Tag: installation

Katharina Fritsch

Three Sculpture Installations by Katharina Fritsch

German sculptor Katharina Fritsch is known for her sculptures and installations that reinvigorate familiar objects with a jarring and uncanny sensibility. Her works’ iconography is drawn from many different sources, including Christianity, art history and folklore. She attracted international attention for the first time in the mid-1980s with life-size works such as a true-to-scale elephant. Fritsch’s art is often concerned with the psychology and expectations of visitors to a museum.

Katharina Fritsch takes on relatively ordinary subjects in new, and often times jarring, ways. Most notably is the size of her works. Though many are meant specifically for museums, the size and scope of these works make a real impact. The images above are examples of that:  “Child with Poodles” (1995),  “Company at the Table (1998)” and “Rattenkonig” (1993).

The first, “Child with Poodles”, has rows of poodles facing in at a single child. This thick ring of objects creates a barrier between the viewer and the child, creating a dark or sinister feel to the piece. The second work, “Company at the Table”, leaves a haunting impression on many levels. The identical, faceless people and the size of the fifty foot table leave quite a cold and impersonal impression. Her sculpture “Rattenkonig” consists of a circle of large polyester resin rats painted black Facing out to the museum visitors. The scale of the piece is again quite large and formidable; nine foot rats in a circle forty two feet wide.

Gothic Raygun Rocketship

Gothic Raygun Rocketship, Pier 14, San Francisco, California

The sculpture installation first landed at Burning Man event in 2009, and has subsequently appeared at the NASA “Ames for Yuri’s Night” and is now at Pier 14 in San Francisco.

This spectacular forty foot tall sci-fi sculpture is the creation of Bay Area artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, David Shulman and the dedicated crew of the Five Ton Crane Arts Group, who helped to bring their fantastic vision to fruition – a larger than life 1930’s-1940’s pulp fiction space ship, gleaming silver legs forever prepped for lift off, three interior chambers fitted with all of the whimsical knobs and dials that you dreamed of as a kid.

Originally created as a 2009 art installation for the Burning Man Festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the large-scale immersion based piece currently resides on Pier 14, illuminated and dreamy at night and flashing with retro ingenuity during the day. Its presence inspiring the imaginations of all who see it, it stands tall as a symbol of what could have been, but never was.

Christo

Christo, Floating Mastaba in London, Project Design, 2018, Pencil, Charcoal, Wax Crayon, Enamel Paint, Hand-Drawn Map on Vellum

Artist Christo’s Mastaba project for London’s Hyde Park’s serpentine lake will float on the lake from June 18 to September 23, 2018.

Built by a team of experienced engineers, the London Mastaba comprises 7,506 horizontally stacked barrels on a floating platform. It will be 20 meters (65.5 ft) high x 30 meters (90 ft) wide (at the 60° slanted walls) x 40 meters (130 ft) long. Standard 55 gallon barrels will be specifically fabricated and painted for this sculpture. The sides of the barrels, visible on the top and on the two slanted walls of the sculpture, will be red and white; the ends of the barrels, visible on the two vertical walls, will be different hues of red, blue, and mauve.

Reblogged with thanks to http://contemporary-art-blog.com

Phillip K. Smith III

Phillip K. Smith III, “Open Sky”, 2018, Palazzo Isimbardi, Milan, Italy

Phillip K Smith III’s prominent use of mirrors and light refracts the environments surrounding each installation, but his unspoken request for the viewer to focus their intrigue on the often vast stretches of sea, sand and sky surrounding his work is powerful. While many artists thrive on the enigma of presenting an opportunity for subjective interpretation, the message presented by Smith in his Milan Design Week collaboration with COS, the Scandinavian heritage retail giant, is one of a person who spent a childhood bathing in the arid glow of the Coachella Valley and a lifetime meditating on the landscape as his palette.

“I’m already looking at the potential for this project to maybe be in another exterior site, maybe even to be in an interior site. You’re dealing with a vertical surface which is a piece of architecture – material A – then a horizontal surface above you, which is the sky – which is material B. That’s the case here in Milan, maybe if this piece moves somewhere else those materials A and B begin to shift, and the dynamic quality in which they merge across the surface begins to change.” – Phillip K Smith III

Felice Varini

Optical Installations by Felice Varini

Felice Varini is known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings in rooms and other spaces, using projector-stencil techniques. 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

Jorge Mendez Blake

Jorge Mendez Blake, “The Castle”, 2007, Bricks, Book

“The Castle” is a 2007 project by Mexican artist Jorge Mendez Blake that subtly examines the impact of a single outside force. For the installation, he constructed a 75 x 13 foot brick wall that balances on top of a single copy of Franz Kafka’s “The Castle”. The mortarless wall bulges at the site of the inserted text, creating an arch that extends to the top of the precarious structure.

Although a larger metaphor could be applied to the installation no matter what piece of literature was chosen, Méndez Blake specifically selected “The Castle” to pay tribute to Kafka’s lifestyle and work. The novelist was a deeply introverted figure who wrote privately throughout his life, and was only published posthumously by his friend Max Brod. This minimal, yet poignant presence is reflected in the brick work—Kafka’s novel showcasing how a small idea can have a monumental presence.

Amanda Parer

Amanda Parer, “Rabbits” from Her “Intrude” Series

Amanda Parer examines the relationship between humans and the natural world in her massive inflatable artworks. The Tasmania-based artist works with a team including New York based co-producer Chris Wangro. Together, Parer Studio realizes her larger-than-life versions of translucent rabbits, a series of works called” Intrude”.

The white fabric appears opaque during the day as it reflects sunlight. After dark, the creatures take on a different dimension: they are illuminated from within and reduce surrounding humans into diminutive silhouettes. Parer grew up in Australia, where rabbits are a non-native species and are considered a serious pest as opposed to a domestic pet.  Since being introduced by settlers in the late 18th century, their overpopulation has caused substantial ecological destruction.

“They represent the fairytale animals from our childhood – a furry innocence, frolicking through idyllic fields. Intrude deliberately evokes this cutesy image, and a strong visual humour, to lure you into the artwork only to reveal the more serious environmental messages in the work. They are huge, the size referencing ‘the elephant in the room’, the problem, like our environmental impact, big but easily ignored.”- Amanda Parer

Muti Randolph

Installations and Architectual Design by Muti Randolph

Muti Randolph lives in Rio de Janeiro and studied Visual Communications and Industrial Design at the Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. One of the pioneers in computer art in Brazil, he has been shifting from virtual 3d to real 3d spaces creating sets, installations and interior architecture projects. In his work he explores the relation of time and space through music and interactive generative video using custom designed software and hardware. His projects are present in the most relevant art, design and architecture publications.

Jacob Hashimoto

Jacob Hashimoto, “Infinite Expanse of Sky”, 2008/ 2009, Vellum, Bamboo, Wire, Wood, Dimensions Variable

Jacob Hashimoto is an American born sculptor and installation artist currently based in New York City and Verona, Italy. He is best known for using traditional Japanese methods to create large-scale “tapestries” out of thousands of hand crafted paper and wood kites. While they are three-dimensional and can thus be described as sculptures, these works also invite associations with painting.

The kites appear as abstract painted forms suspended in space. Hashimoto’s dynamic constructions also blur the line between abstract and figurative. A tapestry may resemble a landscape when glimpsed from afar, however that likeness disappears when the work is approached at a closer distance.

Andom International

“The Rain Room”

Known for their distinctive approach to digital-based contemporary art, Andom International’s experimental artworks come alive through audience interaction. Their largest and most ambitious installation yet, “Rain Room” is a 100 square metre field of falling water for visitors to walk through and experience how it might feel to control the rain.

On entering The Curve the visitor hears the sound of water and feels moisture in the air before discovering the thousands of falling droplets that respond to their presence and movement. Cameras installed around the room detect human movements and send instructions to the rain drops to continually move away from visitors. The water drips through a grid in the floor where it is treated before being sent back up to the ceiling to fall again.

At the cutting edge of digital technology, Rain Room is a carefully choreographed downpour – a monumental installation that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation. The work also invites us to explore what role science, technology and human ingenuity might play in stabilising our environment by rehearsing the possibilities of human adaptation.

rAndom International said: “Rain Room is the latest in a series of projects that specifically explore the behaviour of the viewer and viewers: pushing people outside their comfort zones, extracting their base auto-responses and playing with intuition. Observing how these unpredictable outcomes will manifest themselves, and the experimentation with this world of often barely perceptible behaviour and its simulation is our main driving force.”

Finding a common purpose as students at the Royal College of Art, rAndom International was founded in 2005 by Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood. Today the studio is based in Chelsea – with an outpost in Berlin – and includes a growing team of diverse talent. With an ethos of experimentation into human behaviour and interaction, they employ new technologies in radical, often unexpected ways to create work which also draws on op art, kinetics and post-minimalism.

A short film by rAndom International: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FslABAyj2OA

Doug Aitken

Doug Aitken, “Mirage”’, Desert X Art Festival, 2017, Coachella, California

“Mirage” by Doug Aitken is one of 16 artworks scattered around the Coachella Valley as part of the inaugural Desert X, a contemporary-art festival organized by curator Neville Wakefield. It takes the form of a single-story ranch house in the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains that is wrapped inside and out in mirrored surfaces. From certain angles it disappears almost completely into the landscape it endlessly reflects.

The piece is located in a high-end residential subdivision that is among the last major undeveloped parcels of hillside land in the valley. Aitken describes “Mirage” as a study of the relationship between the architecture of the typical suburban ranch house (and its forebears, including residential designs by Frank Lloyd Wright and others) and the natural landscape that it both relies upon and threatens to destroy.

Ydessa Hendeles

Two Installations by Ydessa Hendeles

In a distinguished career as gallerist, collector and curator before she started to make her own works, Ydessa Hendeles has fashioned a distinctive space in the contemporary art world. Internationally renowned as a pioneering exponent of curating as a creative artistic practice, her groundbreaking work is widely discussed and embraced as a model by leading members of the new generation of curators emerging today. In her exhibition making and artistic practice, Hendeles often explores notions of difference and diversity, and especially the way representation and distortion, appropriation and assimilation can filter group and individual identities.

The Top Six Images:  “From Her Wooden Sleep”, 2013, utilises display to create a narrative space where appearances and roles are distorted. A vast collection of pseudo-human wooden mannequins, each subtly unique in size and expression, is arranged within its own gallery. These figures seem to form a distinct community, and confronted by them the visitor is suddenly cast in the position of ‘outsider.’

Despite their human likeness, shared characteristics of the mannequins separate them as a group, and their collective stare isolates the visitor, transforming him or her from the observer to the observed, the guest to the interloper. This space of distorted roles and perceptions is enhanced by a series of funhouse mirrors that line the perimeter of the space, contorting the reflections of visitors and making direct reference to the untrustworthy nature of representation.

The Bottom Four Images:  “Partners (The Teddy Bear Project)”, 2002,  is a vast display comprising more than 3,000 family-album photographs of people posing with teddy bears, alongside display cases that contain antique stuffed animals. The installation adopts the toy as symbol for the consolatory and encouraging power of artworks, and highlights the relationship between people and their objects of affection.

Jame Jones

Jame Jones, “Beyond the Edge of Reason”, Stainless Steel, 3 Meters Wide

James Jones is fascinated by our ever changing notion of consciousness. By creating forms that juxtapose the scientific with the spiritual, the philosophical with the biological, James explores our belief systems and the systems within the mind/body that create our experience of the universe. The interrelated concepts of unity; opposites; balance; the internal and external; micro and macrocosms; the self and the soul are also examined through his sculptural work.

James’s recent sculptures involve the use of “zeros” and “ones” that can be seen as a metaphor for mutually dependent dualities such as on-off, male-female, all-nothing. By combining this visual language with a variety of forms, James attempts to further question our notion of consciousness.

Ken Unsworth

Ken Unsworth, “Suspended Stone Circle II”, Wire and Stones

Ken Unsworth came to prominence as a sculptor in the 1970s, when he combined performance or body art with highly conceptual sculptural forms. Some of these performances, in particular ‘Five secular settings for sculpture as ritual’, involved using his own body as a kind of minimalist sculpture. In one, he posed spread-eagle on the wall, held aloft by a pole between his shoulder blades in a visual recreation of Richard Serra’s lead prop piece now held in the National Gallery of Australia collection in Canberra.

Unsworth’s art is often ephemeral, surviving only in the memory of those who once saw it or in rumours of that memory, or sometimes as photographs or scratchy old videos. Like Joseph Beuys, whose work Unsworth passionately admires, his art is full of apparent contradictions. He reworks the great sagas of life and death while shaking the staff of a jester and yet he has created remarkable and enduring monumental sculptures. He is admired by formalists for his sculpture and for the rigorous logic of propped or suspended stones, while others respond to the expressionism of the paintings and the symbolist theatricality of his kinetic installations.

In many of his early body art pieces, Unsworth held his body in suspension as if levitating between consciousness and unconsciousness, between the material world and the immaterial. The figure seems trapped, pinioned or bound. These works are not only about equilibrium, balance and formal relations; they are also violent and claustrophobic experiences and many of his sculptures continue this theme. ‘Suspended stone circle II’ is one of his levitation works with 103 river stones each weighing around 15 kilograms held in place by three wires tied to three rings secured to the ceiling structure. The stones form a suspended disc, with each one held as if in a force field. The stones are hung so that their centre of gravity falls exactly on the central axis of the disc and each stone is equidistant from its neighbours. The three sets of wires create three cones, suggesting the force field which they literally constitute.