Shamus Clisset’s images are not photographs in the traditional sense; they are 3D virtual environments complete with simultaneously terrifying and hilarious characters. Clisset builds hyper-real vignettes, exploring his own obsessions and personal history with an acute sense of the absurd. The artist’s digital character, FakeShamus (aka the “Manifest Destinaut”) “is a sort of imaginary-friend character who lives and explores these alternate realities—a digital golem wreaking havoc on everything around him,” Clisset writes. “He morphs from scene to scene, melding with objects of my own mental obsessions and personal history: the Lamborghini Countach that I drew compulsively as a kid; the nature and suburban landscapes of my upbringing in Colorado; Bazooka subwoofers that I lusted after even before I owned a car to put them in; the aesthetics of beer, guns and violence.” Clisset’s work is currently on view at Galerie Thomas Flor in Berlin and will show at 601 Artspace in New York City beginning November 6, 2013.

Clisset is also a master printer who has printed exhibition images by Joel Sternfeld, Pieter Hugo, Tim Hetherington and others. PDN Subscribers, for his tips on printing, see “Making Exhibition-Quality Prints: Tips from a Master Printer” on PDNOnline.