Month: May 2015

Eduardo Catalano

Eduardo Catalano, Stainless Steel and Aluminum, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Inaugurated in April 2002, this gigantic flower by Buenos Aires-born Eduardo Catalano  has become one of the latest icons of Buenos Aires. Officially the flower goes by the name of Floralis Generica, but since nobody seems to be able to remember that ‘scientific’ name, it usually gets called the Steel Flower. The solar flower is 23 metres high and weighs 18 tonnes. When the petals are open they span 32 metres and when closed only 16 metres.

One of the fascinating features of this sculpture is that it acts like a real flower in that its gigantic petals are open during the day and then close for the night with a red glow emanating from within. There are four special nights a year where the petals remain open: 25th May, 21st September and the 24th and 31st of December.

The Steel Flower is made of stainless steel and aluminium and sits in the centre of a pool of water which reflects the flower and also protects it from vandals.

John R G Roth

John R G Roth Sculpture and Furniture

“My sculpture / furniture hybrids evolved into a series I call “Speculative Naval Architecture”.  Absurd ship models sometimes reflect my visceral response to the anthropomorphic aspects of machinery, vehicles, and buildings and sometimes serve as metaphors for my reflections upon conveyance and modes of communication.”

– John R G Roth

www.mayerfineartgallery.com

Peter Paul Rubens

Peter Paul Rubens, “The Fall of Icarus”, 1636, Oil on Wood, 27 x 27 cm, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

“The Fall of Icarus” is another of the sketches that Peter Paul Rubens produced from 1636 onwards for the decoration of the Torre de la Parada. In it he chooses to illustrate the most dramatic moment of Ovid’s narrative, when Daedalus looks towards Icarus falling headlong into the void. The painter confers a highly human dimension to his work by representing the painful loss of a son.

At the same time Rubens concentrates on the movement of the two bodies, contrasting with the calmness of the sea and the mute intensity of the sun. Icarus is exposed in full light, whilst Daedalus’ body is handled in darker tones. This play of light and shadow allows the artist both to place Icarus in the forefront of the picture and to insist on the vulnerability of his flesh.

This sketch represents the destiny of man, as does Rubens’s “Fall of Phaethon”, also conserved in the museum. Archive documents tell us that these two paintings with a similar theme were placed facing each other in the first room on the ground floor of the Spanish royal hunting pavilion. This strict placing forms an exception, as Rubens’ mythological works do not appear to have been arranged according to any pre-established concept.

The final picture, now in the Madrid Prado, was painted by Jacob Peter Gowy and is much more anecdotal than Rubens’ sketch. A city is visible to the back of the composition, with two small figures walking on the beach, probably Daedalus and Icarus before starting their flight. Contrary to the Ovid text, which evokes a day of bright sun, the sky is cloudy and the sea choppy.

Rene Milot

Rene Milot, “The Fall of Icarus”, 2014

Rene Milot is a Realist illustrator and painter from Toronto, Canada. He works both in oil paints and digitally, both mediums have garnered him an impressive list of international honors. He studied at the Ontario College of Arts, changing his major from architecture to illustration. Milot’s work is influenced by artists such as Mark English, Bernie Fuchs, and Brad Holland.

Barry Lopez, “Of Wolves and Men”

Barry Lopez, “Of Wolves and Men”, 1979, Scribner Books, 320 Pages

Of Wolves and Men reveals the uneasy interaction between wolves and civilization over the centuries, and the wolf’s prominence in our thoughts about wild creatures. Drawing on an astonishing array of literature, history, science, and mythology as well as considerable personal experience with captive and free-ranging wolves, Lopez argues for the necessity of the wolf’s preservation and envelops the reader in its sensory world, creating a compelling picture of the wolf both as real animal and as imagined by man.

Jaehyo Lee

 

Sculptures and Furniture by Jaehyo Lee

Korean artist Jaehyo Lee creates sculptures and furniture pieces from metal and chopped wood. Yhese elements are bound together in such a way that the often-times linear building components become curved semi-geometric works of art.

Each piece crafted by Jaehyo Lee is both an engaging shape within a given space while also existing as an object with an inherently domestic purpose. The artist’s most recent exhibition, ‘Transformations’, is comprised of a series of useful art objects through which the artist has continued to actualize his exploration of the materiality of his chosen media.

Leslie H Whitten Jr: “No Man Rode Horseback at Night”

Photographer Unknown, (No Man Rode Horseback at Night)

Around the fire, old men talked of the days before the tall evergreen cane was felled, of how wolves as big as lions crept among the cabins and watched while the older boys went by, waiting to grab off the youngest of the toddlers amid the screams of desolated mothers.

Then the eyes of the youngsters around the fire grew wide. They sobbed and pressed up against their mothers, until one of the other men said sharply, ‘Hush up, you’re scaring the children.’ There was silence then around the fire for a while, each with his own thoughts: of wolves who were truly men and men who were wolves.

No man rode horseback at night if he could avoid it, and no hitchhiker was offered a lift save by the foolhardy or the secret death-lover. For town dwellers, the walk in at twilight from the garage to the house seemed inordinately long and dark.

-Leslie H Whitten Jr., Moon of the Wolf