Giger

The Swiss artist HR Giger (1940-2014) became famous primarily for designing the space monster in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror film Alien (1979), for which he won an Oscar. The Alien is undoubtedly the star of Giger's extensive arsenal of biomechanical creatures, but it is just one of many hybrids of human and machine that Giger populated our nightmares with. These creatures are characterized by their haunting power, terrible beauty, morbidly erotic starkness, and surreal fantasy. Giger created a completely independent visual world and expressed the collective fears of his era: fear of nuclear war, overpopulation, and scarce resources, as well as a future where the survival of our bodies will depend on machines. This volume tells Giger's life story through autobiographical texts and a wealth of excellently eerie illustrations, providing insight into a highly multifaceted body of work. It showcases Giger's sculptures, interiors, drawings, paintings, and album covers, his refined set designs for films like Species, Alien, or Dune, the unique Giger Museum, and the fantastic bar entirely designed by Giger in the small town of Gruyères in French Switzerland. The foreword was written by Giger's friend Timothy Leary.