April 30th, 2012
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French artist Julien Berthier brings a pranksters twist to conceptual art with tongue and cheek alterations, manipulations, and juxtapositions. A great example of his comic wit is  A Lost (pictured above) featuring a ripped piece of a billboard with  “A Lost” written across it. Next to the torn billboard fragment Berthier hangs a photo of the billboard that originally read “Making Thievery A Lost Art”. Other favorite projects include a large fully functional boat that appears to be capsized, skull topiary, and a fabricated chair based on the artists left handed drawing of a chair (Berthier is right handed.

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April 27th, 2012
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Parisian artist Baptiste Debombourg large scale installations of shattered glass look as if an iceberg has crashed through the gallery walls and shattered into a million frozen pieces. Created out of over two tons of glass and taking over 420 hours to install Aerial (pictured above) transforms a banal material that we  come across everyday and transforms it into a monument of beauty.

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April 26th, 2012
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Manifest Destiny! is a temporary rustic cabin occupying on of the last remaining unclaimed spaces in downtown San Francisco. Positioned above and between well established city buildings the tiny cabin can be seen affixed to the side of the Hotel des Arts, floating above the restaurant Le Central like an anomalous outgrowth of the contemporary streetscape.

Created by Jenny Chapman and Mark Reigelman, Manifest Destiny  is a commentary/critique on the unwavering perseverance of San Francisco’s early settlers.  During the mid 19th century, as the eastern United States became over-crowded and expensive, the West offered limitless possibilities for those willing and able to make the journey.  The drive to seek new possibilities and establish a better life at any cost is the conceptual motivation for this project. See more photos of this piece and some installation shots after the jump.

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April 26th, 2012

Heeseop Yoon‘s large-scale installations explore storage and debris — items that occupy space in our lives. Yoon’s method varies between collage and pen, and plays on notions of memory and perception of clutter over time. The finished work doesn’t feel finished as it swells over the space it inhabits, sketched and redrawn, different from every angle and space.  Read more »

April 25th, 2012
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New York-based artist Roxy Paine’s work fuses organic with mechanical, making life-like replicas of natural structures in man-made materials. His stainless steel trees manage to retain the sense of spontaneity that we expect from organic objects, while being completely machine-made and rigidly planned. Paine’s highly detailed reconstructions of natural phenomena explore the tension between the natural and the built. In his piece Crop he carefully reconstructed a small patch of wild poppies and his piece Weed Choked Garden brings a decaying garden to eye level.  By bringing reconstructed natural objects into a gallery setting you’re forced to consider things you might have ignored in its usual setting.

Paine’s work reminds us of the importance of the natural world and how it continues to fight for survival amongst the structures and debris of modernity. With Woolly Pocket you can help plants fight back. Woolly Pocket makes urban gardening easy; let nature reclaim a fence, wall or even an indoor structure.


Kids want to help reclaim spaces for nature too! Woolly pocket helps schools grow gardens so that students can learn the basics of gardening and the satisfaction that comes with growing your own food. Their Woolly School Gardens project that connect schools looking to start a garden with community members looking to support their efforts. Visit Woolly School Garden  and find a school near you to sponsor.

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April 25th, 2012
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Although references to animation and manga can be found in the large sculptures of Japanese artist Keisuke Tanaka, the artist’s main themes revolve around life and death, as he considers one of his main motifs, mountains,  to be a magical place where life begins and ultimately ends. Each hand carved sculpture is built out of solid wood with so many miniature details so that we may get a sense of the view that the gods might have of the imaginative world of Tanaka.

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April 25th, 2012
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In the fall of 2009 artist Michael Anthony Simon left Chicago behind, and moved to the countryside of Korea.  He wanted to experience a new place and culture that would hopefully inform a fresh body of work that could exist beyond the constraints of the western art world.  In the spring of 2011, contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei was arrested on falsified charges of tax evasion by a notoriously conservative Chinese government.  The claims were suspect to say the least, and many silent protests were organized throughout the world by major museums and institutions calling for his release.  These silent protests became a louder gesture than anything anyone could have audibly said.  This act of defiant solidarity became a source of motivation for Simon in the year to come.  Realizing that by attempting to silence something you make it’s presence that much more apparent he commenced on a series entitled “The Silence Paintings”.  Analyzing the design and significance of the word ‘silence’ in different languages lead him to the creation of an intuitive process that would allow for compositions to develop naturally, but with purpose and intention.

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April 20th, 2012
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In 2010 Fionna Banner installed Harrier And Jaguar at the Tate Britain. The massive installation  juxtaposed real fighter planes inside the neo-classical gallery spaces. Weapons of mass destruction have never looked so good.

“According to Fiona Banner, Harrier and Jaguar are “ambiguous objects implying both captured beast and fallen trophy”.  While the Sea Harrier was transformed into a “captive bird”, with feathered markings on its surface similar to the Harrier Hawk, the Jaguar lay belly-up on the floor with posture suggestive of a submissive animal”- Urban Ghosts

“We all hate war but these objects inspire a strange enthusiasm in us. When you reflect on their beauty it’s a strange thing, people say surely they are designed with an aesthetic in mind and, of course, they’re not. They are absolutely designed to function and that function is to kill, and that says something questionable about our aesthetic judgement and makes us ask questions about our moral position.”  - Fionna Banner as told to The Guardian

More images of Fionna’s work after the jump.

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