Yong Ho Ji produces his unique sculptures using metal, styrofoam and recycled rubber tires. I encountered one of the sculptures in person at a graduate show at CU a few weeks ago and was really impressed. The sculptures themselves are either life-sized or larger and the detail is really amazing.
Alex Ziv lives and works in San Francisco and is a recent graduate from SFAI. He recently participated in a group show hosted by Fecal Face titled Cigarettes, Phone Cards & Hip Hop Clothing and has updated his site with new works from the show. Ziv’s work draws heavily from pop culture and cartoons.
“Dancehall Queen Style is a Jamaican dance fashion which became popular in the 1990s through music videos and The Grind show on MTV. The video is a playful take on the dancehall culture with its provocative costumes, suggestive poses, roles and blatant sexuality.”
Originally GRIND was made for Art gallery/-museum KIASMA and exhibition “Thank you for the music” 2012.
I will totally and openly acknowledge that the image above might be a little off putting to some (while totally inviting to others) but you have to trust me on this because there is something rather ‘glorious’ about this little video and yes ‘glorious’ is precisely the right word in this situation.
Credits:
Idea and script: Jenni Hiltunen (vimeo.com/jennihiltunen)
Direct and edit: Miikka Lommi (vimeo.oom/miikkalommi or kennelhelsinki.com)
DOP: Jan Granström
Styling: Kirsi Nisonen/Henna Koskinen
Make-up & hair: Piia Hiltunen
Lights: Paavo Lehtonen/Jan Granström
Coloring: Pasi Mäkelä/James Post
Music: Ville Riippa
Dancers: House of Queens
“The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For our work we asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud), so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process. The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer, as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective.
The body – constant and indefinite at the same time – “bursts” the space already with its mere physicality, creating a first distinction between the self and its environment. Only the body movements create a reference to the otherwise invisible space, much like the dots bounce on the ground to give it a physical dimension. Thus, the sound-dance constellation in the video does not only simulate a purely virtual space. The complex dynamics of the body movements is also strongly self-referential. With the complex quasi-static, inconsistent forms the body is “painting”, a new reality space emerges whose simulated aesthetics goes far beyond numerical codes.
Similar to painting, a single point appears to be still very abstract, but the more points are connected to each other, the more complex and concrete the image seems. The more perfect and complex the “alternative worlds” we project (Vilém Flusser) and the closer together their point elements, the more tangible they become. A digital body, consisting of 22 000 points, thus seems so real that it comes to life again.”
Credits:
Project by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer
project documentation : onformative.com/work/unnamed-soundsculpture/
produced by:
onformative.com
chopchop.cc
Documentation:
vimeo.com/38850289
Dancer:
Laura Keil
I am a longtime fan of artist Brendan Monroe and he has dropped off my radar a bit in the past year. I recently discovered that he has a very active store front and has kept himself very busy producing his signature-styled soft stroked artwork that recalls visions of surreal dreamscapes saturated in warm color. You can dive into Monroe’s unique little realm here. Buy a print while you are there and help keep the starving artist belly full.
“After working as a digital creative for commercial companies, Sit decided to stop this madness in 2008 and went back to head and handcraft to slice away the fat.”
Funny. I’ve been thinking the same thing lately. There is some nice hand done and possibly digitally finished work in Sit’s portfolio. I am not entirely sure of his technique but there is some amazing talent happening that is generating some darkly beautiful imagery.
Can’t say much about who ‘ᎻᎪᏤᎬ Ꭺ ᏁᎥᏟᎬ ᎠᎪᎩ‘ really is other than a working artist in Berlin that is doing some lovely work with soft blending abstract color and really that is probably more than enough to say right?
Sculptor Mauro Perucchetti blends pop and minimalism with a touch of sarcastic wit to help generate some truly exquisite sculptures. I would imagine a personal viewing of his exhibitions would be a memorable experience.
Julien Langendorff is doing the hip, weird, retro, 70s psychedelic collage thing right just when you thought it couldn’t be done right anymore. Well Langendorff will prove you wrong.
The akirA Project is the work of none other than Akira Beard. Not sure who that is or if that is a real name but whoever is responsible for the work in this Flickrfolio is one talented and imaginative human being. It might look messy but it takes a truly gifted hand to master a medium well enough to compose such imagery.
There are some strangely surreal and meticulously crafted images in the portfolio of Canadian artist Tristram Lansdowne. Many of which I very much enjoy.
Estela A. Cuadro is an Argentinian artist and illustrator mixing an interpretive subjective style with just enough hint of abstract expressionism to keep things interesting.
‘HOME’ an exhibition by Ian ‘Kid Zoom’ Strange
In October 2011, after three years living in New York, artist Ian Strange [Kid Zoom] returned to Australia to create a major new installation work housed in Cockatoo Island’s prestigious Turbine Hall. The exhibition featured a full-scale reproduction of his childhood home and a film documenting the violent destruction of three Holden commodores. This video documents what resulted:
Installation footage of;
KID ZOOM : HOME Exhibition
IAN STRANGE
Turbine Hall, Cockatoo Island
Sydney, AUSTRALIA – 2011
and Excerpts from;
‘Untitled Film (Destruction of Three Holden Commodores)’
Single Take, 10min 15sec Loop
Digital Camera RED Epic
Ratio: 1:2,35
Trendy, trippy and varied are some go-to words to begin describing the highly experimental portfolio of renaissance man Aaron Vergult.
Adam Batchelor and Christopher Joyner have created an online gallery currently based in the east of England called W.E.L.C.O.M.E. There is some interesting work being represented so far and the venture looks promising considering the cache of talent. The ‘sole purpose’ of the gallery is in providing a new and innovative space for young upcoming artists to showcase and sell print editions of their work.
Robert Hardgrave A.K.A. Farmer Bob has kept at it and is still updating with his unique brand of abstract expressionism. That’s probably not the right term for what he does but it will at least start the conversation in describing his work.
Thumbtack Press has updated with a new format and increased the number of artists in their cache. You can now purchase affordable prints from a huge group of artists inluding Heiko Mueller, Matthew Woodson and Michael Sieben.
A geeky look at sports, through, like, art and stuff.
On view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from February 19 through May 13.
