June 7, 2012 by collabcubed - 7 Comments

Chen Chun-Hao: Mosquito Nail Paintings

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Taiwanese artist Chen Chun-Hao had been using thumbtacks as his medium of choice in creating sculptures, wall pieces and installations for over a decade. In the past couple of years he departed from thumbtacks and shifted to nails. More specifically “mosquito nails”— small headless pins about a third the size of a toothpick. Using a nail gun, Chen nails these small pins into canvas-covered wood, creating reproductions of traditional Chinese ink landscape paintings. Many of these contain tens of thousands of nails in one work. Crazy impressive! And maybe a little obsessive…

Chen Chun-Hao currently has works included in White Rabbit Gallery‘s exhibit, Down the Rabbit Hole, in Chippendale, Australia.

Photos: White Rabbit; VTArts flickr; Xinhuanet; and Taipei Times.

via frame

June 6, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Ribeira da Carpinteira Pedestrian Bridge

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How sleek is this bridge?! I love it. Designed by Lisbon-based João Luís Carrilho da Graça (JLCG Arquitectos), this pedestrian bridge spans 220 meters over a valley and the Carpinteira brook/stream.

From the architect:
The sinuous and segmented design of the bridge winds above the valley, along a distance of about 220 m. the central takes a path perpendicular to the line of the valley. the other two sections are inflected and oriented towards their anchoring points. the connection between the two points is no longer the shortest distance between them. the tense geometry of its layout interferes with visual orientation and with the perception of dominating heights of “serra da estrela”, on one side, and with the vastness of cova da beira on the other.

Spectacular, though I don’t understand the choice of spiraling cylindrical columns… kind of takes away from the sleekness.

Definitely not for the vertigo-inflicted.

via architizer

June 5, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

More Brigitte Zieger: The Shadow

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Continuing with Brigitte Zieger’s work (previous post) this installation was created for Les Environnementales a Biennial of Contemporary Art held at Tecomah, an environmental studies school near Paris. The Shadow, as the piece is titled, becomes part of the landscape and would suggest the ominous presence of a plane hovering above, yet there is no plane. Zieger painted the grass to look like a shadow. Once again, her art deals with violence, war and the threat of both. Interesting work.

Her Shooting Wallpaper is also worth checking out, here.

June 4, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Max Streicher: Inflatable Sculptures

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Max Streicher is a sculptor and installation artist from Alberta, now residing in Toronto, who has worked extensively with inflatable technology in kinetic sculptures. His inflatable sculptures include clouds, oversized horses, bodies, a beetle, and forest, as well as abstract forms and — in my opinion a little creepy — giant clown heads squeezed between two buildings in Toronto. That one (second row from bottom) might give people nightmares…

via galeria raquel ponce

June 1, 2012 by collabcubed - 4 Comments

Sebastian Mariscal: MCASD Installation

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Mexican-born architect Sebastian Mariscal, now based in La Jolla and Boston, has a string of AIA awards under his belt along with projects that range from homes to restaurants to hotels and even a winery. He also created this tunnel from ~~ply~~wood that served as the entry to the exhibition Mix: Nine San Diego Architects and Designers at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego La Jolla. I love the texture, the varied wood tones, and the red and green flecks throughout on the tips. Nice installation!

Photos: Sebastian Mariscal, A/N, and Chimay Bleue’s flickr

via Arquine

May 25, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Owen Shop NYC: Tacklebox

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Once again architecture firm Tacklebox uses unique materials in their retail store design (see previous post on Aesop’s kiosk here), this time for the new high end OWEN shop in New York City’s Meatpacking District. A continuous surface hand-built out of 25,000 brown paper bags, arches from floor to ceiling creating a honeycomb effect within the industrial brick and concrete 1,800 square foot space that previously housed a meat storage facility. This project is the first in a series of signature stores for OWEN and serves as a preview of stores to come.

Very cool.

Photos courtesy of Tacklebox by Juliana Sohn.

via NY Times

May 23, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Henrik Vibskov: Book Launch Performance

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Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov is not your ordinary fashion designer. His fashion designs could be described as avant garde, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. He is a multifaceted artist, stage designer and musician who has a unique, sort of wacky, offbeat style. Seeing one of his fashion shows must be a real treat. More of a performance art piece than a classic runway show.

This month a book of his work is due out titled, not surprisingly, Henrik Vibskov. For the Berlin book launch, Vibskov designed and choreographed an interesting performance with a graphic backdrop and two actors covered in the same pattern, performing odd tasks, such as sweeping into a dustpan, in very slow motion. Also not to be missed are his collaborations with Andreas Emenius, including The Fringe Projects and The Circular Series.

You can watch a video of the book launch performance below.

And here is one of the installations from The Fringe Projects pictured above, titled Car Wash in action:

via gestalten

May 17, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Yeah! More FarmGroup

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Bangkok-based multi-disciplinary design studio FarmGroup (previously here) created this fun Christmas installation at the Siam Center. Using thousands of colorful plastic drinking straws, the sculpted the word “Yeah!” along with several shapes of animals, stars, and other holiday motifs.

If you like this you might also like Sang Sik Hong’s Straw Sculptures and Scott Jarvie’s Clutch Project, also made with straws.

May 17, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Kukje Art Gallery: SO-IL Architects

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For their recently completed project in the northern part of Seoul, partners Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of the Brooklyn-based Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO–IL) architecture studio, diffused the front of their structure for the Kukje Art Gallery with a chainmail veil. As part of their master plan for the gallery’s new “art campus”, SO–IL designed a clear-span art space in the shape of a box to house large contemporary installations. They maintained the pure geometry of the space by pushing the circulation out to the edge of the building. They felt that the white cube was too rigid within the historic environs, so, by enveloping the structure in a steel mesh, they blurred the edges and softened the appearance as a whole, in addition to creating a very cool-looking building.

Working with FrontInc. Engineers, and fabricators in China, to design and manufacture the armor-style mesh, SO–IL oversaw mock-up tests in Southern China for the proper elasticity and geometry before having it transported to the gallery site in Seoul.

The result, needless to say, is very striking.

Photos by Iwan Baan; FrontInc; SO–IL and SO–IL’s facebook.

via afasia and domus

May 16, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Tomás Saraceno: Cloud City at the Met

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It may not have been the best day to inaugurate Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno’s new installation, Cloud City (his largest in a 10-year-old series Cloud Cities/Air Port City), on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum due to the heavy downpours of rain, but it was the previously determined date. I was looking forward to checking out the installation in person, having been aware of Saraceno’s habitable constructions (previously here) for a while now, but will wait for a sunnier day.

The sculptural/architectural piece atop the Met is made up of interconnected metal and acrylic modules with both reflective and transparent panels. Visitors are able to enter the structure for up to twenty minutes by obtaining a timed-entry ticket. If the regular views from the roof garden weren’t already beautiful enough, I would imagine that both, the views from the additional 20-foot high interior, as well as off of the mirrored panels on its exterior, are even more spectacular, as evident in Saraceno’s photos.

Definitely worth a visit, though there are likely to be long lines to enter, especially on weekends. Luckily, Cloud City will be on the roof of the Met through November 4, 2012, at which point it will travel to Green Box Arts Festival in Colorado where it will be placed in the middle of the forest.

Check out The Met’s site for details.

Photos courtesy of the artist and The Met.

via The Metropolitan Museum and NY Times

May 14, 2012 by collabcubed - 3 Comments

Qzina’s World’s Largest Chocolate Sculpture

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Weighing in at 18,239 pounds (!!), Qzina Specialty Foods’ chocolate model of an ancient Mayan temple has broken the Guinness World Record for largest chocolate sculpture.

Corporate Pastry Chef Francois Mellet and MOF (Meilleur Ouvrier de France or Best Craftsman in France) Stephane Treand led their team in building the winning work. With a 10ft x 10ft square base, and measuring 6 feet high, the chocolate sculpture—which pays homage to the Mayans’ role in the origins of chocolate—accurately recreates the details of a Mayan temple.

The sculpture will be on display at the Irvine-based Qzina Institute of Chocolate & Pastry from June 4 to December 21, 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar year, when it will be destroyed.

If you like this, you might also like Sonja Alhauser’s work.

Photos courtesy of Qzina

via gothamist

May 11, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Peter De Cupere: Olfactory Art

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Where to begin? Not since John Waters’ 1981 film Polyester with scratch ‘n sniff ‘Odorama’ have I seen anything like Peter De Cupere’s Olfactory Art. Apparently, a growing number of artists around the world are incorporating scent into their works. Belgian artist De Cupere creates smell installations, scent sculptures, olfactory performances, smell-movies and scented painting. He generates a sort of meta-sensory experience that goes beyond purely seeing or smelling. He started playing with, and noticing, fragrances as a child, fearing that he would lose his vision. He attributes his fascination with the combination of smell and visual to that early-life fear. De Cupere is also fascinated with people’s desire to change or cover their natural smell with perfume in order to be more attractive to others. He seems to be a firm believer in the natural, and not over-washing.

I find all his work very interesting, if a bit bizarre. From top to bottom here are some of his works:

Sweat: Peter De Cupere collected the sweat of dancers wearing plastic suits during a 15-minute performance choreographed by Jan Fabre. He applied the concentrated essence, enclosed in a glass box, to a wall at the dance company’s home base, in Antwerp. Visitors can smell it through a hole in the glass.

Air Polluter: an interactive smell installation which allows the visitor to decide in how far he or she contributes to pollution of the air. By means of a control panel at the start of the installation, visitors can activate good as well as bad smells. This subdivision into two so called Smell Fields is based on the socially accepted appreciation of the various smells.

Smoke Room: a smell installation made of more than 750,000 cigarette butts.

Smile Room: a smell installation made with 3400 tubes toothpaste, pu-components, creating an intense minty toothpaste smell.

Tree Virus: Smell-installation with intensive peppermint smell. Visitors start to cry by entering the plastic dome. The main fragrance is an intense mix of peppermint in combination of black pepper.

Flower Fragum Cardamomi: first Scratch ‘n Sniff Sculpture in the world, 9 meters high. Made of epoxy, metal, 1000 strawberries and cardamon.

Olfactory Tree: scented sculpture made completely of epoxy and fake. Fragrances: pine, cedre, forest, mushrooms, grass

Garbage City Holiday Jina Park: a smell installation made to look like garbage but smelling of pine & cedar, honey mustard, and peach-cassis.

Smell Me Project: People’s necks are stamped with the words “smell me” and everyone goes around sniffing each other exploring others’ scents and which attract and repel.

Olfactiano: A piano-like instrument that emits different smells when played called ‘Scent Concerts.’

There’s much more to explore if you find this as fascinating as I do. For older work check De Cupere’s website, and for more recent his facebook page. Click through the links above for more on the individual projects.

Oh, and he’s making a perfume called ‘Peter’ of his own smells, coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that!

via saatchi online

May 10, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Daniel Buren: Excentrique(s)

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French artist Daniel Buren has unveiled his monumental installation Excentrique(s), Travail in situ, for this year’s Monumenta, the annual art project that’s in its fifth year and challenges an internationally known artist to ‘own’ the 145,000 square foot space of Paris’s Grand Palais.

Buren, a minimalist, has filled the space with primary colored discs horizontally eight feet off the ground, except for the area underneath the nave which has 9 circular mirrors on the floor facing up. Utilizing the sunlight that shines through the space, Buren fills the Grand Palais with color and light that, apparently, is rather breathtaking.

This would be so much fun to see in person…because of the installation and because it’s in Paris!

Photos: Courtesy of Monumenta, Benoit Tessier/Reuters, Francois Guillot/AFP/GettyImages and Francois Mori/AP.

via voanews and the telegraph

May 8, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Kuggen (The Cog): Wingårdh Arkitektkontor

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Kuggen (The Cog in Swedish) is a brightly colored sustainable office building, designed by the Swedish firm Wingårdh Arkitektkontor, nestled in among Lindholmen’s other office buildings in Gothenberg, Sweden, in less colorful shades of gray. The newish building acts as a hub for formal as well as informal meetings between the local, and student, community and the business community. The design is not only unique in its aesthetic, but incorporates state-of-the-art solutions for adapted ventilation, lighting, heating and cooling that minimize the environmental impact. Growing by two room units per floor, from bottom to top, creates shading for the windows on the previous floor, as well as a curved screen that rotates around the building—following the sun’s path—providing additional shading. The roof has built-in sun collectors that complete the solar energy system.

The cylindrical shape of the structure allows for lots of floor space, and the triangular windows provide both open-plan and private office spaces with good daylight, reducing the need for artificial lighting.

I find it interesting that they have chosen to keep the interior palette to neutral tones, but then, I guess working in a bright red office space could be a little distracting and, of course, not as energy-efficient.

Top two photos from David Anderson’s flickr; Other photos by Ake E:son Lindman courtesy of the architect.

via daddelicious flickr

May 7, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

And That’s the Way it Is: Ben Rubin

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A few weeks ago, The University of Texas dedicated one of their plazas to the legacy of Walter Cronkite. The newly named plaza was debuted along with media artist Ben Rubin’s (previously here) art installation titled And That’s The Way It Is; a digital interface that intertwines transcripts of Cronkite’s legendary broadcasts with contemporary journalism, projected in a beautifully choreographed manner (reminiscent of Jenny Holzer’s work) as compositions of moving text, onto the façade of the CMA building, overlooking the Walter Cronkite Plaza.

From austinist:
The profound differences between Cronkite’s world and ours are felt as the projection evolves, both in their content and manifestation within Rubin’s piece. For the Cronkite transcripts, Rubin slows the pace and allows the text to move slowly up and down the CMA with fully legible quotes. When projection segues to live news feeds, the text flies across the building, occasionally as just snippets of stories and other times with full news coverage. The words overlap and eventually become so dense that the overwhelming presence of media becomes the dominant character in Rubin’s piece. Rubin accurately portrays this amassing of information and reinforces the oversaturation of current journalism.

The permanent installation is on display nightly from dusk to midnight on the southern façade of the College of Communication A Building on the UT Austin Campus.

You can see the installation in action below:

Photos courtesy of the Ben Rubin and Paul Bardagjy.

via frame and austinist

May 4, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Guildor: Write on the Water

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I can just imagine the smiles provoked by coming upon Milan-based street artist Guildor’s floating phrases. Write on the Water (love the punniness) is a series of installations created by the artist in several cities including Amsterdam, Milan, and Venice. Linking foam letters together to create words and statements such as “Clap First”, “Happiness Happens”, “Think Once and a Half”, “Pensa Spensierato (Think Carefree)”, and “Love; Let the Rest Flow” and floating them on water – from fountains to rivers and canals – is simply a happy and nice concept.

From the artist:
Writing on water is like writing down a thought in order to keep it secure even when it is shaken by the course of life, to distinguish the important things from those you should just let flow by.

If you like this you’d probably enjoy Nicole Dextras’ Ice Typography installations, too.

Top photo by Nicole Blommers; Once and HA photos by Andrea Bertolotti; all others by Thomas Pagani.

via flickr

May 4, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Snarkitecture: Odin Fragrance Pop-Up Shop

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Earlier today, I stopped by the new Odin Fragrances Pop-up Shop in the East Village designed by the ever-talented Snarkitecture (previously here and here). The 350-square foot, elongated shop, right next to Odin’s main store, is filled by an installation created with hundreds of white plaster cast pieces in the shape of Odin’s Fragrance bottles. These ‘bottles’, in extreme contrasting white – highlighting the occasional black fragrance bottle within the piece – are both inverted and suspended from the ceiling in a beautiful, flowing pattern, as well as elevated on poles from the floor twisting their way around the space. It’s really quite lovely and unexpected on the East 11th Street block.

The Odin Fragrance x Snarkitecture Pop-Up Shop will be open for five more weeks, from 12pm to 7 pm daily at 330 East 11th Street in NYC.

Top photo courtesy of Snarkitecture; all others collabcubed

via T Magazine via notcot

May 3, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Multipraktik: TapeArt

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The Slovenian, multi-disciplinary, design collective Multipraktik organized a series of street TapeArt actions – with different artists across Slovenia – as part of the new campaign for Orto, a cellphone carrier company. Aside from the resulting wonderful murals, it looks like these guys had a lot of fun. Take a look at one of the many stop-motion videos below.