October 19, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Jonathan Brilliant: “Have Sticks Will Travel”

Click to enlarge

I have, coincidentally, come across several artists working with coffee-related objects in the past two weeks. First Christian Ducharme’s cool lamps, then Matthew Parker’s coffee filter window installation, and now Jonathan Brilliant’s incredible coffee stir sticks installations. Totally living up to his name, Brilliant creates enormous, and amorphous, site-specific installations using thousands of coffee stir sticks woven in place and held together only by tension! This series of installations is collectively known as Have Sticks Will Travel. Brilliant likes to activate the gallery space as part of the work, usually creating the work onsite hoping to dissolve the boundary between the space where the art is created and displayed.

In addition to using the coffee stir sticks, Jonathan Brilliant utilizes the coffee cup sleeves to create the tube formations, as well as the coffee cup covers for yet other, wall-mounted, works.

Living and working in Columbia, South Carolina Brilliant started working with these materials in 2006 with his Goldsworthy of the Coffee Shop Project, taking his cue from the British artist Andy Goldsworthy who gathers materials from his natural environment and uses them in his site-specific installations. Brilliant’s natural environment? The coffee shop, of course, with the take-out coffee cup and all its accessories!

For the Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour, Jonathan created multiple installations, entirely in situ, during the course of 8 to 10 days at each location. You can watch the video below for a sample installation.

You can see more of Brilliant’s amazing work on his website.

October 18, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Mark Wagner: Currency Collages

Click to enlarge for detail

My friend Eric introduced me to Mark Wagner’s currency collages a few years ago in Chelsea. It seems to me that today’s economic climate is a perfect time to share them. These collages, made exclusively with the U.S. Dollar, speak to the cultural, social and political roles that money plays in our society.

Mark Wagner, originally from the Midwest, is a Brooklyn based artist who writes and makes books in addition to his collages. His statement on his currency collages is as follows:

The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it-reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers-striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable… the foreign in the familiar.

The detail on these collages is amazing. The second and third collages above also show zoomed-in sections to appreciate even the tiniest image.

All images courtesy of Mark Wagner and Pavel Zoubok Gallery.

October 17, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

The Comedy Carpet in Blackpool

Click to enlarge

The Comedy Carpet in Blackpool – a seaside resort town in the Northwest of England – is a typographic celebration of comedy in a grand way. The 2,200 sq. meter installation contains over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete, making it virtually impossible not to tip toe through the type.

A super-sized homage to those who have made the nation laugh, as well as to wood type, the amazing sculpture, that will also act as a stage, was designed by Gordon Young with typography by Why Not Associates (both previously mentioned in Architypeture I) and inspired by old theater posters and playbills. The jokes span a full range including one-liners, catchphrases, gags and sketches, with something for everyone’s sense of humor…or not.

via typetoken

October 17, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Matthew Parker: Event Installations

Click to enlarge

Matthew Parker Events is a boutique design studio from Seattle, WA that produces custom event decor, paper art, and prop styling. Most recently, Parker’s design for the Design*Sponge Book Tour backdrop has been popping up on various design blogs, but he’s got other interesting work as well, that ranges from window displays to event installations to a custom wedding altar.

Using common elements such as paper and cardboard in combination with influences that include typography, tessellation origami, pop art and the future, Matthew Parker creates original handmade decor.

Top two photos: Paper airplane installation at the EMP for an Artsfund event. Photos by Jena Lacomis Garcia.

Other photos: Coffee filter sculpture/installation in collaboration with Sam Trout. Photos by Kip Beelman.

October 15, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Ariane Roesch: Electroluminescent

Click to enlarge

Originally from Germany, artist Ariane Roesch currently lives and works in Houston, Texas. Interested in how we situate ourselves in today’s mechanized society, Roesch uses color, light, and textiles to create a sensory experience that often questions both physical and psychological structures; how people communicate and behave as much as the structures that are a part of their everyday. Sustainability is turned inward, addressing the viewer, rather than examining the external.

Top four photos: Take the Path of Least Resistance, installation. An investigation that takes shape as series of drawings and a light installation. The heating coil shape is transformed into a diving board for visual analysis of what it means to take the path of least resistance and its social implications.

Bottom four photos: More Heat, installation. Part of The Kenmore, a project at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston.

If you’re in Houston, Texas next week, be sure to visit Ariane Roesch’s site-specific installation Going Undercover at the TX Contemporary Fair. If you’re anywhere else, you might want to visit her site and see the rest of her work.

October 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Liam Gillick: Type, Color & Light …Trifecta!

Yes siree, three of my favorite elements all combined by one artist: Liam Gillick. The British artist is based both in London and New York. He has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork, and the artwork itself often incorporates typography. In addition to Gillick‘s installations, he has collaborated with architects on the façades and interiors of many buildings including the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver, Canada (see our Architypeture II post) and the Marsham Street Home Office in London.

Gillick’s installations are at once minimalist, conceptual and ironic. They are often seen as abstract representations of the various social projects that he participates in. Definitely would love to see one of these in person.

via artnet

October 14, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Barbara Licha: Wire Figures

Click to enlarge

Polish artist Barbara Licha, based in Australia, is interested in the complexity of the human condition and explores parallels between actual people and the ones in her imagination. I particularly like her wire figure sculptures with their gestures in their tangled worlds or boxes. In her work, Licha tries to convey what she sees inside people: their wishes, dreams and desires.

You can see more of Licha’s work here and here.

via Brenda May Gallery

October 13, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Rebecca Baumann: Automated Colour Field

I love this installation by Australian artist Rebecca Baumann. Automated Colour Field, originally commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, is made up of 100 flip-clocks, laser cut colored paper, and batteries (a later version replaced the over 100 batteries with over 100 power regulating circuit boards designed by Cake Industries.) Such a clever and simple concept beautifully executed. Who wouldn’t want one of these in their home?

You can see the piece in action in the video above and you can see it being installed in the video below.

Photos by Andrew Curtis, courtesy of the artist. Circuit Board photo courtesy of Cake.

via acca

October 12, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Yvette Cohen: Sculptural Paintings

New York City based artist Yvette Cohen was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Paris and Montreal. In her art, Cohen seeks to create a balance of calm and intrigue. Her Ara Pacis Series (from the Latin meaning ‘altar to peace’) consists of richly colored oil paintings on shaped canvases with wood dowels. They appear three-dimensional, but in reality mount flat to the wall and sometimes floor. It’s amazing how the illusion of depth is created through her use of geometric shapes and painting technique.

Groupings of two, three or more of these oil paintings seemingly defy gravity and appear to exist in a boundless space, activating entire walls.

Hence the name of Cohen’s upcoming exhibit in NYC: Defying Gravity.

Defying Gravity: Sculptural Paintings will be shown at Cassina in Soho (151 Wooster Street) from November 8 to December 20, 2011. If you can’t make it to the exhibit, be sure to check out the rest of Yvette Cohen’s work on her website.

October 12, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Molly Hunker & Gregory Corso: Sports

Click to enlarge

Designers Molly Hunker and Gregory Corso – whose talents range from interior and installation design to products and graphics – started their own design collaborative in 2010 called SPORTS. They believe in design and its ability to easily and immediately change a person’s spatial and visual experience of a place.

Within the past year they have put that belief into action with two very cool installations in L.A. California: Stay Down Champion, Stay Down and Life Will Kill You. Stay Down Champion, Stay Down (photos at top) was installed at the Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery. Focusing on the ground plane, the piece was comprised of terracotta tiles creating a flowing and colorful interior landscape with bulging areas elevated by transparent acrylic supports highlighted by vibrantly colored lighting.

The earlier installation (bottom images) Life Will Kill You was installed temporarily at the Revolve Clothing showroom in West Hollywood. The cloud-like piece was created using over 100,000 zip ties with the exterior surface composed of longer white zip ties, and the interior levels of shorter colored ones, resulting in a richly textured effect.

Photos by Justin Harris

October 11, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Aaron De La Cruz

Click to enlarge

Illustrator, street artist, graffiti artist, designer Aaron De La Cruz started drawing on everything, including the walls of his bedroom, from a very young age. Much of his street art appears in California, from L.A. to San Francisco. His work, “though minimal and direct at first, tends to overcome barriers of separation and freely steps in and out of the realms of design, graffiti, and illustration.”

Next Saturday, October 15th, 2011, De La Cruz will be showing past, present, and future work at his exhibit Long Walk Home at Loft in Space in Honolulu. Included in the exhibit will be a room created to look like his childhood bedroom… the one where he drew on the walls.

via Arktip

October 10, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Cecilia Vissers: Minimalist Sculpture

Click to enlarge

Dutch sculptor Cecilia Vissers’ minimalist steel and aluminum flat sculptures are inspired by the Scottish and Irish landscapes.

From the artist:
I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.

From top to bottom: Orange Tide III, aluminum; Very Likely L, two-part, aluminum; Silent Light, two-part, aluminum; Very Likely I, two-part, aluminum; Medardus, aluminum; Blacksod Bay, steel; Follow the River, steel.

Cecilia Vissers’ work will be on exhibit as part of a group show at Acquire Space in London from November 13-27, 2011 and in a solo show at Masters & Pelavin Gallery in New York, February 23 to April 5, 2012. If you can’t make either of those you can always visit her website to see more of her work.

October 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Nils and Sven Völker: Captured

Click to enlarge.

If you’ve ever popped some Jiffy Pop on the stove, it’s likely that that experience will come to mind while viewing Nils and Sven Völker’s recent installation, Captured: An Homage to Light and Air presented at MADE Space in Berlin.

The German brothers – Sven a graphic designer and Nils a machine artist (see our previous post) – collaborated by combining four walls with 304 framed graphic pages surrounding a field of 252 inflatable silver cushion-like air bags. The bags were programmed by Nils Völker to create sequences according to chapters of his brother’s “books on wall”. The inflating and deflating of the bags, along with the colored lighting system, create a very dramatic and intensified effect.

You can watch it in action below.

October 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Ariana Page Russell: Skin Art

Em pointed me to Ariana Page Russell‘s work a couple of months back and now I see that the Brooklyn-based artist is having a show at MagnanMetz Gallery, here in NYC, at the end of the month. Russell has dermatographia, a condition in which her immune system exhibits hypersensitivity through the skin, causing painless, temporary welts that emerge when lightly scratched. She exploits this condition in her artwork by creating patterns on different parts of her body and photographing them as the skin becomes irritated and swells. A sort of skin tattoo. She has also created different wallpaper patterns using c-prints of her skin in all its irritated shades.

From the gallery’s site:
Russell’s recent work continues to explore the possibilities of flesh, using her skin as both source material and an entry to go deeper into the body and its emotions. Images of Russell’s abdomen appear throughout the exhibit: covering the gallery window; in a photograph of her torso blanketed in triangular welts resembling raised sails; and as the temporary tattoo mask that she manipulates over her face in the video, Blouse. In this piece, she exhales sharply into the mask to produce a fleeting, gauzy window. A sudden inhale collapses the window to create a skin-tight barrier with each breath. Blouse comes to a close as Russell removes the tattoo, her unadorned face remaining interrogative but naked of the revelatory mask.

Maybe not for everyone, but definitely pretty unique.

Ariana Page Russell’s exhibit titled Blouse opens at MagnanMetz on October 21st and runs through November 19, 2011.

October 4, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Jan van der Ploeg: Wall Paintings

Dutch artist Jan van der Ploeg has been painting walls and large panels for a couple of decades. His colorful and precise geometric designs are mostly simple forms sometimes in black and white, other times in bright contrasting colors, but always producing a dramatic effect, in my opinion. Painted in multiple layers of acrylic to create a smooth, untextured finish, reinforces the notion that the color has been reduced to a mere surface.

Jan van der Ploeg is also a co-founder of PS Projects, an artist-run exhibition space in Amsterdam.

Photos courtesy of the artist, CCNOA, West and Minus Space.

October 3, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Anya Zholud: Minimalist Wire Sculptures

Russian artist Anya Zholud creates minimalist wire sculptures that appear almost as 3-dimensional line drawings. Their simple forms and often ‘interiors’ setup offer a back-to-basics and paring down view in the present world of excess. Proper lifestyles without luxuries.

I especially like the dramatic effect these have when placed in the starkness of a white or black gallery room, in the contrasting color of the sculpture.

Photos Aidan Gallery and oborte’s flickr.

via Aidan Gallery.

October 2, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche 2011: Follow-up

Click to enlarge.

Last night, a night bookended by heavy rain showers here in NYC, fortunately offered a 2- to 3-hour precipitation-free window. Just enough time to ferry on over to Greenpoint and catch the Bring to Light Festival.

Though the ferry was quite empty, I was happy to see that the crowds obviously made it over by other means of transportation. It was one of those really nice NYC events, where everyone seemed so happy in sharing such a fun and unique experience. The brick and corrugated metal façades of the industrial warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront made for the perfect backdrop and canvases for the various video projections and colorful light installations. There were over 50 works displayed, so naturally I can’t go over all of them here, and some I am not sure of the names or artists, but some of the highlights are pictured above starting with, possibly my favorite, a very Buñuelesque image:

Marcus Zotes-Lopez’s CCTV/Creative Control TV; a projection of an eye on the bottom of a water tower looking over the crowds.
Devan Simunovich & Olek, Suffolk Deluxe Electric Bicycle.
Not sure of this but possibly Colin Snapp, Sylvania.
Jason Peters, Structural Light.
BOB, Columbia Architecture Students, inflatable structure (left and right pics, outside and in).
Glowing pedestrians walking around in self-made light costumes.
Not sure about the colored bulbs.
Camilled Scherrer, In the Woods, interactive projection converting people’s shadows into creatures.
Chakaia Booker, Shadows, silhouettes on installation.
Others include a bench with light emanating from the slats and a person lying down within (à la Vito Acconci): projections of hands morphing into latex gloves; a glowing lung-like object that breathed; and Raphaele Shirley’s Light Cloud on a Bender, a glowing mist sculpture.

It was all very bright, colorful, and animated. You can watch the short video clips below for a better sense of the atmosphere. Next year, I’ll at least hang a glow stick around my neck before heading over.

Top photo courtesy the artist, Marcus Zotes-Lopez. Second photo from Alix’s flickr. All other photos taken by collabcubed.

October 1, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Bring to Light Festival

If you’re in NYC, you might want to check out the Bring to Light Festival tonight in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Taking place simultaneously with “nuit blanche” events in other cities around the world, the festival will showcase site-specific installations of light, sound, performance and projection art from emerging, as well as established, artists re-imagining public space. The streets and waterfront of Greenpoint will be transformed.

Sounds like something that shouldn’t be missed.

The ferry schedule will be extended till midnight from East 34th St. Pier in Manhattan and N. 7th St in Williamsburg. You can see more on how to get there here. And more about the festival and artists here.

It all starts in 6 hours and 5 minutes…. 4 minutes…

via Flavorpill and NPR

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge for detail

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Top two photos: Paper airplane installation at the EMP for an Artsfund event. Photos by Jena Lacomis Garcia.

Other photos: Coffee filter sculpture/installation in collaboration with Sam Trout. Photos by Kip Beelman.

Click to enlarge

Bottom four photos: More Heat, installation. Part of The Kenmore, a project at Box 13 ArtSpace in Houston.

Click to enlarge

Photos by Andrew Curtis, courtesy of the artist. Circuit Board photo courtesy of Cake.

Groupings of two, three or more of these oil paintings seemingly defy gravity and appear to exist in a boundless space, activating entire walls.

Click to enlarge

Photos by Justin Harris

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

From the artist: I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.

From top to bottom: Orange Tide III, aluminum; Very Likely L, two-part, aluminum; Silent Light, two-part, aluminum; Very Likely I, two-part, aluminum; Medardus, aluminum; Blacksod Bay, steel; Follow the River, steel.

Click to enlarge.

Photos Aidan Gallery and oborte’s flickr.

Click to enlarge.

Top photo courtesy the artist, Marcus Zotes-Lopez. Second photo from Alix’s flickr. All other photos taken by collabcubed.

From the artist:
I want my sculptures to be entirely simple, to be viewed quickly, the focus is on the smooth and flat surface, my abstractions are grounded in the landscapes of Scotland and Ireland, the remoteness and silence.