Month: June 2017

Manuel Estheim

Photography by Manuel Estheim

Manuel Estheim is an artist based in Austria. Each photo in his body of work is a riveting surprise.  It is impossible to look at his imagery and appreciate it only on the surface.  It draws you in deeper to a more emotional and abstract layer of subconscious thoughts. Capturing and strengthening one’s own voice is amongst the most difficult things to accomplish for an artist of any discipline.  Manuel Estheim’s photography is a visual representation of what it means to tell dozens of completely individual stories while maintaining a voice that is uniquely one’s own.

At the same time, each of his photographs are so universal and provide us with narrow glimpses into the depths of the human condition. Common in Manuel’s work is a nature setting and the dark woods paint the allegory for man’s search for meaning.  His use of nudity in dark environments boils the subject down to a primal level, a shape identifiable simply as mankind.

Patrick Rothfuss: “Words Are Pale Shadows of Forgotten Names”

Photographer Unknown, (Shades of Blue)

“I struggled for a moment, failed. “So blue is a name?”
“It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”….
He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing. “Look!” he shouted tilting his head back. “Blue! Blue! Blue!”

―Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

David DiMichele

David DiMichele,” Pseudo Documentation”, Installation/ Photography Series

David DiMichele’s current body of work, Pseudo Documentation, is a series of large-scale photographs depicting grandiose installations in fantasy exhibition spaces. DiMichele creates this work by first building scale models of exhibition spaces, and producing original artworks in drawing, painting and sculpture mediums, which are sited in the spaces and then photographed to create the final works.

The Pseudo Documentation photographs are inspired by DiMichele’s background  as an installation artist, love of abstract forms and passion for monumental museum and gallery architecture.

Images from Top to Bottom: Hose Drawing, 2008;  Salt and Asphalt, 2007;  Pendulum Drawing, 2005;  Broken Glass, 2006:  Melting Ice, 2007;  Light Rods, 2008; Apollonian and Dionysian, 2009;  Holes, 2009.

Top image reblogged with thanks to http://contemporary-art-blog.com

Italo Calvino: “Everything That is Not Photographed is Lost”

Photographer Unknown, (Looking into the Camera(, Computer Graphics, Film Gifs

“You only have to start saying of something : ‘Ah, how beautiful ! We must photograph it !’ and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it never existed, and therefore in order to really live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life.”

–Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves

Cesaria Evora, “Besame Mucho”

Cesaria Evora, “Besame Mucho”

A native of the island nation of Cape Verde, Cesaria Evora was known as the country’s foremost practitioner of the morna, which is strongly associated with the islands and combines West African percussion with Portuguese fados, Brazilian modhinas, and British sea shanties. She began singing morna at age 16 after meeting an attractive young guitarist. Her talent soon had her performing all over the islands, and in the late ‘60s two of her radio tapes were released as albums in the Netherlands and Portugal, respectively.

However, Cesaria Evora never left her country, and gave up singing in the mid-’70s owing to lack of profit. In 1985, at the age of 45, she decided to return to music and traveled to Portugal to record two songs for an anthology of female Cape Verdean singers. This led to subsequent recording sessions in Paris, which resulted in four albums from 1988 to 1992.

Her international fame grew, and Evora toured Europe, Africa, Brazil, and Canada, with stops in the United States to perform for Cape Verdean audiences. In the fall of 1995, she mounted her first large-scale American tour; subsequent recordings include 1997’s “Cabo Verde” and 1999′s “Mar Azul” and “Cafe Atlantico”.

One of my favorite singers. Seek out her music. She was a true star.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Hunt Slonem

Hunt Slonem, “Black Diamond”, Oil on Canvas, 2015, 56 x 88 Inches

Bringing a freewheeling sense of awe, wonder and detail to his wild array of paintings and sculptures and peaceful, mystical living and working spaces, NYC based artist and lifestyle trendsetter Hunt Slonem is considered one of the great colorists of his time.

As vibrant a dresser and decorator as he is a painter and sculptor, the Maine born creative force of nature is well known for his neo-expressionist works of butterflies, rabbits and tropical birds, the latter often inspired by the 30 to 100 exotic feathered friends he houses at any given time in an aviary in his 30,000 square foot Manhattan studio.

Slonem has had over 300 one-man shows in galleries and museums internationally. His work is also in the permanent collections of 250 museums including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and the Moreau Foundation, and is part of private collections all over the world, including those of many celebrities.