"Like his Surrealist forebear René Magritte, Basil Pao began his artistic career as a graphic designer, creating album and book covers and Monty Python posters in 1970s New York. In the decades since, he’s harnessed his multimedia talents into a solo oeuvre of visually and conceptually surprising photographs and collages: of people, animals, historical sites and landscapes around the world."

The New York Times

"Pao frames his 'Carnival of Dreams' as an escape, a representation of a 'collective unconscious.' However, the style of images that he pulls from are very much grounded in real life. Whether intentional or not, Carnival of Dreams becomes commentary on the language of mainstream travel documentation, and how what is 'foreign' is often made to stand in for what is outlandish, strange, and dreamlike. While the photomontages are visually stimulating and trace a formidable career deeply rooted in global events and spaces and art historical inspirations, the commentary they offer feels light and almost as substanceless as the clouded world that the acrobat traverses on the book’s cover." 

International Examiner