Because it’s outdoors and the elements eventually destroy the work, the Hyundai Card Music Library in Seoul, Korea commissions an artist to wrap the building with artwork every five years. Los Angeles’ Alex Prager is the latest artist whose photographs, Hitchhiker and Big Valley, are embellishing the walls and ceiling of the building’s plaza. Read more
Order of Importance by artist Leandro Erlich opened at Art Basel Miami earlier this week. Commissioned by the City of Miami Beach and curated by Ximena Caminos with the collaboration of Brandi Reddick, the art installation will remain through the 15th December on the beach next to Lincoln Road and close to Collins Park. Read more
An unusual interactive art installation opens today at New York’s Museum of Sex. Funland features a giant breast moonbounce, racing phallic symbols, Grope Mountain and other carnal carnival attractions. Read more
To Celebrate Peace One Day on the 21st of September, British artists Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss (both from Sand In Your Eye) accompanied by numerous volunteers, took to the beaches of Normandy with rakes and stencils in hand to etch thousands of silhouettes representing fallen people into the sand. Read more
You may or may not have seen images of large sculpted straw beasts, recently being shared all over the internet. Truth be told, they are not new, but are actually a few years old (from 2010 and 2011) from the annual Wara Straw Art festival in Niigata. According to CNN Travel, The Wara Art Matsuri takes place every year in two locations in Niigata, at Kanko Shisetsu Iwamuroya (96-1 Iwamuro Onsen, Nishikan-ku, Niigata) and Uwasekigata park (1 Matsunoo, Nishikan-ku, Niigata).
The festival is an annual celebration of Autumn where local people and college students of Art and Architecture departments create some impressive straw art in Nishikan-ku, an area is said to have the “largest paddy fields in the country,” according to Japan Style.
The art is created from rice straw by locals and college students. The structures are made from pipes and wood sticks, then the straw is added, taking about a week per piece to complete.
images are courtesy of Kotaku and CNN Travel
Levi van Veluw’s incredible, 3-room installation uses more than 30,000 wooden blocks, balls, and slats. These installations are inspired by different aspects of van Veluw’s boyhood bedroom, where he spent many solitary hours between the ages of 8 and 14: the Origin of the Beginning.
This series of installations, photographs and videos in which van Veluw draws from his own childhood memories to thematically and narratively develop his own brand of self-portraiture.
The artist has created 3 “rooms” covered with more than 30,000 wooden blocks, balls and slats respectively. Each “room” is executed as a life-size installation (4m x 2.5m x 2.5m) together with photographs and videos (without any digital manipulation).
Portrayed in one piece (above) is a desk, a table lamp, a bookcase. The edge of the table is burned by Levi van Veluw as he had an obsession for fire. All of these objects including every inch of the floor, walls and ceiling is covered in the same material: 14,000 16 cm2 dark brown wooden blocks. The blocks are made by the artist and glued on the wall one by one. The works suggest a narrative world behind the abstract portraits.
Origin of The Beginning 1.2:
Origin of The Beginning 2.4:
Origin of The Beginning 3.4:
On the one hand these works present themselves as a continuation of van Veluw’s formal approach to self-portraiture, with their preoccupation for materiality, pattern and texture. Yet they are simultaneously very personal pieces. The repetitive structures seemingly express a ‘horror vacui’ and recall van Veluw the youth and his obsessive attempts to gain control on his life by gaining control of his surroundings. Dimly light and dark in colour the overriding tone of these pieces are claustrophobic and sombre, exuding a sense of loneliness. The meticulous craftsmanship and high quality material with which every last nook and cranny is covered, result in a series of works that are also highly aesthetic.
all images and information courtesy of the artist
Initially conceived of 12 years ago, the ‘fake’ swimming pool by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich, known for his illusion-like installations, has been featured at various museums around the world. Read more
