Anastassia Elias is most famous for her mini dioramas in toiler paper rolls and other visual art, but I’m partial to these two installations she did for a group project.
Just your average transparent string elephant on a tightrope. NBD.
The goal was to decorate the streets with whimsical, unexpected designs. Mission accomplished, I’d say.
NYCHOS has put up this awesome installation in NYC’s Flatiron Plaza.
Go ahead…lie down and tell him your problems.
The Low Bros, former graffiti writers Qbrk and Nerd, are Christoph and Florin Schmidt. Their visual art and murals are rather like a modern spin on the designs, colors and elements of 80’s and 90’s youth culture.
Much of their work consists of stylized animals, built with interestingly intersecting lines and geometrical shapes. Shading is often accomplished with ombre lines, which create a really cool effect.
This is Colossal posted an incredible new installation by artist-activist Courtney Mattison. It’s part of her Our Changing Seas series, on display at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art through April 17, 2016.
Each sculpture is inspired by sites identified by her hero, marine biologist Sylvia Earl (isn’t it wonderful to see someone list a marine biologist as a hero? There are so many unsung scientists and healers out there!).
Her pieces are designed to bring awareness to what will happen to marine life as tropical sea temperatures rise and creatures are forced to migrate.
Mattison loves coral reefs because they are “exotic, diverse and often venomous” (sounds like a perfect femme fatale). Who wouldn’t love and want to preserve our world’s beautiful ocean friends?
This is the center piece in the Angels With Dirty Faces triptych by Joe Black. From afar, it seems like some fine use of unique brush strokes, color and shading…from up close, one discovers it is made of 8,000 individually spray-painted soldiers on aluminum with resin coating.
From the artist bio:
Black combines his natural craft skills with a love of materials – many of which are recognizable everyday objects – to create portraits and abstract works.
Using a laborious technique of hand painting and altering each tiny object to give gentle lines and shading to his subjects, Black has pioneered an elaborate new form of pixilation that he uses to hid subtle implications within each of his images.
St. George’s Church in the Czech Republic, constructed in 1352, has been abandoned since the 1960’s since the locals felt it was a bad omen when the ceiling caved in during a funeral. Yet its pews are populated with shrouded ghostly figures.
Although it would’ve made a great story if these pious undead had appeared spontaneously, they were actually commissioned as an installation.
“The figures represent the ghosts of Sudeten Germans who lived in Lukova before World War Two and who came to pray at this church every Sunday,” says the artist Jakub Hadrava, a third year sculpture student. “I hope to show the world that this place had a past and it was a normal part of everyday life, but that fate has a huge influence on our lives.”
The installation was designed to attract tourism and help garner funds to restore the church. I’d certainly pay a visit if I could.
Tulle isn’t just for prom and wedding dresses. Benjamin Shine uses this gossamer netting to construct large scale portraits with incredible dimension.
He can even show the movement of dance…
Or the complex variegated detail of aging human skin.
Hear him talk a bit about the work here.
Read a few quotes from an interview at my source.
German street artist 1010 (pronounced “ten ten”) had an intriguing installation at Hashimoto Contemporary, where he created multi-layered colorful portals.
From the source:
1010 first began creating his “hypnotic portals” in 2009 throughout the city of Hamburg. Using the sides of buildings and abandoned wall spaces 1010, turns an unassuming wall into a colorful gradated void that seems as thought you could step right in and out to the other side. The depths that the artist creates on a 2D plain is perplexing in a good way, as the murals trick our mind into believing his transported vision.
Stunning layers of colors closely overlap as they spread out like liquid that pools up into the darkness at the endless center. The artist carefully maps out work that works its way out of the darkness, finally reaching the lightest colors on the wavy borderline. The resulting polychromatic grottos disrupt the stagnant structures of the urban landscape, bringing a beauty and mystery to the systematic components of the city they inhabit.
See a few more pictures at Hashimoto Contemporary and here.
Swedish art duo Bigert & Bergstrom offer an innovative way to look at photography in their installation entitled Mikrokosmos.
These spherical photos, vividly real yet oddly alien, are illuminated from the inside. I love the way pieces of tiny worlds are joined together in conglomerates that resemble molecular structures suspended in space.
Today I bring you the evocative assemblages of Edward Keinholz, most of which contain a dash of sharp satire and/or criticisms of modern life (works range from the 1960’s-1980’s).
Although he obtained no formal training, Keinholz grew up on a farm where he learned carpentry, drafting and mechanical skills.
His roster of formal jobs is as eclectic as his artistic endeavors: orderly in a psychiatric hospital, manager of a dance band, used car salesman, caterer, decorator and vacuum cleaner salesman.
SheWalksSoftly 