Daniel Goffin for Color Ink Book

I was glad to get a missive from Daniel Goffin concerning his latest work. Goffin’s illustrations are something I find refreshingly unique: they’re grotesque, but not gross. They’re anatomical, but not clinical. They’re sci-fi, but not irritating.

Recently, he made a new body of work for Color Ink Book, my favorite contemporary art coloring zine. Goffin’s outlines can be found under Skinner and Rob Reger’s covers in the all-horror edition Color Ink Book #13 ($10). He describes the new creatures as “Conglomerations of crystals, cables, tubes, fungal infections, blisters, puss and everything that’s ugly.” The work is inspired by old medical illustrations and journals: books such as Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur and Human Monstrosities by Hirst and Barton Cooke. In Goffin’s words:

These inspirations fell on fertile ground as I was rethinking my earlier ideas of the “Netzwerk” universe where humans can redesign their bodies and surrounding environment in any way imaginable. In my mind all these freaks of nature are a result of fungal infections combined with a kind of digital corruption that affects all living and synthetical matter. This fungus feeds on available information in its surroundings and recombines it with the existing material… Like trying to fit together jigsaw puzzle pieces that do not belong together.

You can preview his complete collection, which is kind of like an Oddities Zodiac, on Flickr. Check out a few of my favorites below, then order your copy of Color Ink Book and choose your own horrific hues!