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Daily Candy Feed - Design Observer
- China Portfolio: From the Linked Hybrid to the Bug Dome
- The Language of Design Imperialism
- Camel Mobile Clinic Update
- Permanent Error
- Do You Copy? The Visuals of Ham Radio
- Spatial Intelligence: New Futures for Architecture
- Map Kibera
- Lunch with the Critics: The New Lincoln Center
- Jerry Della Femina, Mad Men, and the Cult of Advertising Personality
- Today, 07.23.10
Mar
23
Action Causes more Trouble than Thought
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Jenny Holzer twitters! Can you believe it? Now if only Twitter had an option where you can manipulate the feed font to look and act like an LED! It would be Jenny Holzer’s longest–ongoing–exhibition to date!
IMAGE | Luis Colan | Jenny Holzer, 2008, 7 curved double sided LED signs. Cheim & Read, NYC | from flickr.com | 28 March 2008
Feb
27
Read ’Em and Weep
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Insanely amazing show, Between the Covers, Women’s Magazines and their Readers, at The Women’s Library,
Ack! Who wants to go? I’ve never been to the
Nov
13
Lacanic Room
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I first discovered artist Liza Lou in 1999, Grand Central Station,
Backyard, was a massive installation in Vanderbilt Hall. Lou, and a team of volunteers, had beaded a human-scale tableau of a yard with tiny, colourful glass beads. The result was an extraordinary artwork completed by hand.
The brilliance of Backyard grows out from the centred picnic scene, which unlike the rest of the installation, appeared to have been recently disturbed. Lou included many markers (signifiers) to indicate an outdoor get-together, unfulfilled. Objects successful in supporting the idea included crushed cans of Bud, salad servers at the ready for scooping salad, and a laundry basket filled with dishtowels. (The ultimate glorification; beaded rags!) Others, not so successful, were cobs of corn imitating cheap Pier 1 imports relics, and flowers that stood so tall and straight as embellished stand-ins of the plastic floral pinwheels people erect in their gardens.
Lou’s colourful Backyard concoction stresses the absence of things. It serves as an index to the missing human element the tableau permits, almost as a dare to the common accepted idea of nature: man’s intervention is beauty’s demise. It’s as though Lou’s version of the adage suggests a variant to be true: man’s intervention brings beauty to life. The irony of Lou’s utilization of a very tactile, man-made technique, only challenges the viewer further to consider this unpopular point of view. Read more
Oct
27
Under the Pink
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Former Canadian fashion designer, Sunny Choi, has moved onto the visual arts. Choi’s impressive fashion illustrations are on view at her Queen West gallery. The works are ethereal, romantic, layered, and full of narrative.
Working with oils on canvas, Choi’s brushstrokes around her female models feel like the running thread between her paintings, context coming out of focus, life taking on some activity–almost as thoughtful (and bold) chaos.
Choi’s portraits and profiles capture elusive expressions. There is an element of seduction and beauty behind the Cover Girls portrayed, without making them too pretty or relevant on the surface only.
Surrounded by the threads, wisps and spots of paint, the Girls take on a myth like quality. The female models come to life as believable-fictional characters. In some instances they are the nymph in the forest, among flitting butterflies, and in others, attending a very VIP cocktail party, aglow, creating metaphorical butterflies in their presence.
In all, Choi’s works are a celebration of the female form, colour, and painting–the sections where Choi allows the paint to “be the paint,” framing areas where Choi controls the paint to create form. The very places where clothing melds into the environment and the environment melds into clothing. More than Choi’s world (depicted and lived). More like Choi’s infinite creative sensibility.
This December will mark Choi’s one-year anniversary in the art world. Judging from the works made, and the new collections she is dreaming up, I’d say that Choi has had a pretty good year. May she have many more. Congrats.
IMAGE | Sunny Choi | Cover Girls | 36″ x 48″ | Lacey in Mauve
Oct
10
f-Stop
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One week remains to see the spectacular, Florian Böhm show, Wait for Walk, at the Cohen Amador Gallery, New York! You know what that means? It’s time to go, go, GO!
Wait for Walk contains photographs of people, stopped at crosswalks, in
The images touch upon many visual and idiosyncratic characteristics. Each photo acts as a composite of two orders contained within. One, the way the pedestrians have arranged themselves at the corner of the crosswalk. Two, the way the crosswalk divides the pedestrians with the viewer–who observes Böhm’s works from the “other side.” (The side where the pedestrians’ intend to cross over to.) In this way, the photos provide a four-dimensional perspective, with the cityscape set as the background, the pedestrians as the middle-ground, the viewer’s spatial relation to the work as the foreground, and the pedestrians’ notification to advance as the element of time. Read more
Oct
9
Primal Scene
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Art, adult content, and beer. What more can anyone want? (I encourage comments.) But, keep it clean people!
Tonight only, Keep 6 Contemporary celebrates the opening of their latest exhibit, Explicit Fantastic: sex(y) in contemporary culture.
The show has sex and sexuality-based works in the visual arts, film, and literature. Artists included are from around the world. Shary Boyle, TILT, and Tomori Nagamoto to name a few.
A screening and reading series runs concurrently with the show, which is up from 9 October 2008 to 30 November 2008, at Keep 6. Exhibiting artists’ merch will be for sale. A catalogue of the works should be available too.
Look for my small contribution to sociology and art theory at the show. (Here’s a clue for you. You’ll likely find me “in between the lines.” That’s all I’m saying for now. Good luck!)
Aug
21
Divided, we Sit.
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Last week I was going through one of my scrap books for a bit of inspiration when I noticed towards the end of the book, a postcard, wedged between two pages where the book had remained blank. The postcard was a portrait of John Bentley Mays by Gertrude Kearns; an invitation to her solo show, United States of Being (the John Bentley Mays portraits) at Lehmann Leskiw Fine Art,
Aug
14
Pink-y and the Brain
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I’m sorry, but if this isn’t amazing, I don’t know what is. Genius!
Jun
25
Brand Wagon: Part Three.
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PART 3 Essentially, when “design” transitioned from “art” to “graphic,” sadly, it did not evolve; it conformed. Conformity is what has caused designers to bow to others impressions of their own discipline, skill, trade, craft, knowledge and, yes, I’m going to say it, artistry. Conformity is what is still killing designers now to rebrand themselves into a title or industry that I don’t think will truly ever reflect what designers do, and actually, degrade designers and the community further than the reduction they assumed when they initially decided to hold a distinction against Art, but used it as its foundation in an attempt to raise its platform. (Huh? How did you think that was going to work?) Rebranding design’s identity won’t work. Taking up the role of the artist, will. Read more
Jun
6
Life’s a Beach and Then You Spy
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Impasto. Light. Colour. When combined, these elements add dimension and depth to a work of art, to painting. The brush stroke provides the pacing in which the work was made. The light provides the life force the image beholds; a sliver for a glimmer, bathed for dazzling. Colour provides the weight or intensity of the emotion depicted, including the artist’s own in creation.