Click to enlargeGuatemalen artist Dario Escobar is known for his sculptural installations which explore the recontextualization of objects, particularly sports-related ones. From chopped bats to rooms filled with serpentile bicycle tires, or hanging sculptures of worn soccer balls to reconfigured skateboards, Escobar’s work takes the ordinary object and metamorphosizes their form and meaning.
I was fortunate to be invited by a friend to the Vernissage of the Armory Show 2012 here in NYC on Wednesday night. It was a great show, if a bit overwhelming as these art fairs can be, but I’ll be back to see the rest of it for sure. Right up front in one of the closest booths to the entrance of Pier 94 was an interesting piece by a Finnish duo from Helsinki, Tommi Grönlund and Petteri Nisunen. Trained as architects – they have a studio called a.men – both Grönlund and Nisunen are record producers and artists as well, creating installations and mixed-media pieces that explore sound and space in a relatively low tech, simple manner.
Their latest work, currently at the Armory in Galerie Anhava’s booth, is subtly dramatic creating an appealing and soothing sound. The piece, titled Wave of Matter, consists of a large metal sheet low to the ground with thousands of small metal beads on top, automated to tilt ever-so-minimally every minute or so. The result is visually stunning with all the beads shifting to the other side, creating a similar effect to sand along the shoreline as the water retreats. The swishing sound of the metal beads is also very water-like. It’s quite mesmerizing. Probably best to see it in action, as in the video below:
Click to enlargeYes, there’s been a bit of a Russian theme this week after perusing many a Russian gallery site into the wee hours the other night, but this is the last of it for now, and it’s a fun one, at least I think so.
The Red People project, created by Andrey Lublinskiy and Maria Zaborovskaya of the Pprofessors art group, is a modular system used to assemble an anthropomorphous character, sometimes large, other times small, out of 13 wooden blocks. Working in practically any context and integrated therein, these Red Men have become a sort of viral phenomenon around Moscow and its environs. So much so, that they have become stars of comics and political debates, and are slowly making their way across the world.
With inspiration from, and a nod to, cult artists such as Malevich, Rodchenko, Bruskin, Giacometti, Haring and Gormley, the Pprofessors have made these red contemporary icons pop up in the most unexpected of places, including sitting by a park fountain, scootering around the streets of Moscow, or sitting in the middle of a shopping center. After their exhibit in 2010 at the Gridchinhall Gallery, a few of the men have become permanent fixtures on the grounds, with one sitting atop the gallery’s building entrance.
The Pprofessors also created a toy-like kit of the Red People, where each child (or adult) can manipulate the elements of the composition using the basic red blocks included in the kit.
All in all, a very fun project that I could see taking off in NYC.
via artguide
Click to enlargeOriginally from Alicante, Spain, photographer Marie Bovo now lives and works in Marseille. I really like her ‘Cour Intérieure’ (interior courtyard) series of photographs. Despite its consistent theme, each one has its own personality and color scheme, with clotheslines varying in direction, capturing that particular aspect of many Mediterranean towns and cities. Such a cool perspective, too; a bottom-of-the-well sensation.
via kamel mennour
Lithuanian designer Gogelmogel has a humorous take on most things from street art to facebook icons. His clever concepts made me smile.
You can see much more on his website, and flickr.
Thanks Lukas!
Click to enlargeRussian artist Alexey Morosov creates sculptures, paintings and drawings combining the influence of famous masterpieces by sculptors of Ancient Greece and Rome with the contemporary cultural experience of modern man. His recent solo exhibition at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg was titled Antologia and included over 48 of Morosov’s works. From the museum’s press release:
The contrast of these Hellenic nymphs on their super-rugged segways cracks me up. You can see more of Morosov’s work on his website.
Click to enlargeMoscow-based contemporary new media artist Aristarkh Chernyshev creates sculptures that integrate today’s technology while commenting on our obsession with it in a humorous fashion. His LED sculptures play with the idea of information overload, in some instances grabbing real-time news feeds from the internet, winding them around the LED lightboard strips through the trash as in his work Urgently! (top two photos), or winding around endlessly in a knot as in Knode (third from top), as well as taking poetic texts and breaking them apart then reuniting them as stock exchange rates in Lyric Economy (second from bottom).
In addition to his LED sculptures, Chernyshev has collaborated with other artists on some fun and interesting interactive pieces. With Alexei Shulgin —the co-founder of their art collective/gallery/creative electronics production company Electroboutique — they created the eyeglasses piece titled The Way I See It! as well as the wowPod, an oversized distorted iPod.
There’s lots more interesting work that can be seen on the XL Gallery’s site and the Electroboutique site.
Here’s The Way I See It! in action…with a very catchy poppy tune that I, unfortunately, don’t know what it is.
via XL Gallery
If you’re in New York City tomorrow (March 6th) you may notice a double-size golden statue of David being hauled around town from 11am through the early afternoon on a lowboy trailer. This would be the work of Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya, whose golden replica of Michelangelo’s David was initially created for the Istanbul Biennial in 2005. Özkaya’s work typically deals with the concepts of appropriation and reproduction. Apparently, the sculpture collapsed shortly after its installation, then was restored and two replicas were cast. One remains in Turkey and the other was acquired by 21c Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
So, tomorrow the museum, in collaboration with the Storefront for Art and Architecture, will tour the David around town arriving at the Storefront Gallery on Kenmare Street in the early afternoon where it will be parked outside on display until 9pm. The gallery will be running a Manifesto Series titled Double, which will include a live staging of manifestos on the topic of doubling, replicating or copying, by a panel of artists, architects, critics and historians.
You can follow David (inspired by Michelangelo) on twitter @storefrontnyc #doubledavid to keep up with its whereabouts or visit the gallery’s website for details on the event.
Click to enlargeI love everything about this amazing project by the appropriately named Spanish art collective Boa Mistura (good mix): the typography, the color, the participative nature, and most of all the huge heart behind it.
Made up of artists Arkoh, Derko, Pahg, Purone, and Rdick who have developed their work in different fields, Boa Mistura represents a mixture of perspectives combined to create something better. Recently they have started a series of projects in the favelas (slums) of Brazil, starting with Vila Brasilândia near São Paulo where, directly involving the inhabitants, they painted the streets and alleyways with murals using anamorphic typography with pride-inducing words such as, well, ‘pride’ (orgulho), ‘beauty’ (beleza), ‘sweetness’ (doçura), ‘firmness’ (firmeza), and ‘love’ (amor).
As you can see, the result is fantastically joyful. Bravo!
via juxtapoz
Click to enlargeSpanish artist Ana Soler has a knack for taking the everyday object and creating spectacular installations. Her most recent, Causa-Efecto (Cause and Effect) involved 2000 tennis balls giving the illusion of bouncing all over the various rooms and levels of the Mustang Art Gallery in Alicante this past fall. The multiple trajectories that these balls take have you looking in all directions. A bit like a three-dimensional airline route map.
Very fun and cool!
via mag
Click to enlargeWell, this certainly puts the Houston graffiti wall to shame! The Wynwood Walls is a community revitalization concept conceived by Tony Goldman in 2009 as a way to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood, Miami into a center where people could gravitate and explore, thereby developing the area’s pedestrian potential. I should have picked up on something with so many street artists featuring projects in Miami on their sites.
Initially opened in 2010 with the Wynwood Doors, the project has since expanded to the Wynwood Walls and Outside the Walls. Street artists from all over the world have gone to Miami to participate and it has become a sort of “Museum of the Streets,” as coined by Jeffrey Deitch, one of the original co-curators.
Here Comes the Neighborhood is a series of short episodes on the project as a whole, as well as interviews with individual artists. If you like the trailer below you can head on over to their site to see much more.
via the delightful Karen aka Kaia!
Click to enlargeNew York artist Will Ryman has taken a departure from his sculptures of giant roses that decorated the Park Avenue Malls in midtown last year here in NYC, and has now created two site-specific works: one a giant male figure, the other a giant bird. Presently, at both Paul Kasmin Galleries in Chelsea (the first artist to show in both at the same time) Ryman’s exhibit titled Anyone and No One consists of a 90-foot figure lying against the perimeter of the Tenth Avenue gallery walls, unclear whether he is sleeping or dying. The figure is made up of 250 pairs of shoes for the shirt and 30,000 bottle caps make up the arms, hands, and feet. The sculpture/installation, titled Everyman, seems to open up through the figure’s head into the next room where a labyrinth has been created out of 200,000 paintbrushes stacked on top of one another. I’m not sure if these organic structures are intended as a trip through the Everyman’s brain or not, but, in either case, this looks pretty amazing.
At the 27th Street gallery is Ryman’s Bird. This 12-foot high, 16-foot wide sculpture is made with 1500 actual and fabricated nails and weighs two tons. In the same way that the Everyman space becomes a box in which the huge man has been stuffed into, so, too, does the Bird’s gallery transform into its cage.
I think I’ll have to check this out in person soon. Both pieces will be up at both Paul Kasmin galleries through March 24th, 2012.
Thanks for the tip, Stephen!
Click to enlargeThe Slinky Springs Bridge in Oberhausen, Germany, was completed this past summer. Designed by artist Tobias Rehberger, the inspiration for the bridge came from the iconic Slinky toy and the catchy phrase “Slinky Springs to Fame” which seems to be the way the bridge is referred to. Rehberger was able to recreate the light, wild and irregular quality of the toy in his vibrating spiraling bridge that almost looks thrown across the Rhine-Herne Canal. This was no easy feat, if I understand correctly from the not-always-easy-to-decipher google-translated German sites that I read. Apparently, the execution of artist Rehberger’s, (self-admittedly clueless about bridge design) vision was successfully accomplished through the collaboration with structural engineers Schlaich Bergermann and Partner. A bit of description from their website on the 406-meter-long bridge with 496 coils:
The colorful pavement pathway was carefully selected by Rehberger who had very specific ideas on its look. Then the bottom of the bridge was made to exactly match the colors on top in a separate material. It’s great how the nighttime illumination really accentuates the colorfulness.
Seems to me that bouncing across the incredibly cool and unique Slinky Bridge could be a lot of fun, if maybe a little unsettling as well.
If you like this bridge then you’ll probably enjoy the Tiger & Turtle Walkable Rollercoaster and the Twist Bridge as well.
Click to enlargeSwiss design studio I Never Kissed A Dog created a winter wonderland in a living room using thousands of white Post-its as part of a photoshoot for the perfume Winter 1972. Designer Adrian Merz painstakingly covered the entire room and then photographed it using different light sources and effects to add to the image…as if a room covered in white paper from top to bottom isn’t impressive and surprising enough!
via urbanpeek
After not thinking about the Hirshhorn Museum in years, right on the heels of finding out about the plans for a bubbled garden (see previous post) is now news of the upcoming Doug Aitken installation, turning the exterior of the circular museum into a 360-degree projection screen. The piece, titled “Song 1”, will consist of 11 high-definition projectors streaming multichannel yet-to-be-disclosed images in conjunction with the song “I Only Have Eyes for You” with covers created and performed by several artists including Beck, and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, specifically for Aitken’s work.
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen by Doug Aitken, including his video installation Sleepwalkers at MoMA back in 2007 (where does the time go?!) which was also projected on the building’s façade (bottom photo). Based on past experience, this should be worth checking out. Maybe a trip to D.C. combining cherry blossoms and the Hirshhorn is in order this spring.
This impressive project will be on view from March 22nd to May 13th, 2012.
Click to enlargeWhat a great surprise to walk into the Jewish Museum a week ago, not knowing what I was about to see, and experience one of the best photography shows I’ve seen in a long time. The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 is a must-see for any lover of New York City, or of street photography in general. Some of the photos were familiar, but most were new to me. From the moment you enter the gallery, the parallels with the present are evident in the opening short film showing protesters in Union Square demanding unemployment assistance. It’s the 99% almost 80 years earlier. Of course, the contrasts are striking as well: these protesters look hungry, poor, all dressed in suits and skirts, and no one is smiling. There are no bed-ins or fun t-shirts as in the 1960s and today; clearly it was a different time, but it’s hard not to compare.
Apart from the protests and the poverty, the streets themselves also, in some cases, look exactly the same and in others are hard to recognize. It’s truly fascinating to look at every detail of each photo. Add to that, that the Photo League – a group of amateur and professional photographers who were politically progressive, believed in photography as an instrument for social change, and were later blacklisted during the McCarthy Era – leased 2,600 sq. feet of space in our very own building’s basement in the late 1940s as their gathering space, makes it all the more close to home.
One of the projects by the Photo League, and led by photographer Aaron Siskind, was the Harlem Document, an in-depth photographic overview of the black community. It made me smile to read that they collected ‘dozens’ of photos over several months of shooting; definitely not the digital age of today.
On a different note, don’t you think the bagels-on-a-string delivery method has great potential for a comeback in a contemporary health code compliant version?
If you’re in NYC, I highly recommend this exhibit which will be at the Jewish Museum through March 25th, 2012.
French artist Claude Lévêque has been creating light sculptures and installations since the ’80s. There’s a surreal quality to much of his work — upside down blacklit beds, abandoned trailers with chandeliers, or an elevated one with stringed lights inside, precariously balanced on cement blocks — as well as wit. I also like the way many of his neon signs are integrated with chairs or paintings, resulting in a strange juxtaposition.
Lévêque currently has a show at La Maison Rouge in Paris through May 20th.
CollabCubed 