Using found objects collected from within big-box stores, artist Carson Davis Brown creates color-specific installations for his photography series Mass. The works are organized conglomerations of basketballs, laundry baskets, wrapping paper, and other mass produced goods, each arranged by color within the stores they are found. After photographing the works they are left as is, experienced by passersby as a break from the monotony of the weekly grocery store run and eventually disassembled by the store’s staff. You can see more of Brown’s assembled consumer experiments on Instagram and his project’s website massproject.biz. (via Juxtapoz, Catherine Edelman Gallery)
Ai Weiwei at it again. The Chinese artist and activistAi Weiweicurrently has an exhibitionon Alcatraz, the notorious island used as a military fortress and federal penitentiary. Amongst a large body of work created specifically for Alcatraz is “Blossom,” which has been installed in several hospital ward cells and medical offices. And as its name suggests, intricately detailed encrustations of ceramic flowers are blossoming out of sinks, toilets and tubs that were once used by hospitalized prisoners.
The curator offers two possibilities in interpreting Ai’s porcelain blossoms: a symbolic offering of comfort to the imprisoned or perhaps an ironic nod to China’s famous Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956. But to understand the piece we think this quote by Ai himself is all you really need: “The misconception of totalitarianism is that freedom can be imprisoned. This is not the case. When you constrain freedom, freedom will take flight and land on a windowsill.”
Ai Weiwei’s exhibition on Alcatraz will be open through April 26, 2015. (via My Amp Goes to 11)
While in college, artist John Bisbee was scavaging in an abandoned house looking for items to incorporate into a series of found-object sculptures when he kicked over a bucket of old rusty nails. To his astonishment, the nails had fused together into a bucket-shaped hunk of metal. He had an epiphany. Bisbee has since spent nearly 30 years using nails as his sole medium to create geometric sculptures, organic installations, and unwieldy objects from thousands of nails that are hammered, bent, welded, or fastened together in a seemingly limitless procession of forms. His mantra: “Only nails, always different.” He shares with American Craft, “A nail, like a line, can and will do almost anything. What can’t you draw with a line? The nail is just my line.”
Bisbee is currently an artist in residence at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and had an exhibition at Shelburne Museum earlier this year. He was recently profiled in American Craft’s Material Crush issue featuring 30 artists working in unusual mediums, almost half of which have been featured right here on Colossal. Definitely worth a look. (via American Craft)
This dude is a total boss. A background in neuroscience drives much of the ideas and visuals at the heart of Timothy H Lee’s art. His recent work utilises a neutral colour scheme to explore themes as diverse as human psychological, religious spirituality and the nature of identity. One can see these ideas bubbling beneath the surface of his exquisitely crafted sculptures and paintings. Originally from South Korea, he is now based in Brooklyn, New York.
as a union of organic mediums and mechanical systems, american artist roxy paine has meticulously hand carved ‘checkpoint’: a room-sized diorama, which uncannily represents — in complex and painstainking detail — a generic airport security stop. presented at marianne boesky gallery, new york, the large-scale installation comprises soft-hued maple, aluminum and fluorescent light bulbs, with each material translating a portion of the transportation hub’s architectural facets into static and solid matter.
When set designer Nicola Yeoman emailed us to say her newly simplified website was live, I went to check the last time we’d featured her on the site. Astonishingly I found that aside from mentions in a feature by Dan Tobin Smith (with whom she collaborated on the Jay Z albumThe Blueprint 3) we had apparently never dedicated a post to her extraordinary talents in their own right. So consider this long overdue.
Nicola’s brilliance lies in creating imagery which the viewer assumes is computer generated, only to realise that in actual fact she’s built them exactly as they appear. The technical craft is hugely impressive and it’s no wonder that photographers from Jenny Van Sommmers to Sam Taylor Wood are queuing up to work with her.
Her new stripped-back portfolio includes some of her greatest hits as well as some interesting projects I hadn’t come across before so it’s well worth spending some time exploring.
For the 2013 KOBE Biennale artists and designers were invited to create environments inside industrial shipping containers as part of the ‘Art in a Container International Competition.’ Designers Masakazu Shirane and Saya Miyazaki created Wink Space, a modular installation made from mirrors that formed a giant kaleidoscopic tunnel. Not only was the piece an fun immersive environment, but it was also an experiment in building with zippers. “We wanted to create the world’s first zipper architecture. In other words, this polyhedron is completely connected by zippers. And in order to facilitate even more radical change some of the surfaces open and close like windows,” says Shirane.
Drawing inspiration from early theatrical training, and influenced by methods of staged photography and set design, artist Barry Underwood (previously) transforms ordinary landscapes into something out of science fiction. The artist utilizes LED lights, luminescent material, and other photographic effects to create fleeting abstract landscapes that are influenced by both accidental and incidental light. He shares via his artist statement:
My artwork examines community and land-use in rural, suburban and urban sites. I created this series of installations by researching local agricultural, industrial, and recreational land-use. Curiosity about ecological and social history of specific places drives my work. By revealing the beauty and potential of an ordinary landscape an everyday scene is transformed into a memorable, visual experience. Each photograph image is a dialogue – the result of my direct encounter with nature and history. Inspired by land art, landscape photography and painting, as well as cinema, my images are both surreal and familiar.
Underwood will open an exhibition of both old and new work at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York titledScenes, on May 29th, 2014. You can see more over on Johansson Projects and read a 2011 interview atJuxtapoz. Images courtesy Sous Les Etoiles Gallery and the artist.
