I care a lot about, and I am happy that someone emphasized it so explicitly.

(Gaberricci’s blog, in Italian, is Suprasaturalanx)

2nd Prize

For Umberto Eco, wunderkammern are essentially “visual lists”, encyclopedic inventories of wonder.
Elena Simoni (a.k.a. psychonoir) has also assembled in her work some sort of compendium of many of the topics I covered on this blog: martyrs, relics, Victorian hairworks, cannibal forks, tsantsas, taxidermies, monstrous dildos, and much more.
Just like a real cabinet of wonders, which is often pervaded by a certain horror vacui, her drawing is overflowing with detail, so much so that the gaze gets lost in it. Yet the graceful female figure and the delicate trait make the atmosphere welcoming: an invitation to always follow one’s curiosity, however eccentric, and to let oneself sink into wonder.

(Elena Simoni Psychonoir: Facebook, Instagram)

1stPrize

Diletta De Santis wrote to me:

Bizzarro Bazar has always been a source of great inspiration for me, so much so that just last year I founded my own company that has the ambition to become a Wunderkammer of sorts.
I was keen to make my tribute to your work, and I wondered what would happen if you, Ivan Cenzi, were one of the top pieces of a Wunderkammer.
So I combined my master’s degree in digital arts and my (former) job as a restorer to turn you into a wonderful reliquary, one I would definitely buy if only it existed!

The result of her effort — a mixture of painting and photographic processing — is nothing short of spectacular, thus earning the first prize: from now on, call me Saint Bizzarro!

(Diletta De Santis, Mundi Wunderkammer: Facebook, Instagram)

If you liked some work in particular, be sure to show your appreciation to the authors in the comment section.
In the coming weeks I will also post these beautiful works on social networks.
Thanks again to all the participants, you have brightened my days; I hope you enjoyed it too!