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Warp your reality with the art of Istvan Orosz
01.08.2014
08:33 am
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Around the end of the ‘90s, an art dealer friend of mine began bringing traveling exhibitions of Polish posters to town. It was eye-opening stuff—Eastern Europe has long had a tradition for outstanding poster art, its artists boasting stunning skills, married to an admirable obeisance to the visual legacy of traditional printmaking methods and jaw-droppingly inventive surrealist-influenced illustration. It was at one of those poster shows that I bought an item that remains one of my most cherished possessions: Istvan Orosz: Etchings and Posters, a slipcased, hand printed letterpress book from 1998, from an edition of only 750 (a second edition of 300 was made in 2000), published by the apparently now defunct GrafikARCHIVE Publishing of Kansas City, MO. From an archived mirror of the company’s web site:

This first book features the work of internationally renowned Hungarian designer ISTVAN OROSZ. Fold out pages, envelopes with small printed pages of art, several different types of paper; “a feast for the eyes and the hands” (International Paper). The book received the ADDY Award in 1999 for its imaginative presentation by the firm DESIGN RANCH. Slipcase, wire-O bound in portfolio form, 82 pages with numerous 1 to 3 color illustrations. Essays by Roberta Lord (US) and Andras Torok (Hungary).

 
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Other books of his work are more readily available and affordable, but it’s sad that this one in particular is such a rare item, as it’s a wonderful way to experience Orosz’s work—it’s a very playful book for a very playful printmaker, who shows strong influences from the likes of Magritte and Escher. But there are deficiencies. The printing technique makes it impossible to show much of his poster work in full color, and it excludes, due to obvious realities, his anamorphs and his animations.

First, feast your eyes on a few lovely posters.
 
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Now, check out his anamorphic work. Anamorphoses are artworks that look indecipherable until viewed from a specific angle or in a distorting mirror, often a cylinder. Check out how, on top of just the basic anamorphosis, Orosz goes the extra mile and embeds a hidden portrait into the drawing, or uses the anamorphic drawing and mirror as an extension of a larger work. Stuff like this always amazes me.
 
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Jules Verne
 
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Edgar Allen Poe: The Raven
 
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Anna Draws A Circle
 
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Anamorphic Bodyscapes 1

Finally, enjoy a few of Orosz’s marvelous animations. If the stuff on the printed page suits your fancy, I don’t suggest passing up the opportunity to watch his work dance.
 

 
More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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01.08.2014
08:33 am
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David Hockney’s Cubist photography
01.07.2014
12:02 pm
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During discussions for an exhibition of his personal photographs, David Hockney hit upon a new way of making pictures. Alain Sayag, of the Pompidou Center in Paris, had visited Hockney at his LA home in the 1970s and was looking through the 100-odd photo albums, when Hockney realized the photographs had “cheated,” as they had not captured a true sense of the events they depicted.

“I had become very, very aware of this frozen moment that was very unreal to me. The photographs didn’t really have life in the way a drawing or painting did, and I realized it couldn’t because of what it is.

“Compared to a Rembrandt looking at himself for hours and hours of scrutinizing his face, and putting all these hours into the picture you’re going to look at, naturally there’s many more hours there than you can give it.

“A photograph is the other way round, it’s a fraction of a second, frozen. So, the moment you’ve looked at it for even four seconds, you’re looking at it far more than the camera did.

“It dawned on me this was visible, actually, it is visible, and the more you become aware of it, the more this is a terrible weakness; drawings and paintings do not have this.”

That night, after Sayag had left, Hockney started taking Polaroids of his home and studio. He took multiple pictures, concentrating on some areas and ignoring others. Hockney then selected the photos he wanted to use. He placed these onto a board, then arranged them by the same decisions of “line and form” that he used when drawing a picture. The end result Hockney called a “Joiner,” a multiple photographic portrait of a place or individual, which gives the viewer a better sense of space and time than any ordinary snapshot.

“Joiners” owed much to Cubism—an association Hockney found to be a “turn-on.”

In 1983, Melvyn Bragg’s art series The South Bank Show visited Hockney at his LA home, where the artist was filmed as he created a “Joiner” portrait especially for the documentary. Hockney used this “Joiner” to show the difference between a single snap or a filmed sequence.
 
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More of Hockney’s joiners, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.07.2014
12:02 pm
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Giant spheres respond visually and sonically to human touch
01.07.2014
08:46 am
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Japanese art and technology collective teamLab have created a wonderfully immersive interactive installation for the exhibition “Distilling Senses: A Journey through Art and Technology in Asian Contemporary Art” at the Hong Kong Arts Center. The piece, “Homogenizing and Transforming World,” Consists of a huge mass of colored spheres that sequentially change color when a viewer touches just one of them. Here’s a video of the experience:
 

 

The balls change color when touched by people, when they bump into things, or receive a shock, and sounds are produced in relation to the colors. Those balls send this color information to other balls, which in turn send the information to balls close by, and the information spreads out so that all the balls become the same color.

The internet has spread through out the world. Individuals are connected to closely related people and information spreads back and forth freely between them. People act as the intermediary for the information and in an instant the information spreads and the world unifies. All individuals can freely and simply transmit information, the individual acts as an intermediary that transmits the information to the world, transforming it an instant.

This isn’t the first exploration of this theme teamLab have mounted. Did it occur to you what a marvelously fun energy could be conjured by putting those spheres in a roomful of kids? It occurred to them, too.

Patting the Light Balls changes their color and the sounds created. The Light Balls combine to make an orchestral space. Large balls communicate with the other balls, touching one changes the color of all the balls in the vicinity and changes the color of the entire space. Children using their bodies by touching and playing with the various sizes of balls can collaborate to change the space and freely create music.

 
teamLab have evidently been working on this project since as far back as 2009, with the very nearly eponymous piece “teamLabBall.”

“teamLabBall” is an interactive interface that changes color and brightness and emits different sounds depending on the actions of the people around it.

When you touch the spheres, it causes effects such as a change in color, or the generation of a sound. Each sphere is synchronized by wireless P2P (Peer to Peer), so it is possible to change the colors of all of the spheres or to change the color of the lighting of the space. Furthermore, it is possible for directors/designers to change the colors remotely without touching the spheres. Anybody present can take part in the design of the space by tossing the floating spheres. The moment you toss the sphere, you take center stage and that moment is shared by everyone in the space.

Utilizing all teamLabBalls as a common interface allows the creation of a digital space where people can get immersed and feel emotionally involved.

I would absolutely love to spend some time in “Homogenizing and Transforming World,” but Asia is a bit of a schlep for me, so please, teamLab, please bring it to the US, please, and thank you.

In Hong Kong, or planning to be soon? “Distilling Senses: A Journey through Art and Technology in Asian Contemporary Art” runs through January 12, 2014.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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01.07.2014
08:46 am
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David Lynch student film, ‘Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)’ (1967)
01.06.2014
04:58 pm
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“Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)” (otherwise known as “Six Figures Getting Sick”) is a student film that David Lynch made in 1967 when he was attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. With a soundtrack of a blaring siren, “Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)” is basically an animated painting/sculpture of six male figures with visible internal organs vomiting, a one-minute-long animation that was looped four times.

The film was shot in an unused room in a downtown hotel owned by the school. Lynch made a sort of 6 ft by 10ft canvas/sculpture that included plaster molds of his own face to give it extra dimensionality. He then painted over this as collaborator Jack Fisk shot the stop motion on Lynch’s 16mm camera. When the film was originally screened, I believe it was screened onto the canvas itself.

The film was created on a budget of $200, a sum Lynch called “completely unreasonable.”
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.06.2014
04:58 pm
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‘Holy cosplay, Batman!’ Exact replica of the 1966 mask Adam West wore
01.06.2014
12:56 pm
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Cool as fuck—but bloody expensive at a whopping $1500—replica Batman mask modeled after the one Adam West wore on the 1966 TV show.

It is the only available cowl still being made from the original fabric which has been custom dyed to match a color sample from the dye house used on the show. The pattern was created by a professional pattern maker using a original cowl (from the Hardeman collection) The lightweight fiberglass shell was created using a plaster cast taken from an original as a base. Even the eyebrow paint color has been Pantone matched to the original.

Adam West refers to our Cowl as a “work of art” and is a proud owner of one of our replicas.

It’s available to purchase on Etsy by WilliamsStudio2. According to the write-up, you need to “act now as fabric is in limited supply.”

Via Nerdcore

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.06.2014
12:56 pm
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Take a trip on the Stockholm subway’s wild underground fantasia
01.06.2014
10:34 am
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Taking the subway in Stockholm, Sweden, is like taking a trip through some underground fantasia. Every one of the city’s 100 stations has its own particular design, which is bound to make traveling to-and-from work fabulous fun.
 
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More pictures of Stockholm’s stunning subway, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.06.2014
10:34 am
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Jewelry made from seized guns and ammo
01.03.2014
12:14 pm
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jewelry
Bullet Aeternum Pendant Necklace: $245.00
 
I’m generally turned off by stuff like this (I blame Bono). So often we’re told political art is there to “raise awareness,” as if the issue can be solved with a some savvy public relations hustle and a t-shirt or two. Or, we’re told that the answer to problems of capitalism lie in some sort of ethical consumerism—if we all just do our research and vote with our dollar, we can save the world by shopping! (Check out the video at the end to hear Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek lay out exactly why that’s bullshit.)

But I kind of like this jewelry made from recycled guns, and it doesn’t get on my nerves for couple of reasons. One, the mission statement is pretty clear and the artistic concept isn’t overly ambitious or sanctimonious:

Liberty United recycles guns to make jewelry and art made in the U.S.A.

Guns and bullets are collected by partner communities. These are cataloged and checked by law enforcement and then released for recycling. Liberty United remakes the remnants of these guns and bullets, using ancient and contemporary techniques, into jewelry and art.

As we work to reduce gun violence, we provide jobs in America. Our pieces are handcrafted in the U.S.A., incorporating serial numbers and metal from guns and bullet shells that have been reclaimed and destroyed through the communities with whom we’re collaborating.

Second, 20 to 25% of the profits (not a bad cut) go to established anti-gun violence organizations—not just some paper moon charity the artists invented to appear “aware.” And third, it appears their labor practices are actually on the up and up.

But Liberty United doesn’t claim to be saving the world.They’re using recycled materials, they appear to be providing good jobs for skilled laborers, and they’re making something a hell of a lot more attractive than a pair of TOMS shoes.

The stuff is pretty pricey—even when a choice of metals is offered, the less precious of the two is no drop in the bucket. And we won’t save America from gun violence with swank accessories. But this is a cool concept, and I’ll be damned if I don’t need that claw bracelet at the very bottom.
 
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Skinny Bullet Cuff: $95.00
 
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Gunmetal Aeternum Cuff: $395.00
 
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Bullet Ring: $85.00
 
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Bullet Necklace: $95.00
 
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Silver & Gunmetal Inlay Cage Cuff with Turquoise: $1,295.00
 
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Silver & Gunmetal Talon Cuff: $1,545.00 USD
 

 
Via Liberty United

Posted by Amber Frost
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01.03.2014
12:14 pm
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‘A different cultural universe’: Genesis Breyer P-Orridge in conversation with Barry Miles
01.03.2014
11:39 am
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In an event that was held in London recently to discuss First Third Books publication of the monograph about her life, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was interviewed by another countercultural luminary, Barry Miles, a man who brought Beat and underground culture to Britain in the 1960s via associations with Allen Ginsberg, The Beatles, the International Times, “The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream” concert event, the Indica Gallery and bookstore (where John Lennon met Yoko Ono) and the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall. Miles, as he is known, has also run an amazing record label (I Can See for Miles), and he’s written a gazillion books, including biographies of Frank Zappa, William Burroughs, the coffee table book Hippie, two volumes of his autobiography (which I highly recommend) and Paul McCartney’s officially sanctioned biography, Many Years from Now.
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I’m sure Genesis was quite pleased at the choice of Miles to lead the questions—after all he was right in the thick of seminal sixties cultural events the young Neil Megson would have read about in IT—even if Miles ultimately gets but a few words in edgewise. The discussion begins with how a teacher at school told Neil about Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, and how he resolved to meet the real life person the “Old Bull Lee” character was based on—William S. Burroughs—and soon would…

This event was taped at Rough Trade East in London, November 7th, 2013
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.03.2014
11:39 am
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NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING: DADA, a ‘destructive agitation against everything’
12.31.2013
11:46 am
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When he was in exile in Zurich in 1916, the Bolshevik leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin once visited the DADAist club Cabaret Voltaire. This according to performer and DADAist drummer Richard Hülsenbeck. Lenin was living in an apartment across from the club. He was busy writing his revolutionary plans for a future socialist Russia. The Cabaret Voltaire was founded by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings, with the intention of making it a cabaret for radical artistic and political purposes. It was also a focal point for refugees and conscientious objectors, who had fled to Switzerland to avoid fighting in the First World War. According to Ball, from his apartment Lenin would have certainly heard the music and noise that emanated from the cabaret.

Lenin considered himself quite the revolutionary, but what he thought when confronted with the noise and nonsense poems, the shouting and verbal abuse and the endless drumming, is open to conjecture. Was he confounded by DADA? Did he wonder whether this was perhaps how real revolution truly began? Indeed, were these performers more revolutionary than Lenin himself? Or, were they just privileged petty bourgeoisie play-acting at being bad-ass revolutionaries? It is tantalizing proposition to imagine. Lenin certainly did wonder about his revolutionary zeal, as he remarked one night in a conversation with the poet Valeriu Marcu:

”I don’t know how radical you are, or how radical I am. I am certainly not radical enough; that is, one must always be as radical as reality itself.”

DADA was like Punk, but without the Rock. It was subversive, dangerous and revolutionary. European DADA was originally created as a protest movement against war. It was formed by a small group of immigrants from Germany (Hugo Ball, Emmy Hennings, Richard Hülsenbeck), Romania (Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara), and Austria (Walter Serner). These individuals were politically motivated, and wanted to express an new kind of mentality, a “destructive agitation against everything”:

No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no more republicans, no more royalists, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no more armies, no more police, no more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more, no more, NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.

Thus we hope that the novelty which will be the same thing as what we want will come into being less rotten, less immediately GROTESQUE.

DADA may have been a small movement, responding to the “moral bankruptcy” of the day, but its influence has touched upon almost all major artistic and cultural movements of the twentieth century.

Helmut Herbst’s 1968 documentary An Alphabet of German DADAism presents a comprehensive A-Z of the Germans artists and writers who contributed to DADA. Produced and directed by Helmut Herbst, with Hans Richter and Richard Hulsenbeck, featuring sound-artist Kurt Schwitters, satirist George Groz, and artist Max Ernst.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Kurt Schwitters performs ‘Ursonate’: ‘The Greatest sound poem of the 20th century’


 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.31.2013
11:46 am
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The awesome spare-parts sculpture of Edouard Martinet
12.30.2013
10:17 am
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From detritus like bicycle parts, chains, flashlights, corkscrews, spatulas, even steel toes from work boots, Edouard Martinet assembles these astonishing sculptures of birds, fish, and insects. Mainly insects. But WOW, what insects!
 
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When Edouard Martinet was 10, one of his teachers introduced his pupils to insects, but in a rather obsessive way. Subliminally, the fascination sunk in to the young French boy. Fast-forward 40 years, and Martinet has become the art world’s virtuoso insectophile, transforming bits and pieces of cast-off junk culled from flea markets and car boot sales into exquisitely executed insect, fish and animal forms. What sets Martinet’s work apart is the brilliant formal clarity of his sculptures, and their extraordinary elegance of articulation. His degree of virtuosity is unique: he does not solder or weld parts. His sculptures are screwed together. This gives his forms an extra level of visual richness - but not in a way that merely conveys the dry precision of, say, a watchmaker. There is an X-Factor here, a graceful wit, a re-imagining of the obvious in which a beautifully finished object glows not with perfection, but with character, with new life. Martinet takes about a month to make a sculpture and will often work on two or three pieces at the same time. It took him just four weeks to make his first sculpture and 17 years for his most recent completion!

 
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Not exactly the first thing that leaps to mind when one thinks of “scrap metal sculpture,” is this? Be sure to check the individual images on Martinet’s gallery page—he lists the specific materials used for every body part, and some of them will likely floor you. DM readers in London can see these on display at Sladmore Contemporary through January 31, 2014. If you can’t be there, a GORGEOUS book is available.
 
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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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12.30.2013
10:17 am
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