Archive for the ‘Design’ Category
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson
The writer, Alain De Botton, famous for his musings on Proust and the nature of happiness, has always had an interest in the way humans are impacted by architectural spaces. De Botton has explored transitional places and the way they affect human emotions – and he has lived in an airport continuously for a week for research on his book A Week At the Airport. But, for his latest project, De Botton has been inspired to create an edifice for atheists to counter the millions of monuments that exist for gods.
For the scores of glorious cathedrals and mosques built by architects there appears to be none that had been built for atheists. Places of worship have been built for Jesus, Mary and for the Buddha, but temples can also be built for love, friendship and calmness…
Alain de Botton – A Temple for Atheists Image: Thomas Greenall & Jordan Hodgson
De Botton intends to build his tower in London at a symbolic height that reflects a scale of 300 million years of life on earth. He explained in the Guardian, “Each centimeter of the tapering tower’s interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet.” De Botton’s idea is to encourage contemplation. He also added, “the exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.”
Read more on Alain De Botton’s temple
Tags: Alain De Botton, Architecture, Christopher Hitchens, Living Architecture, London, Peter Zumthor, Proust, Religion, Richard Dawkins, Sculpture
Posted in Architecture, Design, Environment, Publishing, Sculpture | No Comments »
Friday, January 6th, 2012
Tomás Saraceno Observatory/Air-Port-City Hayward Gallery,London, 2008. Gesamthöhe: 9,6 m Courtesy: The artist and Andersen's Contemporary,Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, pinksummer contemporary art. Foto: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno
Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno
Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno’s visionary exhibition Cloud Cities at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin is a hall of floating spheres and webs inspired by utopic visions of hanging settlements or cloud cities that can migrate across the globe.
Saraceno builds on his knowledge of architecture and astronomy to create artwork inspired by soap bubbles and the tensile configurations of spider webs. Viewers at the museum can interact and enter the bubbles to experience their translucent, trans-dimensional qualities. The Mother Bubble, features an undulating plastic base for visitors to lounge on.
Photo: Courtesy Tomás Saraceno
Read more on Saraceno
Tags: Berlin, Buckminster Fuller, Hamburger Bahnhof, Tomas Saraceno
Posted in Architecture, Art, Design, Environment, Sculpture | No Comments »
Friday, December 2nd, 2011
The first air show at the Grand Palais in Paris, France. September 30th, 1909. Photographed in Autochrome Lumière by Léon Gimpel
While art fairs have become common, attracting patrons the world over – they are still a long way off from the extravagant theatricality of events from the past century.
An example is Paris’ Grand Palais, a building that was designed as the venue for singular happenings in the 19th c. and became a host for world fairs for over a hundred years.
Salon de locomotion aerienne 1909 - Grand Palais, Paris
Anish Kapoor Leviathan at Grand Palais, 2011
Tags: Art Fair, Grand Palais, Paris, Universal Exhibition, World Fair
Posted in Architecture, Art, Design, Photography, Sculpture | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov
Ivan Venkov created his elegant jeweled bijou, in homage to Joris-Karl Huysman’s novel, À rebours (aka ‘Against Nature’), in which Des Esseintes, who was a gentleman of refined sensibility, an exquisite arbiter of taste, came into possession of a tortoise whose shell he had embedded with jewels to create an ornamental pet.
The detail of Venkov’s art object elaborates on the style of Fabergé eggs which exult in opulent intricacy. The truncated rear of the deer is fitted with a jeweled mechanism and a system of crystal cabinetry with an ambiguous orifice, which presumably acts as the insertion point for a key or a coin. The integration of the machine into the organic flesh of the animal alludes to a parasitic invasion – but one that completes the motion of the running deer as a mechanical windup with a symbiotic consumption of energy.
“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov
“King’s Folly” an object by Ivan Venkov
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Tags: Des Esseintes, Ivan Venkov, Joris-Karl Huysman
Posted in Art, Design, Jewelry, Sculpture | No Comments »
Friday, November 11th, 2011
By Kiša Lala
Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 60 x 80 inches Edition 2/3 photographed by Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of mines, quarries, oil fields, ships and airplane graveyards have transformed landscapes of devastation into a thing of beauty. His new photographic series depicts the earth from above, abstracting the terraced farming practices of Spain into a Kandinsky-like painted canvas.
Burtynsky is passionate about the environment, but his work attempts to frame the truth without judgment. Burtynsky spoke in general to me about the farming practices he’s photographed, citing that a country like China had been largely agrarian in the past. “80% used to be involved in growing food for the rest. Now with mechanical advantages…a tractor can create precise patterns with ploughing on gps.”
Burtynsky explained that only a tiny segment of the population, just about 2% in the USA, is now responsible for feeding the rest of the country, my assumption being that the rest of us are in media or finance busy manufacturing paper money… For my more detailed interview with Burtynsky, read here.
Monegros County, Aragon, Spain 2010 Chromogenic Color Print 48 x 64 inches Edition 1/6 photographed by Edward Burtynsky
For more images of Edward Burtynsky’s Dryland Farming photographs click here
Tags: Aragon, Dry Land farming, Edward Burtynsky, Kisa Lala, Monegros County, Spain
Posted in Design, Fashion, Interview, Photography | No Comments »
Monday, October 31st, 2011
Master manipulator, Erik Sanko Photographed by Bobby Fisher at His Studio, 2011 ©Bobby Fisher
Coming up post-Halloween is Erik Sanko’s pagan puppet premiere at BAM for Phantom Limb’s performance of 69°S.
The production dramatizes the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914 trans-Antarctic expedition in which his vessel, the Endurance, was stranded amid freezing ice-floes for an entire winter only a few miles from the South Pole. 69°S is the latitude at which the intrepid arctic pioneers struck peril. The ensemble, led by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, brings to life Shackleton’s adventure with elaborate hand carved marionettes in a series of tableaux vivants using music, film and photography to create a fantasy Antarctica.
Erik Sanko's marionettes. Photograph © Bobby Fisher, 2011
Tags: antarctica, BAM, Bobby Fisher, Erik Sanko, Jessica Grindstaff, John Cale, Kronos Quartet, Lounge Lizards, marionette, new york, puppets, threeAsFour, Yoko Ono
Posted in Art, Design, Fashion, Performance, Photography | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011
By Aaron Barr
Florence + the Machine at the Archway in Brooklyn / Photo by Bryan Derballa
The Creators Project, the unlikely partnership between Intel and Vice, made a quick stop in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood this weekend. Defining themselves as an ‘ongoing global arts and technology initiative to support artists, musicians and filmmakers who are using technology to push the bounds of creative expression,’ The Creators Project, seeks to elevate artists and support new work.
Crowd at Tobacco Warehouse / Photo by Bryan Derballa
Read more about the Creators Project in Brooklyn
Tags: adam rapp, atlas sound, Brooklyn, chairlift, dumbo, Florence and the machine, intel, j spaceman, jonathan glazer, justice, karen o, origins, spiritualized, the creators project, united visual artists, vice magazine, yeah yeah yeahs
Posted in Art, Design, Film, Music, Performance | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011
Geneviève Gauckler - Pictoplasmic Festival 2011
The organizers of Berlin-based Pictoplasma, a boutique festival and conference for graphic designers and illustrators, are arranging Character Walk, a fun walk-through New York with stopovers at galleries and concept stores, showcasing installations and exhibitions by participating artists throughout the city.
The exhibitions will highlight the hairy, furry, smooth, and ectoplasmic, a colorful array of monsters and ‘characters,’ which have developed ecstatic fan-bases amongst kids and adults alike.
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Tags: BeatBots, Big Screen Plaza, Cappellini NYC, Cotton Candy Machine, Gallery Hanahou, Geneviève Gauckler, Jeremyville, Jonathan LeVine Gallery, Joshua Ben Longo, Lit Lounge, Tim Biskup, TTUnterground, White Rabbit Bar
Posted in Art, Design, Performance, Sculpture | No Comments »
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
By Kiša Lala
Sculpteur de Nourissons - detail © Charles Matton, Courtesy All Visual Arts, Photo: Tessa Angus
Sculpteur de Nourissons © Charles Matton, Courtesy All Visual Arts, Photo: Tessa Angus
A retrospective of handmade miniature interiors by
Charles Matton is on exhibit in London’s
All Visual Arts gallery. Matton, who died in 2008 of lung cancer, built ‘Boxes,’ that recreated artist studios and mise-en-scènes, emotive still-frames of inhabited interiors, empty hotel hallways, lonesome ateliers and imaginary boîtes. Poking one’s head inside one of Matton’s enclosures is being Gulliver trespassing into another reality and expecting the room’s lilliputian occupants to return any moment.
The fascination with doll’s houses is that we glorify our need for tidying and collecting objects with imperial strokes and a make-belief sense of omniscience. Replicating the world exactly had been Matton’s passions, and his artistic journey began with painting hyperreal interiors that he eventually extrapolated into three-dimensions, creating rooms with walls exactly as he would have painted them on canvas, drawing cracks on the patina, filtering sun and shade on the furniture, miniaturizing the effects of light itself.
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Tags: Alberto Giacometti, Baudrillard, Charles Matton, Francis Bacon, Jean Baudrillard, Kisa Lala, London, new york, Sigmund Freud, Sylvie Matton
Posted in Architecture, Art, Design, Sculpture | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
By Aaron Barr
'Braindrop' - Photo by Marc Whalen
At the Escape to New York festival in Southampton earlier this month, I found myself sitting inside a 17-foot tall sculpture called Braindrop alongside it’s creator, Kate Raudenbush, and a mix of good friends and strangers. With eloquence and charm, Kate explained her inspiration for the artwork and how to best experience it – from the inside, lying on one’s back, looking up into the vortex – which reveals a surprisingly breathtaking, kaleidoscope effect.
Kate Raudenbush is a New York City-based sculpture artist who uses symbolism for social commentary and self-reflection. Integral to her work is the public’s participation, so it was nothing short of kismet that we found ourselves, friends and strangers alike, conversing and sharing, while inside a huge steel drop of water.
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Tags: Art, Burning Man, Escape to New York, Escape2NY, experience, experiential, festival, installation, Kate Raudenbush, Music, new york, Sculpture, Southampton
Posted in Architecture, Art, Design, Environment, Sculpture | No Comments »
