Aurelia Butler

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    Vintage Cross-Stitch Motifs Conceal Common Household Objects in Sculptures by Ulla-Stina Wikander

    
    Art
    Craft

    #cross-stitch
    #needlepoint
    #textiles
    #tools

    July 27, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Ulla-Stina Wikander, shared with permission
    Pastoral landscapes and quiet domestic scenes stitched into vintage textiles envelop Ulla-Stina Wikander’s needlepoint sculptures. Using rotary phones, kitchen appliances, or an antique gramophone as her foundation, Wikander (previously) molds the cross-stitch works around her chosen object, cloaking it in a blanket of color and texture while preserving its original shape. Multiple facets of domestic life intersect in the revitalized pieces, which bring the age-old craft traditionally associated with home decoration and items commonly found in kitchens and garages together into reinterpreted forms.
    Splitting her time between Stockholm and Kullavik, Wikander shares that she’s started to work with sports equipment and more elaborate tools, which you can see on Instagram. You can browse her available works at Philadelphia’s Paradigm Gallery, and see her pieces in person through August 6 at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York and at M Contemporary Gallery in Sydney in the coming months.

    #cross-stitch
    #needlepoint
    #textiles
    #tools

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    Massive Human Faces Loom Over Japanese Cities in Uncanny Balloon Works by Mé

    
    Art

    #faces
    #hot air balloons
    #installation

    July 27, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Masayume” (2019-2021), Tokyo Tokyo Festival Special 13. Photo by Kaneda Kozo. All images courtesy of Mé, shared with permission
    An unlikely sight was spotted hovering over Tokyo earlier this month in a disorienting installation by the Japanese collective 目 (Mé). Titled “Masayume” or “dream come true,” the eerie artwork featured a giant human face printed on a hot air balloon, which launched above the city on July 16 as part of the Tokyo Tokyo Festival, an event organized to coincide with the start of the Olympics.
    Bizarre and unexpected for most passersby, the single-day piece was derived from a dream Mé artist Kojin Haruka had as a teen. “‘Masayume’ will be carried out suddenly and without prior notice nor a clear reason, just like an image a 14-year-old Japanese girl saw in a dream, momentarily disabling the ordinary,” a statement reads. “The face will be gazing back at us from the sky in the midst of this pandemic. It is as though we are a part of the spectacle.”
    “Masayume” is a follow-up to a 2013-2014 project titled “Day with a Man’s Face Floating in the Sky” (shown below) that floated a similar black-and-white balloon over Utsunomiya City, Tochigi. Each of the anonymous figures depicts a real person, and about 1,400 people applied to have their faces loom over Tokyo this round.
    Mé’s work is on view at the Towada Art Center in a three-part group exhibition that runs through May 29, 2022. Check out the collective’s Instagram for more of its large-scale projects, including a massive wave sculpture rippling through a museum. (via Spoon & Tamago)

    “Masayume” (2019-2021), Tokyo Tokyo Festival Special 13. Photo by Tsushima Takahiro
    “Day with a Man’s Face Floating in the Sky” (2013-2014), Utsunomiya City, Tochigi. Photo by Takao Sasanuma
    “Masayume” (2019-2021), Tokyo Tokyo Festival Special 13. Photo by Kaneda Kozo
    “Masayume” (2019-2021), Tokyo Tokyo Festival Special 13. Photo by Igarashi Tomoyuki

    #faces
    #hot air balloons
    #installation

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    Clusters of Bright Balloons Envelop Photographer Fares Micue in Her Expressive Self-Portraits

    
    Art
    Photography

    #balloons
    #portraits
    #self-portrait

    July 26, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Contagious energy.” All images © Fares Micue, shared with permission
    In her ongoing series of self-portraits, Spain-based photographer and artist Fares Micue (previously) trades her usual monarchs and lush, leafy botanicals for bright airborne balloons. The perfectly round vessels appear suspended in motion as they encircle Micue’s torso, conceal her face, or lead her up a painted stairway. The amorphous clusters follow the artist’s distinct use of color, adding either a stark contrast to her clothing and the backdrop or blending with the existing architectural palette.
    In a note to Colossal, Micue shares that while she brings in organic elements like flowers and leaves to evoke the earth’s seasonal patterns, the ballons are derived from the universe’s more foundational and constant elements, like the sun, the moon, and the planets. She explains:
    For me, the round shape represents perfection, feelings, energy, and the natural flowing of things…(It) has the ability to move easily like a ball and helps us to move forward like a wheel. They are delicate and soft. Nothing can be hidden around a circle cause it has no edges or pointy corners, and that’s what they represent in my work: the pureness and naturality of our feelings and how they help us to move forward, the energy we share with the world, and how they are always surrounding us shaping our everyday life
    Limited-edition prints of many of the pieces shown here are available from Saatchi Art, and you can explore an extensive archive of Micue’s exquisitely composed portraits on Instagram.

    “Chasing illusions”
    “Endless options,” in collaboration with Artstar
    “Winter blues,” in collaboration with Artstar
    “Too many expectations”
    “The happiness source”
    “Revive your curiosity”
    “I choose you”

    #balloons
    #portraits
    #self-portrait

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    Silky Flowers Spring from CJ Hendry’s Enormous Hyperrealistic Drawings in Colored Pencil

    
    Art
    Illustration

    #colored pencil
    #drawing
    #flowers
    #hyperrealism

    July 26, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Red Poppy,” 45 x 45 inches. All images © CJ Hendry, shared with permission
    Previously drawing giant strokes of oil paint and fruits, fish, and other edibles with remarkable depth and detail, Australian artist CJ Hendry shifts her focus to the soft, silky petals of peonies, roses, and tulips. She uses colored pencils to render individual florals and small bunches at an immense scale, magnifying their thin layers and sticky inner organs. The hyperrealistic drawings enhance the dimension and delicacy of each flower as they appear to blossom from the paper with exquisite detail.
    Hendry lives in Brooklyn and is working on similar botanical pieces for an upcoming exhibition in a dilapidated church in Mile End. Until that London show, follow her works and keep an eye out for limited-edition releases on her Instagram.

    “Peony Peeping,” 65 x 65 inches
    Detail of “Red Poppy,” 45 x 45 inches
    “Pink Fluffy Peony,” 45 x 45 inches
    Detail of “Pink Fluffy Peony,” 45 x 45 inches
    Detail of “Light Peach Rose,” 41 x 41 inches
    “Light Peach Rose,” 41 x 41 inches
    “White Peeping Peony,” 45 x 45 inches
    Detail of “White Poking Peony,” 41 x 41 inches

    #colored pencil
    #drawing
    #flowers
    #hyperrealism

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    A Visit to Wangechi Mutu’s Nairobi Studio Explores Her Profound Ties to Nature and the Feminine

    
    Art
    Documentary

    #collage
    #colonialism
    #identity
    #nature
    #sculpture
    #video

    July 23, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    [embedded content]
    Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu made history in 2019 when her four bronze sculptures became the first ever to occupy the niches of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade. Stretching nearly seven feet, the seated quartet evokes images of heavily adorned African queens and intervenes in the otherwise homogenous canons of art history held within the institution’s walls.
    The monumental figures are one facet of Mutu’s nuanced body of work that broadly challenges colonialist, racist, and sexist ideologies. Now on view at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor is the latest iteration of the artist’s subversive projects: I Am Speaking, Are You Listening?  disperses imposing hybrid creatures in bronze and towering sculptures made of soil, branches, charcoal, cowrie shells, and other organic materials throughout the neoclassical galleries. The figurative works draw a direct connection between the Black female body and ecological devastation as they reject the long-held ideals elevated in the space.

    No matter the medium, these associations reflect Mutu’s deep respect for and fascination with the ties between nature, the feminine, and African history and culture, a guiding framework that the team at Art21 explores in a recently released documentary. Wangechi Mutu: Between the Earth and the Sky visits the artist’s studio in her hometown of Nairobi and dives into the evolution of her artwork from the smaller collaged paintings that centered her early practice as a university student in New York to her current multi-media projects that have grown in both scope and scale.
    Whether a watercolor painting with photographic scraps or one of her mirror-faced figures encircled with fringe, Mutu’s works are founded in an insistence on the value of all life and the ways the earth’s history functions as a source of knowledge, which she explains:
    I truly believe that there’s something about taking these bits and pieces of trees, and animals and completely anonymous but extremely identifiable items and placing them somewhere that draws their energy, wherever they were coming from, whatever they did, whatever molten lava they came out of a million years ago, that is now in my work and that little piece of energy is magnified.
    Dive further into Mutu’s practice by watching the full documentary above, and see a decades-long archive of her paintings, sculptures, collages, and other works on Artsy and Instagram.

    #collage
    #colonialism
    #identity
    #nature
    #sculpture
    #video

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    A Dizzying Carpet of Crystals Blankets a Salon in the Royal Palace Amsterdam with Prismatic Patterns

    
    Art

    #crystals
    #installation
    #multiples

    July 23, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Photo by Benning/Gladcova. All images © Suzan Drummen, shared with permission
    The latest installation by Dutch artist Suzan Drummen (previously) masks a stately salon in the Royal Palace Amsterdam with a gleaming carpet of crystals placed in psychedelic swirls. A response to the Golden Age-era architecture, the bright colors of Drummen’s work are intended to clash with the rich, muted hues of the furniture and walls. Because each individual crystal is laid by hand and left unsecured, the labor-intensive process took a team of four nine days to complete.
    Equally mesmerizing and disorienting, Drummen’s elaborate installations often rely on a combination of patterns, reflection, and a three-dimensional texture that creates a dizzying effect. Much of her work is informed by the overwhelming amount of information in today’s world that can spark confusion and uncertainty, which she explains:
    Phenomena like these alarm me as a person, but as a maker, I’m inspired by that dizzying multiplicity. I‘m interested in things that dazzle us, and in my work, I try to ramp that up. It’s an ongoing quest, with a constant interplay between seriousness, fear, playfulness, and hope. Above all I want it to be vibrant and vital.
    Drummen’s piece is on view through October 3 as part of Trailblazers, a group exhibition inviting past recipients of The Royal Award for Modern Painting to show their works within the palace’s halls. Explore a larger collection of the Amsterdam-based artist’s projects on her site and Instagram.

    The work in progress
    Dutch King Willem Alexander and the artist. Photo by Jeroen van der Meyde

    #crystals
    #installation
    #multiples

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    Take a Swing Around ‘Par Excellence Redux,’ a Mini Golf Course of Playable Artworks at Elmhurst Art Museum

    
    Art
    Colossal

    #Chicago
    #games
    #golf

    July 22, 2021
    Colossal

    All images courtesy of the Elmhurst Art Museum, shared with permission
    Now open at the Elmhurst Art Museum is Par Excellence Redux, a miniature golf course featuring a widely varied collection of playable artworks. Curated by Colossal’s founder and editor-in-chief Christopher Jobson as part of an open call, the two-part course pays homage to the wildly popular Par Excellence that opened in 1988 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The designs range from a challenging optical illusion to a maze-like castle with the potential for a hole-in-one to Annalee Koehn’s fortune-telling piece first shown 33 years ago in the initial exhibition.
    Chicago sculptor Michael O’Brien conceived of the original Par Excellence, which opened to lines down the block and subsequently sold out daily. It was recognized nationally in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Chicago Tribune, among others, and went on tour throughout Illinois before returning to Chicago as a rebranded commercial project called ArtGolf, which was located at 1800 N. Clybourn in Lincoln Park on the site that’s now occupied by Goose Island Brewery. Although artist-designed golf courses are shown at a variety of Midwest museums—you can see versions at the Walker Art Center, The Sheldon, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—Par Excellence is widely regarded as the first.
    The Front 9, which runs through September 26, features artists Julie Cowan, Current Projects, Andrea Jablonski & Stolatis Inc., Annalee Koehn, Latent Design, Jesse Meredith, Gautam Rao, Robin Schwartzman & Tom Loftus (aka A Couple of Putts), and the museum’s Teen Art Council. Open October 13, 2021, to January 2, 2022, The Back 9  shows work from artists Wesley Baker, KT Duffy, Eve Fineman, Joshua Kirsch, Annalee Koehn, Vincent Lotesto, Joshua Lowe, Jim Merz, David Quednau, and Liam Wilson & Anna Gershon.
    Try your hand at the first nine holes by heading over to Elmhurst’s site to book a tee time, and remember that Colossal Members get 25% off.

    #Chicago
    #games
    #golf

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    An XXL-Edition Compiles All of Frida Kahlo’s 152 Artworks in an Extensive Celebration of Her Life and Work

    
    Art

    #art history
    #books
    #painting
    #self-portrait

    July 22, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Self-portrait with Small Monkey” (1945), oil on masonite, 22 x 16⅜ inches, Mexico City, Xochimilco, Museo Dolores Olmedo, photo by akg-images
    An enormous new book from Taschen explores the life and work of famed Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Widely recognized as a groundbreaking figure in contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality, Kahlo’s now iconic image—particularly derived from her more than 50 self-portraits showing her bold brow, braided hair, and range of floral adornments—has secured her legacy as one of the most influential and profound artists of the 20th Century.
    Spanning 624 pages and weighing nearly 12 pounds, Frida Kahlo. The Complete Paintings compiles all 152 of her works paired with diary pages, letters, drawings, an illustrated biography, and hundreds of photos taken by Edward Weston, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Nickolas Muray, and Martin Munkácsi that glimpse moments from Kahlo’s life with her husband and muralist Diego Rivera and of the Casa Azul, her home in Mexico City. Many of the pieces included haven’t been exhibited publicly in more than 80 years.

    Edited by Luis-Martín Lozano with contributions from Andrea Kettenmann and Marina Vázquez Ramos, the volume contextualizes Kahlo’s paintings by offering an intimate and wide-reaching exploration of her oeuvre that was so profoundly impacted by her experiences with a lifelong disability and an unending need to question politics and notions of identity. Lozano describes her unparalleled contributions in a conversation with It’s Nice That:
    Her uniqueness in art history is not only based in a feminist agenda as it has been stressed out in recent years, but mostly in her capacity to engage in ideological and aesthetic discussions of her time and contemporaries, in subjects such as public art and surrealism, and make them part of her core as an artist.
    Frida Kahlo. The Complete Paintings is currently available from Taschen and for pre-order on Bookshop.

    “The Little Deer” (April–May 3, 1946), oil on masonite, 8⅞ x 11 inches, Chicago, private collection, photo © Fine Art Images/Bridgeman Images
    “Portrait of Luther Burbank” (1931), oil on masonite, 34 x 24. inches, Mexico City, Xochimilco, Museo Dolores Olmedo, photo by akg-images

    “Ixcuhintli Dog with Me” (c. 1938), oil on canvas, 30 x 20 inches, United States, private collection, photo by akg-images

    #art history
    #books
    #painting
    #self-portrait

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