Le Zèbre bleu

RIUSUKE FUKAHORI

2012-01-25T11:33:00.000-05:00

"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

2012-01-25T11:12:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-18T08:35:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-16T17:47:00.002-05:00

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

2012-01-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

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

☁ SEBASTIAAN BREMER

ZANDER OLSEN

2012-01-11T11:47:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-05T22:38:00.004-05:00

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

2012-01-05T22:18:00.001-05:00

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

2012-01-05T21:24:00.000-05:00

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

CLAIRE MORGAN

2011-12-21T10:20:00.000-05:00

Claire Morgan: About Time from Electric Egg on Vimeo.

New works by CLAIRE MORGAN
Shown up here is HERE IS THE END OF ALL THINGS and PEDESTAL.

CLAIRE MORGAN /// STATEMENT

"My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures. I feel as if they are somewhere between movement and stillness, and thus in possession of a certain energy.

Animals, birds and insects have been present in my recent sculptures, and I use suspense to create something akin to freeze frames. In some works, animals might appear to rest, fly or fall through other seemingly solid suspended forms. In other works, insects appear to fly in static formations. The evidence of gravity - or lack of it - inherent in these scenarios is what brings them to life, or death.

I feel a close connection with the natural world which I hope is evident in my work, but our clumsy, often destructive relationship with nature, and the 'artificial' world we have contrived for ourselves are of equal significance. Ultimately I find myself focussing on areas where the boundaries cannot be clearly defined.

The titles of the works are very important, and often make reference to historical or contemporary popular culture, words being appropriated from the titles of films or books, or phrases being manipulated through combination with the artwork. These connections often add a comedic element to the works, a sense of irony or bluntness that keeps them firmly rooted in my experience of the world that we humans inhabit. Though the phrases have a specific history, the jarring between the title and the form can bring a desirable ambiguity through intentionally creating confusion.

The processes involved in the work are laborious and there are thousands of individual elements involved, but clarity of form is of high importance. I do not wish the animals to provide a narrative, but rather to introduce an element of movement, or energy, or some sort of reality; animating or interacting with the larger architectural forms.

Drawing is important, and allows me to explore a different side of each idea. The processes involved in my blood drawings bring a growing degree of understanding of material and form. "

Claire Morgan was born in Belfast in 1980. She currently lives and works in London.
She graduated in 2003 with a first class degree in Sculpture and has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions in the UK and Europe, and museum shows in US and Australia.

☁ CLAIRE MORGAN
☁ CLAIRE MORGAN PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE

ALEXANDER KORZER-ROBINSON

2011-12-21T09:47:00.000-05:00

ALEXANDER KORZER-ROBINSON /// STATEMENT

Through my work in the tradition of collage I am pursuing the very personal obsession of creating narrative scenarios in small format. Using antiquarian books, makes the work at the same time an exploration and a deconstruction of nostalgia.

We create our own past from fragments of reality in a process that combines the willful aspects of remembering and forgetting with the coincidental and unconscious.

On a general level, I aim to illustrate this process that forms our inner landscape.

By using pre-existing media as a starting point, certain boundaries are set by the material, which I aim to transform through my process. Thus, an encyclopedia can become a window into an alternate world, much like lived reality becomes its alternate in remembered experience. These books, having been stripped of their utilitarian value by the passage of time, regain new purpose. They are no longer tools to learn about the world, but rather a means to gain insight about oneself.

I make book sculptures / cut books by working through a book, page by page, cutting around some of the illustrations while removing others. The images seen in the finished work, are left standing in their original place.

I am an artist from Berlin now living in Bristol. Drawing from a background in psychology, my art practice focuses on the notion of the “inner landscape”. Using generally discarded materials, I make objects as an invitation to the viewer to engage her/his own inner life in order to assign meaning to the artwork.The cut book art has been made by working through the books, page by page, cutting around some of the illustrations while removing others. The images seen in the finished work, are left standing in the place where they would appear in the complete book. As a final step the book is sealed around the cut, and can no longer be opened.As we remember the books from our own past, certain fragments remain with us while others fade away over time – phrases and passages, mental images we created, the way the stories made us feel and the thoughts they inspired. In our memory we create a new narrative out of those fragments, sometimes moving far away from the original content. This is, in fact, the same way we remember our life – an ever changing narrative formed out of fragments. This mostly subconscious process of value judgements and coincidence is what interests me as an artist and as a psychologist.

☁ ALEXANDER KORZER-ROBINSON

FRIEKE JANSSENS

2011-12-16T08:41:00.000-05:00

FRIEKE JANSSENS /// SMOKING KIDS

"A YouTube video of a chainsmoking Indonesian toddler inspired me to create this series, “Smoking Kids”. The video highlighted the cultural differences between the east and west, and questioned notions of smoking being a mainly adult activity. Adult smokers are the societal norm, so I wanted to isolate the viewer’s focus upon the issue of smoking itself. I felt that children smoking would have a surreal impact upon the viewer and compel them to truly see the acts of smoking rather than making assumptions about the person doing the act. Coincidentally around the time of the “Smoking Kids” gallery opening, a law was passed, and smoking has been banned from Belgian bars. There was an outcry from the public about government intervention, feelings that freedom was being oppressed, and that adults were being treated like children. With health reasons driving many cities to ban smoking, the culture around smoking has a retro feel, like the time period of “Mad Men,” when smoking on a plane or in a restaurant was not unusual. The aesthetics of smoke and the particular way smokers gesticulate with their hands and posture cannot be denied, but among the different tribes of “Smoking Kids,” – Glamour, Jazz, and The Marginal – there is a nod to less attractive aspects, on the line between the beauty and ugliness of smoking. To assure you of the safety of the children, there were no real cigarettes on set. Instead, chalk and sticks of cheese were the prop stand ins, while candles and incense provided the wisps of smoke."

☁ FRIEKE JANSSENS
☁ FOUND HERE

MARTA PENTER

2011-12-16T08:25:00.001-05:00

OIL AND WATERCOLOR

MARTA PENTER was born in Porto Alegre, RS, in 1957. Since an early age she has been connected to the world of arts, having attended to several art schools and arts centers. She has currently dedicated herself to watercolor and oil on canvas. She has a contemporary realistic language which explores the domains of collective unconscious through images of personal antique objects and human figure through a time-space relationship. Such Icons, which derive from the strong influence of her background as a psychologist, acquire empowerment and expression through her works. Her usually large paintings feature the highlighting of light and shadow effects, thus creating a unique intimate atmosphere. In her last series she has been shedding a new light to man and his world, rescuing the feeling of intimacy which has been lost in a globalized and immediate world.

☁ MARTA PENTER

MATT JOHNSON

2011-12-15T13:37:00.000-05:00

MATT JOHNSON /// STAR IN A JAR

☁ MATT JOHNSON

SIMRYN GILL

2011-12-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

SIMRYN GILL’s work questions the coherence of systems that humans create to ‘know’ the world around them. Working with a myriad of materials, including books, plant materials, photographs and other found objects, she encourages the viewer to reject a rigid classification of their surroundings in favour of arrangements which offer uncertainty, disturbance and new possibilities.

For Untitled, SIMRYN GILL used books as a raw material, choosing words such as ‘because’, ‘vessel’, ‘always’, ‘jealous’, and ‘lull’, and removing them from the books to investigate if, and how, words lose or take on meaning when taken away from their intended structures and contexts. She developed and expanded the selection of words throughout the process of reading and searching each book. A delicate lattice-work is left of the pages from which the words have been hand-torn by Gill and three assistants. By removing words from books, the artist opens up new readings, evoking the complexities of world histories through the ways that the English language has filtered into different places. The word ‘vessel’, for example, immediately calls to mind a ship in British usage whereas in India it describes domestic food containers. By giving individual words a physical and sensual presence, she draws us to their sounds, patterns and visual symmetries.

☁ SIMRYN GILL @ TATE MODERN

HONZA ZAMOJSKI

2011-12-06T08:54:00.001-05:00

HONZA ZAMOJSKI /// UNTITLED

☁ HONZA ZAMOJSKI

ELLIE DAVIES

2011-12-05T14:25:00.001-05:00

ELLIE DAVIES /// COME WITH ME

☁ ELLIE DAVIES

DIANA SHEARWOOD

2011-12-05T14:13:00.001-05:00

DIANA SHEARWOOD /// BEHIND THE MALL

Diana Shearwood’s series entitled Behind the Mall is an exploration of the visual propaganda of mobile food advertising. Its central theme is the industrialization of our food and the dulling of our perception to a point where we are removed from any direct knowledge of our food production. It is also intended to reveal both the humour and irony in our everyday landscape that are not always immediately evident.

☁ DIANA SHEARWOOD

STEFAN NITOSLAWSKI

2011-12-05T10:35:00.001-05:00

STEFAN NITOSLAWSKI /// META-MORPHOSIS

I always wanted to break out of my body and shape-shift into another form. It is a means of escape or liberation from the limits of the persona. Although such morphing is imagined, my camera can make it concrete.

Using precise choreography and lighting I record a transformation on one frame without further manipulation. Like a shot in cinema, the image is constructed over time with rehearsed movement. The results yield raw states of human emotion.

STEFAN NITOSLAWSKI /// STATEMENT

I find it difficult to clearly define the physical shape of my body. Sometimes I feel tall, sometimes small, sometimes beautiful or ugly, sometimes powerful, joyful or angry. These specific emotions affect my physical perception of myself. They take an actual shape: walking in a good mood I can feel as oddly huge as an eight foot giant, sometimes when feeling shy short people seem taller than me, joyous my face feels big and round or my face can assume bizarre contortions when irritated. I feel the physicality of these emotions as concrete things. I’m a shape-shifter; emotions morph my body sense into odd forms.

My photographic images reflect this awareness; I seek to break the body out of its purely physical human form. I record the ephemeral perception of the internal landscape. Like a snake shedding its skin I use the medium of photography to wiggle the model from their shell to draw out their inner self.

Photography can be brutally selective in its capture of reality. A click of the shutter freezes a moment in time. My work goes in the opposite direction. Instead of capturing a fraction of an event I build the photographic image over time. This approach is more akin to filmmaking than photography. In a movie one choreographs actors and camera to support an emotive theme. In the same way I will develop movement but to record it onto a single frame. I extended the shutter’s time to allow for a person’s movements to sculpt an unusual form.

Collaborating with a model I develop a sequence of gestures to capture the transformation. I start with an idea for a figure or for an emotion then elaborate the sequence to express that original design. Using precise choreography, specific placing and type of light and particular camera settings I trace an image in one shot. There is no manipulation of the images afterwards. Only the work on set spawns the metamorphosis.

Through bodily movement we express our inner self. Each person walks differently as their step reveals their personality. The same is true for a more complex sequence. This insight resonates within my images as each model generates images of a particular character. Some models move to create figures that tend to be more bold, some fearful, others angelic, some androgynous or animalistic. Each person morphs into a form that is unusually strange yet reflects elements of their inner landscape.

**Images are courtesy of the artist**

STEFAN NITOSLAWSKI is now on view until January 8 2012 @ the Galerie Angers in old Montreal.

☁ STEFAN NITOSLAWSKI

DAVID M WINSHIP

2011-12-05T10:13:00.000-05:00

DAVID M WINSHIP /// POLAR SEA
Photo essay after Caspar David Friedrich's The Polar Sea painting (1823-24) (First shown up here)

'the wreck of the hope' or 'sea of ice'

☁ DAVID M WINSHIP
☁ DAVID M WINSHIP'S BLOG : MINIMAL EXPOSITION

ALFREDO DE STEFANO

2011-11-23T10:19:00.001-05:00

ALFREDO DE STEFANO was born in Monclova, Coahuila, a city of the northeastern Mexican desert.

He's considered one of Mexico's most important contemporary photographers. He has a passion for the landscape specially the desert, an environment to which he has traveled countless times, performing art interventions in it and photographing it.

His work has been featured in over eighty group and solo shows in various cities around the world. His photos have also appeared in numerous books and magazines.

☁ ALFREDO DE STEFANO

SIMON CASSON

2011-11-23T09:46:00.001-05:00

SIMON CASSON’s paintings have been rapturously received: he has gone on to exhibit with great success across North America and Europe. Last year he had solo exhibitions in the USA and at the largest contemporary art space in Canada.

In Casson’s paintings we are presented with the Western tradition of figure painting reinterpreted for a contemporary audience. The distinctive layering of the paint application is also a layering of attitudes, painstaking and flawless quotations of high renaissance and baroque paintings are threatened with obliteration by recklessly exhibitionist mark making. There is a stirring mixture of formality and the casual: the exactitude with which he draws his figures or paints a fruit is balanced by the informal gesture of dragging his fingers though he paint to interfere (or literally break up) the surface. (source)

☁ SIMON CASSON
☁ SIMON CASSON @ GDB

ALESSANDRO PAGANI

2011-11-22T13:43:00.001-05:00

ALESSANDRO PAGANI (1973) was born in Milan, where he actually lives. Graduated in Applied Art and Scenography, he collaborated with the sculptor and restorer Lucio Viola Boros. He’s a teacher of Art Education and Art History. (source)

☁ ALESSANDRO PAGANI
☁ ALESSANDRO PAGANI @ FOREVER UNTIL THE END

ELAINE DUIGENAN

2011-11-22T13:20:00.001-05:00

"We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are"
Morrie Camhi

ELAINE DUIGENAN /// THE DREADFUL AND THE DIVINE

There is something fascinating about the tools which surgeons wield, they can invoke powerful associations: they inspire fear and awe, carry connotations of butchery as well as healing, and are synonymous with intricacy and skill – in manufacture as well as in use. They are the means to open the body and put it back together – instruments of a power simultaneously dreadful and divine.

Using photography, Artist in Residence Elaine Duigenan has explored instruments' contradictory status as the therapeutic extension of the surgeon's hands and as objects designed to destroy living tissue. Drawing on the rich historical collections of the Hunterian Museum and bringing together the expertise of surgeons, historians and instrument manufacturers, her work reanimates the instrument as a thing of beauty and dread.

☁ ELAINE DUIGENAN

ERNST HAAS

2011-11-21T14:19:00.001-05:00

ERNST HAAS
Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921, Vienna – September 12, 1986, New York) was an Austrian artist and influential photographer noted for his innovations in color photography, experiments in abstract light and form, and as a member of the Magnum Photos agency.

Haas attended medical school in Austria, but, in 1947, left to become a staff photographer for the magazine Heute. His photo essay for the magazine on prisoners of war coming home to Vienna won him acclaim and an offer to join Magnum Photos from Robert Capa. Haas and Werner Bischof were the first photographers invited to join Magnum by the founders Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and Bill Vandivert.

Haas moved to New York City and in 1953 produced a 24-page, color photo essay on the city for Life, which then commissioned similar photo spreads on Paris and Venice. By 1958 he was considered one of the top ten photographers in world by Popular Photography magazine. In 1962, the Museum of Modern Art mounted a one-man show of Haas' color photos. Haas' first photo book, Elements, was published the next year.

Some of Haas' most famous pictures were deliberately out-of-focus and blurred, creating strong visual effects. He used the dye transfer process to make many of his original prints, yielding richly saturated colors.

In 1964, film director John Huston hired Haas to direct the creation sequence for Huston's 1964 film, The Bible. Haas continued working on the theme, producing the photo book, The Creation in 1971. Other photography books by Haas included In America in 1975, a tribute to his adopted country for its bicentennial year; Deutschland in 1977; and Himalayan Pilgrimage in 1978. Other films that Haas worked on included The Misfits in 1961, Hello, Dolly! in 1969, Little Big Man in 1970, and Heaven's Gate in 1980. Haas also photographed a number of advertising campaigns for Marlboro cigarettes.
In 1986, Haas received the Hasselblad Award for his photography. Haas died of a stroke in New York City.

While Haas had been working for some time before his death on a book with 'ideas for chapters and picture layouts', it fell to his son and daugher and former colleagues to bring a book to realisation. In 1989 'A Colour Retrospective 1952-1986' was published by Thames and Hudson. In it 'Selected Writings of Ernst Haas' gives broad and profound insight into his approach to and philosophy of photography;

'Photography is a bridge between science and art.It brings to Science what it needs most, the artistic sense, and to art the proof that nothing can be imagined which cannot be matched in the counterpoints of nature'. (SOURCE WIKIPEDIA)

☁ ERNST HAAS
☁ ERNST HAAS @ GETTY IMAGES

RICARDO CELMA

2011-11-21T14:07:00.001-05:00

OIL ON CANVAS BY RICARDO CELMA

☁ RICARDO CELMA

KOREHIKO HINO

2011-11-11T14:32:00.001-05:00

KOREHIKO HINO
BORN in 1976, Ishikawa, Japan.

EDUCATION
1999 Graduated from University of Tsukuba, Major in Painting
2001 Completed the Master Course in Painting at University of Tsukuba

☁ KOREHIKO HINO

ANDREW SALGADO

2011-11-10T14:12:00.000-05:00

I found these paintings today. I read an article last week in neuroscience stating that memory was reconstructive, meaning that "memories are organized within the historical and cultural frameworks of the individual, and the process of remembering involves the retrieval of information which has been unknowingly altered in order that it is compatible with pre-existing knowledge." (read the article here).
I like this kind of painting because it, too is reconstructive. It feels like that artist paints from memory and that the patch of color here and the patch of color there actually builds up the face, just like memory does. Also makes me think of Aaron Smith's works and also of Jérôme Lagarrigue's.

ANDREW SALGADO was born in 1982 in Canada. He holds an MFA from London’s Chelsea College of Art (2009) and a BFA from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (2005).
He has exhibited in London, Berlin, Oslo, Sydney, Vancouver, Toronto, Merida (Venezuela), Niamey (Niger), Chiang Mai (Thailand), and Busan (Korea, forthcoming 2012).

☁ ANDREW SALGADO

ERIC SLAYTON

2011-11-08T10:25:00.000-05:00

ERIC SLAYTON /// ARTIST STATEMENT

Everyday, I watch the world around me moving faster and faster. In its chaotic wake, there are places, things and ideas that are inevitably left behind, forgotten. For me it is these very subjects, the flotsam of the changing tides, that merit special attention. I seek out that which has been left behind, and there I find my inspiration.

The items that I concentrate on have slipped out of mainstream culture. I discover them in pockets and on back roads, sometimes only finding the evidence of their passing. I focus on the essence of these materials, the ways in which they describe political or cultural ideas - ideas that cannot be touched, seen or smelled. The objects that I single out in my photographs express, by form or by context, these very intangibles.

All of my visual explorations have the same fundamental components: content, composition, and lighting. The combination of technical and creative layers set the stage for my work's underlying premise: the importance of recognizing the essential beauty found in the mystery of life and the very important role it plays for a healthy and balanced existence. In art as in nature, technical and aesthetic considerations are of equal value, inextricably intertwined.

My perspective has been shaped by my life's path. Beginning with my formal education in the natural sciences and continuing through my work with wild animals and plants, the natural world nurtured me with an ever-flowing stream of inspiration. Scientific study deals with reality on a very analytical level. My concentration on ecology and environmental studies has given me a keen appreciation of the systems that support life.

Just as significant has been a move to rural Vermont. This alone has provided me the inspirational space to explore my creative pursuits and continue to refine my personal vision.

EDUCATION
Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (2000)
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (1983 - 1987)
Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY (1983 - 1987)
Parsons School of Design, NY and Paris (1984 - 1986)

☁ ERIC SLAYTON
☁ ERIC SLAYTON @ METER

JOHN GRANT

2011-11-04T13:34:00.000-04:00

A beautiful new series of pictures by artist JOHN GRANT : SOLACE: Adrift with Flowers"

☁ JOHN GRANT
☁ JOHN GRANT PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE

JEAN-DANIEL ROHRER

2011-11-04T08:49:00.001-04:00

JEAN-DANIEL ROHRER /// EMPREINTES

From November 3 until December 3, 2011 JEAN-DANIEL ROHRER will be on view @ ESPACE 40 gallery, (Quartier Dix 30) 7200 Boul. du Quartier, suite 40, Brossard (Quebec).

The artist will be present this Friday, November 4 from 5 to 9 and Saturday, November 5 and Sunday, November 6 from 11am to 5pm.

☁ JEAN-DANIEL ROHRER
☁ JEAN-DANIEL ROHRER PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE

LANGDON GRAVES

2011-11-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

LANGDON GRAVES
is a girl from Virginia
who lives in Brooklyn.

Education
Parsons the New School for Design, MFA, 2007
Virginia Commonwealth University, BFA, 2000

☁ LANGDON GRAVES
☁ LANGDON GRAVES @ THE JEALOUS CURATOR

VICTORIA REICHELT

2011-11-01T14:22:00.000-04:00

OIL ON LINEN

VICTORIA REICHELT studied Fine Art at the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 2005 having completed her Doctor of Visual Arts. She has been short-listed for a number of major art prizes including the Sulman Art Prize, Fletcher Jones Art Prize, RBS Emerging Artist Award and the Metro Art Award. Recently she has been awarded an Australia Council New Work Grant, the Linden Innovators Award and the people’s choice prizes in both the RBS Emerging Artist Award and the Metro Art Award. Her work has been included in the exhibitions, ‘Covered’ at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, the ‘Red Exhibition’ at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation and ‘Contemporary Australia: Optimism’ at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. She has most recently been appointed to the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

☁ VICTORIA REICHELT
☁ VICTORIA REICHELT @ THE JEALOUS CURATOR

JEAN FAUCHEUR

2011-10-28T21:23:00.000-04:00

Déjeuner sur l'herbe no. 1 -2 and 3.
Deconstructed photographs.

JEAN FAUCHEUR
Born in Paris, in 1956. Lives and works in Paris.

☁ JEAN FAUCHEUR
☁ JEAN FAUCHEUR @ ADDICT GALERIE

MIKE WEBER

2011-10-26T09:57:00.000-04:00

MIKE WEBER /// BREATHING LIFE INTO VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS
Los Angeles based artist. Born in St-Louis, Missouri in 1975.

☁ MIKE WEBER

SEBASTIAN COPELAND

2011-10-26T08:56:00.000-04:00

Wow. All the pictures on the site are magnificent. I could not decide which one to post so I strongly suggest you go and check them all out on his website. And his website is great not only for the pictures, but because you can read and learn about all his expeditions and missions. Very, very interesting man and work.

SEBASTIAN COPELAND

As an award winning photographer, extreme athlete, author, lecturer and environmental activist, Sebastian Copeland’s work has been featured on CNN’s Larry King, ABC, ESPN, NPR, and Current TV and in National Geographic, Vanity Fair, USA Today, Sierra Club, House & Garden, Publisher’s Weekly, W Magazine, Elle, People Magazine.

His fine quality prints have appeared at the United Nations (Solo Show, 2007), the Council on Foreign Relations, Peabody Essex Museum and the Field Museum (Chicago) among others. These works can also be found in private collections in both the United States and Europe and several are now part of the permanent archive of The Natural World Museum in San Francisco.

A Summa Cum Laude graduate of UCLA Film School (’87) and the son of highly successful family of artists (his father is classical conductor Jean-Claude Casadesus, Director of the Lille National Philharmonic Orchestra), Sebastian—a British/French national relocated to NY in 1980—began his career directing music videos followed by commercials. His still work has appeared in hundreds of publications worldwide including GQ, Marie Claire, The Face, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, Elle Magazine, Interview magazine, and National Geographic. The winner of the prestigious International Photography Awards’ 2007 Professional Photographer of the Year for his first book, Sebastian’s prints from “Antarctica: The Global Warning” were also selected to tour as part of the 2006 and 2007 IPA ‘Best of Show’ collection. In 2008, Sebastian released a second book titled Antarctica: A Call To Action.

His early photography ranged from fashion and advertising to album covers and celebrities.

A personal commitment to fight for the protection of the environment has led to a seat on the Board of Directors of Global Green (the US arm of President Gorbachev’s Green Cross International) and a relentless pursuit of a sustainable future.

Sebastian uses photography as a medium for activism. “Helping people fall in love with their world,” he says,”is a catalyst to wanting to save it”. An extreme adventure expert, Sebastian has led various expeditions to the polar regions. Sebastian spent six weeks in 2006 and in 2007 aboard a scientific research icebreaker in the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2008 Sebastian and partner Luc Hardy led a team of nine children from international nationalities for a month in the northernmost Canadian Arctic as the Young Ambassadors of the Arctic. In March 2009, Sebastian led a mission to the geographical North Pole. He and partner Keith Heger walked seven hundred kilometers to commemorate the centennial of Admiral Peary’s reach in 1909. Sebastian filmed the mission and assembled it into the documentary Into The Cold: A Journey Of The Soul. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and went on to win multiple awards. In May 2010, Sebastian and partner Eric McNair-Landry left from southern Greenland to cross the 2300 kilometers of its ice sheet using skis and kites. They reached the northern tip 41 days later. They hold a new world record for longest distance traveled on kites and skis over one twenty hour period by covering 595 kilometers.

In October 2011, Sebastian and partner Eric McNair-Landry will again attempt a new world record with a three months, unsupported, 4800 kilometer transcontinental crossing of Antarctica in celebration of the South Pole centennial.

As an international speaker on climate crisis for over a decade, Sebastian has been featured on television and radio (Larry King Live, NPR, Air America) and has given keynote addresses to audiences at the United Nations, the World Affairs Council, the General Assembly on Climate in New Orleans, the DLD in Munich Germany, the George Eastman House, Google Headquarters and to Apple’s Senior Design Team amongst others.

In 2008, Sebastian was named German GQ’s Man of the Year for environmental leadership. In 2009, he received the Founder’s Award from Global Green USA, and in 2010 the Gala Award for his environmental stewardship. Sebastian currently lives in Los Angeles and drives a hybrid.

☁ SEBASTIAN COPELAND

BRADEN SUMMERS

2011-10-26T08:31:00.001-04:00

BRADEN SUMMERS, classically trained in drawing and painting, uses his fine art sensibilities to compose photographs with elements and scenes that visually tell a story. In his world, photography is about creating images rather than capturing a moment in time. Throughout the process, he strives to inject inspiration into his narrative style.

☁ BRADEN SUMMERS

JEREMY GEDDES

2011-10-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

oil on wood.

JEREMY GEDDES
Painter from Australia. He has been painting full time for 7 years and he used to work in video game development.

☁ JEREMY GEDDES
☁ JEREMY GEDDES'S BLOG

ROBIN UTRECHT

2011-10-20T08:24:00.000-04:00

ROBIN UTRECHT /// HIMBA TRIBE

These pictures are made off the Himba Tribe in Namibia in January 2011 in the North part of Namibia. They are one of the two last original tribes in Namibia.
The woman never wash but they cover their bodies with red clay.The men are hunters.

☁ ROBIN UTRECHT
☁ ROBIN UTRECHT

DOMINIQUE FORTIN

2011-10-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

DOMINIQUE FORTIN
Born in 1974 in Montréal. Dominique Fortin has been devoting her time to painting and Jewlery making.

She is on view @ the Galerie Saint-Dizier in Old Montreal until November 20, 2011.

☁ DOMINIQUE FORTIN
☁ DOMINIQUE FORTIN @ SAINT-DIZIER

MARCO VAN MIDDELKOOP

2011-10-17T23:02:00.000-04:00

MARCO VAN MIDDELKOOP /// COLORS OF WATER

Water has no color of its own, color in water always refers to something extra: sky or foliage reflected, water bedding shining through, algae and other microlife, metals or minerals brought in from the soil or otherwise - sources that are either natural or the result of industrial pollution, sometimes harmless or sometimes disastrous; and ironically the worst kinds of ecological disaster create the most striking colors of water, delighting the eye until they turn bleak or black when the spectator realizes what causes this luring beauty and at what price.

For me the lovely little orange streams in Owens Lake turned pitchblack when I learned how this lake had fallen dry after in the early 20th century the Los Angeles Aquaduct had been built, turning it into a salt bed and mineral mining area from which alkali storms plague the surrounding regions, causing various illnesses. The dazzling cyanoblue of a large basin in Baha California (Mexico) paled when I found out it was brought about by waste from huge power plants providing electricity to tens of thousands of households. The intense and ecstatic green of an Arizona pond washed into grim greyness when I realized poisonous mine tailings pigmented the water.

I felt this cruel beauty might not only speak to me but also to others, and might arouse an interest in what had brought it about. So I decided to document these colors of water as signals of ecological impact of mining, water supply, farming, irrigation, salt industry and power plants. Next to Owens Dry Lake, the Cerro Prieto power plants areas and Arizona mining areas, I portrayed Salton Sea, the San Francisco Salt Ponds and Searles Lake (Trona) - all are the result of human interventions in the landscape and all are polluted areas though not all equally disastrously. A few areas have entered the first phase of restoration. For most areas, however, this still is a faraway future.

☁ MARCO VAN MIDDELKOOP
☁ MARCO VAN MIDDELKOOP @ MINIMAL EXPOSITION

MARTIN STRANKA

2011-10-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

MARTIN STRANKA was born in Most on Friday the thirteenth in April 1984 in Czech Republic, graduated high school in Litomerice, where he lived more than 20 years and then he finished the university in Prague. He was involved into photography since 2007, but he never studied it and he has been always self-taught himself. He perceives photography as an unique space located in a balance and serenity. His work exists in that narrow space of few seconds between dreaming and awaking.

During the last two years Martin gathered over thirty international photography awards. There is a list some of them, these are really valuable like: Emerging Talent Award in Nikon Photo Contest International 2010-2011 with over than 60.000 entries, Finalist of Sony World Photography Awards 2010 with over than 43.000 entries; 1.st place in International Photo Award 2010, Directors Choice of Center International Awards with over than 6.000 entries; Finalist of Photographer Of The Year 2010, over 114.000 entries; 3.rd place in Digital Photographer of the Year Awards with over 300.000 entries, Artist of the week at The Saatchi Gallery.

He has created book covers for the biggest New York publishers like Harper Collins Publishers or Sterling Publishing. Also he has co-operated with other book publishers, music publishers or artists in person around the world.

His solo and group exhibitions were possible to see from South and North America, through Europe up to Asia. He loves the smell of autumn and sparkling grains of dust floating in the sunset.

☁ MARTIN STRANKA

JHINA ALVARADO

2011-10-17T22:32:00.001-04:00

JHINA ALVARADO /// FORGOTTEN MEMORIES
oil on wood panels.

☁ JHINA ALVARADO

EDWARD BURTYNSKY

2011-10-11T08:58:00.001-04:00

Pictures from the OIL series.

EDWARD BURTYNSKY /// STATEMENT

Exploring the Residual Landscape

"Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

BIOGRAPHY

Edward Burtynsky is known as one of Canada's most respected photographers. His remarkable photographic depictions of global industrial landscapes are included in the collections of over fifty major museums around the world, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.

Born in 1955 of Ukrainian heritage at St. Catharines, Ontario, Burtynsky is a graduate of Ryerson University (Bachelor of Applied Arts in Photography) and studied Graphic Art at Niagara College in Welland. He links his early exposure to the sites and images of the General Motors plant in his hometown to the development of his photographic work. His imagery explores the intricate link between industry and nature, combining the raw elements of mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping, oil production and recycling into eloquent, highly expressive visions that find beauty and humanity in the most unlikely of places. In 1985, Burtynsky also founded Toronto Image Works, a darkroom rental facility, custom photo laboratory, digital imaging and new media computer-training centre catering to all levels of Toronto's art community. Mr. Burtynsky also sits on the board of directors for: Toronto’s international photography festival, Contact and The Ryerson Gallery and Research Center.

EDWARD BURTYNSKY's photographs are on view @ the McCord Museum in Montreal from October 6 2011 to Janurary 8 2012. See the link below.

☁ EDWARD BURTYNSKY
☁ EDWARD BURTYNSKY'S DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE
☁ EDWARD BURTYNSKY @ THE MCCORD MUSEUM
☁ EDWARD BURTYNSKY @ RATSDEVILLE

SERGIO ALBIAC

2011-10-06T10:52:00.001-04:00

THE QUEEN

LES DEMOISELLES D'AVIGNON

MARILYN MONROE

VAN GOGH

LAS MENINAS

MONA LISA

CONTENT IS QUEEN

Content is Queen from Sergio Albiac on Vimeo.

SERGIO ALBIAC /// GENERATIVE VIDEO PAINTINGS

On a technical level, this piece (CONTENT IS QUEEN) is a result of my research in breaking the limitations of the static image in a contemporary revision of the tradition of painting. The portraits are created using an innovative generative technique that I have developed called “generative video painting”. It differs from previous attempts of video collage (like the techniques developed by David Hockney, mixing simultaneous points of view of an action) or video mosaic (where still images are represented by whole videos acting as pixels when properly reduced in size). My technique uses regions of video content to effectively represent or “paint” heterogeneous regions of the image. Both the partial content of the videos and the whole image are fully visible at the same time, widening the possibilities to deliver meaning in a contemporary aesthetic language.

☁ SERGIO ALBIAC
☁ SERGIO ALBIAC'S FLICKR

JOSH KEYES

2011-10-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

(ACRYLIC ON PANEL)

JOSH KEYES' style is reminiscent of the diagrammatic vocabulary found in scientific textbook illustrations that often express through a detached and clinical viewpoint an empirical representation of the natural world. Assembled into this virtual stage set are references to contemporary events along with images and themes from his personal mythology. Josh Keyes' work is a hybrid of eco-surrealism and dystopian folktales that express a concern for our time and the Earth's future.

JOSH KEYES was born in Tacoma, Washington. He received a BFA in 1992 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in 1998 from Yale University. Keyes currently lives and works in Portland Oregon.

☁ JOSH KEYES

GEORGE CHAMOUN

2011-10-06T10:01:00.000-04:00

GEORGE CHAMOUN /// ICONATOMY

Series of collages by George Chamoun, a Swedish jewelry design student at the Konstfack University of the Arts. The project was the student’s workshop with the theme ‘icons’ that would imply either celebrities, fashion icons, political, religious or any other personalities that influenced our world in one way or another.

GEORGE CHAMOUN’s idea was to work with movie icons from two different eras. The project combines several themes and concepts such as ideals, anatomy and Hollywood patterns against the factor of time. According to the creator, his intention was not to make comparisons of any sort, but rather to emphasize the structural aspect as well as the existent similarities, in spite of the era. As the pictures speak for themselves, it is only left to say that when the magnetism of Elisabeth Taylor meets the charm of Angelina Jolie and the virility of Cary Grant is matched with George Clooney’s sexuality, the result can’t be anything but stimulating. (source)

☁ GEORGE CHAMOUN
☁ GEORGE CHAMOUN @ YATZER

IDRIS KHAN

2011-10-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

IDRIS KHAN

Employing seminal texts, musical scores and paintings as well as key works from the photographic oeuvre, Idris Khan transforms the cool art of appropriation into a meditation about authorship and time. To create his works, Khan often photographs a variety of material - sometimes borrowed, sometimes of his own creation - in series and digitally layers the results, accentuating certain areas or adjusting the light, shade or opacity of the images so that resonant composites are created. The results spark new thoughts about the original content, or open up seams of interpretation. For example, with individual notes and staves almost indecipherable, in Struggling to Hear... After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas, 2005, the sheet music for Beethoven's entire series of sonatas becomes a dense wall of near blackness that alludes to the composer's encroaching deafness.

Khan's work challenges our assumptions about various media - how they are received and digested. Words and music, which we experience sequentially and which gain power from repetition are to an extent robbed of their function by becoming almost solid images. Existing images, such as photographs of gas holders and water towers taken by the German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, are in Khan's work made to appear ghostly, animated with lines of energy and pulsing with life. Khan extends the photographic moment and his images, far from appearing to be the result of mechanical reproduction, become suffused with a kind of aura or spirit that lends them the quality of drawings.

"it’s obviously not about re-photographing the photographs to make exact copies, but to intervene and bring a spectrum of feelings – warmth, humour, anxiety – to what might otherwise be considered cool aloof image. You can see the illusion of my hand in the layering. It looks like a drawing. It’s not systematic or uniform. The opacity of every layer is a different fallible, human decision".

Born in Birmingham in 1978, Khan now lives and works in London. He had a major solo exhibition at K20, Düsseldorf in 2008 and has also exhibited at Art Dubai (2008), Forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg (2008), inIVA, London (2006), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006) and Helsinki Kunsthalle (2005).

☁ IDRIS KHAN@ SAATCHI
☁ IDRIS KHAN@ VICTORIA MIRO
☁ IDRIS KHAN /// THE GUARDIAN
☁ IDRIS KHAN 2 FRAENKEL GALLERY

LINUS LOHOFF

2011-10-03T09:31:00.000-04:00

LINUS LOHOFF

Born in Germany in 1985, LINUS LOHOFF is studying communication design at the University of Apllied Sciences Düsseldorf/Germany. He is photographing since the age of 18.

☁ LINUS LOHOFF'S FLICKR
☁ LINUS LOHOFF'S TUMBLR

HEDI SLIMANE

2011-10-02T17:29:00.000-04:00

HEDI SLIMANE
Designer and photographer

☁ HEDI SLIMANE

THE ULTRAVELVET COLLECTION

2011-09-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

THE ULTRAVELVET COLLECTION

Los Angeles based artists Eric Hajjar and Meredith Rose are the co-creators of the Ultravelvet collection. This distinctive body of work by Aston and Rose is produced on 120mm film using a pinhole style camera from the 1960’s. The Ultravelvet Collection yields a signature vintage quality and style that highlights retro-inspired grains, saturated colors and distinct hues that cannot be found in digital photography. The haunting complexity of these twice exposed and layered pieces instantly draws in all viewers.

☁ THE ULTRAVELVET COLLECTION
☁ THE ULTRAVELVET COLLECTION @ GUY HEPNER

CLÉMENT JOLIN

2011-09-19T12:20:00.000-04:00

PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLÉMENT JOLIN

☁ CLÉMENT JOLIN
☁ CLÉMENT JOLIN @ ICONOLOGY

AUDRÉE WILHELMY

2011-09-19T10:49:00.000-04:00

I generally don't talk here about literature. In fact, I don't think I have ever talked about a book on this site. But this one is different... for me ( my little cousin wrote it). And I address this post to my french speaking readers, since the book is in french...

Alors voilà. Ma cousine AUDRÉE WILHELMY vient de publier son premier roman chez Leméac. Un roman qui s'appelle OSS et qui se dévore en à peine une heure. Je suis allée à son lancement vendredi, à la très mignonne librairie le Port de tête sur Mont-Royal et j'ai lu le livre ce weekend. L'histoire est tordue et cruelle mais tellement distrayante et étonnante. Audrée crée des mondes et des images uniques qui m'ont fait beaucoup penser aux images créées par la photographe Brooke Shaden. Je suis extrêmement fière de ma cousine, fière d'avoir à mes côtés quelqu'un à l'imagination si fertile. Je fais donc exemption aujourd'hui en vous présentant non pas une artiste visuelle, mais tout de même une grande artiste qui, elle aussi, façonne des images, mais avec les mots. C'est une lecture fortement recommandée!

(En passant, elle est "coup de coeur" chez Archambault!)

☁ OSS
☁ UNE CRITIQUE DE OSS
☁ UNE AUTRE CRITIQUE DE OSS
☁ ET UNE AUTRE CRITIQUE DE OSS

MARIE-JOSÉE ROY ET JÉRÔME PRIEUR

2011-09-15T13:56:00.000-04:00

Following her successful exhibition at the Cirque du Soleil headquarters in 2010, MARIE-JOSÉE ROY collaborates with JÉRÔME PRIEUR, to present a new exhibition entitled "INTERLACE".

The the opening is on September 22nd, from 4 to 8 pm @ the Galerie Le Royer, 60 rue Saint-Paul Ouest, Montréal.

MARIE-JOSÉE ROY
Marie-Josée Roy received her Bachelors of Fine Arts at the University of Québec in Trois-Rivières in 1992. Marie-Josée Roy offers us a spirited poetry within the various paths to multi-faceted and vibrant characters. Metal is the artists' primary form of communication. As a material, metal is a cold and hard. As a medium which Roy transforms little by little with each blow of the hammer, each grinding down and each brushstroke, she creates a visual passage of light, warmth and a humility concerning humanity. She is actively exposing in Canada, New York, Boston and Miami.

☁ MARIE-JOSÉE ROY ET JÉRÔME PRIEUR

INGRID MAGIDSON

2011-09-12T13:49:00.000-04:00

INGRID MAGIDSON /// STATEMENT

The theme of my work is the often delicate balance between the material and the spiritual. This perpetual dance intrigues my sense of wonder: that we can be beings of such physicality, yet ponder infinity, space, and our own spirituality.

My work uses transparent layers to reveal the depth that is hidden at first glance. I like to use renaissance, or sometimes later, imagery to convey the fleeting quality of life. The people painted so long ago were as alive as each of us now. They had hopes, dreams, and lives we can never know. I bring them back to life, perhaps only for a moment, but alive nonetheless. It is this mix of transience and permanence that is so captivating to me. This is also why I so often use butterflies in my work. They are such exquisitely delicate creatures, with so much complexity and beauty, but live such a short life – some, only a single day. We are like them in many ways.

☁ INGRID MAGIDSON

DAVID MAISEL

2011-09-10T17:12:00.001-04:00

DAVID MAISEL /// HISTORY'S SHADOW

"History’s Shadow comprises my series of re-photographed x-rays of art objects from antiquity. I have culled these x-rays from museum archives, which utilize them for conservation purposes. Through the x-ray process, the artworks of origin become de-familiarized and de-contextualized, yet acutely alive and renewed.

My work as a visual artist concerns the dual processes of memory and excavation, and History’s Shadow provides for the continuation and expansion of these intertwined themes. During a residency at the Getty Research Institute in 2007, I began to explore the idea of images that were created in the processes of art preservation, where the realms of art and scientific research overlap each other. While photographing the Getty Museum’s conservation departments, I became captivated by x-rays of art objects from the museum’s permanent collections. The ghostly images of these x-rays seem to surpass the power of the original objects of art. These spectral renderings seemed like transmissions from the distant past, conveying messages across time.

The x-ray serves as a means to explore mythological themes expressed through ancient objects. The shadow-worlds they occupy are informed by the black space surrounding the images, which in some instances becomes a vast nether world, and in others becomes the velvety ground of some kind of brain scan/portrait. The project’s title of History’s Shadow refers both to the literal images that the x-rays create as they are re-photographed, and to the metaphorical content formed by the past from which these objects derive.

All of the x-rays I have photographed were elements of previously existing archives made for the distinct purpose of art conservation. It was the process of culling through many thousands of them, of uncovering and bringing selected x-rays to light, which gave them their charge. To re-photograph these records, each was laid on a light box in a darkened room; the emanations of light were transmitted by long exposures onto color film. Rendering three dimensions into two is at the heart of the photographic process. With the x-ray, this sense is compounded, since it maps both the inner and outer surfaces of its subject. The mysterious images that result seem to encompass both an inner and an outer world, as the two-dimensional photograph brings us into a realm of indeterminate space, depth, and scale.

I view these x-rays as expressions of the artists and artisans who created the original objects, however many centuries ago; as vestiges and indicators of the societies that produced these works; and as communications from the past, expressing immutable qualities that somehow remain constant over time. What do these works of art from past cultures have to teach us about our current point in human history, or about our relationship to the past, largely formed through archaeology and transmission of cultural objects across national borders? The x-ray provides a filter and a means (much as perception itself is both filter and means) to read the intrinsic properties of these works, the trace elements with which these objects are imbued. They encourage an understanding- made through feeling and art, as well as science and reason- that both spans and collapses time.

As with all photographs, these images are fragments; the x-ray, which in History’s Shadow seems to slice through both material and time itself, furthers that connotation. The x-ray has historically been used for the structural examination of art and artifacts much as physicians examine bones and internal organs; it reveals losses, replacements, methods of construction, and internal trauma that may not be visible to the naked eye. The prints of these x-rays are thus encrypted codes for the viewer to decipher. They make the invisible visible, and express through photographic means the shape-shifting nature of time itself, and the continuous presence of the past contained within us.

The images in History’s Shadow derive (thus far) from the collections of the Getty Museum and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. I am indebted to these remarkable institutions for their gracious permission to engage with their x-ray archives. This project is made possible due to their respect and their trust in my exploration and visual research." (DAVID MAISEL)

☁ DAVID MAISEL

LINNEA STRID

2011-09-10T08:14:00.001-04:00

Paintings by Swedish artist LINNEA STRID.

☁ LINNEA STRID

JESSICA HARRISON

2011-09-06T09:11:00.000-04:00

JESSICA HARRISON /// BREAKING

JESSICA HARRISON
Lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland

Education

PhD (Sculpture) Candidate
Edinburgh College of Art 2007 - ongoing
MFA (Sculpture)
Edinburgh College of Art 2005 - 2007

1st Class MA (Honors) Fine Art
University of Edinburgh / Edinburgh College of Art 2000 - 2005
Dissertation title: Cutting Edge or Dicing with Death: Death and Dissection in Contemporary British Art

☁ JESSICA HARRISON

HENGKI KOENTJORO

2011-09-05T20:58:00.000-04:00

HENGKI KOENTJORO Lives in Jakarta, Indonesia

☁HENGKI KOENTJORO
☁HENGKI KOENTJORO'S FLICKR

PASCAL FELLONNEAU

2011-09-05T19:27:00.000-04:00

Pictures by PASCAL FELLONNEAU

☁ PASCAL FELLONNEAU

RYAN MCGINLEY

2011-09-05T18:05:00.000-04:00

RYAN MCGINLEY
Born on 17 October 1977 in Ramsey, NJ
Lives and works in New York, NY

EDUCATION:
2000B.F.A. in Graphic Design, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

☁ RYAN MCGINLEY

TIM WALKER

2011-09-05T13:04:00.000-04:00

Tim Walker’s photographs have entranced the readers of Vogue, month by month, for over a decade. Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterise his unmistakable style. After concentrating on the photographic still for 15 years Tim Walker is now also making moving film.

On graduation in 1994 Walker worked as a freelance photography assistant in London before moving to New York City as a full time assistant to Richard Avedon. On returning to England he initially concentrated on portrait and documentary work for UK newspapers. At the age of 25 he shot his first fashion story for Vogue, and has photographed for the British, Italian, and American editions ever since.

The Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London include the photographs of Tim Walker in their permanent collections. He staged his first major exhibition at the Design Museum in London in the spring of 2008, coinciding with the publication of his book ‘Pictures’.

In November 2008 Walker received the ‘Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator’ from The British Fashion Council and, in May 2009, he received an infinity award from The International Center of Photography in New York for his work as a fashion photographer. In 2010 Tim was a winner of an ASME Award for his W Magazine 'East Enders' portfolio.

In 2010 Tim’s first short film, ‘The Lost Explorer’ was premiered at Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland.

☁ TIM WALKER

JERRY SPAGNOLI

2011-09-01T14:20:00.000-04:00

JERRY SPAGNOLI /// LOCAL STORIES

“Local Stories” is the title for the latest project. It is a rough translation for the idea of “petit ecrits” put forward by Lyotard as an alternative to the grand historical narratives generally promoted by society; the story of great men, and their great deeds. From my point of view the real experience of history is a personal one. Everything else is a fiction promoted or accepted for all sorts of good or bad reasons. Ultimately the only thing you can know is what you have proximity to, and even that is a construct of your own personal fictions (but at least they are yours). Every person on earth is a container of a history, possessing their own experiences and memories, and all of these histories jostle with one another, resisting and accommodating, in an endless flow, never reaching a consensus but constantly moving on. In order to represent this state I utilize a wide lens, seeking to gather as much of what is in front of me into the frame. The effect I’m after is the visual impression that the whole world is included, and in that view everybody is preoccupied with their own life, in the midst of others. The surface of the earth is a grand bazaar of life, every individual in open exchange with others, and with their own sense of themselves. It’s an ephemeral state. The only constant is its mutability, but there is always a center which holds it all together, the pivot around which all of this must necessarily gravitate and to suggest this point I placed the sun in the center of each image.

The idea underlying this project is that history is what occurs everywhere, all the time, all at once. It’s all connected, of course, in deep or superficial ways, but the hierarchies we have grown accustomed to are a fiction. The persistence of the idea of history as “the story of great men” (or women for that matter ), a singular narrative which excludes “extraneous” stories, robs individuals of the awareness of their own roles in the day to day creation of the world. In fact, for each individual, nothing really exists except the situation within which they find themselves. You can’t interact with anything in the world unless you have some sort of proximity to it.

These images are a metaphor for the democratization of the history of the world: they are general in viewpoint, diffuse in subject, and the only constant is the thing surely there from before the beginning and certain to be there after the end, the sun in the center of the sky.

☁ JERRY SPAGNOLI

TERRY RODGERS

2011-08-30T08:48:00.001-04:00

TERRY RODGERS has acquired considerable fame as the creator of large-scale cinematic paintings that compel the viewer to participate in a disenchanted world where beauty, sex and money do not seem to bring happiness. They evoke the confusing energy, decadence, desire, loneliness and promise of an age. He portrays a contemporary search for a meaningful life as a perpetual existential hangover.

Rodgers makes clear that this 21st century jet-set notion of success is but a metaphor. It is the various modes of language and perception of every era or culture that are the inevitable roots of illusion, and often disenchantment. Rodgers' works underline the complexity of human relations in contemporary society, with all its contradictions and mediated influences.

On a more abstract level, his works concern his fascination with the dialectic coalescence of contradictory impulses in a subjective perspective.

☁ TERRY RODGERS
☁ TERRY RODGERS @ THE TORCH

CHRISTY LEE ROGERS

2011-08-30T08:17:00.001-04:00

CHRISTY LEE ROGERS grew up in a family of musicians in the small beach town of Kailua, Hawaii on Oahu’s windward coast. She is a self-taught photographer, indie-filmmaker, poet and lyricist. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California and Kailua, Hawaii.

☁ CHRISTY LEE ROGERS

TERESA REICHERT

2011-08-18T16:58:00.001-04:00

TERESA REICHERT /// TYPEWRITER

☁ TERESA REICHERT

SUZANNE JONGMANS

2011-08-18T16:46:00.001-04:00

SUZANNE JONGMANS /// STATEMENT

Referring to both vulnerability and impermanence, I am investigating the texture and feel of both the present and past. Since 2007 I have been working on the series 'foam sculptures': caps and collars, inspired by 16th and 17th century paintings, made from materials currently used for packaging and insulation. This is also an inferior material which is often discarded after use.
By using this material I make a reference to consumerism and the rapid circulation of materials. With these foam sculptures, but also an i-pod, a tattoo and a foot in plaster, we end up in the 21st century.

The portraits are a certain reference to Holbein, Clouet, Vermeer and Holland's Golden Age.
It is no coincidence. In fact, in the 16th and 17th century, laid the foundations for photography.
Call it the prehistory of photography. It appears that the artists have used photographic images, they could not yet capture. In fact, there was the phenomenon of photography so much earlier. This is an atavism of the Golden Age and the early days of the invention of photography.

I use the elements in the present as in the past, the objects in my work are used as symbols
of values. I mutate old costumes into new plastics and old masters in new photographic works.
By using time foreign materials, plastics and techno's, I am creating a time crux, a tension of time.

☁ SUZANNE JONGMANS

CHARMAINE OLIVIA

2011-08-15T20:37:00.001-04:00

CHARMAINE OLIVIA
Self-taught painter, tea addict & jewelry fiend living and loving in San Francisco.

☁ CHARMAINE OLIVIA

NEIL CRAVER

2011-08-15T20:22:00.001-04:00

NEIL CRAVER /// OMNIPHNATASMIC

"As a youth in North Carolina; I begun my path as an abstract painter and figurative sculptor; my motivation grew from my interest of psychophysical effects of chroma. Photography holds all the intrinsic values of all the other arts; but it is the foundation of the origins of existence. My creations are the exploration of my inner facilities; in the pursuit of contemporary knowledge expressing “original thoughts”.
"Nothing can exist without the photon, and every aspect is controlled by it’s usage" " (NEIL CRAVER)

☁ NEIL CRAVER

TOM CHAMBERS

2011-08-05T06:56:00.002-04:00

TOM CHAMBERS' BIO
Tom Chambers was born and raised on a farm in the Amish country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Tom completed a B.F.A. in 1985 from Ringling School of Art, Sarasota, Florida with an emphasis in graphic design and strong interest in photography. For many years Tom has worked as a graphic designer, including the design of packaging and magazines. Since 1998 Tom has devoted himself to photomontage for sharing the intriguing unspoken stories which reflect his view of the world and elicit feelings in the viewer.

Currently, Tom is represented by a number of galleries in the United States and Europe. His work has been shown nationally and internationally through solo and group exhibitions, as well as in a wide range of print and online publications. Recently, NPR's (National Public Radio) "All Things Considered" and "All Songs Considered" presented a collaborative Project Song based on the photograph "Black Dog's Retreat" (October 12, 2009). Tom has received recognition for his photography through a variety of awards.

☁ TOM CHAMBERS

RICHARD BARNES

2011-08-05T06:36:00.001-04:00

RICHARD BARNES /// MURMUR

European starlings have a way of appearing in unexpected places — the United States, for example, where they are not native but owe their origin to a brief reference in Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890, a drug manufacturer who wanted every bird found in Shakespeare to live in America released 60 starlings in Central Park. After spending a few years nesting modestly under the eaves of the American Museum of Natural History, they went from a poetic fancy to a menacing majority; there are now upward of 200 million birds across North America, where they thrive at the expense of other cavity nesters like bluebirds and woodpeckers, eat an abundance of grain — as well as harmful insects — and occasionally bring down airplanes.

In Europe, where the birds are native — Mozart had a pet starling that could sing a few bars of his piano concerto in G major — they still have the power to turn heads. Each fall and winter, vast flocks gather in Rome. They spend the day foraging in the surrounding countryside but return each evening to roost. (Rachel Carson, author of “Silent Spring,” called the birds reverse commuters.) They put on breathtaking aerial displays above the city, banking in nervous unison, responding like a school of fish to each tremor inside the group.

The birds are beloved by tourists and reviled by locals — understandably, since the droppings cover cars and streets, causing accidents and general disgust. A flock of starlings is euphoniously called a “murmuration,” but there is nothing poetic about their appetites. Their ability to focus both eyes on a single object — binocular vision — allows them to peck up stationary seeds as well as insects on the move. In the countryside outside Rome, they feast on olives. Like us, the birds are enormously adaptable but what we admire in ourselves we often abhor in our neighbors.

Richard Barnes’s photographs capture the double nature of the birds — or at least the double nature of our relationship to them — recording the pointillist delicacy of the flock and something darker, almost sinister in the gathering mass. Many of Barnes’s photographs were taken over two years in EUR, a suburb of Rome that Mussolini planned as a showcase for fascist architecture. The man-made backdrop only enhances the sense of the vast flock as something malign, a sort of avian Nuremberg rally.

It is, of course, natural for birds to surrender individual autonomy to the flock; according to the Roman ornithologist Claudio Carere, who has identified 12 basic flock patterns, the starlings are primarily trying to evade falcons. But we project onto the natural world a large measure of ourselves. In ancient Rome, augurs studied the flight patterns of birds to divine the will of the gods; part of the fascination of the starlings is the way they seem to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if only we could read it.

A consortium of ornithologists, physicists and biologists in Italy and other European countries has in fact begun studying the birds with the aim of learning not only about the relationship of individual birds to the surrounding flock but about human behavior as well. The project, named StarFLAG, entertains hopes of using the birds to illuminate herding responses in human beings with a particular eye on stock-market panics.

The starling in “Henry IV” that inspired those first American birds is a mimic, capable of tormenting a king by speaking the name of Mortimer. Mozart’s bird sang his own music back to him. But Mozart may also have smuggled a few of the bird’s notes into his own compositions. When humans contemplate animals, the question is always who is imitating whom. The starlings that so plague us in America (where we kill more than a million of the birds a year) grew out of our desire for nature to be poetic, rather than truly wild; they reflect the consequences of such self-serving fantasies. It isn’t their fault that they treated an open continent much as we ourselves did.

More and more, as surrounding habitat is flattened, we may find fragments of the wild world coming home, literally, to roost. The abundance of starlings in Rome is partly the result of climate change — they used to go farther south before Roman winters warmed up. Bird-watching thrives on the recognition that the urban and the wild must be understood together. We are, after all, urban and wild ourselves, and still figuring out how to make the multiple aspects of our nature mesh without disaster. (FLIGHT PATTERNS by JONATHAN ROSEN)

Jonathan Rosen is the editorial director of Nextbook. His book about bird-watching, “The Life of the Skies,” will be published next year.

☁ RICHARD BARNES

MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOTT

2011-08-01T15:48:00.001-04:00

The 8 covers of upcoming issue #6 of THE LOVE MAGAZINE. Shot by MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOTT.

☁ MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOLL
☁ THE LOVE MAGAZINE

ELLEN ROGERS

2011-08-01T14:13:00.001-04:00

ELLEN ROGERS is an all-analogue fashion photographer. Through her work, Rogers creates timeless dream worlds where temptresses seduce and lure you into unknown, dark lands. A firm believer in the art of analogue photography, Rogers does not utilize any digital equipment or computer based manipulation (other than scanning the end result) and has developed most techniques through experimentation with traditional darkroom processes.('Excerpt by Tricia Rock')

ELLEN ROGERS /// STATEMENT

I am desperately trying to find something.
My search in the black foam and the fog of my psyche.
I see no other way to that place/emotion/world, oh I don’t know.
I saw it in a dream recently. I knew instantly I would be there again.
I hope I am there again.
I need to find that place, to right the wrongs, it is the punishment that I need, perhaps?
I can feel a reality slipping away from me, with this drive replacing it, this quest.
Where my problems are worked out and my worries are confirmed and made corporeal, real worries walking and seeing, they are deformed and contorted ideas in the flesh (and in the fog), where in there/here even your taunts will leave me smiling.
I think I will get there, perhaps I will see some of you there.

☁ ELLEN ROGERS

ARAMINTA DE CLERMONT

2011-07-29T16:09:00.001-04:00

ARAMINTA DE CLERMONT /// LIFE AFTER

This series is an exploration into the tattoos, and lives, of members of South Africa’s ‘Numbers’ prison gangs (the 26s, 27s & 28s) after having been released back into society, normally after many years, if not decades, of imprisonment.

Tattooing has always been forbidden in the South African prison system, with severe penalties, but the drive to create these marks is so strong that tattooing equipment will be created somehow.Pigment will come from grinding up rubbish bins, industrial rubber washers, batteries, or bricks. This will then be mixed with saliva, and will be pushed under the skin with nails pulled out of furniture, or sewing needles.

Tattoos may convey rankings within the hierarchy of the Number, may be testimonies to a crime committed, or may sometimes be a rather more personal statement: like a message of blame, threat, or regret, or a tribute to a loved one. A “Numbers” gangster can read another’s life story simply through the markings he has. The gallows symbol signifies that the bearer faced the death sentence, before it was outlawed. Many of the most highly tattooed men that I photographed, had been given the death sentence, before Mandela’s reprieve, and thus they had never believed they would be released, never imagining “a life after’.

Some prisoners will go as far as covering their whole body, including the face, with these 'chappies'. The motives behind such a drastic action fascinated me. Was it about a need to belong, or does it simply reflect an absolute immersion in “The Number”? Do the tattoos create an armour, or do they instead offer a voice, a potent form of self-expression, where the prisoners’ skin is perhaps their only remaining possession and form of self-expression?
And then there is perhaps the most pertinent question of all: how does someone live with such branding after their prison sentence ends? In jail, the men I photographed are considered to be “Kings”. Once freed, their tattoos stigmatize them as dangerous criminals, obscure their humanity and evoke fear in the general public. Unable to get jobs, many become homeless ‘strollers’, suffering high levels of substance abuse.
And so I found my subjects in Cape Town’s hidden places: homeless shelters, broken down tenement blocks, back alleys, soup kitchens, bus stations and township shebeens. I photographed them wherever them I found them, always in their own environments. As I worked, many questions were raised for me, especially regarding the choices we make in life and the prices we pay for them.

I also found myself wondering how it would be if we all had our past mistakes permanently emblazoned across our faces.

☁ ARAMINTA DE CLERMONT

KRISTY MITCHELL

2011-07-26T10:15:00.001-04:00

KRISTY MITCHELL /// BIO-STATEMENT

"I was born in 1976 and raised in the English county of Kent, known to many as the 'Garden of England'. My earliest memories were always of the stories read to me by my mother as a child ... how it felt to be curled into her side, listening to the rush of her breath as she paused for effect, before launching into yet another characters voice. She was an English teacher, and read to me almost everyday, to an age I could no longer admit to my friends. She instilled in me the most precious gift a mother could, her imagination and a belief in beauty...... it became my root, and the place I constantly try to return to in my work, and my dreams.

Growing up, art became my sole passion. I studied until I was 25, taking courses in the history of art, photography, fine art, and then on to train in 'costume for film and theatre' at the London College of Fashion. Having graduated and worked for a short time in the industry, I decided to further my education, and returned to university, completing a first class degree with honours in fashion design, at Ravensbourne in the summer of 2001. During this time I also completed two internships at the design studios of Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, both of whom have effected me greatly.

Since then I have worked full time as a fashion designer for a global designer brand, until in 2007 when personal illness brought a sudden change in myself, and led me to pick up a camera. I cannot explain how this happened, but a new, deep, and genuine need was born. I used to say I had never truly 'looked' until it was through a lens... life was different, more beautiful, more sad, and extreme in every sense of the word. People mattered, how they sat, how they slept, how they looked when they thought no one else cared. I fell in love with the faces of strangers, and photography gave me a new purpose...... that is, until March 2008.

Tragically my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour, and my world fell apart. Photography became my only escape when I could no longer talk about how I felt. I lost myself in street portraiture, focusing on those who reflected my own sadness and loss. I later turned the camera inwards, and began photographing myself throughout the hardest year of my life. It became an utter fantasy that blocked out the real world, and a place where I could return to my memories of her, far away from those hospitals walls.

She died in November 2008 and that was when photography engulfed me, becoming an overwhelming passion that I couldn't stop. I found myself producing pieces that echoed the memories of her stories, and the belief in wonder I have always felt since a child. By combining my various backgrounds, I now create images where everything has been designed and produced by myself, and a small team. The costumes, the props, the sets and accessories, are all part of the process that is finally recorded in the finished product of the photograph. It is driven by the need to produce tangible pieces of my dreams, and make it possible to step into the scenes for real. This physical creation is my favourite part, and has taken me to places I would have otherwise never known. I have walked on snow covered in flowers, stood in lakes at sunset, painted trees, set fire to chairs, made smoking umbrellas, and giant wigs from stolen flowers. I have laughed, been overwhelmed, and left in awe of all the things I had previously passed unnoticed until now ...

Life has become a different place, 'a second chance' is maybe the only way to describe it, and for that I am so grateful. I have had my eyes opened, and no matter how sad the origin of it all was..... I will always cherish the fact this small and precious awakening has happened..."

☁ KRISTY MITCHELL

BROOKE SHADEN

2011-07-21T16:44:00.001-04:00

Here are some new wonderful dreamy and creative pictures by BROOKE SHADEN. She has a lot more new ones on her sites. Totally worth a visit!

☁ BROOKE SHADEN
☁ BROOKE SHADEN'S FLICKR
☁ BROOKE SHADEN PREVIOUSLY ON LE ZÈBRE