February 1st, 2012
by Amir

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.

Read more »

Share
February 1st, 2012
by Amir

 

Bethany Krull’s ‘Dominance and Affection’ revolves around the exploration of this duality as it can be seen in the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. In today’s increasingly nature-deprived society, our most intimate connection tends to be with plants and animals that we ourselves have drastically altered through the process of domestication. We have turned wild animals into companions, genetically sculpting them into sweeter, cuter, less dangerous versions of themselves. We shower our pets with love at the same time we cage and contain them and it is this affection contradicting complete control that Krull is interested in illustrating in her work. For no amount of love lavished upon these creatures will erase the fact that the success of the relationship lies in our complete domination over all aspects of their existence.

Read more »

January 31st, 2012

Salão Coboi is not a singular artist like you’d assume from the sound of the name, but rather a collective of individuals based in Portugal. They hit major attention on the blogosphere in 2011 when they did a project named Generation H, in which they sculpted figures wearing clothes modeled after actual items by haute couture houses like Prada, Alexander Wang, and Junya Watanabe. And there’s just something charmingly unique and European about the characters Salão Coboi create, which really makes me feel the same positive energy I get whenever I look at the wonderful designs of The Yellow Submarine and Wallace & Gromit. However, Salão Coboi have taken that kind of work to the next level by making it not just for children, but also adults as well. Beautiful/Decay featured the work of Salão Coboi a lift bit ago HERE.

 

Read more »

January 27th, 2012

 

I have been a close friend of Chicago-based artist Wyatt Grant since we studied together at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he blew me away with his 20+ layer screen prints on fabric. He graduated this past May with me, having worked fluidly between sculpture, print media, and painting. His works fuse a personal alphabet with a warm, dedicated aesthetic that is consistent throughout all of his work, both abstract and representational. The works have a rose-tinted magical realism to them, a narrative that is both specific and achingly mysterious. Wyatt is also a musician, producing shoegaze-y acoustic tunes studded with electronic loops under the name Pool Holograph.  More after the jump.

 

Read more »

January 25th, 2012
by Amir

Women always say that men think with their crotch so Cuban artist Yoan Capote decided to create a series of work replacing the male genitalia with a giant brain. All of Yoan’s smart and witty conceptual sculptures mix a dash of irony with a dose of comedy such as the ladder with rocking chair legs or a pair of pristine running shoes carved out of pure marble.

Read more »

January 24th, 2012
by Amir

Kyle Bean’s sculptures are made out of everyday objects such as straws, baked goods, jello, and even matchsticks. His latest eggshell sculpture doesn’t necessarily answer the question “What came first the chicken or the egg” but it sure is beautiful.

Read more »

January 24th, 2012

BD-Dialogue-Space-Gallery-Ll-Jikai-mushroom-boy-Los-Angeles-LA-art-show-photo-article-by-Daniel-Rolnik

Li Jikai is a Chinese artist who makes wonderfully melancholy sculptures and paintings. And even though he is well known in Asia, I had never seen his work before visiting Dialogue Space Gallery’s booth at the LA Art Show – a massive art exhibition being held in the convention center downtown. His piece “Daydream” of a young boy laying on his back and holding his legs against his chest drew me straight towards it, so I battled the waves of artwork at the convention center to get a closer look. And after inspecting the piece and meeting the gallery’s director, I turned the corner and became totally entrenched in Jikai’s world full of lonely characters and heavy symbolism. Especially one piece that I found most interesting of a boy sitting underneath a giant mushroom, because it existed as both a sculpture as well as a painting. According to some online sources Li Jikai is a member of the Ego Generation – a group of Chinese artists born after 1970 who deal with personal matters in their work as opposed to cultural ones. However, it doesn’t really matter if he belongs to that movement or not, since his work is so powerful at expressing its intentions that it doesn’t need to be lumped into a group.

Read more »

January 23rd, 2012
by tess

If ever a designer could be labeled Cult Couture, Aoi Kotsuhiroi would be it. Kotsuhiroi’s “body objects” blur the line between fashion and fine art, with each handmade, one-of-a-kind piece embodying a sense of primal energy, like relics of an ancient gothic warrior tribe. Through her juxtaposition of precious materials like cherry tree wood, phantom crystals, and pit-fired porcelain with once living, borderline grotesque elements like human and horse hair, lacquered horns, and elephant, buffalo, and crocodile leathers, Kotsuhiroi breathes animalistic life into her wearable sculptures, imbuing the wearer with a spirit of strength, mystery, and a little bit of danger. Her most recent collection, entitled “Exotic Regrets,” is a post-apocalyptic masterpiece, featuring talon-shaped rings that could double as primitive weapons in an end of the world showdown, and a pair of sinewy, scorpion-like shoes which give new meaning to the term “killer heels.”

Read more »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »