April 30, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Evol: Repeat Offender

Berlin-based artist Evol – known best for his street art interventions of scale models of abandoned and decaying buildings left on electrical boxes and cement blocks in cities around the world – currently has his first solo show in the United States at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in Chelsea. Repeat Offender, as the exhibition is titled, is a collection of Evol’s recent work of multi-layered stencil paintings on used and flattened cardboard boxes, as well as other paintings on scrap metal. These works continue to convey general urban decay and, more specifically, the walls and façades of pre-gentrified East Berlin. Incredibly realistic (I thought they were photo-silkscreened), these spray-painted pieces work beautifully on their chosen canvases. The combination of the painted façades with the type, tape, and icons on the original boxes gives them a wonderful texture. Though they photograph well, seeing these in person, as with most art, adds another dimension.

Repeat Offender will be at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery through this Saturday, May 5th.

You can watch a video of Evol’s process here.

Photos courtesy Jonathan LeVine Gallery.

April 30, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Henrique Oliveira: Labyrinthine Installations

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Brazilian artist Henrique Oliveira, based in São Paulo, started as a traditional painter, but after some time he started experimenting with scraps of wood found in his father’s woodworking shop as well as on the streets. In many ways his installations are seen as his own unique style of painting. With these splintered scraps of wood as his pictorial material, Oliveira evolved from a painter and sculptor to simply an artist.

His large-scale, labyrinth-like installations burst through walls and façades in a sculptural, painterly, and collagey way. Inside, these works resemble the interiors of caves and, in some ways, the inside of the human body as entered through a vaginal-like entrance. The gigantic and jammed quality of these ‘paintings’ sprawl out of exhibition spaces and buildings in a beastial and amazing manner.

Oliveira’s most recent exhibit just closed yesterday at the Offenes Kulturhaus in Linz, Austria, but coming up in July he will be having another show in Galeria Millan in São Paulo.

via ok-centrum

April 27, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Design-y Sushi: Lasercut Nori

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This has been posted all over the place, but I just love it so, here it is! The Umino Seaweed Shop commissioned creative agency I&S BBDO, who developed this laser-cut nori, to respark the sale of nori. This could do the trick. Design Nori is intricately patterned laser-cut seaweed for sushi rolls. Such a simple idea and yet so brilliant! Not that sushi needed much prettying-up, but it certainly does add a little more pizazz to the already appealing rolls.

The lasercut seaweed designs are on exhibit at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo as part of the Katagami Style show on view through May 27, 2012.

via swissmiss and designboom

April 27, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Liu Wei: Cityscape Installations

Chinese artist Liu Wei is a man to watch in the new Chinese art scene. He creates installations, paintings and videos oscillating between order and disorder. His installations/cityscape sculptures are at times sprawling and depict cities in a state of metamorphosis, something he can relate to in the development of his native city, Beijing.

Presently, Liu Wei has his first solo exhibit, Foreign, at the Almine Rech Gallery in Paris. The installations in this exhibit are, once again, cityscapes made from stacks of schoolbooks, held together by steel rods and wood clamps. These are unidentifiable skylines, including a range of iconic buildings from the Pentagon to Saint Peter’s Basilica.

His hanging installation above, is titled Don’t Touch and was exhibited at the Farschou Foundation in Beijing last year. That work is made of oxhide, wood, and metal. His earlier work Love It! Bite It! was made of edible dog chews.

Liu Wei’s exhibit at Almine Rech Gallery will be on view through May 16, 2012.

via saatchi gallery

April 26, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Boa Mistura: Order is Intangible

The Spanish art collective Boa Mistura (previously here) composed of five self-proclaimed ‘graffiti rockers’ created this cool anamorphic typography installation for the interior design fair Interiorissimo Decoracción 2011. Inspired by the poem “Order is” by Louis I. Khan, the words “El Orden es Intangible” (Order is intangible) were painted on an abstract furniture composition that is only legible from one specific angle. This sort of thing always blows my mind.

April 26, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Scott Lynch: Fun NYC Photos

Dos Toros

The Magical Floating Hat of 23rd Street

Chelsea Gallery Goer: Do Ho Suh, Home Within Home

Elizabeth Street

Trader Joe’s

Baked by Melissa

Awed by art, at the MoMA

La Dolce Vita

Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds at Mary Boone

Click to enlarge photos; click captions to go to photo on flickr photostream

Scott Lynch – best friend and beau – (aka Scoboco) has snapped photos for years, mostly of his daughters and, well, of me, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that he took photography on with a vengeance. Today he’s got almost 5,000 photos in his flickr photostream (and there are probably another 5,000 that didn’t make the cut!) His primary subject? New York City. He’s covered Occupy Wall Street from the beginning, compiling an impressive collection of OWS photos with rarely a day missed. His love of street art is also evident in his NYC Graffiti and Street Art photography set. And then there are his photos of art exhibits. But, for me, where Scott truly stands out is in his ability to see and capture the humor (and/or poignancy) in everyday New York City street scenes. These are my absolute favorites. And, though not necessarily evident in the photos I’ve selected, much of the time his captions are as clever and humorous as the photos themselves. In some cases they even make the photo (see Awed by art at the MoMA above).

The photos here are definitely in my top 20 but, as you can imagine, with 5,000 to peruse, it’s hard to narrow down to a handful. So, take a look for yourselves at Scoboco’s photostream, and you might want to wish him a happy birthday while you’re at it.

April 25, 2012 by collabcubed - 4 Comments

cartonLAB: Cardboard Furniture and more

Just when you think they couldn’t possibly come up with more cardboard objects and designs, the fine folks at the Spanish studio cartonLAB (previously here), come out with a whole bunch of clever and innovative designs. All made from cardboard and flatpacked for easy shipping and transport. From their lovely lamps to their recent collaboration with Ecological Drive – a green company that recycles tires – where cartonLAB incorporated recycled tires as cushions for the company’s benches and displays.

But it doesn’t stop there. They’ve got uniquely designed chairs, bookcases, headboards and much more; all fun, sustainable, and stylish.

Check out the entire collection at their website, or download a pdf of their new catalogue on the upper left corner of their home page, to see the very reasonable prices. Can you tell I’m a fan?

April 25, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Robert Currie: Videotape Installations

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English artist Robert Currie creates large scale installations using unspooled videotape transforming spaces into dramatic physical and optical experiences. Many of his works are actually titled by the length of the videotape, which I find sort of fun, such as 2 Days, 1 Hour, 59 Minutes and 47 Seconds.

Also interesting are his sculptures made of layers of black nylon monofilament creating both abstract three-dimensional structures as well as image-based ones that appear photographic.

You can see more of his installations here and sculptures here.

April 24, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Roman Tyc: Semafory

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Czech artist Roman Tyc (née David Hons), member of the guerilla art group Ztohoven, replaced 48 traffic lights in Prague by amending the standard red and green figures to show them in situations such as drinking, urinating and being hanged, as well as more benign ones such as a man walking his dog. The act was embraced by the public as great fun (as well as awarded top prize at Austria’s Sidewalk Cinema Festival in Vienna that year) but, naturally, not so much by the authorities. Tyc had to pay for repairs in addition to a large fine. Tyc paid for the repairs but, refusing to pay the fine, was sentenced to 30 days in prison this past February. In protest, his supporters signed petitions and ‘decapitated’ – by blacking out the heads – traffic light figures throughout the Czech Republic. Despite their efforts, Roman Tyc served the 30 days and was released in March.

Here’s a video of the installation:

via gestalten

April 24, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

A Building in the Hand…

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Awhile back I came across a student project for a redesign of the Casino VLC in Valencia Spain, by interior design student Vicente Ortuño at Escuela de diseño Barreira. The design features a large sculpture of a hand wrapping around the building as if grabbing it. Ortuño’s design is meant to break with the traditional Roman architecture approach to casino design. He opted for a surrealist vision, with a dreamlike quality in a place where people hope for dreams of winning and wealth to come true. The hand was specifically chosen for its presence in such game-playing phrases as “a good hand” or “sleight of hand” as well as for its strength, not to mention making a clear indicator as the main entrance.

Shortly after, I came across a case study for a house in Los Angeles by Greek architect Andreas Angelidakis who maintains an experimental practice in Athens which involves “building, designing and speculating the contemporary ecosystem of screens and landscapes. He usually operates at the intersection of systems: Art and Architecture, Virtual and Real, Building and Nature, Ruin and Construction.” Angelidakis’ design for the Hollywood Hand House has an involved story behind it. Basically, a concrete hand of a giant girl punches through a mountain off Wetona Drive from the direction of the Hollywood sign. After the anger subsides the hand comes out of a reservoir water basin and elegantly holds a glass box building on a serving tray, perched over the cliff like a billboard. The punched-out cave and glass house are connected via the reservoir which is converted to a swimming pool…it’s quite a fictionalized and surreal story which you can continue to read about on Angelidakis’ blog.

Obviously, they seemed like natural projects to group together…you know, with the giant hands and all. Both projects have a creepy quality, but then, I think that’s what each designer was going for.

Images courtesy of the architects.

via Di* and PINUP

April 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Anthony McCall: 5 Minutes of Pure Sculpture

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New York based artist Anthony McCall has been creating unique light installations since the 1970s with a 20-year break in between. Currently, McCall has a solo exhibit in Berlin at the Hamburger Bahnhof, titled Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture – his largest to date – showing light installations created since 2003. His works are a combination of film, sculpture and drawing, though his more recent works are digital with complex forms created with the aid of computers. These light sculptures are ephemeral, yet seem tangible and physical. The projected beams of light — some vertical to the floor, others horizontal onto the walls — engulf the viewer in the slow-moving cones while animated lines, drawn in black and white, are projected into a haze-filled room, creating the sculptural forms.

The choice of space sounds and looks perfect, too; the spacious former railway station has been converted into a black box filled with haze and light. I vote for this coming back to NYC at the Park Avenue Armory!

Five Minutes of Pure Sculpture will be on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof through August 12, 2012.

Photos: Markus Schreiber (AP); David Levene (the Guardian); Hugo Glendinning; luyu2’s flickr; College des Bernardins’ flickr; Sean Gallup, Getty Images; AnatR’s flickr, and courtesy of the artist.

April 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Alison Knowles: Make a Salad (Follow-up)

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Tempted to skip it due to the rainy-day wetness, at the last minute I bussed on over to the High Line for the special Earth Day Make A Salad event with fluxus artist Alison Knowles (see previous post). I arrived in time to witness the chopping (though not exactly to the beat of the music) by the crew who ranged in age from around nine to upwards of sixty. The covered, two-tiered Chelsea Market Passage was the perfect spot, both for avoiding the rain and the required dramatic height for pouring the salad contents onto the mixing tarp. The reasonably large crowd (I’d say over a hundred people attended) gathered around the tarp, some vigorously shaking and tossing the lettuce, celery, carrots, mushroom, radishes and onions, while Ms. Knowles added a couple of pitchers of dressing and the rest of the crowd cheered them on. Knowles came down to put the final raking touches and the salad was then shoveled into large salad bowls by Jessica Higgins and served up by the young High Line staffers.

It was a fun event, with lovely music “DJ’ed” by Joshua Selman with his lettuce covered guitar and nori shredder around his neck. How was the salad? Very tasty, though I personally would have preferred it onion-free. Good ol’ NYC fun.

April 20, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

One Chair a Week

This is the kind of course my daughter Daniela would really enjoy. Associate Professor and architect Nicolai de Gier, along with Deane Simpson and Jesper Pagh taught a chair design course at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Architecture School. Noting that usually students spend much of course time on sketching and making small-scale models of their chairs, not allowing time to confront the limitations and challenges of the actual building at a 1 to 1 scale, de Gier decided to have his students design and build one chair – one to one – once a week. Each week a new material was assigned so that students would have new experiences and challenges. The emphasis was on quality of concept more than final finish of the chair. The result? You be the judge. The students made 78 chairs in 6 different workshops. I’d say impressive, with some very unique designs, for sure.

You can see the rest of the chairs here, and you can see an unrelated but also interesting project, 100 Chairs in 100 Days, using discarded chairs in London, (via@mrfidalgo) here.

via DDC

April 20, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

GAUD12: Pratt Institute Exhibit

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For their Graduate Architecture & Urban Design Student Exhibition, the students at Pratt Institute, under the tutelage of their professors Michael Szivos and Carrie McKnelly of SOFTlab (previously here), created this series of suspended tubular tunnels made up of over 2,400 lasercut cardboard triangles interconnected with 6,000 thin plywood clips, taking over the Robert H. Siegel Gallery. The walls of the gallery are papered with five years worth of student work which can be seen through the portals created by the cardboard installation, which are also used to display models by the students.

You can see the installation in progress in the time lapse video below.

via designboom

April 19, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Architect’s Eye: Speech Tchoban & Kuznetsov

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As part of this year’s Interni Legacy event at the Università Statale in Milan, in conjunction with Milan Design Week, Sergei Tschoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, partners of the Moscow based architecture studio SPEECH Tchoban & Kuznetsov, have designed a high-tech sculpture titled The Architect’s Eye. A stainless steel sphere, completely smooth and reflecting, features an LED system to create the image of a huge human eyeball that rotates to look to the sky as well as at visitors and the ground. The iris changes color and the pupil increases and decreases in size. Very cool.

The theme of Interni Magazine’s event is ‘legacy’ and SPEECH’s sculpture dutifully works that in by including images and video of abandoned monuments of the Russian avant-garde, commenting on the importance of preserving our history and cultural legacy.

April 19, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Vitamins Design: Out of the Box for Samsung

This is so clever. London based design and invention studio, Vitamins, works “in the spaces between science, technology, business and wonder.” They came up with this Out of the Box manual for Samsung after working with users of all ages across Europe and analyzing the difficulties that some people have in learning to use their new cell phone, especially older people. Instead of creating a special phone, they came up with a different approach: a user-friendly way to learn how to use the handset. Instead of the usual complicated manuals they offer a set of books that can live on a bookshelf and actually contain the phone. Each page reveals the elements in their correct order, from sim card, to battery, to the case, and the second volume allows the phone to slide into a slot with arrows pointing to exact locations that the user should press.

The video above demonstrates the Out of the Box experience which has won an Interaction Award 2012 for Best Concept and was exhibited in the MoMA’s Talk to Me exhibit last fall.

Thanks to Daniela and Natan!

April 18, 2012 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Simone Decker: Chewing in Venice 1 + 2

These photos are a lot of fun. Luxembourger artist Simone Decker created them in 1999, but I just happened upon them for the first time now. Decker is interested in perspective shifts and often explores the way public space is arranged. Much of her work appropriates said space as in her photographic series shown above: Chewing in Venice 1 + 2. Using photographic trompe l’oeil devices, Decker includes the streets and squares of Venice as the backdrop for her oversized gum sculptures; a proposal for sculptural work, or at least that’s the way I understand it.

From an article translated on her website:
All of these works consist of photographs, mostly series of photographs, that propose sculptures or architectural elements for the public domain. They are documentations of real outside installations of these objects. But it is only the perspective of the camera that lends the works a visual presence and a dimension that puts them in the relationship to the urban or architectural environment desired by the artist. In Chewing in Venice, for example, the chewing-gum objects only become sculptures that fill squares and lanes by virtue of the fact that they are photographed right in front of the lens.

Those big bubbles remind me a bit of the RedBall Project. I think the realization of these sculptures would be a huge hit.

via chiquero

April 18, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

David Shillinglaw: Street and Studio Art

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London based artist David Shillinglaw’s (aka Dodie Boy) work is new to me, at least by name, but by the number of street art blogs that came up when googling, I have a feeling I may be in the minority. Either way, I really love it. Shillinglaw’s work moves between street and studio, usually working on multiple projects at once…no time for boredom! His bold, colorful, type-infused illustrations convey the ups and downs of life, often including humorous idioms and metaphors.