March 26, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Life

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Choi Jeong Hwa, who the LA Times called “the internationally recognized leader of Korea’s Pop Art movement” had a few works included last month as part of the Perth International Arts Festival in Australia. Typically using synthetic materials in oversized installations, it’s not surprising that Air/Air, two pyramids in the Stirling Gardens, was made up of over 15,000 molded plastic shopping baskets, one pyramid in pink, the other bright green.

His installation in the Gallery Central, Life/Life, consisted of 15,000 squiggly balloons creating an explosion of synthetic color for people to walk through and interact with, giving the sense that synthetic materials are taking over the world.

You can see much more of Choi Jeong Hwa’s work on his website, including his giant motorized red lotus sculpture Breathing Flower, also at the Perth International Arts Festival.

Photos courtesy of the artist and coweena’s flickr

via coweena’s flickr

March 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Freude auf Morgen: Chezweitz & Roseapple

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Last month in Freiburg, Germany, in commemoration of 111 years of electrical engineering at Alexander Bürkle, a technological company, a room was turned into an art installation combining video, paint, and beams of light creating a surreal and futuristic interactive environment. The installation by Chezweitz & Roseapple in collaboration with kubix and Stefan Hurtig was titled Freude auf Morgen and invited visitors to walk through the red fluorescent tunnels of light and ponder time and technology. Cool.

via luminous mushroom

March 22, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

The Simpsons in Stained Glass…OK, Plastic

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Here is more from the Recycle Group (previously here): these stained glass windows made from recycled plastic à la Recycle Group style, made me chuckle. Though my preferred window is the Simpsons rosetta, the Superheroes triptych windows are also well done. Continuing in their mixing of classical art with the recyclable materials of the present, Andrey Blohin and Egor Kuznecov definitely seem to be having fun with their art.

Photos Galerie Rabouan Moussion and Perm Krai Capital of Culture

March 22, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Recycle Group: Recycled Renaissance

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Andrey Blokhin and Georgiy (Egor) Kuznetsov are the Russian duo that make up the Moscow-based, contemporary art collective Recycle Group. Much of the art that Recycle Group creates involves (not surprisingly) recycling. Taking objects such as plastic nets, thermal moldings, garbage cans and more, Bolkhin and Kuznetsov play with the idea of the permanence of classical art in the non-permanent material. There is humor as well as message in the immortalization of rubbish. Seeing a a trash can as a sarcophagus depicting the office battles of an office warrior, or The Last Supper as a tense business meeting, clearly Recycle Group has a sense of humor.

You can see more of their work on their website as well as at Galerie Rabouan Moussion.

You might also enjoy Alexey Morosov’s work.

Photos: Galerie Rabouan Moussion/picasaweb.google.com/tiffoen/

March 22, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Alan Rath: Digital Video Sculptures

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Last Saturday, while half the world was at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the other half was walking on the High Line (myself included), I meandered around Chelsea checking out some exhibits on a list supplied by my art-savvy friend Eric. One of these was the delightful Alan Rath show at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery titled Skinetics. It’s impossible not to smile at these ultra-expressive digital media sculptures. Whether it be the large eyes looking in all directions, or mouths with tongues sticking out at you, these are just a lot of fun. Greeting you in the window is the electronic pheasant-feathered piece titled Yes, Yes, Yes! doing a little dance; reminded me of a more elegant version of a venus flytrap. Leaving the gallery, I witnessed a cab driver sitting in his cab, captivated by the robotic performance, while the passengers in the back were laughing and smiling at the same spectacle. You can see it in action in the video below.

Alan Rath is based in San Francisco and originally received a BS in Electrical Engineering from MIT. He has been playfully exploring new media – as well as expression and gesture without the inclusion of speech – with his distinctive sculptural works using moving and interactive digital media since 1990. His show Skinetics includes his most recent work, mostly from 2012, and will be on exhibit through April 7th.

Julie Dodd: Paper Sculptor

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English artist Julie Dodd usually works with paper creating books, installations, sculptural pieces and even recycling it to make new paper. Inspired by the patterns and shapes found in nature, Dodd tends to work in multiples mimicking life in its growth and regeneration.

What first drew me to Dodd’s work were her Paper Eggs where she used recycled magazine pages glued in layers to revert them into a wood-like material. It’s very hard to believe that those eggs are made from paper! Julie Dodd’s choice of eggs was done as a commentary on the decline of migrating birds to Europe due to loss of habitat and climate change all stemming back to the loss of trees. The fleeting nature of magazines converted into a permanent and significant object.

Also shown above are Dodd’s Forest: Lungs of the World and Illegal Logging installations, but there is plenty more to see on her website including beautiful paper cut books and her Human Nature installation.

via saatchi online

March 21, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Liu Bolin: Lost in Art

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As previously mentioned, artist and photographer Liu Bolin currently has a show titled Lost in Art at the Eli Klein Gallery in Soho. I stopped by yesterday pre-opening while the many gallery workers were setting up wine and cups, cleaning floors, as well as organizing a couple of armfuls of stuffed animals which, if I overheard correctly, were going to be given away as part of the event. All the prep aside, the exhibit is definitely worth visiting if you’re passing through Soho before May 11th. Though I’ve seen several of these images before online, as with any art, seeing them in person was a real treat. They are larger than I imagined and the detail is incredible. Plus the top three photos were completely new to me.

As far as the JR/Bolin collaboration on Elizabeth Street near Spring? Gone. Finito. Not a trace left. It’s as if it never happened.

Photos taken at Eli Klein Gallery by collabcubed (sorry for the reflections) except for the photos of Jean Paul Gautier and Andrea Missoni pre-paint which are courtesy Harpers Bazaar.

March 20, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Sergio Garcia: Tricycles Reinvented

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It’s difficult not to smile when looking at Sergio Garcia’s work. His delightfully fun tricycle sculptures play with the viewer’s structural expectations while at the same time stimulating childhood memories. According to Garcia, “Sometimes it’s good to step back and laugh and not take everything so serious.” That lighthearted mentality is evident not only in his sculptures, but in their titles, as well as in his Billboard series (bottom three photos.) Some of the tricycle sculpture titles are: “Its not always easy to tell whats real and whats fabricated” and “And then there were two” (the top photo and third one down, respectively.)

Fun work all the way around.

If you like these, you might also enjoy Dario Escobar’s work and Tulio Pinto’s.

via irreversible

March 20, 2012 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

JR and Liu Bolin Collaboration in Nolita

French street artist JR (previously here) and Chinese artist Liu Bolin (previously here) have collaborated in Nolita, NYC, on a great looking work. NewYorkStreetArt has documented the ‘making of’ Liu Bolin’s part on her flickr here. Love it.

I’m going to take a guess that this has something to do with the opening of Liu Bolin’s exhibit Lost in Art at Eli Klein Fine Art in Soho today, which will be up through May 11th, 2012. Happy Spring!

UPDATE: JR’s mural is a photo of Liu Bolin. You can see the first stage of JR’s wheatpasting over at Arrested Motion.

All photos NewYorkStreetArt’s flickr except bottom photo from Arrested Motion.

March 19, 2012 by collabcubed - 14 Comments

Rob Mulholland: Vestige Installation

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Scottish sculptor Rob Mulholland has created a ghostly art installation in the woodland walk at the David Marshall Lodge in Scotland titled Vestige. Originally intended to be temporary, the six mirrored life-size silhouettes (three men and three women) have been so popular that they are now to become a permanent fixture in the previously inhabited woodlands. Mulholland’s idea behind the installation seems twofold: 1) to create a vestige of the people who once occupied the land until following World War I, when they were re-located while forests were planted to generate timber and; 2) to make people ‘reflect’ upon man’s impact on the nature.

The almost imperceptible sculptures camouflaged by their surroundings have an eerie quality that has been compared by many to the predator in the 1980s film of the same name that seamlessly blends into its surroundings.

Photos courtesy of the artist and The Daily Mail.

via trendhunter

March 19, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Rat Race Park Project: Yuken Teruya

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There aren’t many things that gross me out more than rats. Seeing them around town occasionally, especially in the subway, is one of the few downers about living in NYC. Artist Yuken Teruya (previously here) has a crazy concept of turning the subway platforms and tracks in New York into a Rat Race Park. His Rat Race Park Project envisions similar play equipment to that sold in pet stores for hamsters and gerbils but, instead, placed on the subway tracks. There would be special lighting equipment with the tracks painted in bright colors similar to those often seen in playgrounds, and, of course, water bottles along the base of the platform for a quick pick-me-up and refresher for the active rodents working up a sweat. Teruya’s goal behind this plan? “…to reconsider the underground life of rats at the subway station and to thus share a feeling of larger community in New York City.” Umm…I think my community is large enough, thank you.

March 16, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Yuken Teruya: Paper Forests

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Japanese artist Yuken Teruya, now based in NYC, creates beautiful paper cut-out trees from bags, bills, and even toilet paper rolls. In his paper bag sculpture series, Notice – Forest, the trees are cut from the top of the bag and folded down to be viewed within the bag, giving the illusion that the bag is holding the fragile tree, when in actuality it is the tree that is holding up the bag.

Green Economy, a series where the trees were cut out and folded up from international paper bills, was a project done to illustrate a New York Times Magazine article. And Corner Forest is his series from toilet paper rolls, where the delicate branches cut from the cardboard tubes extend out to create a lovely forest. In a sense, it’s as though the trees are allowed to come full circle, from tree to paper to paper tree.

Currently, some of Teruya’s work can be seen as part of a group show at 601Artspace through the end of April, here in New York.

March 15, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Patrick Mifsud: Connect/Dissect

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There have been many of these thread/string art installations recently, but this one, Connect/Dissect by Maltese-born, UK-based artist Patrick Mifsud seems to integrate the whole gallery especially well. I like the way it wraps around corners in addition to the tension and different textures that are created by varying the distance between the threads.

Photos by Philip Sayer courtesy of Marsden Woo Gallery

March 15, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Dmitry Gutov: Pictorial Sculptures

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Moscow artist Dmitry Gutov tackles several mediums in his art but he is consistently interested in the existence of three-dimensionality; “a dense space inside which everything lives.” With his metal sculptures, he likes to play with that three-dimensionality, giving the illusion of flatness from the front, when in reality these pictorial iron works are very much 3D.

Gutov has been drawn to metal and wire from an early age as well as calligraphy and old manuscripts. Many of his paintings and drawings have wiry motifs and, not surprisingly, he has a fascination for abandoned fences and their expressive nature which inspired him to create his series of iron metal sculptures, some calligraphic, others abstract, but most of them rendering famous drawings (such as his Rembrandt Drawings series), icons, and composers in his signature style. Seeing these sculptures at different angles changes them completely. Ideally hung from the ceiling, these pieces look flat from the front and become more and more abstract at every angle as one circulates around them.

Gutov’s series Used Goods is another iron based work of 13 assemblages that combine objects from the 60s, as if flying through the air, to create a sort of still life. These are also worth checking out here.

Starting next week, Dmitry Gutov has a show in Moscow: new 3D metal works of ancient Russian icons at the Marat Guelman Gallery through April 20, 2012.

March 13, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Icy & Sot: Street Art from Iran

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The two street artist brothers Icy and Sot from Tabriz, Iran, create stencil art and graffiti about peace, war, love, hate, despair, human rights, children and Iranian culture.

You can see much more of their work on their website and flickr including this uncharacteristic large-scale Coke can.

via artinfo

March 13, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Occupy Chairs by Sebastian Errazuriz

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Chilean-born, New York-based artist and designer Sebastian Errazuriz definitely has a provocative sense of humor with his heart and brain in the right place. Smack in the middle of one of the aisles at Pier 92 of the Armory Show this past weekend, in a prime rest/lounge area, were his Occupy Chairs. Targeting the art-collecting 1%, Errazuriz invited them to purchase these white folding chairs painted with the Occupy Wall Street movement’s slogans, to raise money in support of the 99% as well as integrating the messages of the larger group into the homes of the smaller one. In essence, transporting the movement’s placards into private lives of those they are protesting. Political statement, general awareness, and a fundraiser all rolled into one. Genius if they actually sold at $2,500 a piece!

There are eight Occupy Chair designs with 10 of each slogan all available through the Cristina Grajales Gallery.

Second and bottom photos courtesy of the artist and Cristina Grajales Gallery; all the rest by collabcubed

March 12, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Andreas Johansson: Collage Pop-Up Books

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I came upon these impressive photo collage pop-up books at the Volta art show here in NYC last Friday. Swedish artist Andreas Johansson has been drawn to industrial and desolate areas ever since his youth as a skateboarder in Vaxjo. Working in collage, cutting apart photographs and then building up new environments of the abandoned industrial kind has been something Johansson has done for a while. In his solo exhibit titled From Where the Sun Now Stands, he has taken these ‘sets’ and created a series of oversized pop-up books with 6 pages each, showing different perspectives of the same vacant lot. Turning these large pages and seeing these pages come to life was an interesting departure from the pop-up books (that I loved) of my youth. You can see the pages being flipped at the bottom of this page here.

Photos courtesy Galleri Flach, VoltaNY, and collabcubed

March 12, 2012 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

CollabCubed at 1

Last week marked our one year anniversary as a blog and, though not an especially remarkable feat in this sea of blogs, it seems like a good time to say of few words and acknowledge some people. It’s been a fun year for us and surprising how this blog, as well as a few related side projects, have been major topics of conversation between the three of us even at a semi-long distance. We’ve had fun trying to come up with somewhat unique content and it’s been really satisfying, and sometimes a little thrilling, to have many of the blogs and sites that we admire pick up some of our posts. Notcot and Rugenius (aka Jean and Justine) over at notcot.org have picked up many of our submissions and have been instrumental in giving us exposure. You can see our collabcubed posts on their pages here. Christopher Jobson at the amazing Colossal has had many kind words for us and been very supportive, as well as picking up several of our posts during the year and kindly linking back to us…this is where the little thrills came in. Same goes for the wonderful thisisnthappiness. And a big thanks to holycool and the always generous swissmiss for being the first ones to post our EARonic phone cases causing them to go viral with buyers cropping up all over the globe and eventually leading to a deal with Fred and Friends who will be distributing a variation on Daniela’s initial concept starting next month but, have no fear, we continue to sell our own EARonic models at our shop.

We’ve got other exciting projects in the works for this year, starting with being selected to exhibit our EARonics and some other designs at the Designboom Mart at the ICFF 2012 in New York this May, which has us super excited, but we’ll talk more about that later.

In the meantime we’ve added a bunch of photos and links to our facebook page – we’ll be adding more in the next few days – making it easier to look at some older posts, so maybe you’d like to ‘like us’ there if you haven’t already, and of course there’s also twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed or emails.

Below are a few of our most popular posts this past year (in case you missed them the first time around); click on the photo to go to the post. Most importantly, thanks to all of you for following our blog and making it fun for us to keep posting.