Burton at the MoMA
So what’s better than a Burton Christas? Tim Burton at the fricken’ MoMA!
Over 700 examples of work by Burton are being exhibited in a five month long retrospective at the MoMA in New York before moving on to Melbourne and then Toronto. The works on display include sketchbooks, drawings, paintings, concept art, photos, fillms, and sculptures. There is also a film retrospective that includes both films by Burton and those that served as inspiration.
The exhibit opened November 22, 2009 and will run until April 26, 2010. [Via: MocoLoco]
Visit the exhibition page at the MoMA for the Tim Burton exhibition.
Structural Sapling
Gilding once told her Dad, she didn’t want a tree house unless it was made out of a tree. Guess what, she never got a tree house. But there is just something so magical about literally being inside of a tree.
These installations by artist Patrick Dougherty bring all those whimsical dreams back.
Spinoffs, Decordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusettes, 1990. Ph: George Vasquez.
Crossing Over, American Craft Museum, New York, New York, 1996. Ph: Dennis Cowley.
Trailheads, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, 2005.
Ph: Courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art.
Around the Corner, University of Southern Indiana, New Harmony Gallery, New Harmony, IN, 2003. Ph: Doyle Dean.
Call of the Wild, Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, 2002. Ph: Duncan Price.
The Summer Palace, Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 2009. Ph: Rob Cardillo.
With his skills in carpentry and a love of nature, Dougherty began studying primitive techniques of building. From there he began to experiment with tree saplings as construction material. His first work, MapleBodyWrap, built in 1982, was included in the North Carolina Biennial Artist’s Exhibition. By the following year, he had his first one person show. Since then he has build over 150 works throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. The above works are just a sampling — Gilding’s favorites, so to speak. Trust when she says, it was hard to narrow it down to these. More of his works can be seen on Patrick Dougherty’s site.
Like Mixing Tea for Coffee
Created by artist Tsang Cheung Shing of Hong Kong, the sculpture, named Yuanyang II, was created for a pottery exhibition of “YingYeung” — a popular local drink mixture of coffee and tea. This piece is now part of the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art and is currently on display at the Central Concourse of Hong Kong International Airport. Yuanyang II is sculpted in a distinctive form of two faces locked in an indulgent kiss; their heads supporting the upturned elegant mugs which have allowed them to escape. The concept of the piece follows the theme of the popular drink, “Yuanyang”, its mixing of coffee and tea a metaphorical representation of love and marriage. [Via moillusions]
Troll Fee
This summer has been the Gilding Duo’s foray into ceramics that has kept the pair so busy for the past couple of weeks.
For those who don’t know, Gilding’s husband was in a car accident some 10 years ago that left him paralyzed from the neck down — the technical term is quadriplegic. Mr. Gilding also happens to be an artist, which leads us to a very experimental venture into most things art.
As an art major, it has been a test of wills and boudaries in the world of traditional art education; many of the required courses for art majors are 3-Dimensional art forms and require the use of hands that are fully functional — and often lacking in even the best of times. As ironic as it sounds — in a major that’s supposed to be all about pushing and reinventing and even tearing down the boundaries — art institutions are simply baffled and often disgusted by the notion of giving someone a degree for which the traditions of many of their art institutions were substituted with some other form. So we devised a way of life that both confounds but thus far has earned us the respect of these institutions — Mr. Gilding creates the design of his imaginings, and from the outside looking in, acts as another pair of eyes with a separate line of perspective as Gilding acts as his hands. Because of this the pieces created are a unique collaboration, his being fully the driving idea, while Gilding’s being a subconscious result of her mind directing her hands. The end result is a blending of both our styles that thus far has resulted in TOTAL AWESOMENESS!
The assignment was to create a trophy, though the stipulation was that the trophy had be of an original idea — no remakes of “#1 Dad” of “Mom of the Year” and other such generic awards. It had to be in celebration of something, whether it be good or bad or otherwise, and the it had to be discernable what quality the trophy was awarding. Mr. Gilding struck upon the idea of a play on words, hence a trophy became a “Troll Fee” and we hashed out the meaning behind the award would be a celebration of capitalism — a social commentary on the visibly corrupt system that capitalism has become yet that it is revered and celebrated as an individual freedom when its has such qualities of greed and gluttony that for all other intents and purposes is seen as sinful but regarded highly in industry.
There is much symbolism in the piece itself, the overall form is meant to connotate something large and hulking over a structure that barely contains its weight and at the same time holds the wealth of the people, which they will never see once its cashed in. Though the figure is obviously a troll, his polished veneer and coiffured hair denote a semblance of civility, though only one that is outwardly worn. The suit, which also features tails, denotes an authority that is recognized even if you know what lies beneath is actually a beast not to be trusted. The teeth are gleaming and while visually they are meant to be a bright spot on an otherwise dark structure, they are a show of the wealthy being able to afford healthcare, while most others cannot. The structure itself is strong though there are creeping, vine-like lines that appear to be burned on and crackling while its color is rusty, denoting decay and degredation. And the coins, though a gold color, are dirty in appearance underneath their bright veneer. Finally, the scroll contains the word “Fee”, its length symbolizing the large list of collections to be paid, while its overall form of a scroll conotates an age old industry that dates back a century or more, yet its crisp white shows an inability to ever die — a pretification if you will.
Not bad for our first time working with ceramics, eh?
Iconic Pop Art in Japanese Tradition
Gilding is really diggin these works by artist YOskay Yamamoto:
Nightmare of Day Dreamer, acrylic on wood, 24×36 inches
the will, mixed media on wood, 36×24, 2008
Yamamoto has fused two different cultural backgrounds together in his work, nostalgically blendin pop iconic characters from his new Western home with the traditional and mythical Japanese elements. The effect successfully balances his Asian heritage with urban pop art.
kata-omoi: unrequieted love, acrylic on paper, 24×24, 2008
Gilding also finds these pretty spiffy. Having teamed up with Munky King in the production of his “Koibito vinyl figurines, Yamamoto is set to release his new and final colorway of the sculptures this week, along with a new print.
The intital all black colorway [not shown here] sold out, leaving fans clamouring for more. But the new Koibito sculptural figurines will be released in two different colorway, the first is a gold and black colorway (edition 500) and the second is a Munky King exclusive translucent-smoke colorway (edition 150).
An American Stonehenge
Photo by Dan Winters
America has its very own Stonehenge? Who knew!
Looming over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia, five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. Standin 16 feet tall, four of the slabs weigh more than 20 tons apiece, while their supporting capstone weighs 25,000 pounds. Having the appearance of Stonehenge meets the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the stone structure was actually built in 1980 and quietly await the end of the world as we know it.
Called the Georgia Guidstone, the monument remains a mystery — nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clue to the monoliths origin are on a nearby plaque, which gives the dimensions and explanation to the series of notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars. The “guides” themselves are directives carved into the rocks, appearing in eight languages ranging from English to Swahili and reflect a New Age ideology. What are these guiding ideologies? Some are vaguely eugenic as they prescribe GUIDE REPRODUCTION WISELY — IMPROVING FITNESS AND DIVERSITY. Others are like the writings of the hippies issueing hippy mysticism such as PRIZE TRUTH–BEAUTY–LOVE–SEEKING HARMONY WITH THE INFINITE.
More on the Georgia Guidestones can be read in the Georgia Guidestones Guidebook written by Elberton Granite in 1981. Also in this article written by Randall Sullivan for Wired Magazine.
Do-Ho Suh
Gilding has been sitting on this for a little while and just hasn’t had time to write on it, but the works are really too stunning and striking in their conceptual complexity for her to pass it over as old news.
Korean artist Do-ho Suh’s sculptures are intricately crafted works designed to raise questions about individuality and anonymity.
Born in Seoul, Korea in 1962, Suh earned his MFA in oriental Painting from Seoul National University, and after fulfilling his term of mandatory service in the South Korean military, Suh relocated to the United States to continue his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University.
Suh’s sculptures are known for their defiance of conventional notions of scale and site-specificity, and draw attention to the way the viewers occupy and inhabit public space. In several of the artist’s floor sculptures, viewers are encourarged to walk on surfaces composed of thousands of miniature human figures:
Floor
Suh’s experience in the military led him to the creation of a slew of works questioning the identity of the individual in an entity that essentially seeks to efface personal identity and create a unity identity of their design.
But the sculpture also speaks to the quality of homogeneity, of walking that fine line of strength in numbers.
Screen
In “Some/One,” the floor of the gallery is blanketed with a sea of polished military dog tags. Evocative of the way an individual soldier is part of a larger troop or military body, these dog tags swell up to form a hollow, ghost-like suit of armor at the center of the room.
Some/One
This is the sculpture that first caught Gilding’s attention. The way light plays off the otherwise dull color of the dog tags inspires something lighter than what actually is and that shiny something metal inside the shell of armor suit is mesmerizing. But overall, the tactile quality of the work is astonishing. It inspires the viewer to do waht museums and galleries don’t let you do and that is to touch the art.
Continued are more installation sculptures from Suh:
Paratrooper
Who Am We
Cause and Effect
Another piece from his Paratrooper series features embroidered signatures on a parachute.
This next series of works from Suh concerns itself with space and the interaction of objects with their environment, the pieces themselves question the nature of identity in a different way. These installation scluptural works are crafted from silk or nylon and steel tubing and center on the idea of home as a structure and a concept.
Seoul Home/LA Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home/London Home/Seattle Home refelcts Suh’s status as a transient being, having moved from Korea to the United States and now his current lifestyle of travel to promote his work.
Perfect Home II
The detail in these works are awe inspiring even in their prosaic normalcy simply by knowing that their made from fold and cuts and stiches in fabirc. And no structural detail, plus a few extras, are forgotten as even things such as a radiator, a ceiling medalion and light, even an air conditioning vent.
Reflection
Staircase
What’s really intersting of these pieces, besides everything, is their opacity; how we can see through what we normally cannot see through such as a wall or a ceiling, and yet what we are seeing through the other side is still obscured and not quite clear. Like living in a place that is yours for only a little while but not really yours, one that you dwell in and personalize but can never truly make of it what you want and adorn it the way you want simply because its not yours but someone elses and you are simply paying to borrow it.
Via design crisis
Biographical Information on Suh:
PBS
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York
Do-Ho Suh on Art21 blog
Stamp Me, Brand Me, Doggy Bag Me
Ahahahahaa…are you both annoyed and at the same time insanely and narcissistically jealous at Paris Hilton’s penchant for creating ridiculous and irksome fads; such as carrying dog’s in her purse. Ok, so that was a habit of socialite alite for some time, but it serves notice that big designers really began making whole seasonal lines of bags dedicated to this one purpose around the same time that Paris decided she couldn’t live without her muts. Frankly the only star that should be allowed to carry their dog out in public in such annoying fashion is Pink — and that’s because she named her dog Fucker and that’s just friggin hilarious! Had children not been present during Hamtardo’s naming ceremony, she may very well have suffered the same fate.
Then comes artist Meryl Smith’s interpretation of the doggy bag. A couple of days ago, Mr. Gilding sent Gilding a pic of this but there was no information attached — which meant, as with most random stuff he sends her, she has to do a bit of research…and on that note, she’s been sitting on it. So in a spark of bored inspiration this morning she went about searching for this Louis Vuitton Doggy Bag, which took longer than it should, but one supposes that would be because she kept looking for a pig and kept coming up with Wim Delvoye’s Louis Vuitton tatted up pigs. Don’t ask Gilding why she thought it was a pig — it so obviously doesn’t look like a pig — but in her head it was a pig, and we all know what sick and warped dark places lurk in dark recesses of her mind, so don’t go there.
Anyhoo, entitled “Excess Baggage”, Smith’s bag was the outcome of her creative spontaneity when she was asked by Honey Space in New York to create a sculpture for an exhibition whose dimensions were suited to hold international carry-on luggage. The piece is a hilarious social statement of our propensity for fadalistic label-whoring. Several blogs have bashed the artist for this creation, calling it everything from over-indulgent to childish, to “done before”, but perhaps that’s a bit of the message. Its hard to have an “original thought” in this world, and evry artist faces this. With advances in technology and the expansion of the world wide web, the once vast space of the the Earth is now covered by a few miliseconds of high speed internet. But perhaps its a collective thought; a prevailing message that in your creative mind’s eye is a new piece, but on a universal level shares a collective thought, reason, or concern that to some extent many share. Maybe if its been done before, that’s because we didn’t get it the first time, and each artist is simply seeking their way of getting our attention. Its not unfathomable to think that some just don’t get the message while other still never see it.
And with that said, Gilding wants one…ok, maybe two. I have a great pair of taupe flats that a nice buttery caramel color would go great with.
Images via Fashionphile
Dead and Feathered
Artist Emily Valentine is a macabre creature of the gilded ilk. Over the past decade she has developed her own style in a class of works using feathers from road kill. Recently, she has taken her art to a public service by helping to exterminate the local register pest, the Mynah bird. Harvesting the feathers from the dead flying varmint, Valentine tars and feathers (minus the tar) and bejewels (befeathers) non-feathered critters in a form of hybrid taxidermy.
Her works are a discussion of attitudes towards wearing animals and birds and how those attitudes have changed. Whether its a demonstration of fashion’s power of persuasion, or if society has become more caring of animals, Valentine’s works are meant to confront the viewer with the uncomfortable nature of wearing animals and birds, and ask whether we sub-consciously classify animals — pets or pest, equal or lesser, valuable or worthless, plain or beautiful.
Featured here are Valentine’s scultptures/taxidermy Foxy Budgie and Pair of Pugcocks, 2008.
Gilding wants one in hamster.
Via: ArtMoCo
Eerie Ethereal
Remember the crazy awesome detail of Nicole West’s dolls. Now check out Marina Bychkova’s Enchanted Dolls.
Neither doll artist is what you would call the classic pretty in sunshine curls and frilly dresses kind of doll maker, and while West’s dolls lean to the side of Polymer Lolitas, Bychkova’s dolls would be the more ethereal counterpart to something Tim Burtons claymation creations.
The life found within the details of her creations is awe inspiring. While dolls in general are creepy and to have them stacked on shelves staring at you is a thing of which Gidling finds all together just plain disturbing, these dolls have so much life within their form and face and features that it inspires you spending hours perched upon something staring at them instead. You wonder at their sensual forms. Your eyes tweek their rosy little nipples to buds where your fingers would be to large and clumsy. You marvel at the detail of underarm hair and that delicate thatch of pubic hair decorating the gently sloping V between their legs. What’s most remarkable is that each doll really and truly is different even if cast from same molds so to speak. From their eyes to their nose to their lips, its all unique, fitting to the personality of the doll and the vision of beauty they portray. And they’re not the conventional beauties either. There’s something quite eerie about them, but in truth, Gilding has always thought the ethereal to be eerie.
Featured below are Bychkova’s works, Alice, Bride of Frankenstein, and Princess Swan.
Link: Enchanted Doll
Via: Design Block
Noted with Stone Birds
Well this Composition Mission simply noted this artist’s name with the side note “stone birds.” Maybe this is what the note was referring to…maybe not. Who knows. Going back into shit you’ve written in the past can either be illuminating or stupifying. Still, these are kinda neat.
With a wingspan of seventeen inches, Alena Hennessy’s sculptural bird — and there is a line of them in varying colors — can be adjusted to suspend from any ceiling height. They are created from a two piece mold out of hydrostone and then sanded smooth and painted. Best part, for these little buggers are expensive, they ship free in their own white gift box.
Shadowless Summer
Creepy darkling darling, Elizabeth McGrath, has an upcoming exhibit, Shadowless Summer, at the Sloan Fine Art gallery, New York, NY.
You may remember McGrath from Gilding’s post on her, Everything That Creeps.
Vagina Model-logues
Design a Vagina is the third in a series of works by artist Jamie McCartney that explores our relationship with our genitals. As of October 2008 he had completed this panel of 40 casts of the vagina (featuring the vulva), arranged in a grid. The final piece will have 5 of these panels.
McCartney’s reason for making this vagina model-logue? As he explains:
“Well, vaginas are as different as a faces, many people, particularly women, don’t seem to know that. Men tend to have seen more vaginas than women, who have often only seen their own and many have never looked that closely. Hence the exposure of so many, showing the variety of shapes is endlessly fascinating, empowering and comforting. For many women their vagina is a source of shame rather than pride and this piece seeks to redress the balance, showing that everyone is different, everyone is normal, and everyone is beautiful.”
Awww…Gilding’s pussy would be all a flutter with the compliment if she weren’t a narcissistic bitch already.
The title, Design a Vagina, is a play on words, creating a social commentary on the recent trend for surgery to create the ‘perfect’ vagina. As McCartney very accurately points out, “This modern day equivalent of female genital mutilation is a bizarre practice which suggests that one is better than another.”
Link: Brighton Body Casting
Spring is in the Air
Feeling the spring time inspiration.
From Dutch artist, Ans Bakker: Celestial Nest (Bed), Celestial Nest, and Frosted Lives (Crown). Bakker’s works are a creation of her fascination “lives” — their origins, developments, desires, dreams and truths — and is inspired by the “light” that surrounds them.
Beach chic in Uruguay with this peaceful seaside retreat.
Gilding misses this — the German Easter Egg Tree. Decorating a baren twig of a tree was a tradition Gilding always took pleasure in doing with her Grandmother. While commercialization of the Easter holiday and this tradition have allowed people to purchase fake, twig-like trees, nothing beats the beauty of hanging eggs on a living tree, seeing and feeling the warmth of its life even in its baren state and watching it slowly bloom to life with the beginnings of spring and warmer weather. Mr. Gilding will be loath to have yet another seasonal decoration up (he barely tolerated the Christmas tree), but Gilding thinks she shall perform this tradition this year, having a need to feel close to her Grandmother and childhood memories. Besides, he’ll get over it.
And how could this not inspire visions of spring. Based on a painting by Gary Baseman (Gilding loves this sick, warped little man), the Clown Cone from Fully Visual stands 6″ tall. Made of solid metal, the piece weighs around 1 pound. Limited to a production of 100 pieces; look for the piece to retail around $250. From DKE toys.
Bookworm, to Lunch or to Live
Livio De Marchi has created a bookworm’s heaven…or, at least, an undevourable living space of their favorite meal — books.
For those not familiar with De Marchi by name, you’ll probably recognize him for his Volkswagen Beetle Boat featured some years ago in the press. As a child, De Marchi worked on ornamental sculpture in the Venetian tradition while studying art and drawing at the Accademia di Bella Arti in Venice. During his artistic evolution he has worked first in marble, then bronze, and eventually in wood. Wood has always been his favorite material, preferring its vitality which other materials lack. And with space, imagination runs free. Opening his own studio, De Marchi declared his way of being as his interior world, an evolutionary irony that spurned his ability to “see” life which gave him the upper hand in letting him carve this this kind of sculpture.
De Marchi’s Casa di Libri is another one of his fantastical wooden installation sculpture — and the source of this bookworm’s hard-on. Casa di Libri is a house made out of books. A house in which the table, the chairs, the bed seem to be made of the pages and binding of books.
Link: Livio De Marchi | Casa di Libri
