Nizhny Novgorod, Russia based graffiti artist Nomerz has a way with faces. Transforming structures into massive portraits, Nomerz changes the urban landscape into unexpected faces that reimagine their surroundings into giant pink faced expressions of joy, anger, excitement, and contemplation. More work by Nomerz after the jump.

(via colossal)

Maskull Lasserre’s creations are tributes to the process of creative inquiry, while also existing so confidently within the world of the craftsman.  His conceptual propositions are incredible inverted thoughts that require a certain inquisitive disposition from its onlookers.  Within the work exists the same double-take of mind required by the French surrealists, while also asking questions of skill equally as challenging. Within each incisive action of sculpting exists a test of otherwise practical objects and casts them in perfectly intentional new contexts.

The point is that there should be no limitations to the questions one can and should ask, if only because the point of art itself is to serve as creative cognitive dissonance.  The inquiries within are about emblazoning images on the mind while inviting logic to skip a beat, thus opening up a brand new set of possibilities. Seemingly unhindered by any technical obstacle, Lasserre’s art is a bold testament to creative evolution, pushing the philosophical envelope while clearly exceptional insofar as vision and craftsmanship. It’s always been about the ideas, but the impeccable execution within makes one question whether or not this artist is confined at all; After having asked the following questions, ir’s clear he isn’t in the least.

Lets get right to it! The second we saw your piece entitled, ‘Second Thought,” we were hooked. The title is as appropriate as possible. How do you most often come to these inverted thoughts, in this case, where an axe becomes a piece of art?

I really like your term “inverted thought”. In many ways that is exactly what these pieces are – cerebral musings that only converge, or distill into unity, in the material realm. In many ways, I work not from idea to object, but from object to idea. For this piece to work, the potential volume of a violin scroll had to exist within the wood of an axe handle. Where some people reason out their pieces, I think I am susceptible to the whims of inspiration. My work is to cultivate maximum receptivity to the potential of what is already present around me.

You seem to have identified a philosophy of seeing new objects come into being via the adaptation of another, often times, when the parts are divergent in tone. This causes a cognitive reaction of incongruency and wonder, as long as the viewer is able to get past the sometimes oppositional subject matter. Is it your goal to help them over that hurdle?

In a word, yes. I have to win the trust of the viewer so that they are willing follow me through the work. There needs to be an element of visceral, technical, or aesthetic seduction that makes the (often) bumpy cognitive journey worthwhile. This is where the sticky matter of “craft” or technical accomplishment is worth mentioning. People trust something that looks authentic, or – if not seamless – somehow “believable”. I have to fight the impulse to get indigent when people ask me “where did you find that?”. It’s actually the response that all the work is somehow designed to elicit (when it is most successful).

Sometimes it’s clear that the reaction, as in, provoking a certain response, is the goal of some creatives, while others are more focused on the transformative and vocational power of creating things. Which one are you?

I would imagine that I am the latter. I am consummately selfish in the creation of my work. I make the things that I do not understand in order to help me do so. My work is a material sketch or model through which I come to account for, or at least demonstrate, some otherwise disembodied mystery. It is my very good fortune, and great pleasure, that other people happen to enjoy with my indulgence.

How do commissioned pieces tend to work for you? I assume the process would be different than the way a company or collector might interact with an illustrator or graphic designer.

On one hand, I like to think that I am selective in the commissions that I accept – that I hold out for the ones that sync nicely with my sensibilities, or present specific opportunities to expand on current personal research. On the other, I really enjoy challenging my own dogma; expanding the conceptual and technical territory of my private practice through accepting projects with parameters very different from those I naturally follow.

Tell us about the piece entitled, “Allegory.” How’d it come to be?

Allegory grew out of exactly one of these challenges. I was commissioned by Lacoste to create a work that included some of their polos. There was something analogous about how textiles are stitched together from a pattern, and how the crocodile head was welded out of small pieces of formed sheet steel. It was also an exploration of how the different vocabularies of additive and subtractive techniques (the crocodiles teeth and nose are carved out of the sewing table and pile of polos) could participate in the same piece.

You also draw… I assume that was your entry into art… How did that inform your later work as a sculptor?

Yes, and true. I understand drawing as a way of seeing – I think that the material trace on paper is a marginal byproduct of what is most valuable about the undertaking. Drawing is somehow uncompromising, and offers nowhere to hide -there is nothing like it for calibrating the eye, mind and hand. There is also something infinite about the drawn line; It holds the potential to describe a universe of texture, form, and motion. It’s something that I should should do more consistently.

When did you find that you loved to make things with your hands?

It’s something I have always done, it was characteristic of the environment into which I was born. My mother is an artist, and my father was a research scientist – both creative, hands-on people. I was never short of old mechanisms and instruments to take apart and investigate, and had all the clay and paint I could possibly handle.

Sounds like a great environment to grow up in… “Lexicon” is another piece that blows us away. It incorporates carved newspapers and a mechanical press, which has been carved into the shape of a skeletal rendering of a human torso. Seeing human shape in machines is an aesthetic juxtaposition that feels much different than if you had carved the idea into a different material. How does the actual material you carve affect the technical process?

I share the authorship of each work with the material that constitutes it. The creative act has a trajectory in which the material is engaged, subdued, controlled, but then ultimately re-asserts itself as a dominant factor in the work. Often this dialogue between matter and technique is the truest subject of the work – the sculpture’s representational quotient or motif serves only really as an architecture for this interaction to inhabit.

Similarly, it feels like the material being sculpted is a huge part of the commentary of the piece.  How have other art forms influenced the way you create, or how have they influenced the environment in which you create?

At this point I can identify three types of experience that influence me most profoundly. First, I played the violin for 14 years. This instilled a certain kind of sensibility through which I both perceive and interact with the world around me. Second, my bachelor degree included a minor in philosophy. My cognitive approach to the creative process definitely derives from this training. Third, I boxed for many years. There is a surprising kind of grace and intimacy to this activity that reminded me of playing an instrument. Boxing also set a scale to measure physicality, something that is implicit in the way I address my work.

I can definitely trace identifying myself as a writer with learning about writers of the past, and it clicking in my mind that this was what made me feel good, and what I should work on in life. I feel like most creatives relate to a certain spark which inspires them be creative themselves, howbout yourself?

I think it was Rudyard Kipling who said that he wrote because no one was writing the stories that he wanted to read. In relation to my own field, I think this holds true. I guess I make the work that I want to think about and that I can’t find anywhere else. Music, though, is something that I could identify as a direct inspiration. I think that if I could make sculpture like Tom Waits makes music, I’d be pretty happy.

THANKS MASKULL!!!!

My pleasure, most interesting questions that I really enjoyed pondering. Please keep in touch.

Tiger and Turtle – Magic Mountain is a large site specific sculpture by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth that is a roller coaster for those of us who don’t like the sensation of falling to our death over and over again at hundreds of miles an hour. Built as the ultimate roller coaster for pedestrians, this magnificent piece sits on top of a man made hill in Duisburg that acts as a giant green pedestal for the work. Visitors are invited to walk through the maze of loops and turns using the LED lit handrails and the even spaced steps that casually guide them through the official roller coaster for the speed challenged.

(via collabcubed)

Welcome to Nathan Alexis Brown’s blank generation.  Where punk dudes drink forties and hang around a camp fire  with luchadores and werewolves.  All while wearing a few of the most mind blowingly cool denim vests that would even make Tezz Roberts drool.

One of the most iconic artists of our time Mike Kelley passed away today at the age of 58. With over four decades of activity within the international art world spanning dozens dozens of museum shows, several art noise bands, and multiple Whitney Biennial inclusions,  Kelley will be sorely missed by the art community. Watch an interview with Kelley about his work after the jump.

Monica Cook’s animation Volley, along with new sculptures are on view at Postmasters in NYC from now til February 7th . Her stop-motion animation fully exploits the uncanny potential of the medium. Cook’s laser-like attention to every millimeter of surface was developed during her years as a painter, rendering meticulous depictions of flesh. Her sculptural sensibility is attuned to surface texture, opacity and luminosity. These sculptures have the extra duty of performance in creating her animated work.

Volley is a love story, a beautiful and painfully honest one. Its protagonists are candy- colored primates who dwell in otherworldly crystal caves. This environment, and the bodies of its inhabitants, are colored, adorned, and vivified by powerful fantasies. Wordless yet eloquent, the monkeys dream of love. A skull-faced monkey seduces his darling in a blacklit reverie of efflorescent fluid. A beloved mother-monkey is envisioned as a levitating goddess. Here, love is the power to ennoble and elevate the beloved.

But the illusions of sentiment are not completely convincing. The stark workings of physical necessity are ever-present, revealed in the mechanistic pumpings and ejaculations of breast milk, the eruptions of diseased skin, the exaggerated sexual organs. The monkeys are ‘visible,’ as are anatomical diagrams. Bones, musculature, and reproductive systems are exposed, re-inscribing our childhood experiences of shock upon learning that our own bodies are stuffed full blood and squirming tubes. The creatures’ crude innards – ribcages constructed of telephone cording, inflatable plastic stomach membranes – stand in contrast to their rigorously lifelike faces, with their soulful eyes and perfectly modeled teeth.

Paradoxically, for all the visibility of their artifice, Cook’s sculptures are unmistakably alive. Painstakingly constructed from scraps of skin and fur, complete skeletons and organ systems, the figures have all the marks of an organic origin. They exhibit all the unexpected plasticities of having lived and been affected by life, growing, acquiring idiosyncrasies: scars and pustules, preferences, mannerisms. The creatures aren’t slick representations of a species or an idea, and they refuse to be reduced to mere sigils. They are particular, individual beings, animated through a deeply evocative process. Cook has an unconditional regard for her creations, and she gives them secrets, hidden interiors, unnecessary mechanisms that constitute a sort of private life. In all their tenderness and grotesquerie, their imperfection is perfectly human.

Like we humans, these monkey-creatures are incomplete, deluded, faintly ridiculous. The squeamish feelings aroused by Cook’s work may be the anxiety of recognition. They show us how our very make-up is a leashing-together of implacable oppositions: Violence and desire, sweetness and aggression, devouring lust and untiring devotion. They show us, as well, how lovely and how fragile is the tissue that holds us together.

Artist always need to make their homes different. We collect designer furniture, find old design treasures at flea markets and estate sales, and go the extra mile to make our homes uniquely ours. Apparently the same goes for the artsy neighborhood of Neustadt Kunsthofpassage in Dresden, Germany. Designed by Christoph Roßner, Annette Paul, and Andre Tempel who all live in the building, the rain gutter house is truly a work of kinetic art bringing together rainfall and a complex system of rain gutters that weave in and out of one another on the buildings facade. The result is a musical symphony of sound everytime it rains, making the house one of the largest instruments and an awesome display of what a bit of creativity can create! Watch a video of the house in action after the jump!

When Bonnie Brenda Scott is not busy heading up Philadelphia’s Wham City –RIP– analog, Big Rock Candy Mountain, she produces feverish images of life and death, blood and guts, and the wild and free. With a penchant for rendering juicy bulbs of organic tissue and staging spectacular installations, she could be called a more mystical Mark Dean Veca. But such a label would pin her down too much toward something she’s not. Scott’s work engages the natural world on a level far above Veca’s laminated scale. She speaks for the elements of the world that are dirty; hard to contain. There are neon wolves out there, constantly on the hunt, and we best be on watch.