October 17, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Matthew Parker: Event Installations

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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

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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 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 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 2, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche 2011: Follow-up

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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

September 29, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Andrei Molodkin: Transformer No. V579

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Oh how I wish I were in London to see this! Russian artist Andrei Molodkin has created a site-specific installation titled Transformer No. V579. The exhibit consists of three galleries: the first, a monumental corridor of transparent acrylic tubes filled with light and oil; the second gallery, shows a video with details of the installation’s construction; and the last, is a ‘laboratory’ of drawings and photographs that outline the project’s development.

Visitors are encouraged to interact and walk through the six cubed modules and corridors. The effect of the bleeding oil and its glowing white light counterpart is reminiscent of blood coursing through the human body.

From the gallery’s site:
While the oil and light represent simple dichotomies of life and death, purity and greed, the dissimilar substances unite to highlight the interchangeability of these labels. Oil is both a natural substance of an ancient earth and yet the fuel of urban, technological and unnatural power. It is Molodkin’s intention that visitors will directly experience an unlikely physiological affinity to this substance and will find themselves « true revolutionaries » upon exiting the installation, « capable of achieving a variety of mutually exclusive goals »

Hard not to be reminded of my last trip to London and one my favorite light exhibits ever.

Transformer No. V579 will be on view at Art Sensus in London through December 17, 2011.

via ArtSensus and Frame

September 28, 2011 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Jean Nouvel: Jane’s Carousel in DUMBO

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I went over to the DUMBO Arts Festival in Brooklyn last Saturday and visited many an open studio, as well as new (to me) designy shops, the crazy sale at Desigual’s Pop-up Shop, and the large bubble-making contraption in the tobacco factory. All were fun to see, but the star of the festival was the recently opened Jane’s Carousel housed within a pavilion designed by architect Jean Nouvel, as he describes it: the jewelry box for the precious jewel.

The carousel and its box are a gift to the city from the Walentas family. Jane Walentas had been restoring the exceptionally elaborate 1922 carousel since 1984. Positioned on the edge of the East River between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges, the views from the carousel are priceless, whether direct with the retractable doors folded open, or through the impressively thick acrylic walls that add a wavy, almost drippy, distorted quality to the Manhattan skyline. At night, the box acts as a magic lantern with curtains that come down and become screens, allowing the projectors in the middle of the carousel to project the horses’ shadows onto all four sides of the pavilion. I would imagine that to be a lovely sight from either bridge, the water, or Manhattan.

I have to confess that I was not initially impressed by the design when I saw it in the NY Times, but after speaking with one of the structural engineers involved in the project (Gilsanz Murray Steficek) I was assured that the photos did not do it justice. That may be the case here as well, so if you happen to be in NYC, I highly recommend taking a stroll over to Brooklyn Bridge Park and experiencing the size and majesticness of the carousel in person. If nothing else, you’ll get a spectacular view of both bridges and the skyline across the way.

September 26, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

IBM THINK Exhibit at Lincoln Center

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Today, my dad and I went to explore the new IBM THINK Exhibit at Lincoln Center here in NYC. We were greeted at the entrance by the very familiar (my father is a retired longtime IBMer) ‘THINK’ logo, still looking fresh today in the same slab serif type that I remember from the 1960s.

The exhibit is in celebration of IBM’s 100th anniversary and illustrates – via multimedia – the possibilities that science and information technology offer to ‘make the world work better.’ Beginning with its 123-foot digital visualization wall which streams real-time data from the surrounding Lincoln Center area with respect to traffic, air quality and water consumption, to its interior 12 minute immersive film, which then converts to multi-panel interactive walls mostly displaying the changes in science, technology and comparisons in the way we display information in the past and today.

It’s all beautifully executed. The Data Wall, in particular, is mesmerizing. Designed by the transmedia studio Mirada (started by director Guillermo Del Toro) in conjunction with a team of mostly faculty and graduates of the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts who designed the software, it’s a perfect example of art and science merging; animated infographics at their best. Also quite lovely, are the print exhibition graphics throughout the exhibit that are clearly a nod to the great Paul Rand.

The IBM THINK Exhibit is on the inclined Jaffe Drive at Lincoln Center through October 23, 2011. It’s hard to miss the spectacular digital wall from Broadway.

September 22, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Robert Wilson: 7 Electric Chairs for 7 Decades

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In celebration of his 70th birthday, artist/choreographer/stage designer (and more!) Robert Wilson has designed a set of seven polycarbonate and neon chairs produced by Kartell.

The seven chairs are titled 7 Electric Chairs…As You Like It, alluding to his seven decades, seven days of the week, as well as the seven ages of man in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” Each chair’s neon insertion expresses a different form and power.

The chairs are on view in the Teatro alla Scala in Milan through the end of September and will then be available to collectors through art galleries around the world. Perfect for lumen lovers.

Top photo: Lorenzo Nencioni for The New York Times

via NY Times and Domus. Thanks Eric!

September 20, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

EARonic iPhone 4 Case: CONTEST

It’s not really our style, but we’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and have a giveaway contest. It seems like a win-win situation. You: possibly win one of our fun EARonic iPhone 4 cases. We: get more people following us on facebook as well as walking advertisements for our EARonics when all your friends “oooh” and “ahhh” and ask where you got such a cool iPhone case. Okay, so maybe we win a little more.

We will be giving away three EARonic iPhone 4 cases (if you win you’ll get to pick your favorite one.)

How to enter:
Just “like” us on our facebook page. If you’re already a fan and would like to enter (keep in mind these cases are for the iPhone 4) just send us an email (hi@collabcubed.com) with the word ‘CONTEST’ in the subject header. Write your full name in the email and we will include you in the drawing. The contest ends one week from today (September 27th) when we will randomly draw three names from the pool. The winners will be announced on facebook Wednesday the 28th.

Good luck!

September 16, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Polly Borland: Disturbingly Funny Photos

Australian-born, longtime-London-based, currently-residing-in-LA photographer Polly Borland dresses up her models in costumes, makeup and, sometimes, spandex to create her own personal visual language. Somewhat creepy yet humorous, Borland’s photos hardly go unnoticed. Having regularly photographed portraits for several UK and American magazines including The New York Times and The Independent, Borland decided to change gears and create her own subject matter by adding a humorously disturbing theatrical element.

An exhibit of Polly Borland’s photographs from her Smudge series will be shown at the Paul Kasmin Gallery, here in NYC, opening September 22nd.

September 13, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

PSLAB: Mybar

Lebanese design firm PSLAB designed the lighting concept and fixtures for HGroup Architects on the restaurant/bar project MyBar in downtown Beirut.

Three distinct areas needed to be addressed: the long entrance corridor; the bar; and the dining area. The challenge was to provide a trendy and edgy atmosphere for the evening crowd while keeping it sophisticated to avoid alienating the business professionals who work in the same building and have lunch there.

All the lighting and decor is quite striking, especially the oddly shaped hanging lights. I’d say they succeeded in mixing trendy and sophisticated.

via restaurant and bar design awards

September 6, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Urban Daddy Cycling Classic

This looks like it must have been a lot of fun. As part of the E2NY Festival this summer in the Hamptons, Red Paper Heart – a collective of artists and coders who make music videos, installations and games by combining interactivity and animation –was asked to create an installation for UrbanDaddy. They proposed a head-to-head bike race with a design focus, mapping forests, foxbears and orbs to the speed of the bikes, giving the rider a sense of their speed. The rides lasted 60 seconds. The faster the cyclist the farther they got unlocking multiple environments. Some even made it to space.

Here’s a video worth checking out for a better sense of the event as well as the added treat of listening to a Collabcubed favorite: Ed Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros’ song “Home”.

I think they should implement something like this in my spin classes…

via TagoArtwork

September 1, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Miler Lagos

Colombian artist Miler Lagos works in several mediums including sculpture, installation and video. Much of his art is a metaphor for the fine balance between nature and culture especially in today’s state of diminishing resources.

For his upcoming show here in NYC, Lagos will create his installation piece Igloo, a 9-foot domed structure (see top photo) constructed of layers of reference books laid like bricks in a cylindrical shape. The igloo symbolizes the transfer of knowledge through generations at the same time serving as a shelter to protect from nature, despite its own fragility.

The second work from the top is Pie de Amigo (Foot of Friend) is an arc of stacked architecture books with one pencil placed in the leaves of each book that, if removed, would cause the whole piece to tumble.

Tree Ring Dating is a cross-section of a tree made from folded stock pages from newspapers, exploring the relationship between commodity and nature.

The last three pieces shown are: Silence Dogood; El Papel Aguanta Todo (The Paper Resists Everything) ; and Fragmentos del Tiempo (Fragments of Time)

Miler Lagos’ show Home opens September 8th at MagnanMetz Gallery in NYC.

August 25, 2011 by collabcubed - 0 comments

BMW Guggenheim Lab (follow-up)

I finally made it over to the BMW Guggenheim Lab earlier tonight to see a screening of Garbage Dreams, a film about the Zaballeen (garbage people) living in the outskirts of Cairo. The film was very good, but what I was most excited about was the Lab itself.

For a description of what the BMW Guggenheim Lab is, and is setting out to do, you can see our previous post. What the BMW Guggenheim Lab felt like, was an oasis of tranquility off the bustling, hectic thoroughfare that is Houston Street, especially at rush hour. The minimalist structure (designed by Atelier Bow-Wow from Japan) is surprisingly cozy, and remarkably quiet considering its few steps from Houston Street and Second Ave. Only the occasional mufflerless motorcycle disrupted the film and/or speakers. Also surprising was how well the screen projected even in the daylight. And once the sun did go down, the Lab was warmly lit by spotlights.

It’s these sort of things that make NYC such a wonderful place. Free, interesting events in a lovely setting, open to everyone, with something for most everyone. There are lectures on architecture-related topics and sustainability. There are family-oriented events. There are screenings of films as well as guest speakers that range from authors to television directors to inventors and much more. The BMW Guggenheim Lab is open Wednesdays through Sundays until October 16th in NYC before moving on to Berlin. Check their site for the calendar of events. Oh, and there’s a café run by Roberta’s and bathrooms on the premises as well, so there’s really no excuse for not stopping by if you’re in New York.

Top photo: Paul Warchol from the BMW Guggenheim Lab site.

August 22, 2011 by collabcubed - 4 Comments

MIT FAST Light

MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) celebrated its 150th anniversary this year with 150 consecutive days of special activities and festivities. A major part of these celebratory events occurred during the Festival of Art, Science and Technology (FAST) which culminated in May with the FAST Light festival. On May 7th and 8th the open house featuring installation projects by faculty and staff took place around the MIT campus. Though all the projects are very interesting and worth checking out, for the purposes of keeping this post a reasonable length, I’m only posting about four of these installations.

From top to bottom:
Unflat Pavilion / Feather-Weight Houseby Nick Gelpi: A pattern cut into flat plywood stock transforms into a three-dimensional, freestanding pavilion. Architectural features appear as flat sheets are bent, unfurling into skylights, columns, buttresses, windows and vents.

Night of Numbers by Anna Kotova and Praveen Subramani: a dynamic lighting installation that tells the story of MIT’s past with projected numbers and phrases (that are relevant and meaningful to MIT students and alumni) on buildings around campus.

Maxwell’s Dream: Painting with Light, by Kaustuv De Biswas and Daniel Rosenberg. On display in the Infinite Corridor Community Lounge: An art installation that allows observers to play with a magnetic field to create patterns in light.

Dis(course)4, by Craig Boney, James Coleman and Andrew Manto: A stairwell transformed by a shimmering conduit designed to inspire delight, wonder and communication between floors.

Photo credits: Arts at MIT; caromk’s flickr; courtesy MIT.

August 18, 2011 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Miles Neidinger: Everything We See is Never Enough

Click on images to enlarge.

I was walking past the Flatiron building last weekend and came upon this art installation by Miles Neidinger in the Sprint store window at the base of the building. Everything We See is Never Enough is the name of the piece made of twist ties, vinyl tape, yarn, cellophane and tinsel. This is the first of Sprint’s “Art in the Prow” series of installations.

Miles Neidinger, an artist from Missouri, uses — as he states — “the crummiest materials” in his work:

From Neidinger’s website:
The crummiest materials are employed in this work, yet it insists on formal purity; the process of creation is strictly governed as a means of randomizing the final product. I ask the viewer to uplift twist-ties to the realm of architecture and elevate them to the realm of beauty.

Reversals are staged between banality and beauty, synthetic and organic. These concepts are balanced in such a way that the viewer can oscillate between a preconceived utility of an object and, its new found physical state. With this new physicality I enable the viewer to make new concept formations and, associations regarding familiar objects.

I think the newspaper installations are my favorites.

CollabCubed

Category Archives: Event

Matthew Parker: Event Installations

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.

Ariane Roesch: Electroluminescent

Click to enlarge

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

Yvette Cohen: Sculptural Paintings

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

Ariana Page Russell: Skin Art

Bring to Light/Nuit Blanche 2011: Follow-up

Click to enlarge.

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

Bring to Light Festival

Andrei Molodkin: Transformer No. V579

Click to enlarge

Jean Nouvel: Jane’s Carousel in DUMBO

Click to enlarge.

IBM THINK Exhibit at Lincoln Center

Click to enlarge.

Robert Wilson: 7 Electric Chairs for 7 Decades

Click to enlarge.

Top photo: Lorenzo Nencioni for The New York Times

EARonic iPhone 4 Case: CONTEST

Polly Borland: Disturbingly Funny Photos

PSLAB: Mybar

Urban Daddy Cycling Classic

Miler Lagos

BMW Guggenheim Lab (follow-up)

Top photo: Paul Warchol from the BMW Guggenheim Lab site.

MIT FAST Light

From top to bottom:
Unflat Pavilion / Feather-Weight Houseby Nick Gelpi: A pattern cut into flat plywood stock transforms into a three-dimensional, freestanding pavilion. Architectural features appear as flat sheets are bent, unfurling into skylights, columns, buttresses, windows and vents.

Night of Numbers by Anna Kotova and Praveen Subramani: a dynamic lighting installation that tells the story of MIT’s past with projected numbers and phrases (that are relevant and meaningful to MIT students and alumni) on buildings around campus.

Maxwell’s Dream: Painting with Light, by Kaustuv De Biswas and Daniel Rosenberg. On display in the Infinite Corridor Community Lounge: An art installation that allows observers to play with a magnetic field to create patterns in light.

Dis(course)4, by Craig Boney, James Coleman and Andrew Manto: A stairwell transformed by a shimmering conduit designed to inspire delight, wonder and communication between floors.

Photo credits: Arts at MIT; caromk’s flickr; courtesy MIT.

Miles Neidinger: Everything We See is Never Enough

Click on images 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.

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.

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

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Click to enlarge.

Top photo: Lorenzo Nencioni for The New York Times

Top photo: Paul Warchol from the BMW Guggenheim Lab site.

From top to bottom: Unflat Pavilion / Feather-Weight Houseby Nick Gelpi: A pattern cut into flat plywood stock transforms into a three-dimensional, freestanding pavilion. Architectural features appear as flat sheets are bent, unfurling into skylights, columns, buttresses, windows and vents.

Night of Numbers by Anna Kotova and Praveen Subramani: a dynamic lighting installation that tells the story of MIT’s past with projected numbers and phrases (that are relevant and meaningful to MIT students and alumni) on buildings around campus.

Maxwell’s Dream: Painting with Light, by Kaustuv De Biswas and Daniel Rosenberg. On display in the Infinite Corridor Community Lounge: An art installation that allows observers to play with a magnetic field to create patterns in light.

Dis(course)4, by Craig Boney, James Coleman and Andrew Manto: A stairwell transformed by a shimmering conduit designed to inspire delight, wonder and communication between floors.

Photo credits: Arts at MIT; caromk’s flickr; courtesy MIT.

Click on images to enlarge.

From top to bottom:
Unflat Pavilion / Feather-Weight Houseby Nick Gelpi: A pattern cut into flat plywood stock transforms into a three-dimensional, freestanding pavilion. Architectural features appear as flat sheets are bent, unfurling into skylights, columns, buttresses, windows and vents.