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[Photographs by Marcus Gaab for the New York Times.]
Imagine coming home every single evening and casting your gaze upon this sucker in your dining room? Well one lucky couple in Munich can, and does. Suspended 25 feet in the air is a 12 foot amoebic creation designed by legendary lighting designer, Ingo Maurer. He calls it a Biotope.
Incidentally, a Biotope is an actual thang: a contemporary combination of the Greek terms Bio, for life. and Topos, for Place. In short, it’s a fancy word for habitat, and quite frankly, we should all start thinking more about our own Biotopes. Seriously, bitches.
Maurer was commissioned to create and design this masterpiece to illuminate and act as a sound barrier in a dining room whose previous life was a 19th Century chapel. He describes it as a ‘hybrid lighting and acoustical devise.’
In order to satisfy the ‘sound deadening’ challenge, he came up with quite the ingenious usage of sponges; yes, sponges. Farmed of course, because that’s what responsible Biotope developers would do. Each sponge was then sprayed with a specially formulated green pigment. L.E.D lamps, along with an integrated sound system are hidden throughout the structure. If Bach composed a Katydid Concerto in D Minor, this chandelier would have it on repeat.
But it gets better: Maurer wanted “something artificial, something abstract” so his team of Creatives set forth to locate a Californian artist who makes insect replicas. Adding delicate butterflies, dragonflies & insects, this light fixture takes on a world of its own.
Breathtakingly brilliant. A Home Tree for the rest of us.
I call it as I see it: genius.
Diego Diaz Marin is a Spanish fashion photographer from Torre Del Mar in Malaga. That sentence alone made me swoon, but I’ll admit, much as I found these kaleidoscopic images utterly otherwordly, I was just as intrigued by the self-portrait of Mr. Marin on his site. Beauty begets beauty, it would seem.
His work is layered and evocative, almost cinematic. It’s the kind of work that is sometimes flawed in its technical delivery, but so full of spirit that mostly you don’t care. Purists may decry these geometric repetitions, but the effect cannot be denied. Looking glass, eat your heart out.
From Mr. Marin: “The shoot is entitled Gypsy Crisis, with Spanish model Fabiola Gomez, my personal muse. It is a story of an Andalusian girl, an elegant millionaire, who finds herself suffering from the current economic crisis in Spain. The focus was strong color and feeling. These kaleidoscopic images are meant to be disorienting but also beautiful.”
Discover his work for yourself. Beware, though, you may find hours slipping by before you know it…
The HYÈRES FESTIVAL is a competition that takes place each spring in the south of France at the Villa Noailles. The very selective and prestigious competition has two categories: fashion and photography. Young designers and photographers proffer to the public their work, which is then examined by a highly-esteemed jury.
This year that jury is a veritable roster of fashion’s most notable names. In the designer category: London-based wunderkind Christopher Kane, Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez & Jack McCollough and Tim Blanks of Style.com. In the photography category: Tom Watt of Artreview and Jason Evans and Magdalene Keaney of Fashion Space. Intimidated yet?
This is a fantastic opportunity to shine if you think you have the talent. Not sure? I’ve devised an easy litmus test:
a. Have the gods and goddesses on Mt. Olympus appeared to you in visions and donned your new collection?
b. Have you awoke from sleepwalking hanging off the edge of a building clutching your Canon 60D in a divinely inspired attempt to photograph the brilliant light of dawn against a crumbling facade?
If you answered yes to either you should apply.
This is how Viktor & Rolf got their big break, after all, among other terrifically notable designers and photographers. Applications are due December 5th, so start your sketching and snapping ASAP.
DETAILS HERE.
Griffin Museum of Photography
4 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02116
4 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA 02116
P | 857.239.9240
The new video collaboration between filmmaker Harmony Korine and Proenza Schouler is a doozy. After the brilliant film Act Da Fool, which showcased Proenza Schouler’s Fall 2010 RTW collection, I was overwhelmed with anticipation for this year’s creative iteration, titled Snowballs. The video was premiered (quite fittingly) at Silencio, a club in Paris designed completely by David Lynch.
Observing Act Da Fool in juxtaposition with Snowballs, I would venture to say that if you give Korine an inch he is wont to take a mile.
The first film stirred up some controversy, with arguments focused on the misrepresentation of urban culture. One must realize that Korine’s whole oeuvre focuses on groups that often go unnoticed. His portraits of these individuals come from a completely different angle than we are generally used to, and therefore arouse distain and controversy among many critics.
With that introduction, lets delve into Snowballs – the most alien portrayal of fashion I’ve witnessed. The video’s protagonists are two young females decked out in selections from Proenza Schouler’s Fall 2011 RTW line, juxtaposed against an assortment of cheap store-bought ‘Indian’ headdresses, plastic bags as shoes, and other passing accoutrements as costume. Styled by Pop magazine’s Vanessa Reid, the pairings point to society’s nascent obsession with Native American cultures, and are rightly spliced with a heavy dose of the derelict.
The two protagonists move through this dystopian space in a puckish manner, dancing in backyard forts, and wandering down deserted Nashville streets, where manufactured homes dot the landscape to form a decidedly lackluster setting for gorgeous clothes. It’s an unsettling narrative, to say the least, wherein a nasally sing-song voiceover vaguely references issues of American Indian oppression.
As the film proceeds, it explores a decidedly Lynchian aura, causing an inexplicable feeling that forced me to the edge of my seat multiple times. The sets become blanketed in darkness, with characters losing layers of clothing as day turns to night. At one point a male character enters the narrative, ranting prophetically, as if possessed.
Snowballs does not have the same evocative, dreamlike qualities of Act Da Fool; you can’t let it take you away like a magic carpet. But Snowballs is effective in that it incites a strong curiosity: what is the true context of these clothes, and what is their origin in terms of influences? Proenza Schouler said they looked at many Native American textiles for inspiration, yet the wearers of the clothing are far removed from those influences. We are trained to critique the conceptual within art, the aesthetic within fashion, but the true beauty of Snowballs is that Korine invites us to do both, giving the fashion a space within which to live and breathe, and indirectly imbuing the clothes with a meaning beyond artifice.
The skies are darkening and the sharpened, menacing shapes of this necklace are luring depressive dressing habits back out from my inner psyche.
Bevel jewelry takes inspiration from the mytho-historical narratives of the ancient Guatemalan document Popul Vuh. That means there is a silly yet still entertaining little backstory behind every piece, this particular one involving a sacrificed head hanging from a tree that spit onto the hand of Xquic, a daughter of a lord, impregnating her with the Hero Twins. Talk about one fanciful Immaculate Conception. The “thistles” on the necklace are representative of the 7 heads that were hanging on this tree during the time Xquic visited the tree. Kind of a darling story that balances creepiness with heroicism. Perfect fodder for daydreams and nightsweats.
GET IT HERE.
From Ryan McGinley’s Moonmilk series.
Recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston unveiled its new Linde family Wing for Contemporary Art. While the MFA has always possessed a fairly incredible collection of Impressionist and early American artworks, it has never had much of a reputation for its contemporary collection. The opening of this wing appears to be the first step in changing that perception, if admittedly a bit late to the game.
The new space is located in the west-facing building, designed by I.M. Pei. It’s a rather awkward modernist space, one that the Museum has had difficulty in using effectively. But the whole of the space has been revamped, and successfully.
Over 200 contemporary works will be featured in the new wing and surrounding spaces. In one particularly arresting instance, a flashing chandelier is suspended from the ceiling, both a functional object and a piece of art. A section of the floor vibrates and resonates with the low frequency sound of bubbles escaping from massive ice flows. If nothing else, the MFA deserves credit for its curatorial creativity.
While some of the work has, on more than one occasion, occurred to me as a bit too Museum of Science, it is clear that the MFA is finally trying to transform their space into one that is more welcoming and engaging of the younger generation — the generation that will presumably be its new benefactors.
Most exciting is the MFA’s small gallery dedicated purely to video and multimedia artwork. It is about time that the Museum begins to accept the significance of multimedia art in the contemporary scene, and a gallery that honors these models of art is long overdue.
During the preview of the Linde Family Wing, Malcom Rogers (Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA) and Edward Saywell (chair of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art) repeatedly emphasized the unique combinations of the artworks shown, pairings that adduce the dialogue that has existed between artists of the past and the present over the last 100 years or so. The connections made range from the blatantly obvious (i.e. a Lawler photograph next to the Monet that was originally appropriated), to substantially more thoughtful pairings, my personal favorite being a Morris Louis painting against Lynda Benglis’ “Wing,” a painterly, flowing aluminum-cast sculpture that is the perfect 3-dimensional counterpart to Louis’ poured paintings.
It would appear the MFA might be the unassuming tortoise when it comes to contemporary relevance in Boston. Whether this nascent promising persistence will win the race remains to be seen.
For all you awash in the NYFW hubbub, I admonish you to stop for a second, take a cool sip of your diet coke, and give a little thanks to all of our designer ancestors. Specifically Giorgio di Sant’Angelo. Potentially one of the most cultured and well-traveled designers that ever were, Giorgio di Sant’Angelo successfully incorporated a mind-blowingly eclectic set of influences that even Comme des Garçons would balk at.
He is also the genius that brought jersey fabric into wide use for outerwear, praising the sensuality of the form of the body. “Silhouette as we’ve known it, as something imposed by fashion is finished. The only silhouette for 1971 is the body,” he stated. He was known as the wild child of fashion, bringing vibrant colors, ethnic influences, and massive clusters of jewelry into wide circulation.
Giorgio di Sant’Angelo was born in Italy and grew up in Brazil and Argentina. He eventually returned to Italy to study architecture and industrial design. Later on, he focused on art, ceramics and sculpture in Spain, boasting Picasso as one of his professors. Following that, he did a brief stint in California doing animation, then relocated to New York City and began freelancing. He soon caught the attention of Vogue editor Diana Vreeland with his unique and bizarre Lucite jewelry. The rest was history. Giorgio di Sant’Angelo brought hippie into high fashion by wrapping his models in layers and swaths of fabric and adorning them with the most brilliant of accessories. This is truly a case of artist-turned-designer, a man with a varicolored vision that ended up being most successfully expressed through dress.
He was quoted as saying, “I am not a fashion designer but an artist who works in fashion—an engineer of color and form.” This is clear when one spends a little time with his work, there is a painterly quality to his clothing compositions—they don’t exist merely to flatter the body but also to bring the mind into the persona the clothes create.
If you are going to be in Phoenix any time soon, make an effort to check out a retrospective of his design work, opening the 17th of September and running until February 12th, 2012. More details HERE.
We are all familiar with the empty billboard. These sentinels loom over us, silently urging us to bring them back to life. In Mexico, unused billboards are plastered with the title disponible, translating to mean both available and potentially changeable or disposable. If only the owners were aware how profound that word can be. Disponible succinctly expresses the country’s continual battle to successfully negotiate social and economic advancement in the wake of globalization.
“Disponible: A Kind of Mexican Show” gathers 8 of Mexico’s most relevant contemporary artists as they query cultural and social issues within their home country. Social critique and witty design solutions are two frequently reoccurring inclinations in today’s contemporary art scene, and the artists of “Disponible” are looking to examine the complex relationship between these two strategies in reaction to the complicated issues inherent in modern Mexican life.
The show will open today, September 13th, in various locations throughout the School of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, including the Barbara and Steven Grossman Gallery, Mrs. E. Ross Anderson Auditorium and the outdoor courtyard, and will be running until November 19th, 2011. For more information, visit www.smfa.edu/exhibitions.
September and subsequent months in Boston can, in many ways, be viewed as our ‘Social Spring’. We are all back from our island vacations, tanned, relaxed, ready for commitment all over again. It is a month that launches the pre-new year in terms of major events in Fashion, Design, and Fundraising. Bostonians are feeling the love for all things social, and who can blame them? Fashion Night Out this past week was an enormous success not only for our local economy but for our social egos as well.
Come October 1, 2011 Boston will be partying it up yet again at ARTcetera, a major fundraising event to help raise money for the AIDS Action Committee. If you haven’t already, get your ticket asap, as this will be a sold out event!
” Twenty-five years ago, a group of Boston-area artists came together in response to the AIDS crisis, which was claiming the lives of so many of their friends, fellow artists and colleagues. They responded by creating and organizing the first ARTcetera, a contemporary art auction held at Boston City Hall, to raise money for AIDS Action Committee.
Over the years, ARTcetera has grown to become one of New England’s premier art auctions and an essential funding source for AIDS Action. And, while the AIDS epidemic looks nothing like it did 25 years ago, this epidemic and AIDS Action’s work are far from over.
This October, ARTcetera turns 25! Once again, the arts community and AIDS Action will celebrate our extraordinary partnership in this fight to stop the epidemic by preventing new infections and optimizing the health of those living with HIV.”
Chances are you know someone who has suffered from this disease and it is our responsibility to help educate and support such organizations in the flight to find a cure.
This year there are over 200 artists, both emerging and well established, along with local museums and private collectors, who have donated a plethora of works. To view the collection, and enter the online auction, please check out Bidding For Good.
Not only is it a great opportunity to bid on fabulous art for your own collection, for a client, or friend, but it can be used as an educational opportunity to introduce someone new to the art world. Not to mention raise money for an extraordinary cause.
You will not be disappointed.
J Mendel is a label best-known for it’s coveted red-carpet creations. This is not generally the realm of innovation.
This dress, however, defies such constraints. It is quite beautiful, yes. But the technique at work here, lasercut pieces of calfhair stitched to layers of tulle, is spellbinding, and incredibly precise. It’s as if Gilles wanted to remind his public that he knows his stuff. And yes, he makes beautiful gowns.
It needs little embellishment, so skip the jewelry wherever possible. For your feet, disregard these awful boots and pair this technical wonder with a pair of sky-high sculptural platforms courtesy of Raphael Young or Diego Dolcini.
GET IT HERE.
Having been collaborators from 1987 – 1999, Issey Miyake and Irving Penn were able to bring out the best in each other’s work. Miyake has a supernatural ability to create pieces of clothing that transform the wearer into exotic and alluring beasts. Penn is a photographer that can tame these beasts into photographable masterpieces. Their work together was a journey into a phantasm, where human and clothing fused together into something far headier.
Design Sight in Tokyo will be putting on a brilliant show of their work together, investigating this unique relationship and the pieces produced during those years. Expect a magical leap into an alien collection of images that will make Avatar seem like child’s play. On from September 16th, 2011, to April 8, 2012.
