March 30, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

No Longer Empty: “This Side of Paradise”

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The contemporary public art organization No Longer Empty, is revitalizing the Andrew Freedman Home — a block-long mansion along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, originally built as a welfare hotel for the retiring wealthy who had fallen on hard times beginning in the 1920s and lasting into the 80s, when it was taken over by the non-profit Mid Bronx Senior Citizens Council — by inviting 32 artists to create site-specific works.

Many of the artists included are well known graffiti artists such as Crash, Daze, and How & Nosm who have each taken one of the rooms and are bringing them to life. There is a bit of irony in the choice to invite street artists to revitalize the grand mansion when its decline coincided with the rise of Bronx graffiti in the 70s and 80s, but there are also parallels which the curator points out: “…the role of the artist rising from the ashes of the burned-out neighborhoods then and an art show in the decay of this home now.”

The exhibit, titled This Side of Paradise, begins the evening of April 4th through June 5th, and will open the gates of the Andrew Freedman Home to the public.

Photos by Jaime Rojo. Top to bottom: How & Nosm Reflections; Crash Connections; Daze; Adam Parker Smith, I Lost All My Money In The Great Depression And All I Got Was This Room; Scherezaede Garcia; Cheryl Pope, Then and There

via Brooklyn Street Art

March 26, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Choi Jeong Hwa: Air/Air & Life/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 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 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 16, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

LEGO Imagine Ads: Jung Von Matt

This series of ads for LEGO by German agency Jung Von Matt is fantastic. Starting with the Simpsons at the top, breaking down all of these characters into blocks of color and still retaining the element of recognition is so wonderfully surprising. Love it.

via adsoftheworld via thisisnthappiness

March 15, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Cartoon-like Handbags: Jump from Paper

These bags are ridiculously fun. Designers Chay Su and Rika Lin from Taipei asked themselves “How amazing it would be if a two-dimensional hand-drawn illustration could come to life as a real bag?!” And from there Jump from Paper came to be. Pretty amazing. Though the bags look flat, apparently they are quite roomy. These bags will definitely turn a head or two on the street.

via swissmiss

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.

Sang Sik Hong Plastic Straw Sculptures

Nicole Dextras Ice Typography

The Portrait Building by ARM Architects

Matchheads by David Mach

Blackfield by Zadok Ben David

The Transfinite: Ryoji Ikeda

The Twist Bridge

Ana Soler: Causa-Efecto

EARonic iPhone Cases by Daniela Gilsanz

March 9, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Dario Escobar: Sports Recontextualized

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Guatemalen 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.

Photos courtesy the artist and Galerie Kamel Mennour

March 8, 2012 by collabcubed - 2 Comments

Sprinkles 24-Hour Cupcake ATM

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Not being much of a dessert person myself, I can’t really imagine a 4am craving for a cupcake, but I guess it’s reassuring for some of you to know that now there is a 24-hour cupcake ATM to assuage such a desire. The Beverly Hills bakery Sprinkles has recently installed the cupcake vending machine as part of their storefront and judging from a photo posted to their facebook page, the late-night lines are insane. We’ll have to ask our LA correspondent, Moni, to check this out for us.

UPDATE: Apparently there will be three of these ‘cupcake automats’ opening in NYC within the next year, the first one opening this summer on the Upper West Side. (Thanks, Breger!)

You can watch the video below to see it in action:

You might also like these other unique vending machines here.

Photos: Sprinkles facebook, we heart, and Sprinkles

via @mrfidalgo

March 7, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

Pprofessors: Red People Art-Constructor

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Yes, 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

March 6, 2012 by collabcubed - 1 Comment

Slade Architecture: Virgin Clubhouse and…

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Virgin Atlantic’s new JFK Clubhouse – designed by our good friends James and Hayes Slade of Slade Architecture – opened yesterday at JFK International Airport here in NYC. The 10,000 square foot lounge includes a beautiful curvy bar, cool seating such as the also curved, oversized, custom-made flame red ball sofa, and a large maple wood and burgundy billiards table in the ‘Entertainment Zone’. Bumble and Bumble has opened their first US airport salon and spa as part of the Clubhouse, as well.

Slade Architecture have a slew of great projects under their belt (many of them award winning) and an impressive range to boot; from residential to commercial, educational to cultural…plus furniture and product design, to boot! Below are some of our recent favorites, but you should really visit their website to see much more.

Top three photos: Barbie Flagship Store in Shanghai; second from bottom: Pup Tent; bottom left: Diffa Installation (discarded furniture covered in duct tape); bottom right: East 67th Street Bathroom.

All photos courtesy Slade Architecture

via Virgin Atlantic’s facebook page

March 1, 2012 by collabcubed - 0 comments

The Wynwood Walls: Street Art in Miami

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Well, 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.