Author: Stephanie Printz

Sara Cwynar’s photographs and collages seem to come from a personal time and space that only the creator knows of. In her photos, blurry limbs float over the black velvet background never revealing their true form, while piles of sentimental objects sit in front of a collaged wall of strange animals, vast terrains, and crucifixes. Whose images and objects are these? Is this how the space actually looks in real time or is it staged? It’s difficult to tell if the photo is a happy accident or on purpose, which lends to the charm of each one. The collages speak of an older time, channeling Martha Rosler sans feminism, with their bright colors and presentation of cut images. The thoughtful placement of a grey skull over a toddler’s head forces one to wonder why it’s placed there, masking the child’s face. An oval of paradise is transplanted onto an ordinary kitchen stove, offering a better life. Are these the artists’ way of trying to convey a desire to escape her mundane life? The self portrait photos are also interesting because of their duality of the girls being the same but different. Do they represent two different people entirely or just different emotions the artist feels? Whatever the reason, the artist keeps us at a distance from knowing what these images really mean, with only she knowing.

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Source: Ignant

Star Wars changed the world forever when it hit the big screen in 1977. In a series of photographs called “The Dark Lens,” photographer, Cédric Delsaux, captures the characters in an apocalyptic world transformed by war. When first looking at these photographs, one wonders, is this our world we’re looking at it, or theirs? C3PO is stranded in a field of alien machinery in what looks to be an old parking garage. Silver androids with arched swan necks, armed by machine guns line up against what could be this years’ newest Chevy truck, while R2D2 stands alone with what looks like a disassembled helicopter in an abandoned repair shop. There is an obvious devastation on whatever planet they may be on. The world seems to be vacant of any human life. Delsaux’s photos create an interesting dilemma for the fan by placing the beloved characters in an unknown world with unknown tragedy. Will they try to leave or attempt to start over? Will they have their own race wars to determine who’s in charge? Will Darth Vader be President!? One can only hope.

Footnote: All these photos were shot at a Star Wars amusement park in Dubai!

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Source: Fubiz

The team of Bjorn Wad and Elisabeth Lund combine their talents of photography and styling to create fashion forward and edgy editorial type shots of women and men, being beautiful and looking tough. Women sprawled across bear skin rugs, hovering above sinks, and perched on top of motorcycles are just a few places you’ll find them, all the while looking disinterested in what’s going on around them. The men look equally uninterested in their surroundings as they smoke and roll around on the floor with vacant eyes. The most interesting photos this team produces are the ones without a human subject. A billboard screams to you to “TRY” a gun as if it’s a new flavor of ice cream. A tin can on wheels collects what looks to be blood from a stark white pipe in an unknown room, while large Leggo type road blocks surround a lone newspaper on the wet ground of the street. These lifeless images are interesting simply because life was once involved and is now absent from the picture plane. Their simplicity manages to communicate something far more profound than the pretty girl straining to see her reflection in the mirror. Sure, she’s beautiful but I’d rather look at the plastic baby heads crammed together in a window sill in the next photo. But that’s just me.

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The photos of Luke Byrnes‘ show how skilled he is at capturing the unseen. Moments in time caught that seem so personal that the subject is unaware that they are being captured on film. A woman stands looking down in the shower wearing her sea foam shower cap, a man wades too far out in the emerald sea, while a group of balloons float up to the ceiling like birds to the sky. All of these images seemingly calm and serene, and only part of the bigger picture. One is left wondering what happened before and after each one was shot. The soft green tint in each photograph offers more than a pleasing aesthetic, but an eerie feeling of quiet. Lighting in each picture also plays a big part in portraying the mood. Whether it be the flash of the camera that illuminates the paint like splatter across the trees, or the sun shining through the canopy of ropey branches of a giant maple, the light becomes just as imprtant as the subject matter.

Every now and again, a photographer like Luke Byrne comes along, shooting the mundane mishaps of everyday life and catching them on film. Few do it so successfully.

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Source: Ignant

Joe Stevens’ photographs of vans are not only a look into the past, but a look in to the future of cars in this country. Brightly painted vans scattered across different neighborhoods, streets, cities, towns, and flat-lands, act as push-pins in regions of hidden America. These vehicle sightings are a rare and happy occurrence for Stevens’ camera lens. Like a man with his muse, he catches her in various different states of change, but follows her true singular form. The sheer size and shape of the van act as a moving canvas to be transformed, personalized, and seen. The ever changing taste and desire for a sleeker, smaller, more fuel efficient car, is the main reason as to why we rarely see these gentle giants on the road anymore. Impractical in size, shape, and cost, these vehicles will sadly disappear. Thankfully, Stevens will be there to document the last of them.

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Source: Californiavans

Christopher Wilson, a former director and designer in the the world of advertising, shows off his photographic abilities with his stunning pictures of Dubai. A mix of untraditional portraiture and industrial landscapes, Wilson’s photos are as quiet as the deserts they feature. Emerald City towers float over sand mountains while construction cranes stretch over the land like a spider over its web. Camels rock back and forth over seas of dirt in an orderly line like a fleet of ships. A woman’s lined eyes peer out from an ebony veil and look toward the sun. His subjects appear almost alien in their vast sand-scapes all the while commanding attention against the beautiful wasteland behind them. With past clients such as Jaguar, Nikon, Inifiniti, and the Ritz-Carlton, Wilson’s new clients could easily be New York’s galleries and museums.

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Source: Flylyf

Vincent Fournier’s stark and ghostly photos have an other worldly quality that lend to the chosen subject matter of all things outer space. In his exhibit “Space Project,” he captures desolate landscapes that could easily be from another planet, as well as droids, machines, and other objects actually meant to travel beyond this earth. Interiors of different space stations from around the globe also offer a look into the inner workings of a research station, as well as transforming it into a canvas of white, dotted with brightly colored control panels and buttons. Offices and labs with prototypes of space craft and other developing technology, show just how complex these adventures into space can be. The French born photographer also catches a few human forms in his photos, fully suited up in space gear and helmets as if ready to leave on a mission. Fournier’s photographic mission forced him to travel to various space centers all over the world suchs as The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center of the Russian Federation, and the Atacama Desert Observatories in Chile, to research his subject matter.
Although sterile and quiet, his photos activate and excite the mind to consider the appeal of outer space. From earth, Fournier’s lens only reaches so far, but far enough to keep us questioning the unknown.

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Source: Daily Icon

The illustrations of Graham Robinson, a.k.a Beaston, have a fanciful quality that offer a look into an ordinary life in the woods and all its hilarious quandaries. Illustrations found in magazines, journals, and other papers feature images of luxury, wealth, and people enjoying the high life. In today’s fast paced world, he chooses to take times out to focus on the unseen banalities of venturing out into the woods rather then a busy cafe’ on a crowded street in the city. The quiet moments and believability of the everyday mishaps are what makes the Canadian artist’s drawings so special. Scenes of woodsmen struggling with their worn out rust-colored canoes, or parked in front of roaring fires cooking tin cans of beans, are only some of the endearing characters in Robinson’s world. Brilliantly colored fish, wiry tackles, bicycles wrapped in fly fishing hooks, cut and float through the empty plane of the paper like birds through air. One could easily imagine these images alongside a text in a manual instructing the camper on how to be a successful woodsmen. The paintings could also tell Robinson’s personal adventure into the forest, or simply illustrate Murphy’s Law applied to camping.

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Overcast and bleak are words that may come to mind, when looking at Jason Koxvold’s newest photos. Life is present, or at least there a moment ago, but now seems lost or missing from each shot. His photos of grey skies over cement cities have an almost end of the world type quality.The softness of the color lends to the dreamy quality of each picture, all while begging for some human interaction. Did tragedy strike or is everyone just work safely in their office, going about their day? Is a storm about to hit or a war about to begin? When a figure is present, he or she begins to look like a last survivor or an alien visitor on our dead planet. Koxvold travels from Japan to New Orleans, Russia to Detroit, all to create a portfolio of images that capture a community aspect even when it appears the city is abandoned.

Source: We Heart

What if you could create a structure that could contain all of your personal belongings within each room of your house and fit them together into a smaller, more condensed object? Does it make each object less significant now that is has become part of a bigger and more complex form or more significant now that all of those items are part of a whole new form? These are some of the questions one might ask while looking at the installations of Swedish artist, Michael Johansson.

Shelves, books, shoes, appliances, radios, tvs, boxes, suitcases, desks, vanities, clocks, chairs, glassware, and refrigerators, are only a few of things one finds when looking at one of Johansson’s complex installations. Creating new spaces within spaces of objects are something he excels at. While viewing, many different emotions are brought about by the sheer sentimentality of the chosen objects and how they coexist with each other. To fit all of your most prized possessions without destroying or compromising the originality of the object, one wonders how the actual artist feels towards each one as an individual. And then once, forced into cohabitation with the surrounding objects, one wonders do the feelings change now that it’s part of something bigger. Is the sentimentality taken away? Or is is simply transferred onto the finished puzzle?

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Johansson also takes these 3-D Tetris like structures to the streets, placing them in a new environment for all the world to see. Whether it be in the harbor, outside a restaurant, or rested by a fountain, people are now forced to interact with the artist’s most private possessions in their public space. With every stack, and every move, Johansson pushes his personal boundaries by exposing himself to the general public, who now know what goes on inside his creative mind as well as what kind of toilet paper he uses.

See Johansson’s installtions at The Inner Space

Group Exhibition

The Flat – Massimo Carasi, Milan (IT) Dec 1, 2009 – Feb 13, 2010

One of the pioneers of American graphic design in the in the 30’s, Lester Beall was a master of combining images of America and graphic text to convey a message of what issues the country was facing. Culturally and politically informative while interesting to look at, Beall’s work became a regular on magazine covers, journals, and papers. The new website devoted to his designs and ideas help paint the picture of how he helped shape American design today.

Drawing inspiration from the avant-garde designers in Europe, such as Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky, Beall would create his images using unorthodox materials such as photograms, lithographic prints, old woodcuts, and pieces of paintings. He was constantly experimenting with varying visual elements in the dark room to create his graphic pieces. It’s been said he never went anywhere without his camera.

The new website devoted to Beall and his work, is a glimpse into his creative mind. Focusing on his personal story and his years behind the desk, it also shows work from his personal collection chosen by his family. The site also boats his many achievements and personal thoughts on designing for the environment. He’s often credited with launching the Modernist movement of American design and propelling forth a new era of graphic arts. The site hopes to promote, educate, and inspire younger generations of designers through his life’s work. The site was created by Gregory Chinn, who married Beall’s youngest daughter.

Visit the website at http://www.lesterbeall.com/.

Source: Core 77

Should denim be considered artistically relevant as much as Warhol’s soup can? David Rimanelli thinks so. The noted writer of Art Forum and Interview magazine, is responsible for the new “Denim” exhibit, that showcases America’s most beloved trouser.

Consisting mostly of photographs and other mixed media, the works in this show not only celebrates denim’s history, but also what it communicated to the world when worn. According to Rimanelli, the effect of denim on culture was not simply in fashion, but indicative of what was going on in America during the times. In movies, cowboys and bad boys showed up on horses and motorcycles to save the girl, while hippies and political rebels outside protested the war in effort to gain peace, all while wearing their blue jeans. With ever-changing styles and looks, jeans created an attitude that was both rebellious and effective in saying, “I don’t care, I wear what I want.”

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Denim took its place in the art world as well, showing up in ads in magazines, on models in photos, gallery openings, and art itself. Denim was a staple for pop artist Andy Warhol in the 80’s who turned up on the cover of L’Uomo Vogue sporting his favorite pair. Denim as art and art as denim seem to be one in the same, even today.

Artists included in exhibit are Michael Smith, Rob Pruitt, K8 Hardy, Tom Burr, Jack Pierson, Knut Asdam and Valie Export

Denim

Opening Reception: 2 February 2010, 6-8pm

2 February-12 March 2010

80WSE Gallery

80 Washington Square East

New York NY 10011 map

tel. +1 212 998 5743