Motion Reel 2013 from Justin Blyth on Vimeo.
Born in Los Angeles, Justin Blythe now lives and works in Amsterdam. He continues to create strong visual work through a variety of outlets and has recently updated his website. His body of work strikes a balance between hyper-colored juxtapositions and darker informed themes. Equally proficient in original illustration and reappropriation, Justin’s visual vocabulary enlivens clothing design, motion graphics, editorials, the music industry, and more.
Jason Freeny lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He has an ongoing series of sculptures that eschew the clean and safe demeanor of mainstream toys. From Barbie to Lego Figures, Freeny’s creations are dissected so that individual anatomy can be seen. The kitsch cuteness of a My Little Pony figure is immediately eradicated once the viewer takes in the bizarre skeletal structure on the opposite side. Jason finds a way to expose inherent creepiness in otherwise harmless characters that populate the pop culture landscape.
Iconic and lovely Louise Bourgeois once said, “The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.”
Likewise, one might suggest that the soft and silicone rubber sculptures of Michelle Carla Handel, collected here, are conceptually doing something similar, but with a splash of Claes Oldenburg’s wit and color pop.
Each piece feels intriguingly pubescent: exploring the grotesque softness of bodies and gender through seemingly pliable forms that physically confuse or bend out of shape, emotionally heaving with discovery and wear.
Beautiful/Decay has partnered with premiere website building platform Made With Color to bring you some of the most exciting contemporary artists working today. Made With Color allows you to create a website that is professional and easy to use with just a few clicks and no coding. This week we bring you the Deconstructed geometric abstractions of Benjamin Gardner!
Great things can be found in the mid-west such as the work of DeMoines, Iowa based painter and sculptor Benjamin Gardner. When we usually think about geometric abstraction we think of razor precision lines and carefully calculated angles. However Gardner bucks the norm by presenting a deconstructed geometry where it’s angles bend and sway in ways more aligned with abstract expressionism. Creating both sculpture and paintings (and often a combination of both) Gardner’s work calls upon the visual language of mystic texts, constellations, mandalas and hex signs combined with found objects and materials for surprising results that make us ponder the space between intuitive mark making and mathematical precision.
As traditional Middle America and the housing market continues to breakdown, its imagery on the television or in advertising seems to persist, with an eerie commercialized flatness. It is here, in this strange space, where artist Lori Larusso’s work finds its stride.
Of her paintings, Larusso explains: “I am interested in exploring the unavoidable contradictions which exist in our personal (and collective) systems of belief, by pointing to the complexity of individual situations. Very often, our ideals are a reflection of the way we wish things were, rather than a product of the way we actually experience them. I find this conflict to be in direct connection to the representational image.”
If you were similarly a nerd-child, this home library would have been better than any I could conjure. Architect Moon Hoon designed this extremely family friendly house. The spaces throughout the house are very versatile with this library being its highlight. Embedded in the bookshelves is a wooden slide. Also, the shelves double as tiered seating for the home theater. Moon Hoon says of the feature:
“The multi-use stair and slide space brings much active energy to the house, not only children, but also grown ups love the slide staircase. An action filled playful house for all ages.” [via]
The collisions between art and life can create an interesting space for an artist to create work from—and something that Atlanta-based installation artist Gyun Hur seeks out. Even though she works abstractly, Hur chooses to charge her work by using the medium’s significance as a conceptual starting point. Artificial flowers and colorful woven fabrics are hand-shredded into a brightly colored powder, which she disseminates throughout the space.
Hur creates her soft, delicate, vibrantly-colored installations through a carefully choreographed “performance,” in which she works to create perfect arrangements of materials that have been released from their original forms. Tweezers, masking tape, and a ruthlessly meticulous attention to detail all play a part in Hur’s impressive, site-specific works. The simultaneous tangibility and impermanence of the works force the viewer to become startlingly aware of every breath, every step—every movement made while in the space.
Not unlike the waves that he’s surfed religiously for more than 50 years, the mangled surfboard pieces by artist Herbie Fletcher soar in scale. Up close, you can see the bites taken out of each piece by rocks, sun and surf—recalling the moments that each board was obliterated by crashing waves. They echo the sheer power of the sea, and the tenuous line that pro surfers ride when trying to catch a massive, championship wave.
The somewhat cleverly titled “Wreck-tangles” carry a colorful, graphic collection of various decals, traction pads, fins or logos carry the personality of the surfer who used it, collected sponsorships and awards with it…and ultimately wrecked it. The collision of precise, formal geometries with the pop cacophony of logos and images finds an appropriate resting place on these destroyed relics of surf culture.
