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.
Sculptor Ben Young (previously) just unveiled a collection of new glass sculptures prior to the Sculpture Objects Functional Art + Design (SOFA) Fair in Chicago next month. Young works with laminated clear float glass atop cast concrete bases to create cross-section views of ocean waves that look somewhat like patterns in topographical charts. The self-taught artist is currently based in Sydney but was raised in Waihi Beach, New Zealand, where the local landscape and surroundings greatly inspired his art. You can learn more about his sculptures over on Kirra Galleries, and follow him on Facebook.
these benches give me boners. Product designer Hilla Shamia has developed a novel way to meld poured aluminum with irregularly shaped wood pieces to create sleek tables and benches. The process preserves that natural form of the tree trunk while still allowing the molten aluminum to flow into the crevices of the wood, slightly burning the area where the two materials meet. These remind me somewhat of Greg Klassen’s glass tables from last month here on Colossal. You can see more of Shamia’s work on her website. (via The Fox is Black)
Beijing-based artist Ren Ri bases his work around the relationship between humans and nature. This thinking has led him to an unconventional collaborator in his fascinating set of sculptures - honeybees. Ri choose to work with the insects and their wax, although it’s not the easiest medium to use because it’s unstable and can change shape and temperature. But, that’s the gamble that Ri takes, and it complements the fact that he bases his work around the element of chance.
The artist first began beekeeping in 2008 and two years later felt that his knowledge of it was enough to start working on Yuansu I: The Origin of Geometry, which is a collection of maps made in beeswax. Yuansu II is a continuation on this theme, and sculptures are embedded in transparent plastic polyhedrons. In order to induce the insects to create symmetrical wax sculptures, the queen bee is kept at the center of the geometric space. This causes the bees to gather and start building around the center. Every seven days Ri changed the gravity of the developing honeycomb by rotating the box on a different side, determined by a throw of dice.
These beautifully-peculiar sculptures are the result of what happens when man and nature work together in harmony.
This delicate series of sculpted plants is part of a project by artist Camila Carlow titled Eye Heart Spleen. The photographic project is comprised of 13 images representing human organs constructed from plants and flowers. From Carlow’s statement about the project:
The most fascinating and intricate of biological structures, yet we rarely pay heed to the organs inside our body. Regardless of whether we fill ourselves with toxins or nourishing food, whether we exercise or not—our organs sustain us, working away effortlessly and unnoticed.
In a similar way, plants flourishing in the urban environment are a testament to nature’s indifference to our goings on. They grow out of the sides of buildings, in brick walls and between the cracks in concrete, despite of the traffic and pollution.
Camila Carlow is a Guatemalan-born artist based in Bristol, England, and she works in a range of mediums from photography and painting as well as cinematography. Several of the Eye Heart Spleen photos are available as prints in her shop. (via Sweet Station)
for a major new work, damien hirst returns to his ‘natural history’ series with the reveal of ‘gone but not forgotten’, the gilded skeleton of a three-meter tall woolly mammoth, encased in a colossal steel and glass vitrine.‘the mammoth comes from a time and place that we cannot ever fully understand. despite its scientific reality, it has attained an almost mythical status and I wanted to play with these ideas of legend, history and science by gilding the skeleton and placing it within a monolithic gold tank.’ hirst explains of the piece ‘it’s such an absolute expression of mortality, but i’ve decorated it to the point where it’s become something else, i’ve pitched everything I can against death to create something more hopeful, it is gone but not forgotten.’ the work has been donated to aid amfAR‘s work in the fight against AIDS.
Amsterdam-based artist Berndnaut Smilde is best known for his fantastical Nimbus series, in which individual clouds appear to magically float in empty rooms. The haunting images portray the airy nimbuses drifting through gorgeous Rococo rooms, Gothic cathedrals, and abandoned factories, evoking a sense of mysticism or supernatural presence.
Carefully controlling the temperature and humidity in a room, Smilde uses a fog machine to produce the ethereal clouds that remain suspended in the air for only a fleeting moment. Although the nimbuses are visible for just a few seconds, their ephemeral existences are made permanent through photography. These works center on an impermanent state of being between construction and deconstruction, as the dreamy clouds appear and vanish in the blink of an eye.
Smilde’s latest exhibition Antipode will be on display at the Ronchini Gallery in London until June 14. The show will feature the artist’s stunning multidisciplinary works that synthesize photography, installation, performance, and sculpture. The exhibition title Antipode is a geographical term that refers to parts of the earth diametrically opposite each other, echoing Smilde’s focus on duality in his artwork.
Paris-based designer and artist Maud Vantours uses layer upon layer of cut paper to create hypnotizing patterns and textures that translate into set designs, fashion accessories, and editorial treatments. You can see more of her work at Figure and on Behance.
Laura Plageman is an artist and educator who lives and works in Oakland, CA. Her images explore the relationships between the process of image making, photographic truth and distortion, and the representation of landscape. She is interested in making pictures that examine the natural world as a scene of mystery, beauty, and constant change - transformed both by human presence and by its own design:
“In th series Response, I am responding to photographs both as representations and tangible objects. Through physically altering enlarged prints and then re-photographing the results, I create works that oscillate between image and object, photography and sculpture, landscape and still life. While they may appear illusory, the resulting pictures are documents of actual events and are thus as authentic as the original representational images contained within.
My process unfolds through observation and experimentation – I let the image and its materiality dictate its direction. Playing with paper and with light in unplanned and organic ways, I look for new ways to perceive the space, form, and context of my subjects. In some works, large pieces of the original image are torn out while in others, smaller parts are more subtly altered. I use a large format view camera throughout my process so I can control perspective and record as much detail as possible. Whether focused on a ripped paper edge or a nesting bird, I hope to reach a place where picture elements interact and merge in unpredictable and expressive ways.”
