Is this really art?

It's bizarre, weird and most times, abstract to the extreme.

Modern art can be anything, ranging from works featuring traffic cones or a work resembling a huge beehive hanging from the ceiling.

Some artists, like Argentine painter Leandro Granato, have made a huge splash in the art world through a new painting technique, where he snorts paint up through his nose cavity and squirts it out from his eyes onto a canvas.

At the Frieze Art Fair, now on in London's Regent Park (it ended yesterday), similar artworks have been described as "cutting-edge contemporary works", Reuters reported.

At the Stephen Friedman gallery, one of the galleries in the fair, US artist Jennifer Rubell's "Portrait of the Artist" is a giant white fibreglass sculpture made of the artist when she was eight months pregnant, and which allows people to crawl into its open womb.

Nearby, four people draped in black crepe sit on a small black dais for the living sculpture "Four in a Dress". If these are not abstract enough, Granato's unique painting style will definitely be among the most abstract ones.

Weeps out colours

Proving to have a real eye for art, the Buenos Aires-based painter literally brings himself to tears as he weeps out watercolours for his paintings that attract eye-watering price tags of thousands of dollars in art markets, Sky New Australia reported.

"The technique consists of introducing the paint through the nose cavity, through the nose and putting pressure to expel it and induce the tear. I can create a stream of short or long tears to paint," he explained.

He said he discovered the painting technique shortly after his grandfather died and opened up his own studio when he was 20 due to growing demand for his unique eye painting.

Each of the unique works of art are accompanied by a video that captures Granato's tearful artistic process, with each painting taking 15 minutes to a month to complete and using about 800ml of watercolour paint.

Sometimes, even empty houses can become works of art, as one in Kent, England, has become. It looks as if the facade of the derelict building has slipped into the front garden, The Mirror reported.

But it is just a work of art entitled "From The Knees Of My Nose To The Belly Of My Toes".

The work, which cost £100,000 (S$200,300), is the brainchild of artist Alex Chinneck, 28.

He started the project in August and completed it last month.

The exhibit will be on display for the next 12 months, after which the four-storey property will be brought back into use.

The mid-19th century house had been empty for 11 years before Chinneck stepped in.

Last year, he installed more than 1,200 pieces of glass across the facade of a factory in Hackney to create the illusion that its 312 windows had been identically smashed and cracked.

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