Like your favorite horror movie, Andrew Au’s work pulls double duty, serving up scares that also illuminate deep-seated cultural anxieties. Working with a variety of digital and analog printmaking techniques, the Cincinnati,OH, artist illustrates a dark, wild ride through the terrifying corridors of his mind.

Horror films have long acted as a vehicle of expression for underlying personal and social fears: paranoia bred out of religious frenzy (The Witch), panic over women’s bodily autonomy (Rosemary’s Baby), and the nonsensical brutality of war (Night of the Living Dead). Andrew picks up where surrealist filmmakers David Lynch and David Cronenberg leave off, creating an insular world for his fearsome creatures to frolic. “Mostly driven by my fears and anxieties, these spaces are a way to put those fears into a safer space of reflection and expression,” he says of his work. 

With its blend of human characteristics, creature features, and mechanical details, Andrew’s work is reminiscent of H.R. Giger’s painstaking biomechanical illustrations. His practice was molded by an early fascination with “science fiction, religion, reading, and art,” as well as his childhood fears. “My work becomes these physical manifestations of anxiety and fear—like residue from another world,” Andrew says. “It makes sense within those worlds, but maybe feels alien from our end of things.”