RIUSUKE FUKAHORI

"Goldfish Salvation" Riusuke Fukahori from ICN gallery on Vimeo.

RIUSUKE FUKAHORI /// GOLDFISH SALVATION

When struggling with artistic vision, Fukahori's pet goldfish became his inspiration and ever since his passion and lifelong theme. His unique style of painting uses acrylic on clear resin which is poured into containers, resulting in a three-dimensional appearance and lifelike vitality.

‘Kingyo Sukui’ normally means ‘Goldfish scooping’ in Japanese, but the artist uses a homonym Chinese letter to create an unique expression, which can be translated as 'Goldfish Salvation’. When distressed with his career as an artist Fukahori noticed the fish tank beside his bed which housed a goldfish he had for years. He looked down into the fish tank which he abandoned cleaning and was given a breathtaking shiver. In the dirty water the goldfish’s shiny red silhouette moved mysteriously and was extremely beautiful. Thinking to himself “I’m sure she will save me”, he took out his red paint and painted her figure, a moment later there was a large shoal of goldfish in front of him. This was the day he calls ‘Kingyo sukui’, the day he was saved by the goldfish.

“I will keep searching for the motivation for my activities as an artist and my identity through goldfish. While salvaged and suffered by goldfish, I will live with goldfish and stare at myself further.” - Riusuke Fukahori

Over the years the goldfish breeding business has reached an extreme, perfecting goldfish in a variety of colours and shapes, they are admired as beautiful objects like ‘living sculptures’. Fukahori’s brush strokes capturing the liveliness, delicacy and dynamics of the goldfish and his sculpture works create an illusion by using resin to captive the painted surfaces creating a truly ‘living sculpture’.

This video gives you a glimpse of his amazing painting process.

Artist Riusuke Fukahori's London debut exhibition "Goldfish Salvation" was held at ICN gallery from 1 December 2011 - 11 January 2012.


RIUSUKE FUKAHORI
BORN: 1973, Aichi, Japan.

1995 graduate of Aichi Prefectual University of Fine Arts and Music.
In 2000 he was inspired by a goldfish he owned for over 7 years and it has become the theme of his artworks ever since.


☁ RIUSUKE FUKAHORI @ ICN GALLERY

LEE GUK HYUN

LEE GUK HYUN
BORN : December 1983 in Seoul, Korea


Education:
2010 Attending Department of painting,Graduate school of Chung-Ang university
2009 B.F.A. Department of painting, College of Fine Arts,Chung-Ang university





Fetish, the Ways of Seduction


Chung-hwan, Ko - Art Critic -

Contemporary art involved many waves of shocks, and Manet's is a well-known scandal among them. In the painting, which clearly touches upon the concept of sex or the sexual perception, Olympia made the bourgeois male spectators feel uncomfortable with her unabashed gaze and seductive pose. The naked body had made the eyes which were used to seeing nudes disconcerted. The ribbon adorning Olympia's head(the pearl necklace in the picture) presents her as a sexual commodity rather than a person. The painting reflects the hypocritical nature and the moral duality of the society at the time.

Cindy Sherman, in her early photography works, re-enacted the scenes of movies with female character playing the leading role in them. Through series of works featuring herself in range of costumes, Sherman points out that the image of the female projected through media is a conjured one, one that has been modified to cater to the taste of the spectator. Her works later developed into grotesque images subverting the protected realm of female signs and signifiers. On the other hand, Harun Farocki's media work using the actual set of the magazine, is also interesting. A video in documentary form reveals that the images which turn the male audience on without exception has been orchestrated to the point of dictating everything single thing, including the position of the hair.

The nude and the naked, the look and the gaze, the issue between the onlooker and the power, the issue between sex and power, sex as commodity and the fetish, the tailored symbols of feminity disguised as something natural, and the ideology, especially the fetishism involved in capitalism, involved in the conjured up concepts, have been the subject of many artists, and concerns psychological, social, political, and economical fields. Guk-Hyun Lee also reveals the issues concerning sexual commodity and fetish through the female images in the work through direct and blatant portrayal.

Lee's previous work, along with the homosexual, portrays images of directed images of femininity emphasizing submissiveness and introvert character. After this process, Lee developed works that show images of woman as sexual commodity. Lee's work has been focused on the theme of sex from the beginning. This strong interest in theme of sex is also reflect on the theme of identity, and 'Package' is no exception. Package, which implies a wrapped bundle of products, can help one deduce that the artist's main interest in the female entity presented as sexual commodity. This theme might have come from the artist's personal interest, but more importantly, it seems more probably to have been stemmed from a reaction against the consumption of female images distributed by media. It is thus more seeming to see it as an intention to extend the image exploiting sex as a medium to the realm of political and social matters. The artist has recently further developed the work to , rendering a stronger sense of discourse. If one was to translate this synthesized word, 'ways of packaging' would seem appropriate. The commodification of femininity, or the images of the female, has become a blatant reality, and one can see that such has become an icon of the age speaking for the kind of technical and strategic being. Such reality is what the artist is trying to convey to the public.

The veil and the dolls in the later part of the work are also interesting. The dolls remind one of sex machines, and thus a kind of attitude towards fetish which regards the subject as a commodity rather than as a being. By partially obscuring witha veil, it points out to the duality of sex, the methods of seduction exploiting sexual fantasy, and above all, the ambiguous relativity of desire. The object and the fetish manifested in a form of doll, and sexual fantasy and seduction techniques surfacing on the veil all work together to accentuate female image as a sexual commodity.

In the artist's work,the female identity emerges as an image representing sex as commodity. As a fetish device, we can see the simplified background which draw the attention solely to the model. The background color has been set in pastel tone, emphasizing the soft feminine feel. The model comes in either looking straight at the potential spectator or twists the angle a little bit to show the feminine body and facial lines. The poses have been directed with eyes without focus, the slightly parted lips showing teeth with lipsticks smudged around, the layer of lace adorning the thin feminine garment, the neckline and the chest showing through hair, etc. Tantalizing seduction strategically accentuate the ambiguous relativity of the desire. (This may perhaps be related to voyeurism. Regardless to the kind of desire, this might be a suffocating scene of the battle between the desire to look and the desired to be beheld).

And props as supporting device appears at this point. To be a little exaggerating, the sunglasses which covers more than half of the face looks like a mask one might see at a costume party. These props has been employed to accentuate the sexual fetish.

Not to mention the masks, it is really clear that the sunglasses are artificially set props, as it is less likely in real setting for one to engage in acts of affection in such condition. Furthermore, the seductive pose of the model resting on the soft velvet matter just looks overly orchestrated. The scene itself is largely dramatic, moved away from the ordinary everyday life, and it is meant to re-enact a breathtaking scene in a drama. (Under the assumption that sexual events still throbs one's heart). Here, the signs are no longer confined to the realm of reality, but are rather abstract. It goes beyond the restraints of the reality and creates fantasy. The signifiers' pertaining meanings are not merely confined to the reality. The signified of the signifier is fantasy. In other words, the functional context of the sun-wear of blocking excess sunlight is irrelevant in the work. It is an instrument for sexual seduction.

The mask works as persona or the substitute subject. One hidebehind the substitute and consume the subject. The substitute(or the mask), like the sunglasses, belongs to the realm of fantasy and fiction. One can infinitely project one's desire onto the substitute, and one can even realize the desire of the entity behind the substitute. Hence it is possible for one to seduce the other.

Guk-hyun Lee suggest female entity as an image of sexual commodity. (It is more of an implicit reaction towards such tendency in the society, rather than a suggestion). And as a auxiliary device(also part of fetish) suggests sunglasses and party-wear mask, and these are all instruments of seduction. Incidentally they are all to do with the act of seeing. They are tools of seduction and one employed by the seduced. They help one achieve the objective of seduction more efficiently. The act of looking is deeply related to sexual incidence, and it is also to do with voyeurism. Sartre's definition regarding the subject supports the view that it has a lot to do with the struggle coming from the desire to control the other, and the tug of war between the onlooker and the beheld is profoundly involved in existential matter. To seduce or to be seduced?

In some ways, erotism is an event or an experience in which the subject becomes fetishized and depersonalized. Hence dolls or mannequins are the ultimate true subject of eroticism. Thus the recent work features female entity like pretty dolls, and actual equating of the female with the dolls seem fit.
(I want to love you like a doll. Or perhaps like a bird in a cage?)




☁ LEE GUK HYUN 

MATTHEW TAMMARO

MATTHEW TAMMARO currently lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
He received his BFA in Photography from Ryerson University,
and has exhibited and been published internationally.


☁ MATTHEW TAMMARO
☁ MATTHEW TAMMARO'S BLOG

MR JOE BLACK

MR JOE BLACK /// MADE IN CHINA


Produced using more than 5500 toy soldiers. The portrait is of a Chinese soldier boy taken by photographer Robert Capa. The image was used on the front cover of LIFE magazine, January 1938 to cover the Sino Japanese War. The toy soldiers are manufactured in China, hence the title “Made in China”.


☁ MR JOE BLACK

SEBASTIAAN BREMER

SEBASTIAAN BREMER
Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1970.
Lives and works in New York.

☁ SEBASTIAAN BREMER

ZANDER OLSEN

ZANDER OLSEN /// TREE LINE

‘This is an ongoing series of constructed photographs rooted in the forest. These works, carried out in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales,involve site specific interventions in the landscape, ‘wrapping’ trees with white material to construct a visual relationship between tree, not-tree and the line of horizon according to the camera’s viewpoint.’


☁ ZANDER OLSEN

TAMAS DEZSO

TAMAS DEZSO /// HERE, ANYWHERE

The map of Hungary is speckled with capsules of time. During the political transformation twenty years ago, as the country experienced change, some places were simply forgotten… Streets, blocks of flats, vacant sites and whole districts became little self-defined enclosures, in which today a certain out-dated, awkward, longed-to-be-forgotten Eastern European feeling still lingers. These places seem to be at one with other parts of the city, but their co-existence in time is only apparent; Each place fades in accordance with its own specific chronology, determined by its past. That what remains is then silently reconquered by nature, or enveloped by the lifestyles of the generations of tomorrow. Of the original inhabitants, who’ve never fully integrated with society, soon only traces will remain, until they, too, will inevitably disappear over the course of time.

I do not observe these mini-universes in the hope of recording them in their entirety, but I rather try to capture the essence of these worlds by elevating certain chosen details of this disappearing existence. The series, begun in 2009, examines the typically transitional period and symbolic locations of post-communist space which, due to disinterest or thoughtlessness, is slowly vanishing, and fading into images. But for the time being, they are still around. Here.

Here, anywhere.


TAMAS DEZSO is a documentary fine art photographer working on long-term projects focusing on the margins of society in Hungary, Romania and in other parts of Eastern Europe. His photographs have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME, GEO, Le Monde Magazine, Ojo de Pez, Polka Magazine and many others.


☁ TAMAS DEZSO
☁ TAMAS DEZSO @ BURN

MARC CINQ-MARS

MARC CINQ-MARS
With an extensive artistic and cultural background and more than 15 years of design experience, Marc is an inspired and inspiring designer, passionate about the creation of strategies, experiences and products. Prior to joining EMC, Mozy and Bubl, Marc worked as art director in the ad agency world specializing in web and interactive advertising, identity branding, print and packaging as well as collaborating on award-winning interior design projects.

Marc joins EMC and Mozy in 2008. While serving as lead creative, interaction and user experience designer he strove to produce a culture founded on the end user & creativity while focusing on the collaborative efforts of design and development across teams in India the US and Canada. In 2010 Marc joins Bubl where he applies all of his talent and experience as lead creative & interaction designer.

Marc is also a respected contemporary artist. Studied at the Saydi-Bronfman school of fine arts under Roslyn Swartzman. 2006 SODAC grant recipient. Participated in many solo & collective exhibitions such as the New York Bridge Art Fair and considers art & design as core to many interests and endeavours.

Born in Ottawa in 1973, Lives and works in Montréal, Québec, Canada


☁ MARC CINQ-MARS
☁ MARC CINQ-MARS'S GREAT VISUAL BLOG, FOREVER UNTIL THE END

KATE MCCGWIRE

KATE MCCGWIRE /// STATEMENT
Kate MccGwire's practice probes the beauty inherent in duality, exploring the play of opposites - at an aesthetic, intellectual and visceral level - that characterises the way we conceive the world. She does this by appealing to our essential duality as human beings, to our senses and our reason, and by drawing on materials capable of embodying a dichotomous way of seeing, feeling and thinking. The finished work has a consistent 'otherness' to it that places it beyond our experience of the world, poised on a threshold between the parameters that define everyday reality.



KATE MCCGWIRE
Lives and works in London

Education

2004
MA Sculpture, Royal College of Art
Awarded Distinction for 'Hair's-Breadth'
Dissertation on the use of hair in contemporary art practice
Short-listed for Deutsche Bank Pyramid Award

2001
BA Fine Art, 1st-class honours
University College for the Creative Arts, Farnham


☁ KATE MCCGWIRE