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On November 1st, as part of the DANCE/DRAW exhibition at the ICA in Boston, Paul Chan and William Forsythe will be speaking in conversation with ICA Chief Curator Helen Molesworth. The talk will explore the junction of performance and art, focusing on 21st century artists that have branched out from their specific medium. The DANCE/DRAW show, which opened October 7th, is an interesting mélange of works in and of itself. Here Molesworth is attempting to examine how the body leaves traces after movement, exploring performance, performance art, and more traditional physical arts, and how the interplay between these different dimensions of art has formed something a little more complex when one compares the corporeal verses the ethereal.
William Forsythe is a brilliant contemporary choreographer and dancer, known for being one of the first to re-envision classical ballet choreography, deconstructing said choreography’s structures and forms in extremely groundbreaking ways. He is also acutely engaged in other forms of art-making, particular performance and multimedia work.
Paul Chan is a contemporary art genius out of New York, and truly embraces the contemporary interdisciplinarity of art-making, working primarily in multimedia but never limiting himself to one medium. His work has been in many exhibitions worldwide, including solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery in London and the New Museum in New York. He is represented by Greene Neftali gallery in Manhattan.
Find out more about the talk and exhibition at the ICA’s website.
[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.
Outside of Seoul, Korea, lies a house that is unique from the typical buildings you would see dotting the Korean landscape. Built by the Finnish architect Sami Rintala, The Element House winks down at visitors from atop a forest park in the city of Anyang, and operates as a secular temple paying homage to each of the four elements: water, fire, earth and air. A cavernous cube that supports its four elemental limbs is the anchor for this man-made sanctuary, and each separate room highlights one of the aforementioned elements.
The park lies in a river valley that has long been a treasured Buddhist retreat. Colored concrete forms a bed for incense, and guests may feel free to rest in the building, enjoy lunch, or just sit and clear the mind while contemplating the scenery.
The Elements House is a rumination on how a building could stand in as the polar opposite of the corybantic dynamism of a city such as Seoul. Its purpose? To remind us that beauty can most easily be found in nature, and that silence of the mind is as powerful as thought.
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
I have an addiction and it involves electricity. It runs neck and neck with a similar addiction I have that involves shoes. But I like to refer to that as my ‘Sculptural Collection of Footwear’ on prominent display in my closet. I open it to the public twice a year and I do charge an admission.
This electrical addiction I have consists of collecting sources of light. Lamps, chandeliers, hanging pendants, etc. I refer to that collection as my ‘Sculptural Collection of Illumination’ and it is on display though out my office, client projects etc. Eventually you have to come out of the closet.
Here is a look at what I would eventually like to curate for a show I would title: Dine-O-Mite: Lighting It Up, Like.
Fuse and XFINITY have come together to give you a chance to win a full day and night of enjoyment in Boston! One lucky winner will win a pair of tickets to an event of their choice at the Citi Performing Arts Center Wang Theatre, a music prize pack including an MP3 player and headphones, a gift certificate for a night on the town and a pair of tickets to a local Boston museum or attraction! In short, it’s one of the few contests worth entering.
To enter, simply head here and fill out the quick registration form. This sweeps is only open to residents of Massachusetts and ends next Thursday, October 13th, so get on it now.
That meant NOW, kids.
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.
