In addition to his exceptional technical skills, one of Giger’s greatest strengths was his ability to envisage the drama of everyday post-human life, with overwhelming, ubiquitous organic matter contaminating urban scenes even when they are supposed to take centre stage for themselves in an image. The acrylic New York paintings are a clear example of this. The artist from Chur likened minute electronic circuits, biomechanical pathways and independently operating systems to the straight, rigid and fixed shapes of New York skyscrapers, the constantly jostling, sharp corners of the American skyline, and tussling metropolitan apartments, cubicles and residential complexes. From the microscopic to the gargantuan, from the underground bristling with multicultural life to the neo-Gothic splendour of megalopolises forgotten among the haze of faded fortunes, as in his Biomechanical Landscapes Giger once again showed that he was the master of mixing biology and technology, landscapes and characters.
