One Square Meter of Roots: Swarte
Click to enlarge
It’s hard not to think of Gotye’s Someone that I Used to Know video when looking at these works by Romanian duo Swarte. But love, anger, and heartbreak don’t seem to be on Corina Olaru and Manuela Vulpescu’s agenda. Instead, their collaborative series of 18 pieces titled One Square Meter of Roots combines painting, drawing, body art and, finally, photography, in an exploration of what made more than 70 tribes from all over the world able to survive and conserve themselves over time. The balance between emotions and symbols varies from one work to another, offering personal reflection and identification to and from the viewer with each artwork’s message and story explained here by the artists.
Pae White: Typography Yarn Installation
Click to enlarge
Los Angeles artist Pae White creates site specific installations merging art, design, and architecture. Presently at the South London Gallery you can find her latest installation titled Too Much Night, Again where 48km of yarn is interwoven and criss-crossed into connecting supergraphic letterforms spelling out the words “Unmattering” on one wall and “Tiger Time” on the opposite one. The work was inspired by a period of insomnia which is hinted at in its name. Depending on your location within the space, the words emerge and fade. Pretty spectacular.
You can see the exhibit being mounted in the video below as well as White being interviewed about her process. And if you’re in London before May 12th, you can see it at the South London Gallery.
Photos courtesy greengrassi by Andy Keate.
via it’s nice that
Coming Soon: Natan Dvir
Click to enlarge
My favorite kind of street photography usually involves humor, but I’ve also noticed that I’m drawn to photographs that juxtapose large images, be they street art murals, bridge arches, or other structures, with miniature-looking people in front of them. Israeli photographer Natan Dvir combines both quite successfully in his series Coming Soon. Arriving in NYC in 2008, Dvir was struck by the super-sized ads/billboards at street level and their effect on the urban landscape, and began photographing them. The resulting images emphasize not only the evident contrast in size but socio-economic levels and ad-agency-dreamworld vs. reality as well.
You can see many more of Dvir’s photographs on his website or in person at the Anastasia Photo Gallery on the Lower East Side in NYC where his work is being exhibited through May 19, 2013.
via NYTimes
Filament Mind: Teton County Library
Click to enlarge
Filament Mind is an information-driven installation at the Teton County Library in Wyoming, designed to visualize the collective questions of library visitors through an interactive and dynamic spacial sculpture. Designed by Brian W. Brush and Yong Ju Lee of E/B office, Filament Mind illuminates searches in a flash of color and light through glowing bundles of fiber optic cables. Whenever any Wyoming public library visitor anywhere in the state performs a search of the library catalog from a computer, each of the 1000 fiber optic cables hanging above (totaling over 5 miles of cable) corresponds to a call number in the Dewey Decimal System, which organizes the library’s collection into approximately 1000 categories of knowledge. These category titles are displayed in text on the lobby’s south and north walls at the termination points of the fiber optic cables. For further clarification how the installation works watch the video below:
via onesmallseed
Zhu Jinshi: Boat
Click to enlarge
Consisting of 8,000 sheets of rice paper, 800 shafts of bamboo, and cotton, the 12-meter long structure titled Boat was presented last month at Art13 London by Chinese abstract artist Zhu Jinshi. The impressive installation was assembled over a three-day period by a crew of workers from Hong Kong who delicately layered the historically- and culturally-relevant paper onto the bamboo poles. The Boat acts as a metaphor with both western and eastern significance: the artist’s personal voyage from east to west; as well as honoring the dead’s passage from living to afterlife, something that Chinese viewers would recognize from the meaning of the Chinese character for ‘boat’. Even time travel could be insinuated by the spaceship quality of the interior.
Photos: Domus and wallpaper
via domus
NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 3/29
Cheap things to do this we
Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (3/29/13 to 3/31/13) between bites of matzo or peeps, or neither. Events in art, music, theater, performance, dance, architecture, film, design and general fun. Click through to event pages for more info on images above or in the descriptions below.
1. ART: Fri 3/29 & Sat 3/30 through 4/6 – Daniel Rozin, Angles at Bitforms, cool interactive art. Love this guy’s work! FREE
2. DANCE/ART/PERFORMANCE: All Weekend – HeardNY: artist Nick Cave transforms Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into a pasture for a grazing herd of 30 fantastical life-size horses. Accompanied by the sounds of live harpist. Daily Crossings at 11am & 2pm. Tours daily at 3pm. FREE
3. PARTICIPATORY/FUN: Fri 3/29 – Holi, Hindu Festival of Colors Dress in white and expect to get colors thrown all over them and you. At Solar 1 on the East River near 22nd Street. 4:30 to 7:30pm. FREE.
4. TALK/BOOKS – Fri 3/29 – Journalist Robert Caro talks to Frank Rich at the Strand. 7pm. Purchase of book or $20 gift card.
5. THEATER: Fri 3/29 & Sat 3/30 matinee – West Side Story. Tisch New Theatre presents a fresh take on a timeless musical. $20 to $35.
6. ART/PARTICIPATORY: All Weekend – New Museum’s Recalling 1993: Call from any NYC pay phone to hear what every neighborhood was like 20 years ago. See map. FREE
7. TALK/BOOK: Fri 3/29 – “Reading Images: Time/Site/Agency” an event that brings scholars, architects, artists and critics to closely look into images and construct arguments, narratives and observations that produce incisive readings of form, politics, representation and the interpretation of “Instant Culture’s” value or devalue in contemporary urbanism today. 7pm FREE
8. MUSIC: Fri 3/29 – Simone Dinnerstein and Tift Merritt discuss their album Night and perform at Soho Apple Store. 7pm
9. FILM: Fri 3/29 & Sat 3/30 – Brooklyn Girl Film Festival, Williamsburg. $10 to $15 See schedule for films and times
10. MUSIC/PUPPETS/PERFORMANCE: Fri 3/29 & Sat 3/30 – Abigail Washburn: Post-American Girl – the folk singer and banjoist has created a stage piece employing Chinese shadow puppetry and sacred harp singing to tell the story of a young woman coming of age in our swiftly changing global order. 7pm $15
11. SPORT/FUN: Sat 3/30 – The Red Hook Criterium an unsanctioned race series consisting of world class road racers, track specialists, bike messengers, and urban athletes competing around a short, technical circuit. 9pm FREE
12. MUSIC/PARTY/FUN: Sat 3/30 – Red Hook Criterium After Party 10:30pm $10
13. COMEDY/PERFORMANCE/MUSIC: Sat 3/30 – Martin & Lawrence/Matt Thurber/The Canadian Romantic: An evening of random stuff with interesting people. Some comedy, some performance art, some dancing, some music, some tv, some juggling, some oil painting, some wrestling, some zumba…you get the picture. Bushwick. 8pm to 11:45pm. FREE
14. ART/TALK: Sat 3/30 – MAAS Talks: Artist Richard Garet who interweaves moving image, sound and multimedia performance into his installations talks about his work with Seth Cluett 2pm FREE LIC
15. ART/CARTOONS/PARTY: Sat 3/30 Comiques: comics and drawings by Anne Emond Opening 7 to 10pm at CultureFix LES. FREE
16. FILM: Sun 3/31 – distENDed cinema: temporal flow in the wake of sound: “Crucial Fictions” at Outpost Artist Resources in Queens. First in a series of live AV events organized by David Linton 7pm to midnight. $7
17. MUSIC: Sun 3/31 – RSVP Only with music by DJ Trauma, Frei Speech & Danny Ocean. Easter Sunday Brunch Edition. 3 to 9pm. FREE with rsvp
18. DANCE/VIDEO: All Weekend – Lace Gries: The FIFTY Project. For his 50th birthday Gries invited 50 dance colleagues to meet him in a studio for a 50-minute dance encounter. Video documents of these are shown Fri & Sat from 1 to 4:30pm, in a double duet image. Presentations also Fri, Sat 5pm & 8pm. Sun 2pm. FREE with reservation.
PLUS…
>>TV/EXHIBIT: All weekend – for you Games of Thrones fans, well, a Games of Thrones Exhibition! FREE
>>FUN/PARTICIPATORY: Sun 3/31 – Check out everyone’s bonnets from tame to wild at this year’s Easter Parade. 10am to 4pm along 5th Ave. FREE
>>DESIGN: All weekend – NY International Auto Show. $15
Alice Hope: Ball Chains & Magnets
Click to enlarge
From a distance it’s hard to tell if New York based artist Alice Hope’s works are paintings, tapestries, or even hanging shag rugs. But, as you get closer the source of the curious colors and textures is revealed as long strands of aluminum ball chains, some painted, others in their natural metal state. Hope painstakingly places each one of these ball chains manually (I know because I saw her finishing one up at the Armory Show earlier this month) onto a perforated steel panel, using magnets. Though it could seem that the process is random, in reality Hope has a process that often relies on numeric patterns. The repetition and monotony of the process is a significant part of the work, as is the gradual deterioration of the work that occurs through dropped chains and magnets.
Currently you can see one of Alice Hope’s pieces at the Greene Space in NYC. The video below shows her process installing it.
Photos courtesy of the artist and collabcubed.
Infinity Bridge: Stockton-on-Tees
Click to enlarge
The Infinity Bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Stockton-on-Tees in the UK, is suspended from a pair of beautiful asymmetrical bowstring arches that, when reflected in the water, look like the flowing double loop of the infinity symbol, hence the name. Designed by Expedition Engineering and Spence Associates, not only are the shape and reflection striking and interesting, but the lighting design by Speirs & Major makes the bridge an interactive kinetic experience. The deck of the footbridge is cloaked in a blue glow that shifts to a white light that moves along with you as you cross, much like a protective spotlight. You can see it in action in the video below.
Photos: Brian Swales and Morley von Sternburg.
via e-archtitect
Jay Shells: Rap Quotes
Click to enlarge
I don’t pretend to know much about rap and even used to refer to Busta Rhymes as Buster (yeah, I know…) but I got a kick out of this project: Graphic artist Jay Shells brought together his love of rap and his keen sign-making abilities in his street art project titled The Rap Quotes. He made 30 official-looking street signs with rap lyrics that cite specific locations and posted the signs at those very locations. Everyone from Mos Def to GZA, Puff Daddy to Kanye West, and more are quoted.
I have to give a nod to a friend who had another rap lyric-related project idea a while back that we briefly worked on together: rap tees. Who knows? Could still happen…
You can follow @TheRapQuotes for more on Shells’ project.
Lin Xinjian: City DNA
Click to enlarge
Shanghai-based artist Lin Xinjian was fascinated by the combination of uniqueness and uniformity in the patterns revealed by Google Earth’s views of cities. He began sketching the patterns he saw, making them into geometric shapes; a series of lines, curves, x’s and o’s. He calls these large canvases City DNA, borrowing the term from urban planning. Though not as minimal as Mondrian, it’s hard not to draw comparisons. Circuit boards come to mind as well.
From top to bottom: Paris, Madrid, Manhattan, Los Angeles, Chiasso, Venice, London, and Beijing.
via coudal
Sergei Sviatchenko: Less
Click to enlarge
I love all of these photo collages by Ukrainian-born artist Sergei Sviatchenko who lives and works in Denmark. In his Less series, which seems to be an ongoing project started in 2004 with subtle variations such as Less Paint and Lessroyal, Sviatchenko takes familiar everyday objects and recontextualizes them delivering the imagery in new, dynamic forms.
These collages have a surreal bent to them that’s just great, and how about that wallpaper (third image down from the top)? That would be fun to have at home or in an office.
You can buy prints of some of Sviatchenko’s works here, and a recently released book on his work titled Everything Goes Right & Left If You Want It.
Alex Schweder: Performance Architecture
Click to enlarge
Alex Schweder creates installations that he refers to as “performance architecture”. Based on the notion that relationships between occupied spaces and occupying subjects are permeable, Schweder’s works often invite interactivity. Visitors follow their visual architectural instincts and once engaged, their expectations and perspective are challenged; what at first seemed familiar becomes strange. Top two images are from the pivoting and rocking Stability, which relies on the position and weight of its two occupants (in collaboration with Ward Shelley.) Snowballing Doorway (third photo down) is an inflatable installation with two arches in mirrored orientation, participants can pass through the bottom arch until the upper up-side-down arch starts to displace it. The next two photos are of A Sac of Rooms All Day Long another inflatable structure with something too big inside something too small. Roomograph, which follows, works like a photogram with photosensitive material that when the lights go out, occupants see their outlines as shadows. Counterweight Roommate forces vertical movement to rely on the counter weight of its two occupants, and was continuously inhabited for five days at Scope Basel in 2011. Split Skin (bottom left) is an installation of licked together packing peanuts that melts and contorts when in contact with water and lastly, The Rise and Fall, offers visitors a ground-shifting structure that responds to their weight and their movements with relation to one another.
There’s much more information on all of these installations as well as many others on the artist’s site.
via haptic blog
Eran Gilat: Life Science
Click to enlarge
Israeli scientist and photographer Eran Gilat combines both passions in a visual study influenced by his constant exposure to various biological tissues and specimens. His photo series Life Science offers an artistic expression of scientific observations, research methodology with an emphasis on aesthetics. Disturbing to many, there’s an eerie beauty to these somewhat morbid painterly photographs. Hard not to compare them to 17th Century Dutch still lifes.
NYC Culture on the Cheap: Weekend 3/22
Cheap things to do this we
Free & Cheap things to do this weekend in NYC (3/22/13 to 3/24/13) in art, music, theater, performance, dance, architecture, film, design and general fun. Click through to event pages for more info, either on images above or in the descriptions below.
1. ART: Fri 3/22 & Sat 3/23 through 4/20 – Sergie Tcherepnin: Ear Tone Box. Works at the intersections of sound, sculpture, and theater with objects taking on hybridized personalities, inviting play between things and bodies. At Murray Guy in Chelsea FREE
2. THEATER/DANCE: Fri 3/22 and Sat 3/23 – Breaking Surface: merges dance, acrobatics, flight, water, & poetic imagery in a watery adventure that defies expectation. 8pm. $25
3. BOOK/MUSIC/PARTY: Fri 3/22 Celebrate Touré’s new book I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon with a dance party featuring a night of Prince music spun by Ali Shaheed Muhammad from A Tribe Called Quest. 7pm. $5.
4. FILM: All Weekend – New Directors New Films: $12 to $15. See schedule
5. ART: Fri 3/22 – Anne Lilly: Temporal Tincture. Beautiful and elegant interactive kinetic sculpture (one of my favorites at Scope). Noon to 5pm. Reception 5 to 8pm Galerie Swanström, 136 Sullivan St. FREE
6. MUSIC: All Weekend – Planetarium by Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, and Nico Muhly at BAM. A few $25 seats left.
7. DANCE: All Weekend – DanceBrazil at the Joyce Theater. Tkts $10 and up.
8. FILM: All Weekend – The Films of Stanley Kubrick at IFC: $13.50
9. FOOD/DRINK/MUSIC/FUN: Sat 3/23 & Sun 3/24 – The Big British Invite will take place from 12pm-6pm. Drinks, dance, express manicures. FREE
10. MUSIC/FOOD/FUN: All Weekend – Freetown Produce Festival with Cajun Music and Cooking. Day Passes $30 to $37. See schedule
11. ART/TALK: Sat 3/23 –Artist Hans Haacke and Irving Sandler in Conversation on Haacke’s practice, including his contribution to the German Pavilion at the 1993 Venice Biennale. 3pm $8
12. MUSIC: Sat 3/23 – Fredericks Brown & Jean Grae: a double bill of Soul and ground-breaking hip hop. 7:30pm $20
13. COMEDY/PERFORMANCE: Fri 3/22 & Sat 3/23 – NYC Improv Fest. See schedule for shows. $8ea/$40 for Fest Pass
14. FOOD: Sat 3/23 & Sun 3/24 – Big Cheesy Competition: Seven Grilled Cheese sandwiches from 7 chefs compete: $25 (This is apparently sold out.)
15. MUSIC: Sun 3/24 – Lucy Michelle & The Velvet Lapelles at Mercury Lounge 7:30pm $10
16. ARCHITECTURE/WALK: All Weekend – Go for a stroll on the brand-spanking new bouncy Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge with yet more spectacular views of the NYC skyline. FREE
17. FOOD/WALKING TOUR: Sun 3/24 – Big Onion Multi-Ethnic Eating Tour. Combines the history of the diverse LES with a series of small food sampling, or “noshing” stops from local shops. 1pm $25 with RSVP
18. TALK/ARCHITECTURE: Sun 3/24 – Surfrider Foundation: Mobilizing Grassroots Activists in Coastal Conservation at Beach 94 in the Rockaways. 1 to 3pm. FREE RSVP
Check last week’s COTC, or the week before, for some ongoing events. Enjoy!
Drop the Beat: Wesley Chau
Click to enlarge
Drop the Beat is a wearable electronic drum set designed by RISD Senior industrial design student Wesley Chau. Inspired by Laurie Anderson’s concert film “Home of the Brave”, Chau aims to elevate the artist’s presence during live performance. The neoprene vest gets velcroed with drum pads embedded with piezo sensors. The result is a one-person band allowing for flexibility and movement. Fantastic! Make sure to watch the video above to see it in action. Check out Chau’s other designs on his site. I especially like this pill box.
Mark Hartman: Billboards
Click to enlarge
Some of my favorite “street art” is the type that occurs naturally, unplanned, with no single artist responsible. It’s the collage-like effect created by the little bits of postings and ads left behind and piled upon each other on billboards and plywood throughout the city. It’s actually been a longtime (unfulfilled) plan of mine to try to recreate this effect on a wall in my home. New York based photographer Mark Hartman has honed in on this very subject matter in his personal photo series project titled Billboards. He describes himself as curator, picking and choosing specific parts of these shredded walls, beautifully cropping and photographing them.
via Prism
Long-Bin Chen: Sculpted Books & Magazines
Click to enlarge
Taiwanese artist Long-Bin Chen works with books, magazines, and phone books using traditional sculpting techniques to carve them into works that resemble classic stone busts of both Eastern and Western icons. I saw several of these in person at this year’s VoltaNY Show and even seeing the front and backs up close, and knowing that they’re made with printed matter, they are still amazingly convincing.
CollabCubed 