A Hand-Drawn Animation of Merging Faces and Morphing Bodies by Daniel Zvereff

Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Zvereff works in a combination of drawing, photography, and videography and all three come into play in a animated short. The three minute long film is a music video for Norwegian singer-songwriter Okay-Kaya‘s song “Emulate”. It is a departure from her other music videos, which usual feature the singer herself in live action scenarios. Throughout the video, pieces of unbound notebook paper show shifting blue drawings. Ranging from moving faces to animals and planets, as well as abstract shapes, the drawings are all executed in simple line work, in a unified blue hue. You can see more of Zvereff’s work on his website and Flickr. (via Vimeo Staff Picks)

Spools of Colorful Tape and Piles of Painted Canvases Transform Subjects Into Living Works of Art

French creative studio Akatre was recently asked by Centre Pompidou to create a series of visuals that would further engage the Paris-based institution’s audience. For the project, Akatre knew they wanted to humanize the museum’s visitor communication materials, while also speaking to the act of creation. The studio shot a series of seven portraits that covered their subjects’ heads with arts and craft materials such as spools of colorful tape, dozens of paintbrushes, and drips of neon paint. The works will be incorporated into Centre Pompidou’s communication materials, with three of the images printed on upcoming membership cards. You can see more projects by Akatre, including these slime-covered portraits, on their Instagram and Behance.

LEGO Launches a Rotating Wind Turbine With Trees Made From Plant-Based Plastic

LEGO recently launched a new 826-piece set that includes a three-foot tall wind turbine. The fully functioning power source features aircraft warning lights and adjustable blades, and towers above a cottage surrounded by trees and a garden. This is the first LEGO set to use a new plant-based plastic formulated from sugarcane, which comprises the kit’s spruce trees. The turbine, which is a collaboration with the Danish sustainable energy company Vestas, was previously developed in 2008 but was never released to the public. The updated set will be available through LEGO stores and online on November 23, 2018. (via Designboom)

 

A Cafe in Seoul Uses Clever Contour Lines to Appear Like a 2-Dimensional Cartoon

Photo by @bulaiern

Since 2017, a small cafe in South Korea has been transporting its visitors to a two-dimensional world. Cafe Yeonnam-dong 239-20 in Seoul features all-white walls, floors, furniture, and fixtures accented with black contour lines that give the space the flattened look of a cartoon drawing. Illustration-inspired elements include drawn cacti, a curious puppy, and blank picture frames. Some of the beverage containers even sport defining lines. You can take a peek inside the playful cafe on Instagram and Facebook. (via My Modern Met)

Photo by @benjamin_liang

Photo by @cg__shinwonho

Photo by @__elsalovetravel__

Photo by @tsaichialing_kelly

Photo by @mmarichell

Photo by d7my_uk_

Photo by @adayinthelalz

A Porous White Aluminum Sculpture Encourages Exploration and Play at the Jinji Lake Biennale

All images by NAARO

For the 2018 Jinji Lake Biennale in Suzhou, China, Marc Fornes and his art and architecture studio THEVERYMANY (previously here and here) installed a porous outdoor pavilion crafted from white aluminum. Holes that span the bulbous structure allow light to pour in from each direction, sprinkling the interior with a variegated influx of miniature light beams. The piece is titled Boolean Operator after the search function that determines relationships between statements, concepts, or forms. Its experience is detailed in a statement on THEVERYMANY’s website:

The intricacy of the skin asserts a density: of limbs, of openings, of parts and their connections. You have to let your eyes adjust to the resolution of the experience. Unfocusing your gaze again, the whole scene overwhelms, strikes awe, compels you to move closer, deeper, and through an edgeless space. The doubly-curved surfaces cast no regular shadows, giving little information to the eye to perceive its scale or depth.

The winding nature of the installation encourages play, as the curvature of the outside walls turn inward to form the interior, and vice versa. You can see more projects by the New York City-based studio on their Instagram. (via NOTCOT)

Extraordinary Pigeons Take Flight in Large-Scale Feathery Murals by Adele Renault

Artist Adele Renault (previously) paints realistic portraits of the common pigeon, often highlighting real examples of pigeons whose stories are anything but ordinary. This year she painted a mural of “Baby Girl,” a New Jersey pigeon who won a 366 mile race 19 minutes ahead of the other feathered contestants. A few years ago she dedicated a series of smaller paintings to “Camp,” a pigeon adopted by a Chicago couple after finding his egg left on their kitchen table.

By focusing on these inspiring stories, Renault highlights the often overlooked bird as a magnificent creature rather than an urban nuisance. Her brightly hued public murals and paintings on canvas bring purples and blues into the bird’s feathers, and accentuate the iridescent tones one might not notice at first glance. Recently she published a book combining her avian works titled Feathers and Faces. You can view more of her large-scale paintings on her website and Instagram. (via My Modern Met)

An Early 20th Century Guide to Wave Designs for Japanese Craftsmen is Now Available Online

In 1903, Japanese artist Mori Yuzan’s wave designs were published in a resource guide for Japanese craftsmen looking to add aquatic motifs to their wares. The three-volume series, titled Hamonshū, includes variations on contained and free-form wave patterns suitable for embellishing swords, religious objects, and ceramics. The collection has recently been digitized and is available for free on Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library of free books, movies, and software. (via My Modern Met)

Black and White Analog Photographs Explore the Serenity of Long Meandering Roads

Swedish photographer Håkan Strand works with old analog cameras and black and white film to capture landscapes that exude the serenity of a time past. The photographs often center around rural roads and explore the stillness that exists when one reaches the fringes of civilization. His recently published book Silent Moments will soon be available to purchase on his website, where you can find further studies of back roads and long desert highways in landscapes in the US, UK, and throughout Scandinavia. (via This Isn’t Happiness)

Miniature Installations Built Inside Suitcases Detail the Homes That Refugees Leave Behind

Syrian-born, New Haven, Connecticut-based artist and architect Mohamad Hafez compiles found objects and scrap metal to construct miniature recreations of homes, buildings, and landscapes left by refugees in the Middle East and around the world. The dioramas for his series, UNPACKED: Refugee Baggage, are built into suitcases to pay tribute to the difficult journeys forced by the ravages of war. Miniature cars, tiny living room sets, and even fake plants adorn the open luggage—installations which each take Hafez several months to complete.

The detailed works are paired with audio recordings from refugees from Afghanistan, Congo, Syria, Iraq, and Sudan. The stories are recorded by Admed Badr, an Iraqi refugee and Wesleyan University student, and illuminate the struggles faced by those who have had to leave their homes. You can listen to the recordings on Hafez and Badr’s website for the project, and see more of Hafez’s suitcase dioramas on his Instagram.

    

Sculptural Assemblages by Thomas Deininger Are Three-Dimensional Tricks of the Eye

A New Three-Dimensional Installation by Chris Engman Invites the Viewer to Step Inside a Photograph

“Containment” (2018), site-specific installation created as a part of FotoFocus Biennial 2018 exhibition “Chris Engman: Prospect and Refuge” at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery, photo by Tony Walsh

Artist Chris Engman transports natural landscapes such as waterfalls, caves, and vast deserts to domestic interiors by securing large-scale photographs to the room’s walls, ceilings, and floors. “I believe photography derives its power precisely from the fact it can’t be entered, however much we may want to,” Engman tells Colossal. “When I make photographs I try to be mindful of this, even to exploit it.”

His most recent work, Containment, is his first installation which allows visitors to step inside. The work features a rushing stream surrounded on two sides by dense forest, and on the top by a branch-covered sky. Engman thinks of the work as a singular photograph, even though it consists of more than three hundred individual prints applied to the surface of the installation’s temporary walls. Although the piece can be entered, unlike his other works, there is still a hesitation on the part of the viewer. Engman explains that once one enters the work its believability as a singular landscape becomes penetrated. Each step deeper inside the work makes the photographed landscape appear  increasingly warped and unreal.

“Even so,” says Engman, “compared to a singular framed photograph the experience of this installation for the viewer is much more physical and immersive. The structure is a room, not an image of a room. The photograph is an object, in addition to being an illusion. It has weight, and volume, and changes as you walk around it. Making this installation has been a  thrilling process, and this new way of working seems to afford many new possibilities.”

The work is exhibited alongside several of his photographs at the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio through November 18. The exhibition is a part of the 2018 FotoFocus Biennial, a photography and lens-based presentation of over 400 artists at art spaces across Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky. You can visit exhibitions and attend programming for the biennial through January 2019. Engman will have his third solo exhibition with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles in February 2019.

“Containment” (detail) (2018), photo by Tony Walsh

“Containment” (detail) (2018), photo by Tony Walsh

“Landscape for Candace” (2015), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

“Containment” (2015), Digital pigment print, 43 x 58 inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

“Landscape for Quentin” (2017), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

“Prospect” (2016), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

“Refuge” (2016), Digital pigment print, 43 x 53 inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

“Equivalence” (2017), Digital pigment print, 43 x 55½ inches, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Garment-Inspired Sculptures by Susie MacMurray Explore Perceptions of Female Identity

Chain mail, needles, and dishwashing gloves: though not the materials you’d expect a dress to be made from, British artist Susie MacMurray uses them in her garment-inspired sculptures. MacMurray’s first piece in this body of work was Gladrags, made in 2002 from 10,000 pink balloons. Since then, the artist has produced several other seemingly wearable sculptures including Medusa (copper chain mail), Widow (leather and 100,000 dressmaker needles), and A Mixture of Frailties (1,400 household gloves).

“They have all been more concerned with the perception of women, their power and their vulnerabilities,” she explains to Colossal. “I am interested in how human strengths and frailties can often be one and the same thing. I suppose you could almost call them portraits… Much of my sculpture and drawing practice is concerned in one way or another with the perception and negotiation of female identity, both internal and external.”

MacMurray was formerly a classical musician, and she retrained as an artist, graduating in 2001 with an MA in Fine Art. In addition to her garment sculptures, MacMurray also creates drawings and architectural installations. You can see more of her work on her website and Twitter. (via #WomensArt)