Paul Chiappe

Old photos? Cool. Hyper-real drawings of old photos? Cooler. Miniaturist hyper-real drawings of old photos depicting Victorian children in animal masks and Laurel and Hardy’s fictitious school portrait? Coolest. Paul Chiappe creates these tiny graphite masterpieces in microscopic detail, concealing bizarre characters within unremarkable surroundings. Peering through a magnifying glass at these images conjures the voyeuristic illusion of glimpsing a surreal secret history in which Humpty Dumpty was a real egg-headed child and Adolf Hitler had his trademark ’tache before he even reached puberty.