Art Diary

Seeking the balance between studium: the cultural, linguistic, and political denotation and punctum: a touching, wounding detail that inspires (Barthes, Camera Lucida). Photos do not belong to me unless otherwise specified--used for educational purposes only. Sources for photographs and research listed.

[sabrineismail]

Restraint - Sculpture installment #1 in indefinite series

Wood, hemp string, glue, black thread, iron rods

[woundingdetail]

Simon Heijdens, Light Weeds, c. 2005-present

Light weeds are living digital organisms that are projected onto indoor walls that move and bloom based on the local weather conditions and human interaction.  As people move past the light projection, the stalks bend and seeds break off to pollenate the rest of the space.  "[This creates] a constantly evolving bio system that reveals the character of the space and how it's used."  

In an indoor space, our environment is constantly conditioned through temperature and lighting.  "When unpredictable natural elements such as a lifting breeze, a sudden shower, or a setting sun are planned out of our surroundings, the timeline of our everyday is lost." Light weeds have sprung all over the world, but since they grow of their own accord, each arrangement is unique and unadulterated.

Sources: gardendesign, simonheijdens.com

[crossconnectmag]

HYBYCOZO, or the Hyperspace Bypass Construction Zone, is a series of sublime, laser cut cosmic objects, ranging from a Burning Man art installation to design pieces for the home.

The project is inspired by the intersection of science, technology, maker culture in the Bay Area, and of course, the artists’ favorite book, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. HYBYCOZO was designed by 2 San Francisco artists who are hoping to take their passion for design, technology, geometry, and installation art to the next level and expand it into thought provoking art and design.

Serge Beaulieu is an industrial designer whom recently led design at Fuseproject designing tech hardware, housewares, furniture and more. After doing stints at multiple design agencies, Serge is embarking on personal art and design ventures. Design/Lighting/Cozo

Yelena Filipchuk is an environmental scientist by trade and spent years studying natural patterns and bio-mimicry. She currently works at YouTube helping musicians and artists bring their content onto the platform.

&&&

Don’t forget Facebook !

[manamorimoto]

So Bershka has been using their store windows as a platform to promote and show the work of young artists in their B.Y.D.P. (Bershka Young Designers Project) and they decided to show my work at their selected store this time!

THANK YOU BERSHKA!

If you live close to any of the location listed below, please go see it! It’d be great if you could send me a photo/video or tag me on Instagram or something (my instagram is @mnmrmt) I dunno but thank you domo arigato in advance. 

Berlin, Vienna, Brussel, London (Oxford/Park House), Barcelona, Madrid, A Coruña, Paris, Milan, Bologna, Zürich, Amsterdam, Prague, Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Osaka and Moscow

That square photo is a window in Berlin, the next one is A Coruña, and I wanted to post those gifs because I worked v hard to make that prototype.

[woundingdetail]

Paige Bradley, Expansion, 2004. 

Paige Bradley creates bronze sculptures of bodies in graceful, striking poses that convey the beauty of the human form. Despite the the obvious beauty of the pieces, her sculptures weren't being circulated within Manhattan's art world because it didn't fit within the contemporary values critics and curators held.  Figural artists often burned out and turned their attentions to teaching.  

In an effort to encroach on this contemporary space, Bradley took a sculpture she took months to sculpt from wax and threw it on the ground, therefore literally breaking her own limitation of traditional art. "I knew that it was time to let go of all the finely tuned skills...and just trust in the process of making art.  The art world was telling me I had to break down my foundation, let me walls crumble, expose myself completely and from there I will find the true essence of what I needed to say."

This is the piece that made her present in the art world.  However, it has been placed in a private collection and Paige Bradley has created this petition to make it public again.  Help her move it back to Brooklyn, where the picture above was taken. 

[woundingdetail]

Robert Barry, Inert Gas Series, 1969.

Robert Barry released prepackaged liters of noble gasses into the atmosphere in several locations in Southern California, including Beverly Hills and the Mojave Desert. He was invited to participate in a one month exhibition, which had a printed poster stating:  ROBERT BARRY/INERT GAS SERIES/HELIUM, NEON, ARGON, KRYPTON, XENON/FROM A MEASURED VOLUME TO INDEFINITE EXPANSION/APRIL 1969.  Only later did he provide photographs as documentation.  

Most would believe that releasing the gasses that were so painstakingly and financially costing to contract from the environment would be a strange and fruitless endeavor, especially since the actual performance was invisible to the viewer the first time it was shown. However, Barry had the conceptual drive to produce art that wasn't aesthetic, existed outside traditional methods and mediums, and which without documentation would be completely invisible to the eye.  

Another important point in the piece is that the gasses would have been used commercially if the artist had not retrieved them and returned them to their original environment.  He recorded the life cycle of these gasses, something that happens constantly but nobody can see.

"[Noble gasses] were completely unknown about one hundred years ago, we didn't know they existed, and yet we breathe them in and exhale them; we live around them and move in these inert gases"

In this way, it was only natural that the piece would exist outside the institution--not in a gallery or a museum, not presented where everyone would pay attention to it.  This way the viewer would conceptualize it in their mind, aware of the processes at work around them. 

Sources: moca.org, museums in progress

[authentic-boredom]

susan derges

[woundingdetail]

Xu Bing, Book from the Sky, c.1987-91

 In February 1989, the crowd edged forward, eager to read the text, to discover what knowledge four hundred books and fifty foot scrolls could impart.  Traditionally bound, strung, and typeset, the installation was a nod towards China’s history, perhaps to some a source of cultural pride to be using the methods of their ancestors. However, the three to four thousand unique characters Bing meticulously carved out of woodblock were all invented by him, were nonsense words.  His high society viewers were suddenly rendered illiterate, unable to access the endless information that lay before them. 

Bing lived through the Cultural Revolution lead by Mao, a movement that sought to destroy China of its capitalism and traditionalism and replace it with communism, terrorizing and displacing large amounts of people.  During his youth, Bing’s talent for calligraphy was put to use to create propaganda that promoted the same regime that imprisoned his father, an intellectual. In school he was taught the more simplified Chinese characters that would replace traditional ones. "To change the language, even a little bit, really changes people’s thinking," Bing realized.   Bing watched most literature and art be destroyed by Mao’s politics, especially those of historical value, because of this political purge. 

Book from the Sky illustrates the consequences of Mao’s politics.  An endless worth of knowledge lost upon the people of China. 

Sources: PBS, metmuseum.org, xubing.com, teachartwiki, moreintellegentlife

[our-flame-never-goes-out]

What’s also cool about this is that 天书 (Book from the Sky) can also mean something like “books that the gods wrote” and it is used to describe something you can not understand at all.

[woundingdetail]

Erwin Redl, Twists and Turns, 2014.

Erwin Redl (b. 1963) is a primarily an installation artist that uses LEDs to alter a darkened room.  The exhibit at the Wood Street Galleries featured two rooms, one of which was Twists and Turns, glass panels hung from the ceiling that swirled around according to which way the draft was blowing with LED going through them and reflecting off of them.  Also, depending on how fast the lightwaves are moving, there is a pulsing beep that changes speed.  The final result reminds me of watching traffic from a distance, and it is quite an entrancing experience.  The installation was mainly trying to create an abstract interpretation of the virtual world within a physical space.  

[red-lipstick]

Magda Huygens (b. 1961, Tessenderlo, Belgium) - Just Me, Meself And I, 2011    Drawings

[itscolossal]

[red-lipstick]

Kobayashi Kiyochika (Japanese, 1847-1915,Japan) - Fireflies at Kinu River, Tennoji, c. 1910-20’s    Woodblocks

[wetheurban]

FASHION: The Dress That Defends Itself

The future is now. Meet the Robotic Spider Dress. Techno Couture from Anouk Wipprecht, a dress with insect-like robotic limbs which react to the proximity of others. Footage after the jump:

Read More

[woundingdetail]

Chiharu Shiota, Trace of Memory, 2013.

Chiharu Shiota is a Japanese performance and installation artist that has filled eight rooms at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory. She creates intricate geometric patterns out of yarn to encompass every day objects such as bed, books, dresses, and chairs.  The artist's intention is to "draw in the air" the emotional tension that lies there: what human traces we leave behind that are on the edge of our memory.  Although the building is visibly worn down by history, the objects themselves are unexplained--a call to the viewer to supply their own context for ordinary objects, as if they were somehow a part of our own lost memories. 

Sources: arthopper.org, yelp.org, arndtberlin.com, mattress.org

[woundingdetail]

Xu Bing, Book from the Sky, c.1987-91

 In February 1989, the crowd edged forward, eager to read the text, to discover what knowledge four hundred books and fifty foot scrolls could impart.  Traditionally bound, strung, and typeset, the installation was a nod towards China's history, perhaps to some a source of cultural pride to be using the methods of their ancestors. However, the three to four thousand unique characters Bing meticulously carved out of woodblock were all invented by him, were nonsense words.  His high society viewers were suddenly rendered illiterate, unable to access the endless information that lay before them. 

Bing lived through the Cultural Revolution lead by Mao, a movement that sought to destroy China of its capitalism and traditionalism and replace it with communism, terrorizing and displacing large amounts of people.  During his youth, Bing's talent for calligraphy was put to use to create propaganda that promoted the same regime that imprisoned his father, an intellectual. In school he was taught the more simplified Chinese characters that would replace traditional ones. "To change the language, even a little bit, really changes people's thinking," Bing realized.   Bing watched most literature and art be destroyed by Mao's politics, especially those of historical value, because of this political purge. 

Book from the Sky illustrates the consequences of Mao's politics.  An endless worth of knowledge lost upon the people of China. 

Sources: PBS, metmuseum.org, xubing.com, teachartwiki, moreintellegentlife

[woundingdetail]

About

The reasons I'm blogging about art:

1. I believe that with the digital age with so much free information, art has become less for the elite and more for the public.  Even those who do not have access to acquiring "high" art are able to view it, critique it, and consume it.  I believe this is both a gift and a right.

2. However, the ability to critique has become challenging.  Even if viewing is free, the literacy is not.  There are some people who don't understand how paint splatters cost millions of dollars and find that the art world is a flimsy game for artists to conceive the societal value of their art and then convince their audience of it, however ugly or worthless the art may be.    

3. This has caused people to be turned off to the art world despite its availability.  

I'm not an art historian, and art collector or curator, a gallery owner, a renown critic.  I'm just starting out in life, and I don't know a lot.  But I love art, and I want to use this platform to express what I love, who I love, and why I love.    

[excdus]

Yayoi Kusama

I’m here but nothing

Yayoi Kusama began hallucinating spots atop the surfaces of her world at a young age. In these dots, at once simple and boundless, Kusama found a way to break away from the self and look into infinity.