Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 113 Shares109 Views

    in Art

    Life-Sized Wildlife Protrude from Ornate Rugs in Perspective-Bending Sculptures

    
    Art

    #animals
    #carpets
    #rugs
    #sculpture
    #textiles

    March 29, 2021
    Anna Marks

    “Persian Kangaroo.” All images © Debbie Lawson, shared with permission
    A new menagerie of polar bears, stags, and kangaroos resemble typical wildlife except for the fact that they’re literally swept under the carpet, their features hidden from view. These towering sculptural forms are by artist Debbie Lawson (previously), who crafts animals that are cloaked in sweeping Persian rugs. Rather than being camouflaged by a forest, jungle, or snow-covered Arctic, Lawson’s creatures boldly protrude from the fabric and loom over the viewer.
    In her process, Lawson sculpts the animals from a combination of chicken wire and masking tape. She then layers luscious carpets across them, creating the illusion that these animals are about to jump, walk, and prance out of the fabric. This method is derived from what Lawson describes as her ability to spot hidden images in floors, textured walls, and various patterns, an interest that’s mirrored in her perspective-altering sculptures that appear to leap out from the gallery’s walls.
    Peek inside Lawson’s studio and find a larger selection of her carpeted creatures on her site and Instagram.

    Lawson with “Polar Bear” in-progress
    “Bear Cartouche”
    Detail of “Persian Kangaroo”
    Detail of “Polar Bear” in-progress
    Left: “Blue Stag.” Right: “Red Boar”
    “Bear Cartouche”
    Detail of “Red Boar”

    #animals
    #carpets
    #rugs
    #sculpture
    #textiles

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 163 Shares159 Views

    in Art

    Explore the Louvre’s Entire Collection of 480,000 Artworks in a New Digital Database

    
    Art

    #art history

    March 29, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Leonardo da Vinci’s “Portrait of Lisa Gherardini” known as La Joconde or Monna Lisa, the 1st quarter of the 16th century (1503-1518)
    The Louvre just launched a new online database compiling more than 480,000 artworks from its collections and those at the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix and The Tuileries Garden. Spanning Egyptian antiquities and medieval sculpture to Renaissance and modern decorative arts, the free digital catalog includes works on long-term loan and is complete with an interactive map to pursue each room of the French institution. Some pieces are grouped into albums, including one collating 2020’s acquisitions and another dedicated to the National Museums Recovery, a collection of works gathered after World War II that’s being held by the Louvre until they’re claimed by their rightful beneficiaries. Dive into the entire archive, which is updated daily, on the museum’s site.

    Brick panel from Achaemenid: Darius I (circa 510 BC) (-522 – -486), found in Susa apadana palace of Darius
    Marguerite Gérard’s “The interesting pupil,” created in the 4th quarter of the 18th century (around 1786)
    Tablet from Archaic Dynastic IIIB: Entemena (XXVth century), (-2420 – -2400), from Girsu
    Jacob de Littemont’s “Dais de Charles VII: two angels holding a crown” (1425-1450)
    Lion says “de Monzon”; Fountain mouth, 12th century; 13th century (1100 – 1300), found in Spain

    #art history

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 188 Shares179 Views

    in Art

    100,000 Cherry Blossoms Made of Salt Scatter Across the Floor of Setouchi City Art Museum

    
    Art

    #cherry blossoms
    #installation
    #salt

    March 29, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Installation view of “Sakura Shibefuru” (2021), salt, at Setouchi City Art Museum. All images © Motoi Yamamoto, shared with permission
    Sprawling across a bright red floor at Setouchi City Art Museum is Motoi Yamamoto’s sweeping installation of 100,000 cherry blossoms. Using a small, petal stencil and poured salt, the Kanazawa-based artist meticulously laid a mass of mineral-based buds during the course of 55 hours and nine days. Constructed radially, “Sakura Shibefuru,” or “Falling Cherry Petals” mimics the natural patterns formed around trees after the blossoms drop and end their life cycle each spring, a process Yamamoto (previously) says informed much of the work:
    When the red-purple buds fall, for many people, this is also the time when they lose interest due to the flower season being over. However, this time can also be seen as a small nudge to think about the coming fresh greens of spring and midsummer…While thinking about the future of the buds, I created petals that had just fallen, piling the petals while contemplating the trees that produced these beautiful flowers with their thick trunks, supple branches, and powerful roots.
    Paired with the crystalline blossoms are two of Yamamoto’s sculptural works from 1995, which the artist considers the origin of his practice and which he created following his sister’s death from a brain tumor. “This was an attempt to engrave into my heart the moment when an important life ceased to exist,” he says. Creating painstaking salt-based pieces like “Sakura Shibefuru”—which Yamamoto shares is, in part, a response to his wife’s death a few years ago—is meditative and a way to work through grief and retain memories.
    “Sakura Shibefuru” is on view in Setouchi until May 5, and the artist currently is working on a large-scale project for Suzu’s Oku-Noto Triennale 2020+, which will be installed this fall in a former kindergarten building. Until then, watch Yamamoto’s works take shape on Instagram and YouTube, and shop originals, prints, and books in his store. (via designboom)

    #cherry blossoms
    #installation
    #salt

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 175 Shares189 Views

    in Art

    Kinetic Flowers Grow from a Deteriorated Landscape in an Otherworldly Installation by Casey Curran

    
    Art

    #flowers
    #installation
    #kinetic sculpture
    #video

    March 26, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    [embedded content]
    In Parable of Gravity, artist Casey Curran (previously) assembles a vast garden of delicate kinetic blossoms amidst an expanse of deterioration. The sweeping landscape, which is on view at Seattle’s MadArt through April 17, positions Curran’s pulsing plant forms atop 20 towers of wooden scaffolding that line the gallery space. Coated in a thick layer of mud, the tallest structures scale eight feet at the outer edge of the installation, where a human-like figure appears to hover in the air. The anonymous body is covered in the flowers, which are made from laser-cut polyester drawing papers and powered by cranks and small motors.
    Through the maze of garden plots at the other end of the space hangs a hollow, aluminum asteroid—which is modeled after 951 Gaspra, the first rocky mass humans were able to observe in detail thanks to a 1991 viewing by the Galileo spacecraft. Titled “Anchor of Janus,” the imposing sculpture references both the Roman god and the intricate motifs on Gothic cathedrals and provides a foreboding, catastrophic lens to the otherwise burgeoning garden.
    In a statement, Curran explains the confluence of the manufactured and organic themes:
    This mythological, architectural, and astronomical convergence considers not only the scientific and spiritual aspects of our connection to the natural world, but also our cultural legacy and the ways in which past technological advancements continue to impact our lives and experiences today. Further, the reference to Janus recognizes the dual nature of human progress, with all of the positive and negative implications it carries.
    Watch the video above to watch the installation take shape, and follow Curran on Instagram and Vimeo to stay up-to-date with his latest projects.

    Full installation view: “Kinetic Towers” and “Anchor of Janus,” Dur-alar, MDF, aluminum, dirt, paper, and glue. Photo by James Harnois. All images © Casey Curran, shared with permission

    “We Spoke Like This to Remember.” Photo by Adrian Garcia Rodriguez 
    Detail of “Anchor of Janus.” Photo by James Harnois
    Full installation view: “Kinetic Towers” and “Anchor of Janus,” Dur-alar, MDF, aluminum, dirt, paper, and glue. Photo by James Harnois
    Detail of “We Spoke Like This to Remember”
    “Kinetic Towers” and “We Spoke Like This to Remember.” Photo by James Harnois
    Photo by James Harnois
    Visitors walking through the kinetic towers. Photo by Adrian Garcia Rodriguez
    Curran installs “We Spoke Like This to Remember”

    #flowers
    #installation
    #kinetic sculpture
    #video

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 113 Shares199 Views

    in Art

    Lush Tufted Tapestries Document Ecological Changes in Argentina’s Landscapes

    
    Art
    Craft
    Design

    #Argentina
    #carpets
    #landscapes
    #rugs
    #tapestry
    #textiles

    March 25, 2021
    Anna Marks

    All images © Alexandra Kehayoglou, shared with permission
    Designer Alexandra Kehayoglou (previously) creates exquisite pieces of flowing textiles that reference the rugged landscapes of her homeland, Argentina. In the creation of each tapestry, Kehayoglou transforms surplus carpet fabric into natural elements that range from a spectrum of Earth-colored mosses to clusters of trees and serpentine rivers that cut through the heart of her weaves. Entwined within each piece are fragments of the artist’s own memories, including witnessing waterways slowly recede and the alterations to Argentina’s grasslands.
    Her latest works, a series called Prayer Rugs, depict animal footprints and small vegetative features of the Parana Wetlands located 50 kilometers from Buenos Aires. In recent years, the region’s biodiversity has been decimated by the wood and paper industries, which have facilitated the growth of non-native plant species that have since spread out of control. Additionally, human-made fires wreaked havoc during 2020, while livestock simultaneously trampled the once-luscious grassland.
    Kehayoglou’s pieces document the foliage that has survived after years of this widespread exploitation and how, over time, local fauna has started to reappear: thistles grow through cracks in the dry Earth, deer leave mud-splattered tracks, and chirping insects dance upon youthful leaves. The artworks narrate the wetland’s change and growth, reflecting the pain caused by capitalism while turning the need for change into tapestries that reference Argentinians’ hope. Kehayoglou says:
    Isolation made me think of my carpets as spaces where new forms of activism could be enacted. A type of activism that instead of focusing on paranoid conflict was silent, absorptive and, as I believe, more effective. My carpets, thus, became instruments for documenting ‘minor’ aspects of the land, which were otherwise overlooked as irrelevant. A focus on its micro-narratives that would open new doors for possible ecological futures.
    You can see more of the artist’s rich tapestries on her website and Instagram.

    #Argentina
    #carpets
    #landscapes
    #rugs
    #tapestry
    #textiles

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 175 Shares179 Views

    in Art

    Illuminated Streaks Appear to Fall from Trees in Light Paintings by Photographer Vitor Schietti

    
    Art
    Photography

    #Brazil
    #light
    #light painting
    #trees

    March 25, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Vitor Schietti, shared with permission
    In Vitor Schietti’s Impermanent Sculptures, thick treetops and branches are swollen with light that appears to drip down in incandescent rays. Each photograph frames the nighttime scenes in a dreamy, energetic manner as the glowing beams both outline and obscure the existing landscapes. Schietti shot the pieces shown here in February and March of 2021 around his hometown, Brasília, but the ongoing series first was developed in 2015.
    Although some of the long-exposure photographs are taken in a single shot, many are composites created from various light paintings. He explains:
    Apart from this process and color and contrast adjustments, the result is conceived entirely from real action with fireworks, a performance that shifts between spontaneity and control… To paint with light in a three-dimensional space is to bring one’s thoughts from unconscious realms into existence, only visible as presented through long-exposure photography.
    Schietti sees the luminous series as a celebration of the Brazilian city, which he describes as a tree-filled oasis of birds and cicadas that’s “often integrated with the genius architecture of Oscar Niemeyer…Appreciating their hidden expressions, or imagining the life force that pulsates and emanates from them maybe a little less ordinary, so here (the) images play an important role: inspire and foster imagination.”
    Check out the catalog of available prints on Schietti’s site, and head to Instagram for more of his photographs featuring Brazil’s lush landscapes and natural life.

    #Brazil
    #light
    #light painting
    #trees

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 175 Shares139 Views

    in Art

    A Massive Catalogue of Stitched CMYK Studies by Evelin Kasikov Merges Printing and Embroidery

    
    Art
    Craft
    Design

    #books
    #color
    #cross-stitch
    #embroidery
    #thread

    March 25, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “XXXX Swatchbook” (2010-2016), 180 x 210 millimeters. All images © Evelin Kasikov, shared with permission
    In “XXXX Swatchbook,” Evelin Kasikov (previously) explores all of the variables of CMYK printing without a single drop of ink. She catalogs primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, two-dozen combinations showing how rotation affects the final pigment, and a full spectrum of rich gradients. In total, the printing-focused book is comprised of four base tones, 16 elements, and 400 swatches of color entirely hand-embroidered in 219,647 stitches.
    The original idea came from Kasikov’s desire for a reference tool, one similar to loose sheets of Pantone swatches, that she could share with potential book design clients interested in CMYK embroidery. During the next six years, though, the project evolved into the uniquely comprehensive artist book it is now.
    “XXXX Swatchbook” features three-dimensional color studies in the style of precisely arranged halftone dots employed in four-color printing. “I use cross-stitch technique to replicate this. It’s a very simple idea,” Kasikov says. “I prepare the image in InDesign or Illustrator, then pierce the design onto paper and stitch with CMYK colored threads. Of course, my ‘print resolution’ is very low, about 3-4 lines per inch compared to 300 in print.”
    Stitched with varying thickness, the swatches use conventional screen angles—cyan 105˚, magenta 75˚, yellow 90˚, and black 45˚—to produce a wide range of colors and gradients, all of which you can view on the artist’s blog. Each French-folded page features geometric patches of thread, alongside hand-written details about the CMYK values shown. The spine of the book also reveals a vibrant gradient spanning magenta to cyan.

    “XXXX Swatchbook” is founded on Kasikov’s earlier “CMYK Embroidery,” a project that grew out of her MA studies at Central Saint Martins and was influenced by her background in advertising. Merging the two into the broader project of graphic stitching grew organically and offered an outlet to create a piece that was the artist says was “valuable, timeless, and trend-less,” in comparison to the more transitory projects of commercial work. “When you add tactile qualities to graphic design, it changes perspective. The structure of color can be touched. The printed image becomes three-dimensional. A flat page comes to life so to speak,” she writes.
    Kasikov splits her time between Tallinn and London, where she’s working on a project called Small Hours. Centered around a theme of silence, the collection features still-life photographs with freehand dots stitched on top in a pointillist style. Follow the ongoing project and find a larger archive of Kasikov’s book designs and embroidered works on her site and Instagram. You also might enjoy Tauba Auerbach’s RGB colorspace atlas. (via Present & Correct)

    #books
    #color
    #cross-stitch
    #embroidery
    #thread

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Art

    Digital Portraits Reinvent Classical Paintings by Enveloping Subjects in Garments and Masks

    
    Art

    #collage
    #digital
    #portraits

    March 24, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Hidden Perronneau” (2020), photocollage. All images © Volker Hermes, shared with permission
    Nearly a decade before masks became a ubiquitous part of our lives, artist Volker Hermes was fashioning lavish face coverings made of flowers, lace, and ornate baubles. In his ongoing series, Hidden Portraits, Hermes digs into the art historical archive and selects classical paintings that he then reinterprets. Elaborate accessories derived from elements in the original works become tools for obscuring the subjects’ faces, which subsequently draws attention to their garments, gestures, and surroundings.
    Since he began the prescient series, Hermes has based his practice in painting even though he realizes each portrait digitally. Time has given him ample opportunities to delve into the original painters’ backgrounds, periods, and the symbolism of various fashions, an experience bolstered by his costuming work for opera productions.
    Now fluent in historical significance, Hermes continues to parse questions of representation in the works and their current-day implications. “Each era has its own symbols,” he says. “I always like to mention the Chanel costume as a metaphor for today’s upper-class affiliation. There are of course more current, more specific ones, but this garment has something of a general visualization of an established elite.”
    Other emblems—like the big, black hats made from beaver fur that many men don in works from the Dutch Golden Age to signify their rank—are more difficult to recognize today. Hermes says:
    Whoever had such a hat, had himself painted with it. But today we don’t know that anymore. We simply see men with black hats, which no longer trigger anything in us. We look the sitters in the face as our natural approach. If I now exaggerate such a hat in my interventions, blocking the access via the face, the focus changes, the viewer is forced, so to speak, to look at the painting under new aspects, taking into account the meanings that determined the painting at that time.
    From his studio in Düsseldorf, Hermes is preparing new pieces for a group show centered around a theme of clerical representation and pilgrimage, which you can keep up with on Instagram.

    “Hidden Pesne” (2021), photocollage
    “Hidden Larkin” (2020), photocollage
    “Hidden Anonymous (Pourbus)” (2020), photocollage
    “Hidden Cranach III” (2019), photocollage
    “Hidden Liotard VI” (2021), photocollage
    “Hidden Pourbus V” (2019), photocollage

    #collage
    #digital
    #portraits

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member and support independent arts publishing. Join a community of like-minded readers who are passionate about contemporary art, help support our interview series, gain access to partner discounts, and much more. Join now!

     
    Share this story
      More