Tag Archive - Installation Art

Wilco, Ruscha, Sondheim,Tom Phillips, Xu Bing & More: 11 Don’t-Miss Arts Events

May 17, 2013 in Events, Images with 0 Comments

 

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No.93 -Supermarket No.2, 2010 (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin. Click to Enlarge)

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No.93 -Supermarket No.2, 2010. Photographs by the Chinese artist are on view in Brattleboro, Vermont, through June 23rd. (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin. Click to Enlarge)

 

The summer art scene in New England presents a special challenge. On the one hand there is almost too much going on, particularly with outdoor events. And yet it’s not the season when we can expect the best films or museum shows, which are typically reserved for the fall. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t standout events to be found.

On Wednesday I had a chance to share a few of my own recommendations for summer arts events in New England on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth. (It’s always a blast to work with the show’s host Virginia Prescott and producer Taylor Quimby.)

If you missed the segment, you can listen online here.

Here’s a look at the New England arts events that I’m most looking forward to this summer, along with a few suggestions I didn’t have time to mention on the show…

Michelle in the New Hampshire Public Radio studios (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

Michelle in the New Hampshire Public Radio studios (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

 

 

Zach in the control booth at New Hampshire Public Radio (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

Zach in the control booth at New Hampshire Public Radio (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

 

Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott and Michelle just before their live segment on NHPR (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

Word of Mouth host Virginia Prescott and Michelle just before their live segment on NHPR (Photo by Taylor Quimby)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Building on the Sunset Strip-Ruscha-1966

Ed Ruscha at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts

The Rose had a firestorm of bad press back in 2009 when the former President Jehuda Reinharz announced plans to shut down the Rose and sell the collection in order to shore up  Brandeis’ University’s plummeting endowment. The news enraged faculty, alumni and the art world. But the museum has a new president now and the Rose, luckily, has been preserved.

The museum is back with a vengeance showcasing the work of renowned pop artist Ed Ruscha, the first large-scale solo show of the artist’s work in the Boston area.

Ruscha is all about Southern California–cars, billboards, film, and Los Angeles. His best known work may be his artist books 26 Gasoline Stations and Every Building on the Sunset Strip, seminal works that inspired countless imitations.

 

“Standard Station” (1966), a screenprint from the exhibit “Ed Ruscha: Standard” at the Rose Art Museum

“Standard Station” (1966), a screenprint from the exhibit “Ed Ruscha: Standard” at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.

 

Ruscha’s 1966 screenprint called Standard Station (shown above) is a pop art masterpiece. The artist is a genius of word play. “Standard” is not only a gas station, but also a mark of quality. Ruscha is also making reference to John D. Rockefeller’s oil company, Standard, which was dissolved by an antitrust ruling in 1911.

The Ed Ruscha show, also called Standard, contains 70 pieces and covers 60 years of the artist’s career. The exhibit ended up at Brandeis thanks to Christopher Bedford, the Rose Museum Director, who used to work at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where the Ruscha show originated.

You’ll need to act quickly though because Ruscha’s Standard is at Brandeis only through June 9th. Visit the Rose Art Museum website for more details.

 

 

 

 

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No. 99 - Three Goddesses, 2011 (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin)

Liu Bolin, Hiding in the City No. 99 – Three Goddesses, 2011 (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin)

Contemporary Chinese Art at the Brattleboro Museum and Mass MoCA

Liu Bolin at the Brattleboro Museum of Art in Vermont

This summer New Englanders have not one but two rare opportunities to see the work of two important Chinese artists, both working out of Beijing.

Photographer and performance artist Liu Bolin is sometimes called “The Invisible Man” because he creates photographs of himself blending into various settings around Beijing. Whether he is standing in front of demolished building, a piece of Chinese propaganda, or grocery store shelves lined with soft drinks, Liu (with the help of his assistant) finds creative ways to disguise his body with paint and other materials in order to make himself “invisible.”

 

Liu Bolin, Hiding in New York No. 7 - Made in China, 2012.

Liu Bolin, Hiding in New York No. 7 – Made in China, 2012. (Photo Courtesy Eli Klein Fine Art © Liu Bolin)

 

In 2005 the Chinese government destroyed Suo Jia Cun, the artist village where Liu’s studio was located. In response Liu started the Hiding in the City series as a way of protesting artists’ troubled relationship with the government and their physical surroundings. Through his elaborate photographs, he embodies the role of the conflicted citizen in a country torn between tradition and “progress,” communal interests and individual freedom.

Liu is an important Chinese artist and it’s a rare event to have his work at the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont through June 23rd.

Also, on Sunday May 26th at 3 p.m. Taliesin Thomas, director of AW Asia, will discuss the emergence and evolution of Chinese contemporary art from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the present day. More information about the talk is available on the Brattleboro Museum website.

 
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Sonic Artist Bruce Odland: Money Makes Noise, A Water Tank Creates Art

March 21, 2013 in Events, Performance, Sounds, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

The Tank at night (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

The Tank in Rangely, Colorado, is considered one of the sonic marvels of the world within a certain circle of composers and sound artists. (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

 

Is there a connection between noise and money?  Which sounds are healing to us as humans, and which are damaging? And what does an abandoned water tank in Colorado have in common with the Taj Mahal or a Gothic cathedral?

These are questions that sound artist and composer Bruce Odland has been pondering for decades. While Odland began his career in the traditional music world—one that emphasized Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms—Odland discovered that his academic training didn’t correspond with his own experiences in the American landscape. While traveling in the mountains out West, he began to invent a new musical language—one based on the random sounds of nature instead of the repeated sounds and rhythms found in both Western music and in man-made machines.

 

Composer Bruce Odland recording at The Tank in Rangely, Colorado (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

Composer Bruce Odland recording inside the abandoned water tank in Rangely, Colorado (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

 

 

Bruce Odland-Switzerland 1

Bruce Odland making recordings for Hearing View, a project involving the oldest mental hospital in Switzerland. The project is a collaboration with Sam Auinger. (Photo courtesy Bruce Odland)

 

 

Blue Moon at the World Financial Center in New York City (Photo courtesy Bruce Odland)

For Blue Moon, O + A (Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland) created an installation that transformed the environment of the World Financial Center Plaza in New York City into an ambient soundscape activated by the rising tides of the river, docking commuter ferries, helicopter and jet traffic, car horns, waves, bird song, and breezes off the Hudson. (Photo courtesy Bruce Odland)

 

Odland is known for his large-scale, public space sound installations which transform city noise into harmony, realtime. In 2004 he and collaborator Sam Auinger altered the harmonic mix of the World Financial Center Plaza in New York City, using the moon, tides, harmonic tuning tubes, and cement loudspeakers. Together they have changed the sonic character of many public spaces around the world. His most recent project with Auinger involves transforming Switzerland’s oldest mental hospital into a space filled with healing sounds. Odland has also worked with artists like Laurie Anderson, Dan Graham, Andre Gregory, Wally Shawn, Peter Sellars, and the Wooster Group.

Bruce recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to save an abandoned water tank in Colorado. The Tank is considered one of the sonic marvels of the world within a certain circle of composers and sound artists. The group, called Friends of the Tank, has started a nonprofit to preserve the unique structure as a space for community gatherings, music events, and recording sessions. The group needs to raise $42,000 in order to preserve the space, and they won’t receive any donations if they don’t meet their goal by March 31st.

 

 

 

A glimpse inside The Tank (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

A glimpse inside The Tank (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

 

 

The Tank in Colorado (Photo courtesy of Friends of the Tank)

The Tank in Rangely, Colorado is in danger of being lost. (Photo courtesy of Friends of the Tank)

 

 

Light inside The Tank (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

Light inside The Tank (Photo courtesy Friends of the Tank)

 

A few weeks ago Bruce and I had an in-depth conversation about the Tank, sonic space, and the political and personal implications of the sounds we encounter each day.

As Bruce explained during our interview, “We won’t understand ourselves as a culture until we also understand the sounds we make.”

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Tatzu Nishi Builds Christopher Columbus a Living Room in the Sky: Exclusive Photos

September 21, 2012 in Events, Images, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

Tatzu Nishi’s public art installation, Discovering Columbus, opened in Manhattan on Thursday. Here Nishi is pictured with Gaetano Russo’s 1892 sculpture. (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY)

 

Last week I featured Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus on my Don’t Miss List for September. Two New Hampshire friends, who were on their way to Manhattan this weekend, asked me to recommend the one thing they shouldn’t miss during their trip. My response: Discovering Columbus, which finally opened yesterday.

Since no interior photos of the installation were available last week, a few readers were clearly baffled by the project when it appeared on my list. Trying to explain the project in person proved to be no easier:

Me raving with enthusiasm: “It’s Christopher Columbus…inside a room!”

Skeptical friends starting at me with pity and suspicion: “Hmm. Right. Sounds interesting. But what exactly is it again?”

Tatzu Nishi, a Japanese artist who lives in Berlin, Germany, and Tokyo, Japan, is known for his unconventional, site-specific public art projects, which transform historical monuments by placing them in domestic settings. The idea is to place public monuments, which are so often invisible and taken for granted, into a new context. After all, how often are we allowed to get up close and personal with a 13-foot statue with Christopher Columbus?

To better understand the Columbus project, it’s useful to look back at some of Nishi’s earlier projects. In 2002 the artist created Villa Victoria, a temporary functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria for the Liverpool Biennial, and in 2011 the artist built a temporary hotel suite around Singapore’s iconic Merlion fountain for the Singapore Biennial. As these photos show, Nishi’s invented domestic spaces are surprising, highly original, as well as intimate.

 

In 2002 Nishi created Villa Victoria, a temporary functioning hotel around a statue of Queen Victoria for the Liverpool Biennial (Photo © Tatzu Nishi 2011 via tatzunishi.net. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

People sit next to Nishi’s installation surrounding the monument of former Guatemalan President Justo Rufino Barrios during an art biennial in Guatemala City on April 19, 2010. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd via the AP. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Tatzu Nishi, War and peace and in between, 2009-10. One of two spaces Nishi built around equestrian sculptures at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Kaldor Public Art Projects (Photo © Tatzu Nishi. Click to Enlarge)

 

Until yesterday, the interior of Nishi’s latest installation, Discovering Columbus, was a secret. But on Thursday the public art project, a living room that hovers six stories above Columbus Circle, officially opened. Luckily, artist Amy Jenkins was one of the first in line to attend the opening and sent these exclusive photos to Gwarlingo.

“I was certainly transfixed,” Jenkins told me in an email. “It was a truly magical experience and reminded me of why I love New York.”

Perched on top of six flights of stairs and metal scaffolding, Nishi has cleverly placed Gaetano Russo’s 1892 sculpture of Christopher Columbus inside of an airy living room.  The 13-foot marble statue sits on top of a coffee table in a space that measures 30 feet by 27 feet. The ceilings are 16-feet high in order to accommodate this oversized, coffee-table “knickknack.”

Magazines and books are scattered on the table beside the statue. Guests hang out on the couch as though they were watching the game at a friend’s house (conveniently, a working flat-screen television is nearby, but sadly, is tuned to CNN). The pink wallpaper, which depicts pop culture icons like Elvis, McDonald’s Malcom X, and Marilyn Monroe, is another special detail designed by Nishi.

 

A first glimpse of the finished interior of Tatzu Nishi’s Discovering Columbus (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY. Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi (on right) discusses his installation during Thursday’s opening. He also designed the pink wallpaper seen behind him.  (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

A close-up of Nishi’s pink wallpaper (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

Exterior scaffolding and a six-story stairwell support a 30-foot by 27-foot living room in Columbus Square. (Photo © Amy Jenkins)

 

 

Russo’s statue of Columbus before Tatzu Nishi’s installation (Photo by Jesse Hamerman courtesy the Public Art Fund, NY)

 

 

Tatzu Nishi and Columbus. (Photo by Tom Powel courtesy Public Art Fund, NY via Papermag)

 

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Christian Marclay’s The Clock: Does the 24-Hour Artwork Live Up to the Hype?

July 27, 2012 in Events, Images, Sounds with 5 Comments

 

Stills from The Clock by Christian Marclay (Photo courtesy arkitipintel.com)

 

(NOTE: This review is from the summer of 2012. Marclay’s The Clock is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City through January 21, 2013, with a special 24-hour screening on New Year’s Eve. For more information, visit MoMA’s website.)

 

 

Last week I made the four-and-a-half-hour drive to New York City and stood in line for an hour in the rain to see a rare screening of Christian Marclay’s The Clock, currently on view at The Lincoln Center Festival. Before I arrived, playwright Wallace Shawn had been spotted in the queue. The Twitter feed for the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center has also reported sightings of Angelica Huston, Marlo Thomas, and Dr. Ruth. Wait times for screenings have burgeoned to two hours at some points and can be longest around midnight, when the ultimate climax of this 24-hour art installation occurs.

So is The Clock really worth of all this trouble? I’m happy to report that it is.

The Clock is the brainchild of Swiss sound and video artist Christan Marclay, the same artist who created the brilliant video works Telephone (1995) and Video Quartet (2002). (Note: You can watch Marclay’s Telephone at the end of this article).

But while Video Quartet was only fourteen minutes long, and Telephone a mere seven, The Clock is Marclay’s magnum opus, a mesmerizing 24-hour montage of thousands of time-related movie clips that have been masterfully edited and synchronized to show the actual time. The time is conveyed through dialogue, clocks, watches, and other timepieces. One moment Patrick Macnee is looking at his pocket watch in The Avengers; the next, Tobey Maguire is racing to deliver pizzas in Spiderman. The Clock has no beginning and no end, but endlessly loops, just as a real clock does.

As the clocks tick and we see snippets of shootouts, bank heists, chase scenes, romances, comedies, and detective dramas all appropriated from the rich history of cinema, patterns begin to emerge—travelers rushing to catch trains, men with hangovers smashing alarm clocks. The top of the hour is a popular time for cinema’s most dramatic moments—hangings, bombings, shootouts, trains leaving the station. But life is less outlandish when the hour hand passes the 12. This is the time when people wait, comb their hair, smoke, call a friend on the phone, commute to work, or cook dinner. In other words, its more like real life. In The Clock time passes not only in minutes, but also in years, as we glimpse actors like Joan Crawford, Catherine Deneuve, and Jack Nicholson in youth and in old age.

 

It took Marclay three years to make The Clock with the help of six assistants.

 

It took Marclay three years to make The Clock with the help of six assistants. The assistants’ job was to watch movies all day long and to bring Marclay any time-related clips they could find. For the first year, Marclay wasn’t even sure the project would be possible. Were there enough time-related clips in film history to create a 24-hour artwork?

For three years Marclay sat at his computer editing. “It was a gruesome three years,” Marclay told David Zlaewski in The New Yorker:

“But I became addicted to finding those little solutions. It gives you a bit of a high. You put two things together, and you get, like, ‘Oh my God, this works!’…The worst was when I worked really hard on figuring out some nice transition at 10:46 a.m. and someone would bring another 10:46, which was better footage or worked better with the narrative. There was constant remodeling.”

 

The Clock is a film about film, but also a film about our own mortality and obsession with time. (Photo courtesy galleristny.com)

 

The Clock finally debuted at the end of 2010 at London’s White Cube Gallery and was first shown in New York at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Both galleries gave Marclay financial support to cover the budget of creating the piece, which cost more than $100,000.

One cost that didn‘t factor into Marclay’s budget was copyright payments. As Zalewski details in his New Yorker profile, no one has ever objected to the artist’s appropriation of sounds and images in the past, so using thousands of film and music clips in The Clock didn’t give Marclay pause. “If you make something good and interesting and not ridiculing someone or being offensive, the creators of the original material will like it,” Marclay told Zalweski. At the 2011 Venice Biennale, Marclay won the Golden Lion for best artist in the exhibit. Accepting the Golden Lion, the artist humorously invoked Andy Warhol, thanking the jury “for giving The Clock its fifteen minutes.”

No description of this 24-hour installation can possibly convey its genius. Marclay’s collage is nothing less than a masterpiece, and one that must be experienced in person to be appreciated.

First, there is the event of it all, of gathering together with fellow film-goers to have a common and unique experience. Even the wait in line adds to the anticipation. The ability to watch any film or television show on demand in the privacy of our homes whenever we feel like it makes the rarity of The Clock screenings quite exceptional. The Clock is a live event, meant to be seen in real time. The audience is an integral part of the piece. The experience begins the moment we enter the space and ends the second we leave it.

 

It’s Marclay’s brilliance as an editor, his uncanny ability to stitch the right scenes and sounds together, that is the secret of The Clock‘s power as a work of art. (Photo courtesy Time Out New York)

 

The fact that only six copies of The Clock exist has turned these live screenings into a kind of competitive sport. Five copies of The Clock have been acquired by museums (or collectors who intend to donate the piece to a museum), including MoMA and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. One copy has been purchased jointly by the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and in February of this year, the Tate, Israel Museum, and Centre Pompidou collaboratively purchased one of the last remaining copies. The sixth copy was sold to Steven A. Cohen, a Connecticut hedge-fund manager. These institutions were right to act quickly, for I have no doubt that Marclay’s piece is destined to become a seminal piece of 21st century art.

When I learned that Lincoln Center was offering a rare chance to see The Clock for free as part of The Lincoln Center Festival in New York City, I immediately made plans to visit. After waiting in line for an hour outside the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, I was ushered into a darkened room and directed to one of the carefully arranged IKEA couches. I had forgotten my cell phone during the screening, but conveniently, keeping track of time wasn’t an issue.

With the hard work of getting there behind me, I settled into my front row seat and put myself into Marclay’s hands.

The artist doesn’t disappoint. Marclay is a gifted editor, particularly when it comes to sound. He has had a long-standing interest in fusing fine art and audio culture. Earlier in his career, he was known for creating sound collages out of broken records, which he would cut up and then rejoin. Playing these assemblages produced a mix of music, as well as strange pops and hisses each time the turntable needle hit a seam. The artist began working with turntables in the late 1970s independently, but also parallel to hip hop’s use of the instrument.

 

Christian Marclay, Recycled Records, 1983. Collaged vinyl records, 10 inches diameter. (Photo © Christian Marclay. Courtesy of the artist and the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York)

 

 

What surprised me most about The Clock was its emotional pulse. There are moments of poignancy, humor, and surprise: a sudden car wreck, humorous, well-timed cameo appearances from Woody Allen, clock-watching lovers who have been left waiting a bit too long. (Photo: The Clock by Christian Marclay)

 

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Artists Transform New York City’s Water Towers into Works of Art

June 22, 2012 in Images with 0 Comments

 

"Watertower" by Tom Fruin is now on view in DUMBO (Photo by Robert Banat courtesy Tom Fruin)


 
When you turn on the tap in your kitchen, do you ever think about where the water pouring out of your faucet comes from? Do you ever consider the fact that a simple thing like clean drinking water requires an elaborate system of pipes, reservoirs, water tanks, wells, and treatment plants? Probably not.

We take the infrastructure of modern life for granted. Only when we experience a natural disaster like a massive ice storm or hurricane do we realize how reliant we are on highways, trains, power grids, subways, and public water works for modern-day conveniences.

New York City is a playground for infrastructure lovers like myself. The Japanese may have their remarkable manhole covers, but New Yorkers have those ever-present water towers perched on tops of buildings throughout the city.

 

A sunset view of New York City water towers from the top of a building at Broadway and Astor Place (Photo by Michelle Aldredge. Click to Enlarge)

 

The best artists have the ability to make the invisible visible. Last week, a colorful new water tower perched on the top of a roof in DUMBO caught my attention. “Watertower” is the creation of artist Tom Fruin. As Hyperallergic reports, the sculpture is constructed entirely from salvaged and recycled Plexiglas and steel:

Fruin gathered the 1,000 pieces of plexiglas from businesses and buildings all over New York City and the steel from Pennsylvania. This is the fourth work in a global series of sculptures by the artist, all of which pay tribute to architectural icons in their respective locations (an obelisk in Buenos Aires, for example) using the same materials combined to form a gridded, patchwork and playful aesthetic.”

“Watertower” is illuminated by the sun during the day and light sequences by projection designer Jeff Sugg at night, bringing to mind a kind of glowing, sculptural, scrap-art version of another famous tribute to New York — Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie.”

 

Fruin's “Watertower” is illuminated by the sun during the day and light sequences by projection designer Jeff Sugg at night, bringing to mind a kind of glowing, sculptural, scrap-art version of another famous tribute to New York — Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie.” (Photo by Robert Banat courtesy Tom Fruin Studio)

 

 

Fruin's "Watertower" is the fourth work in a series of sculptures that pay tribute to architectural icons in their respective locations. "Kolonihavehus" in the plaza of the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen has the appearance of a friendly and colorful stained-glass house, yet it also evokes thoughts of churches and Charles Rennie Macintosh. (Photo courtesy coolhunter.net)

 

 

Kolonihavehuses were originally small garden sheds that were designed to give cramped and often impoverished city-dwellers a small plot and a refuge from city life. (Photo and caption courtesy coolhunter.net)

 

In 1998 the British artist Rachel Whiteread installed Water Tower on a roof in the Soho neighborhood of New York City. The piece was commissioned by the Public Art Fund and was the artist’s first public sculpture to be conceived and displayed in the United States.

Water Tower is now installed on the rooftop above the Museum of Modern Art’s sculpture garden. The sculpture is a resin cast of the interior of a once-functioning cedar water tower, chosen specifically for the texture this type of wood would impart to the surface.

The translucent resin captures the qualities of the surrounding sky. On a blue day the tower appears blue, but on an overcast day, like the day I visited the museum, the tower is whispery white. On a moonless night it will disappear, but if you catch the water tower on a night when the moon is full, Whiteread’s piece has a luminescent, pearly sheen. At times, the tower seems to be composed entirely of water, as in these images…

 

Rachel Whiteread's "Water Tower" is now installed on the rooftop above the Museum of Modern Art's sculpture garden. The sculpture is a resin cast of the interior of a once-functioning cedar water tower, chosen specifically for the texture this type of wood would impart to the surface. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

 

The translucent resin captures the qualities of the surrounding sky. On a blue day the tower appears blue, but on an overcast day, like the day I visited the museum, the tower is whispery white. On a moonless night it will disappear, but if you catch the water tower on a night when the moon is full, Whiteread's piece has a luminescent, pearly sheen. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

This week I received news of another new public art project involving New York’s pervasive water tanks. Word Above the Street has just announced The Water Tank Project, a landmark public art initiative focused on raising attention of water as a precious resource.

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The Illusionist: The Mind-Bending Installations of Artist Felice Varini

April 10, 2012 in Images, Spaces with 7 Comments

 

Felice Varini, "Orangerie du cha‰teau de Versailles," 2006 (Photo by André Morin)

 

 

"Orangerie du cha‰teau de Versailles" from a different perspective (Photo by André Morin)

Note: This is a guest post by Riley MacPhee, a regular contributor to the Johnston Architects Blog. Johnston Architects PLLC is a small architectural firm focusing on creative, innovative, and sustainable design throughout the West. You can see their designs and learn more about their work at the Johnston Architects website.

 

To walk into a space exhibiting the art of Felice Varini is to be confused. You’ll immediately notice vaguely geometric, monocolor shapes stretching and sprawling across the room, but you won’t be able to determine any kind of method to the apparent madness. Varini’s work looks like interesting, abstract art superimposed on an architectural space.

But if you walk around and explore the space a little more, you’ll start to notice that the shapes change as you move.  The more you move, and the more you stare at them, the more you’ll start to realize that there’s something you aren’t getting. But then, suddenly you’ll arrive at a spot where everything comes together with startling clarity, and you’ll realize that you’re looking at a brilliantly composed perspective work that seems to pop out of the scene and hover eerily in front of it.
 

Felice Varini, "Encerclement à dix," Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc/Centre d'Art Contemporain, Thouars, France, 1999 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Encerclement à dix," Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc/Centre d'Art Contemporain, Thouars, France, 1999 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Carré aux seize disques," Commande du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Centre national des arts plastiques, 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Another perspective of "Carré aux seize disques," 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Another perspective of "Carré aux seize disques," 2011 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

Varini’s work is really the opposite of a stereogram: a series of unintelligible figures painted across three dimensions, that when seen in just the right way, flatten themselves into a mind-bending 2D shape.

Varini is a Swiss artist who currently lives in Paris, and has done dozens and dozens of these types of installations. He thinks of his works comprehensively, not just from the single point where they come together:

“The viewer can be present in the work, but as far as I am concerned he may go through it without noticing the painting at all. If he is aware of the work, he might observe it from the vantage point and see the complete shape. But he might look from other points of views where he will not be able to understand the painting because the shapes will be fragmented and the work too abstract. Whichever way, that is ok with me.”

Felice Varini, "Une ligne, mille et une droites," Musée Bourdelle, Paris, France 2008 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

 

 

Felice Varini, "Tra il Pieno e il Vuoto (In the Fullness and Emptiness)" 2003 (Photo courtesy varini.org)

“If you draw a circle on a flat canvas it will always look the same. The drawn circle will retain the flatness of the canvas. This kind of working is very limiting to me, so I project a circle onto spaces, onto walls or mountain sides, and then the circle’s shape is altered naturally because the ‘canvas’ is not flat. A mountain side has curves that affect the circle, and change the circle’s geometry. So, I do not need to portray complicated forms in my paintings. I can just use the simplicity of forms, because the reality out there distorts forms in any case, and creates variations on its own accord.”

“The same goes for colours. Usually I use one colour only, and the space takes care of altering the colour’s hue. For example, if I use one type of red colour on a mountain side, the result is many kinds of red, depending on the mountain’s surface and the light conditions. Sunlight will affect the different areas on the surface and the same red colour may become stronger or darker or clearer in certain areas, depending on how the sun rays hit the surface. The sky can be bright or dark. And if the surface has its own colour or a few colours then that will affect the red that I apply on it. So, I do not need to use sophisticated colours.”

 

Felice Varini, "Cinq Ellipses Ouvertes," Exhibition: Constellation, En attendant l'ouverture, du Centre Pompidou, Metz 2009 (Photo by André Morin courtesy varini.org)

 
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Soo Sunny Park & Spencer Topel Transform a Chain-Link Fence into Art

March 30, 2012 in Images, Sounds, Spaces with 6 Comments

 

Artist Mary Goldthwaite-Gagne studies "Capturing Resonance," a piece made of chain-link fencing on view at the deCordova Museum. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

On my recent visit to the deCordova Museum, one of the artworks I found most compelling was “Capturing Resonance” by sculptor Soo Sunny Park and composer Spencer Topel.

Park, who was born in Seoul, Korea, currently lives in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College. The sculptor is best known for turning quotidian building materials like insulation and dry wall into sublime, experiential installations. For “Capturing Resonance,” Park has transformed the unconventionally-shaped Window Gallery of the deCordova into a multi-sensory environment using chain-link fencing.

 

Depending on the time of day, rainbow hued shadows fill the Window Gallery, shifting from crisp representations of the structure to abstract color washes. (Photo by Peter Harris courtesy the de Cordova Museum)

 

 

Soo Sunny Park

Soo Sunny Park is best known for turning quotidian building materials like insulation and dry wall into sublime, experiential installations. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

 

deCordova-Soo Sunny Park

When artists like Park re-purpose common materials, I find the technique is most effective when the everyday object becomes enmeshed in the final piece and doesn't advertise its cleverness in an overt, obnoxious way. The subtlety of Park's piece only adds to its drama. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

 

 

By inserting thousands of iridescent acrylic Plexiglas squares into chain link cells, Park has created a sprawling, undulating form that transmits, reflects, and refracts both the natural and artificial light into the gallery. (Photo by Peter Harris courtesy the de Cordova Museum)

When artists like Park re-purpose common materials, I find the technique is most effective when the everyday object becomes enmeshed in the final piece and doesn’t advertise its cleverness in an overt, obnoxious way. The subtlety of Park’s piece only adds to its drama. Only careful observers will recognize the fencing material, and I suspect some visitors never notice it at all.

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The Spectacular Snow Drawings of Simon Beck

February 29, 2012 in Design, Images with 6 Comments

 

 

Winter has finally arrived in New Hampshire. We’re expecting about a foot of snow here in the Monadnock region by the time the storm ends Thursday evening. There hasn’t been a single opportunity for snowshoeing this year, which I’ve missed.

Snowshoeing has been on my mind…This week I noticed these snow photographs popping up again and again on Facebook, Inhabitat, and other sites. Curious about their original source, I did a little digging and discovered the official Facebook page of Simon Beck, an artist who creates these incredible designs by walking in the snow with snowshoes.

The Oxford-educated, self-employed map maker creates these designs on the frozen lakes in the valley of Savoie, France, just outside of the ski slopes at Les Arcs resort. An average work is the size of three soccer fields and takes about two days to complete.

The biggest challenge for Beck (besides getting overly tired) is finding a way to reduce the visibility of his own tracks when he begins and finishes a piece. Sometimes, he might work all day only to have his design covered by fresh snow overnight. At other times, he finishes a design right at sunset and doesn’t have enough light remaining to photograph his work properly. But the inability to predict the outcome is part of the fun.

 

 

 

Snow Artist Simon Beck (Photo courtesy Now That's Nifty)

 

 

 

 

 

I love the simplicity of Beck’s method, and the impermanence of each piece. Personally, I’m partial to Beck’s simpler designs that rely more on line and texture for their effect. A number of the designs are reminiscent of crop circles and other patterns from ancient art.

All of the photographs I’ve seen flying around the web are from Beck’s official Facebook page, which is where he posts his latest work for the public to peruse. There are also a large number of beautiful pieces Beck made between 2009 and 2011 in this photo album on the artist’s personal page. You WON’T find these images anywhere else, and many of my favorite images can be found there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simon Beck's Snow Art (Photo courtesy Inhabitat)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The remnants of one of Beck's designs can still be see on the melting surface of Lac des Combes. A few hours after this photo was taken, the ice completely disappeared. (Photo courtesy Inhabitat)

 

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Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara: Gaudi Made Me Realize the Lines Between the Arts Are Insignificant

February 16, 2012 in Images, Process, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

In Barcelona Hiroshi Teshigahara came face-to-face with Gaudí. "The magic of it overwhelmed me."

 

In the West, Hiroshi Teshigahara is best known as the avant-garde director of the 1964 film Woman in the Dunes–an erotic, surreal film that was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Teshigahara’s haunting shots of sand, skin, and water amid the advancing sand dunes have stayed with me over the years. But there is another Teshigahara film, one that is less well-known, that left an even greater impression on me.

Antonio Gaudi is like no other movie I can think of. Teshigahara’s 72-minute meditation on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect is essentially wordless. He avoids conventional  narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking.

Before watching this film, I didn’t consider myself a fan of the Spanish artist. (George Orwell described Gaudi’s cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”) But my judgment was based on ignorance–on some vague, false impression that Gaudi’s work was not much more than bulbous, overdone kitsch.

But after viewing Teshigahara’s breathtaking film, my opinion of the Spanish architect has been entirely transformed. Anotnio Gaudi was nothing less than a visionary genius–an original, madly brilliant artist who was unappreciated and misunderstood in his own time.

 

Teshigahara's passion for Gaudi's work comes through on every frame. He's a patient, attentive director with a craftsman's eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger.

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batllo, Barcelona, Spain (Photo by Roby Saltori via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batlló in Barcelona. The roof, terminating in a turret and cross, could represent the sword or spear of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon. (Photo by Marcel Germain via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

The Casa Milà is Gaudi’s second most visited building in Barcelona. The roof of this apartment building and office block is one of the city’s hidden treasures, for its view of the nearby Sagrada Familia, as well as for its whimsical and imposing sculptures.

 

Teshigahara’s passion for Gaudi’s work comes through on every frame. Once he has set the scene with opening shots of contemporary Barcelona, Teshigahara brings his camera into Gaudi’s universe, taking us up a characteristic Gaudi spiral staircase. He’s a patient, attentive director with a craftsman’s eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger. Blue tiles shift in the light like water moving. Mosaics morph into a dragon’s scales. Güell Park, a planned garden village, feels like a surreal, fairy-tale landscape.

Teshigahara moves his camera slowly through these fluid, organic spaces. Slow tracking shots give us a sense that we’re actually inhabiting these bizarre, sublime places. Gaudi’s curved, organic designs are shockingly surreal and erotic. Like Woman in the Dunes, Antonio Gaudi pulses with human sensuality, and yet there is also something of the divine in both Teshigahara’s film and Gaudi’s fertile imagination.

Hiroshi Teshigahara

This meditation on the power of and beauty of nature is enhanced with music and sound effects by the renowned Japanese  composer Toru Takemitsu and two collaborators, Kurodo Mori and Shinji Hori. As the critic Stephen Holden explains, Takemitsu was an eclectic impressionist “whose music blended avant-garde Western techniques, electronics and random compositional methods with more conventional symphonic music and Japanese traditional instruments.”

The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. “The score for Gaudi is a kind of free-floating East-meets-West impressionism,” says Holden, “whose organic flow mimics the sprouting curvilinear shapes of Gaudi’s buildings. The score includes four Catalan folk pieces, electronically altered and combined with other sounds.”

Antonio Gaudi is a tactile film–a visual poem that lingers in your memory long after its over. If you have the patience to listen and look and to defer any pressing questions you may have about Antionio Gaudi the man until the DVD extras, you will find the melding of Gaudi’s inventive architecture, Teshigahara’s sensitive camerawork, and Takemitsu’s haunting score a rewarding experience.

 

A spiral staircase in the bell tower of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Toru Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. (Photo courtesy SantiMB via Flickr Commons)

 

 

The atrium of Casa Mila (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

 

The Park Güell bench as seen in Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy the Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudí’s structures, Teshigahara once said, "made me realize that the lines between the arts are insignificant. Gaudí worked beyond the borders of various arts and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities."

 

 

Tile patterns from the Park Güell Bench, designed by Gaudi (Photo courtesy Make Mine Mosaic)

 

 

The staircase at Casa Batllo (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

But how exactly did the avant-garde, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara develop such an intense appreciation for the architecture of Antonio Gaudi? I was curious to know more.

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