Wonderment >> Alex MacClean
Unmarked Tennis Courts, Manchester, NH
I just don’t get sick of aerial photography (see past posts here and here). It’s the wonder you felt as a kid looking out of a plane window, captured in a photograph, how awesome. Ok, I still feel that way looking out of a plane window.
I am really digging the graphic quality of these images by Alex MacClean. I’m fairly obsessed with that top image of unmarked tennis courts– it’s just so cool that you can’t tell at all what it is until you know the title.
Marias River Drainage and Pivot Irrigator, Loma Area, MT
I seem to like the images more the more they abstract what the subject actually is– it’s cool to see these views of very real, tangible things only for their graphic qualities. If you visit his website you’ll see he has tons of different subjects and style, but I’m most drawn to the bold, graphic, and pattern-suggestive images.
Floating Daisy Docks, Chicago, IL
B-52 Bone Yards, Tuscon, AZ
Apple Trees After Spring Snowstorm, Clinton, Mass
[Alex MacClean website]
The World’s Largest Work of Art
Remember Jim Denevan, whose work I put up back here (if you didn’t see it, check it out, pretty awesome)? Well apparently back in March, he completed the “world’s largest work of art,” on Lake Baikal in Siberia, and there’s a documentary in the works about the piece (intro below).
Denevan’s large-scale earth works explore the impermanent, carving geometric shapes into element-sensitive areas, like sand and snow, that will eventually be erased by wind and water.
This latest project in Siberia was a 9-square mile spiral of circles, along the fibonacci curve, starting at 18″ and ranging up to miles in diameter.
Jim Denevan site here.
Siberia project as featured on The Anthropologist
Murakami at Versailles
Takashi Murakami is exhibiting at Versailles! I caught the Murakami show at the Brooklyn Museum a couple of years ago, but would LOVE to see his work in this setting.
Murakami is known for his play on the intersection of high and low, appropriating both Japanese anime and traditional forms of Japanese painting and often producing his work through mass production. Exploring similar themes as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, etc., such as mass media, pop culture, and consumerism, he is considered one of the most prolific Japanese pop artists (albeit a few decades after the West’s pop art movement).
Here’s the artist’s statement about the show– pretty interesting:
For a Japanese like me, the Château de Versailles is one of the greatest symbols of Western history. It is the emblem of an ambition for elegance, sophistication and art that most of us can only dream of.
Of course, we are aware that the spark that set fire to the powder of the Revolution came directly from the centre of the building.
Of course, we are aware that the spark that set fire to the powder of the Revolution came directly from the centre of the building.
But, in many respects, everything is transmitted to us as a fantastic tale coming from a very distant kingdom. Just as French people can find it hard to recreate in their minds an accurate image of the Samurai period, the history of this palace has become diminished for us in reality.
So it is probable that the Versailles of my imagination corresponds to an exaggeration and a transformation in my mind so that it has become a kind of completely separate and unreal world. That is what I have tried to depict in this exhibition.
I am the Cheshire cat that welcomes Alice in Wonderland with its diabolic smile, and chatters away as she wanders around the Château.
With a broad smile I invite you all to discover the wonderland of Versailles.
Similar to Keith Haring, who sold his own work out of a storefront, Murakami also lends his name and his “Superflat” style to other projects. One such project was an ongoing collaboration with Marc Jacobs on a limited edition Louis Vuitton bags, which they even sold within the museums where Murakami was exhibiting.
They effectively set up a pop-up Louis Vuitton store within the Brooklyn Museum during his show, selling bags for $5,000 and canvases for $10,000… now if that doesn’t blur lines between art and commodity, I don’t know what does.
Here is Marc Jacobs on working with Murakami:
Apparently Kanye caught the Superflat bug as well and collaborated with Murakami on the “Good Morning” video…
Keeping Tabs >> Jason Hackenwerth
With his imaginative, large-scale, sea-creaturey balloon art, Jason Hackenwerth is one to keep tabs on.
Doesn’t this seem kind of like an ironic take on Jeff Koons, whose work was an ironic take on balloon art? Now Hackenwerth actually just makes huge balloon art? I’m lost in a maze of irony, but I think it’s like the same as √xˆ2=x.
I like how the context affects this one…
Typography + Architecture >> Colosseo
I just couldn’t end the day with that creepy pageant post, and it was actually really hard to find something to follow that, because all of a sudden, knowing that those images would follow whatever I put up next, they started tainting everything!
So anyway… I’ve had this in the vault for a while and thought, ok, there’s no way the pageant pics could have any kind of dialogue with something with almost no allusions or connotations, something that is just purely graphicly, visually interesting.
After a 10-year anniversary trip to Rome with his wife, designer Cameron Moll decided to make the Colosseum his next artistic subject. Using 16th century calligrapher M. Giovambattista Palatino’s work as his inspiration (see bottom), he then spent over 250 hours creating this piece, character by character, using the Goudy Trajan Bembo Pro typefaces.
[Available as a print here.]
Zimoun’s Sound Sculptures
Above, 21 of artist Zimoun’s “sound sculptures,” which despite their mechanical mediums all seem to sound amazingly like different types of rain and wind, making them peaceful-sounding but faintly maniacal to watch. I felt like I was listening to a sleep-sound-machine while slowly going insane.
Still, check it out. My personal faves are at about 2:24 and 7:23… I just realized I incidentally picked the two least mechanical as my favorites. Ha.
“Zimoun’s sound sculptures and installations are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the «artificial» and the «organic».”
[Thanks Monica!]
XYXX
The tumblr XYXX is a “visual conversation between two iphones and two lovers.” Essentially, this couple started sending photos back and forth, any old thing from their days, more abstract and less cheesy than you might expect, and they turned it into a tumblr as a record of the “conversation.”
You can tell which photos were uploaded by him and which by her given their small tags at the bottom– either XX or XY.
Though the photos are interesting, it’s the concept more than the photos that I like. Here’s what they say about it in their “authors” section of the site:
where conversations can be routine, an image is so much more intimate. it’s letting someone in behind your eye and saying right now, this second, this is my world. this is what i see, how I feel, and what I want to share with you. somedays it’s a game of exquisite corpse. somedays it’s a quiet conversation. An ever evolving game of tag with no rules or expectations except to simply be present, and that’s the beauty of it.
Art in Stead
The MAK Center’s project “How Many Billboards, Art in Stead” asked 21 contemporary artists to each produce a billboard to be placed around Los Angeles, giving residents a break from the generally un-stimulating clutter crowding their cityscapes.
Wouldn’t it be cool if, for some amount of time per year, billboard owners were required to give a portion of their billboards over to art instituations for projects like this, the same way tv networks have to allow ad space for PSAs? And every once in a while you would glance at a billboard and see art instead of an ad?
Read more about the project (which is sadly over) in this NYT article.
Project website here.
Classic >> Slim Aarons
Must See >> Blu
A stop-motion animation film of sometimes small-, sometimes very large-scale murals by the Argentine artist Blu on the sidewalks of Buenos Aires.
I don’t know how quickly he changes these drawings, but it would be pretty cool if you came across something like this on your daily commute, and you could see it evolve every day, not having any idea where it’s headed.
Also pretty amazing that after each drawing was photographed, that became a frame in the film, and there was no way to go back and change previous frames, since he had already changed the drawing and moved on. I’m curious how much he planned out the whole trajectory ahead of time!
