Brooklyn-based Italian photographer Andrea Galvani took to the frosty mountainous regions of Austria, Switzerland, and Italy, reaching altitudes of about 2800 meters, for his photo series entitled The Intelligence of Evil. The works depict a snowy, white expanse cut by a cloud of black smoke emitting from the figure of a man in a charcoal suit. The surreal imagery gives the impression of a monochromatic scheme though it is technically in color, only evidenced by the pigments of the man’s hands. The artist used military grade smoke bombs for these works and his father stepped in as the mysterious man in black.
After the natural disaster in Fukushima, Japan in early 2011, words and thoughts of encouragement and prayers flooded through Facebook, Twitter, and email to the survivors. This instant and amazing response from well-wishers to the crisis victims has been immortalized in a 3-dimensional typographic poster called “Words Can Fly a Thousand Miles”. This paper representation of the outpouring of support for those effected by the disaster was designed and created by Kyosuke Nishida, Brian Li Sui Fong, andDominic Liu and photographed by Simon Duhamel. Employing the long-established Japanese custom, Senbazuri (a thousand origami cranes), in their paper sculpture, artists and designers, Nishida, Li Sui Fong, and Liu, used their unique skills to create perfectly formed origami cranes to attach to the words of the poster.Traditionally, a thousand paper origami cranes are given as a special gift for wishes of recovery from illnesses or injury because it is believed that the folding of a 1000 paper cranes makes wishes come true.
If you had the chance to redesign the iconic hundred dollar bill, with no limitations, what would it look like? Make Your Franklin, an online community art project, challenges participents to re-imagine the bill using a high resolution image they provide. As you can see from these initial results, the designs range from clean euro-esq to dark Darth Vader inspiration.
Surrey, England-based Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey take something we all take for granted, grass, and turn it into a fascinating medium for artistic expression. Their unique portraits are created by exposing plots of seedling grass to light through a custom-made negative, making the grass grow in different shades, from yellow to green. Basically, they harness the process of photosynthesis and capture chlorophyll to fix images to growing grass.
Wait just a couple of weeks and you’ll slowly start to see faces emerge. Wait too long and these images start to disappear, just like a photograph will eventually fade.
Shawn Huckins’ newest paintings are entitled the American Revolution Revolution: What Would George Post? Huckins had the bright idea of using 18th century painting and portraiture to make social observations of our newest (and most profound) lexicons of the digital age. No one has ever LOL’d so hard they ended up ROFL at a portrait of George Washington, but Huckins knows how to get it out of us. With his paintings, Huckins seeks to question the advancement of technology, and ask if it has truly helped or hurt our way of communicating.
French artist Julien Salaud created a luminescent ceiling installation titled Grotte Stellaire, which roughly translates as Stellar Cave, at Palais de Tokyo’s Alice Guy Hall in Paris. The sculptural light installation involves interweaving strands of white string, held down with nails, illuminated by a projected ultraviolet light. Walking in and looking up at this radiant ceiling filled with astral imagery and animal figures may feel like entering a grotto whose inner etchings are made visible by the water’s reflection.
The polygonal representations of deer combined with the galactic connecting and intertwining lines also make this piece look like a section of the night sky with figurative constellations. There’s something primal about the setting appearing like a cave, and yet there is a futuristic appeal in its glowing contoured visuals. If you’d like to experience the wondrous installation in person, you can currently catch it at Parisian gallery as part of the Triennial of Contemporary Art that runs through August 6, 2012.
Catherine Ulitsky, an artist living in western Massachusetts, captured the unique flock patterns of the starling murmurations on camera and gave order to the seemingly random group by painting connections between the birds. In each photograph, Ulitsky uses vibrant colors and straight lines to create beautiful geometric patterns in one of natures great phenomena. “Carefully observing natural phenomena reminds me constantly of the limitless complexity and wonder of the world we inhabit,” said Ulitsky of her work.
Using just wood and paint, Oslo, Norway-based artist Ole Martin Lund Bo created this anamorphic piece of art with a thought-provoking message. Called (Deceptive Outward Appearance), this installation seems as if someone just photoshopped those words onto an already existing image. Look at the other pictures (above), however, and you’ll soon realize that the three words have been carefully painting onto the white walls and wood sticks, becoming what seems like random black marks when viewed from different angles.
Contemporary artist Rashas Alakbrov from Azbaijan creates shadow paintings using disregarded objects seen as ‘trash’ like pipes, and water bottles.
As part of his contribution to Poland’s Katowice Street Art Festival, which took place last week, Valencia-based street artist Escif went to town on the side of a building and created this awesome mural of a humongous on/off switch. Not only will the piece surely turn some heads, it might make those passing by feel like they shrank as well.
(Source: Flickr / escif)
Möbius Ship: An Un-Ending Sculptural Tribute: With a title and form that wittily plays on the puzzling and unending surface of a Möbius strip, artist Tim Hawkinson has created a bizarrely continuous model in the likeness of ship-in-bottle hobbyists. His hanging sculpture takes it’s inspiration from the story of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, interpreting Captain Ahab’s consuming passion of chasing the illusive white whale by creating a ship that chases itself in an impossible loop.
You can find more works by Tim Hawkinson, including his must see ship like Aerial Mobile at the US spanning Ace Gallery.
