Aurelia Butler

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    Ornate Murals by Nespoon Cloak Blank Facades in Traditional Lace Patterns

    
    Art

    #lace
    #mural
    #public art
    #street art

    August 14, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. All images © Nespoon, shared with permission
    Every inch of Nespoon’s elaborately designed murals is rooted in local history. Prior to sketching one of her large-scale lace patterns on a residential building or commercial facade, the Warsaw-based artist (previously) visits museums and meets with residents to learn more about the region’s culture and its ties to fiber arts. “I respect and commemorate the emotional bound between individual patterns and particular cities or even particular groups of lacemakers. If there is no tradition of lace making in the area where I work, I ask for laces in the homes of elderly people living nearby,” she tells Colossal. “I always find something.”
    The resulting murals envelop concrete and brick structures in intricate webbing embellished with oversized florals or fringed edges. Often splaying across multiple levels and wrapping around corners, the massive works showcase the intricacies of the craft and bring the adornment traditionally associated with domestic life out into a public space.

    Craponne-Sur-Arzon, France
    Because women produced almost all of the decorative textiles for centuries, their stories remain at the forefront of Nespoon’s body of work, which ranges from stenciled graffiti pieces to smaller ceramic installations imprinted with patterns. Still today, lace museums and makers tend to be women, the artist says, veiling each of her site-specific projects within a broader, global context of feminine art, craft, and tradition.
    While many of her projects are celebratory and honor the local customs that manifest in the lace pieces, others, like humble motif painted in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, necessarily confront a community’s struggles. “For the first time in my life, my wall had such clear traces of war, dozens of bullet holes all over the facade,” Nespoon writes, explaining further:
    While working, I thought about the fate of women who are victims of wars all over the world. Here, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, it had an extraordinary dimension. Institutionalized sexual violence and mass rape were a cruel instrument of terror used in this conflict, in front of the whole world. I wanted to not think about it, but I did. The bullet holes became part of my mural.
    Next week, Nespoon will be installing a lace web at the Triennale di Maroggia in Switzerland. She’s also preparing for a solo exhibition next May in Brescia, Italy, and working on a book compiling her works from the last 12 years, many of which you can find on Behance and Instagram.

    Craponne-Sur-Arzon, France
    Callac, France
    Callac, France
    Patras, Greece
    Patras, Greece
    Malmö, Sweden
    Nespoon working on the mural in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    #lace
    #mural
    #public art
    #street art

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    Graceful Swimmers Breach the Water’s Surface in Sonia Alins’s Poetic Mixed-Media Illustrations

    
    Art
    Illustration

    #acrylic
    #ink
    #mixed media
    #swimming
    #water
    #watercolor

    August 12, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Placer,” hand-embellished print. All images © Sonia Alins, shared with permission
    In Sonia Alins’s dreamy works, figures gently break through the surface of the sea, creating a minimal ripple around their bodies as they dip in and out of the water. The Spanish artist and illustrator (previously) is known for her expressive swimmers, whose enlarged limbs splay in graceful positions as they float and move through the ocean. Translucent sheets of vellum produce the cloudy effects of water, obscuring fish and coral and adding a three-dimensional element to the largely ink, acrylic, and watercolor drawings.
    Although Alins primarily centers women in ambiguous states of emotion, men and children have been emerging in her mixed-media illustrations, further reflecting on the artist’s own experience with motherhood and the incomparable force of aquatic environments. “I feel the water as powerful entity, a supernatural force capable of source anguish, pain, desperation in the same way that it is a source of happiness, joy, inner peace, and love. Water helps me to express my feelings ​in a louder way, and it’s why I love it,” she tells Colossal.
    Alins works on a variety of commissions in addition to her personal practice, and her ethereal project for Moleskine titled “The Beautiful Red Reefs” recently won her an Award of Excellence from Communication Arts’s annual competition. Browse originals and hand-embellished prints in limited quantities in her shop, and you can keep up with her illustrations, in addition to news about upcoming shows like the one at Taipei’s Contemporary by U gallery in October, on Behance and Instagram.

    “Return to Harmony”
    “Mar en Calma,” hand-embellished print
    “Maternal Love,” hand-embellished print
    Left: “The Bather.” Right: “Inspired by the Moon”
    “Birth”
    Left: “The Boys of the Rocks”, commissioned by 180 Hilos. Right: “The Girls of the Rocks”, commissioned by 180 Hilos
    “Swimming in the Ocean”

    #acrylic
    #ink
    #mixed media
    #swimming
    #water
    #watercolor

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    Lifelike Sculptures by Diana Beltrán Herrera Recreate Flora and Fauna in Intricately Cut Paper

    
    Art
    Design
    Food
    Illustration

    #animals
    #birds
    #flowers
    #fruit
    #paper
    #plants
    #sculpture

    August 12, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Diana Beltrán Herrera, shared with permission
    Colombian artist Diana Beltrán Herrera (previously) adds to her growing collection of intricate paper sculptures with new plant and animal life. From her studio in Bristol, the artist and designer recreates lifelike reproductions of turacos, monarchs, and various species with nearly perfect precision. Innumerable fringed strips become feathers, faint scores mimic delicate creases in petals, and layers of bright paper form brilliantly colored plumes, creating a colorful and diverse ecosystem of wildlife from around the world.
    Prints, jigsaw puzzles, and cards are available in Beltrán Herrera’s shop, and you can see more of her recent commissions and personal projects on Behance and Instagram.

    #animals
    #birds
    #flowers
    #fruit
    #paper
    #plants
    #sculpture

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    Through Totemic Sculptures and Sound Art, Guadalupe Maravilla Explores the Therapeutic Power of Indigenous Ritual

    
    Art
    Documentary
    Music

    #health
    #installation
    #performance art
    #sculpture
    #sound
    #video

    August 11, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    
    In 1984, eight-year-old Guadalupe Maravilla left his family and joined a group of other children fleeing their homes in El Salvador. The Central American country was in the midst of a brutal civil war, a profoundly traumatic experience that’s left an indelible impact on the artist and one that guides his broad, multi-disciplinary practice to this day.
    Now based in Brooklyn, Maravilla works across painting, sculpture, and sound-based performances all veiled with autobiography, whether informed by the Mayan architecture and stone totems that surrounded him as a child or his cancer diagnosis as a young adult. His pieces are predominately therapeutic and rooted in Indigenous ritual and mythology, recurring themes the team at Art21 explores in a new documentary.

    “Guadalupe Maravilla & the Sound of Healing” follows the artist as he prepares for his solo exhibition on view through September 6 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City. Titled Planeta Abuelx, or Grandparent Planet—Maravilla expands on the often-used idea of Mother Nature to broaden its scope—the outdoor show is comprised of the artist’s trademark Disease Throwers, towering headdresses and shrines made of recycled aluminum. Allusions to Central American culture bolster the monumental works, with imprints of corn cobs, wooden toys, and other found objects planted throughout.
    Covering the surrounding grass are chalky white markings, a signature component of the artist’s practice that delineate every space where he installs a piece. The abstract patterns evoke Tripa Chuca, one of Maravilla’s favorite childhood games that involves players drawing lines between corresponding numbers to create new intertwined motifs.

    In Planeta Abuelx, Maravilla pairs his visual works with meditative performances that are based on the sound baths he used for pain management while undergoing chemotherapy. These healing therapies are designed to reduce anxiety and tension that often trigger stress-induced diseases and date back to ancient Tibetan traditions. Using gongs and glass vessels, the palliative remedy has been the foundation of workshops the artist hosts for undocumented immigrants and others dealing with cancer that more deeply connect his totemic artworks to the viewers.
    “Having a community that has gone through similar experiences can be really empowering,” he says. “Making these elaborate Disease Throwers is not just about telling a story from my past, but it’s also about how this healing ritual can continue in the future, long after I’m gone.”
    If you’re in New York, Maravilla is hosting a sound bath to mark the close of Planeta Abuelx on September 4, and you can see more of his multivalent projects on Instagram. For a larger archive of documentaries exploring the lives and work of today’s most impactful artists, like this visit to Wangechi Mutu’s Nairobi studio, check out Art21’s site.

    #health
    #installation
    #performance art
    #sculpture
    #sound
    #video

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    A Monumental 20-Story Wildflower Blooms Above Jersey City in a New Mural by Artist Mona Caron

    
    Art

    #flowers
    #mural
    #public art
    #street art

    August 11, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Mona Caron, shared with permission
    A single Joe Pye weed with barbed leaves and a blossoming head looms over Jersey City in a staggering new mural by Mona Caron. Set against a black backdrop, the hardy botanical—which is actually a wildflower from the eutrochium genus that’s native to the region—is the latest from the San Francisco-based artist, who’s known for her multi-story murals of plants and weeds that soar above city skylines. Commissioned as part of the Jersey City Mural Arts Program, the exquisitely rendered flower is a celebration of resilience as it “rises with the sun, facing off the skyline across the Hudson,” Caron writes on Instagram. “A vision of nature winning, of plants being the ones towering over us for a change, putting us back in our place. May we learn. May they come back.”

    #flowers
    #mural
    #public art
    #street art

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    A Collection of Wax Sculptures by Artist Urs Fischer Is Burning in the Bourse de Commerce in Paris

    
    Art

    #candles
    #chairs
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #wax

    August 10, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images courtesy of Bourse de Commerce, shared with permission
    A diverse collection of life-size candles occupies the renovated rotunda of Bourse de Commerce in Paris, where it will spend the fall and winter slowly melting into pools of wax. The realistic sculptures are part of Untitled (2011), a redesigned installation by Swiss artist Urs Fischer (previously)—see some of the original works on Artsy—and were lit on the first day of the exhibition. Now partially melted, the ephemeral works are a “monument to impermanence, transformation, the passage of time, metamorphosis, and creative destruction,” a statement says.
    At the center of the installation is an exacting replica of Giambologna’s marble “The Abduction of the Sabine Women” (1579-1582), with an effigy of Fischer’s friend and fellow artist Rudolf Stingel nearby. The figurative works are surrounded by seven chairs, four of which are modeled after seats from Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Ethiopia that are part of the collection at Musée du Quai Branly Jacques Chirac. Paired with an airline bench, rolling office chair, and mass-produced garden seat, the eclectic array speaks to the ongoing effects of colonization and globalization.
    Untitled (2011) will burn daily through December 31, 2021, or until the wicks disintegrate. (via Ignant)

    #candles
    #chairs
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #wax

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    Textured Patchworks of Sequins, Plastic Beads, and Oil Paint Comprise Trevon Latin’s Dazzling Portraits

    
    Art

    #collage
    #fabric
    #painting
    #portraits
    #sculpture
    #textiles

    August 10, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Untitled” (2021), oil on canvas, fabric stretched on panel, plastic beads, and barrettes, 50 1/4 x 58 1/2 x 4 inches. All images by Guillaume Ziccarelli, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin, shared with permission
    Through a patchwork of glitzy sequins and humble cottons, New York-based artist Trevon Latin renders a fantastical world fit for an equally nuanced ensemble of characters. His mixed-media portraits and stuffed sculptures, which uniquely contrast color, texture, and medium in striking collaged pieces, draw their founding characteristics from queer nightlife, virtual reality, and mythology.
    Having completed an MFA in painting and printmaking at Yale in 2020, Latin expands on his classical training by utilizing various found materials, including swatches of patterned fabric, multi-color beads, plastic barrettes, and sequins. His portraits center on spliced, abstracted figures stretched on a round frame or couples mid-embrace, with lush, rolling fields occupying the foreground. These green expanses evoke the landscapes of southeastern Texas, which the Houston-born artist and performer knows well, and offer a contrast to the otherwise ostentatious subjects.
    The plush sculptures highlight the more mythical qualities of Latin’s practice, portraying shimmering hybrid characters elevated on pedestals. His 2021 work “I Break Too Easily” is similarly fantastical, featuring an aqua 3D-printed mask with long beaded tendrils hanging from its mouth. Whether depicted on canvas or as a fully-formed figure, each of the works is a flamboyant and elaborate embodiment of Shaturqua Relentless, a non-binary character the artist has performed in recent years. The resulting works reveal an inherent intimacy and idiosyncrasy, marking an entry point into an evolving narrative.
    All of the pieces shown here are part of Trinket Eater, Latin’s first solo exhibition at Perrotin’s New York gallery. It’s on view through August 13. (via Hyperallergic)

    Detail of “I Break Too Easily” (2021), 3D printed PLA mask, beads, barrettes, 52 x 36 x 36 inches
    Left: “Perched” (2021), fabric, earrings, sequins, wood, 81 x 23 x 23 inches. Right: “Lil’ boi blu” (2021), fabric, glass, sequins, wood, 87 1/2 x 34 x 18 inches
    Detail of “Untitled” (2021), oil on canvas, fabric stretched on panel, plastic beads, and barrettes, 50 1/4 x 58 1/2 x 4 inches
    “Untitled” (2021), oil on canvas and fabric stretched on panel, 83 x 51 x 10 inches
    Left: “Untitled” (2021), oil on canvas and fabric stretched on panel, 39 x 42 x 3 1/2 inches. Right: “Untitled” (2021),oil on canvas and fabric stretched on panel, 53 x 36 1/4 x 11 inches
    Detail of “Lil’ boi blu” (2021), fabric, glass, sequins, wood, 87 1/2 x 34 x 18 inches
    “I Break Too Easily” (2021), 3D printed PLA mask, beads, barrettes, 52 x 36 x 36 inches

    #collage
    #fabric
    #painting
    #portraits
    #sculpture
    #textiles

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  • 163 Shares159 Views

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    Lights and Painted Blocks of Color Intersect in a Perspective-Bending Installation by Luftwerk

    
    Art

    #color
    #installation
    #LED lights
    #light
    #site-specific

    August 9, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Luftwerk, shared with permission
    A deceptively trippy installation by Chicago-based duo Luftwerk (previously) immerses viewers in a distorted environment of color and sound. Relying entirely on physical properties for its illusions, Open Square connects two spaces that are painted with clean, angled blocks of color in cool and warm tones. Prismatic LED lights flash across the rooms, skewing their boundaries and creating perpetually changing settings that appear to emerge and fade over time.
    The abstract installation is part of Factory Installed 2021, a group exhibition at Mattress Factory on view now through November 14. One of five projects, Luftwerk’s Open Square transforms the historic building into a kaleidoscopic experience that’s “designed to mesmerize and shed the outside world, holding limitless possibilities for exploration,” a statement says. “Developed throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020, the exhibition reflects on the habitat that defines our everyday experience.”
    Artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero are behind Luftwerk, and you can explore more of their site-specific installations on their site and Instagram.

    #color
    #installation
    #LED lights
    #light
    #site-specific

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