Chaos is the New Order

Avalanche


The project was realized in a retail in Dortmund. The image of an avalanche was used to compare my installation and my way of working to the transformation of the surrounding environment. The distortion began at one point and then suddenly changed and rearranged the whole space. In combination with the outer appearance of the building, it all appeared folded and wrapped around itself. Inside the avalanche, I used common materials, like wallpapers, cardboard, carpet and mirrors, to relate to everyday spaces. The basement housed another work. Pictures of the room in its former state were projected on an installation composed of fragmented, origami-like shapes. Visitors could control the projections through sound and, in this way, move the space and alter its scale.

a fixed draft from Everything and Me on Vimeo.

German artist Clemens Behr (Born 20.10.1985 in Koblenz, Germany) uses the simplest materials to create complex ephemeral architectures, which fill gallery spaces with origami-like structures. Working with recycled materials and basic geometric forms, Behr dreams up installations that result in subtle confusions between 2D painting and 3D objects. Not content with the confines of gallery spaces, Behr has taken his work into the public sphere, building peculiar appendages in metro cars and erecting detailed miniature cities on street corners. At their best, his installations are feats of optical trickery, disorienting architectures reminiscent of German expressionist film sets. At their worst, they look like a creative kid ran amok with a bunch of moving boxes and a vat of paint. Behr belongs to a crop of artists, who take inspiration from childlike forms of expression, a naive, innocent aesthetic befitting a generation of Peter Pans.

More here 

Ewa Kuryluk

Pioneer of ephemeral textile installation and air art, painter, photographer, art historian, novelist and poet.

Kuryluk’s work is inspired by autobiography and realism, by shadows, traces and mirrors, by the legends of the Corinthian girl and Veronica’s cloth.

The artist is known worldwide having had 43 solo shows and over 60 group shows, and from catalogues and books. Her work can be found in public & private collections in Europe & the USA, and be seen in the National Museums in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, Wroclaw and the Museum of Modern Art in Lodz.

Statement and inspiration

solitary and cautious

at the end

She is no longer afraid

cora

daughter of the potter butades

outlines the shadow of her lover

tracing wind

on water

while war calls him away

Ewa Kuryluk, Miss Anima

Poems: 1975-1979

Maps on walls of interiors in old paintings are mementos from past journeys and signs of secret dreams

– maps within. I have always been a traveler and each journey left traces in my art work. The trip to Corinth, the art center of ancient Greece and the legendary cradle of painting, was of a different dimension. In June 1964 I joined a school trip to Greece because of the Corinthian girl who had invented painting by outlining the shadow of her departing lover. I was first appalled by the city of Corinth, a shabby backwater founded in the mid-nineteenth century when Old Corinth was leveled to the ground by an earthquake. But as we walked across the excavations and I watched my shadow move along the white hot stone, I felt near the Corinthian girl. Admiring the faded colors on the metopes and the brilliant meander pattern of red, blue and yellow in the Museum, I had a revelation. In ancient Greece when temples and statues were covered with bright paint, no division between painting and sculpture existed. They really were twins, like the two dancing maenads on a marble relief fragment, now white but once full of color. Looking up at a colossal stone lady beautifully draped, I imagined her cheeks pink, her lips red, and her tunic in color. In Corinth everything seemed possible and all fitted together. A girl my age with no training invented painting out of an impulse. From the shadow’s outline sculpture was born without much ado, soon to be clothed in paint and come alive, like in the legend of Pygmalion. It was during that trip to Greece that

I discovered freedom, simplicity and the limitless potential of art. Nothing could turn me away. I was and still am on my way to Corinth.

A Greek legend attributes the invention of painting and relief to the daughter of the Corinthian potter Butades. The girl “was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief, which he hardened by exposure to fire” (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 35.43.151).

-Early spring 1959 in Vienna, a painting lesson. A girl watches a sparrow on the windowsill. She has a box of watercolors and a glass of water in front of her, but no intention to work. She has always disliked painting, and she doesn’t understand German. She yawns to discourage the teacher, who has approached her with a powder compact. Seeing her own reflection in the small mirror, the girl realizes that she is supposed to paint herself. And 

she does, in a sort of dream. I am the girl.-

-“I write what I cannot draw, I draw what I cannot write.”-

-"My own artistic utopias derive from the irrational conviction that art should be a unique reflection of an individual's fate and experience. It is not so much about creating as it as about using highly sensitive materials [...] to record the grain of the epidermis, the gesture of a hand, a heart rhythm, and our own shadow as thrown by the bright sun." -

Here is her website: www.kuryluk.art.pl/ 

Define us four

Fall 2011 Ready-to-wear

Ken Ohara

( born 1942) is a renowned Japanese photographer.

Ohara Ken is most noted for his series of photographs titled "One", in which he presents faces with a standard size and tone. His work offers an intense examination of space and time in portraiture and provokes a rethinking of the limits of photographic depiction.


"I try not to photograph what 'we' think it should be but what 'it' is."

"One"

This book of 500 closed-up faces taken in New York in the 1960s. Classic photo book originally published in 1970.

Depending on how you look at it, you will find this book to be frightening or enlightening. In my case, it was the latter. It is a thick collection of 500 B/W photos of people's faces. As you can see on the book's cover, the face is closely cropped so that you only see the eyes, nose, and mouth. This is how it is for all the 500 faces. 

It is a monotonous and seemingly never-ending collection of humanity. They are people of all ages and races. The eyes, nose, and mouth are located at the same position on each page. Their individualism and differences disappear. It shows how people are really the same despite the differences we always see in each other. It also proves that the human face is much more that just the eyes, nose and mouth. 

When this book was first published in 1970, it caused a major stir in Japan's photography circles. It was quite shocking. In 1997, the book was reissued by Taschen in Germany. The original edition now fetches a premium price.

" With"

Ken Ohara's photographic series of one-hour exposure portraits create in their final form a new identity for each subject. The traditional evaluations we make of a portrait, ie “How do you look?” are lost in the blur of a passing hour. 


The soft outlines of heads and bodies take on a new power in their loss of detail, and we look to the objects that frame each sitter to give us a context for identity.

 Like Meatyard before him, Ohara's collective subjects create a wry and melancholy portrait of the absent artist.

Anthony Maule + Sandy Kim = Destroyed Perfection

Tired of images being perfect and sleek, the two photographers decided to see what happens when fashion pictures are destroyed, manipulated or scratched

Text by Felicity Shaw from Dazed & Confused

The discussion behind the concept of ‘perfection’ and the ‘perfect’ imagined self has been explored extensively throughout both psychological theory and creative practice, addressing media and advertisement constructs as to what is deemed as aesthetically perfect. This hyper-reality of mannequin-like idealism is explored further in this month’s exhibition at Camer16 in Milan, 'Destroyed Perfection'. We caught up with Anthony Maule and Sandy Kim who are showcasing their work to find out more about how these barriers can be broken down…

Dazed Digital: Your previous work contains hyper perfect fashion images – what made you break away from this? 

Anthony Maule: It was an emotional response. One day I just wanted to destroy everything I’d been working on to see what would happen, I guess it was a moment of madness, so impulsively I did and it kind of went from there. I started destroying other people’s work, advertising campaigns, complete magazines, clothing, etc. Whatever was around me really; there’s a lot of appropriated art in the show.

DD: Why do you think advertisers and fashion magazines continue to use unrealistic, mannequin like models for their campaigns?  

Anthony Maule: I think for a lot of them it probably has a lot to do with respecting a tradition and that tradition being the safest playing ground for them to be working on right now. I think the advertisers are in the most difficult position because they’re directly in the firing line of public opinion. They have the history and integrity of the brand and the fashion industry to consider at the same time as being aware of sales and public criticism so it’s a difficult balance to get right.

DD: Do you think perfection is an impossible concept?  

Anthony Maule: Perfection is obviously connected to taste so what’s perfect for one person isn’t necessarily going to be perfect for someone else, if perfection is about you wanting to achieve your personal goals then no I don’t think the concept is impossible. It can be a huge driving force for positive thinking, innovation and progress and can be incredibly stimulating. However, I think the desire for perfection is much more interesting than perfection itself. If everything was perfect, it would be boring, it’s such a weird paradox, if you look around, everyone is obsessed with this idea of a virtual utopia but the reality of it would be dreadful. The fact that it’s impossible is what keeps us ticking. 

DD: How important is it to you to break down the barriers as to what is deemed as perfect?

Anthony Maule: From my perspective it’s very important, that’s really why I was so interested in doing this show. Perfection isn’t just about control, it’s about loosing control as well, it’s not just about action but also about reaction. It shows the frigid nature of discipline destroyed by passion and emotion so in my opinion I think the work becomes more complete, more real and closer to reality again and definitely poses some interesting questions about which is the more perfect out of the two. 

DD: You interact with the images by destroying, manipulating and scratching. Could you tell us a little about this process?  

Anthony Maule: Yeah, it’s Action painting, so it’s all very impulsive and in the moment. Mainly I’ve been working with spray paints, adhesives, burned ink, heat guns, blood, staples, axe wounds and surgical stitches. The processes are symbolic of a cycle. Construction – deconstruction – reconstruction, it’s taken from what we see in life. I treated the artwork as if it were flesh at times, that’s quite an interesting concept in itself. 

DD: What does the exhibition title, ‘Destroyed Perfection’ mean to you?

Sandy Kim: I never saw my life as being perfect, nor do I strive for perfection in my photos. So I'm not really sure how it addresses the theme because it was never perfect to begin with. But then I think about it again and it does address the theme because my idea of perfection was destroyed while growing up.

DD: Your work seems to reference acclaimed photographers Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. Are these artists’ references for your work?

Sandy Kim: Honestly, I had never heard of Nan Goldin or Larry Clark until people started comparing my work to theirs. I grew up in Portland with a crowd of thugged-out Asian kids who had no interest in art. After becoming familiar with their work of course I'm completely obsessed.

DD: How autobiographical is your work?

Sandy Kim: You only live once - you might as well capture it.

DD: Do you have any other projects you would like to realise? If so, what?

Sandy Kim: Too many projects, not enough time.

The exhibition runs from February 24 to April 9, 2011 at Camera 16, Via Pisacane 16, 20129 Milano, Italy

Lumière Brothers - The Serpentine Dance in 1899

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besançon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besançon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were among the earliest filmmakers in history.

Their work consisted mainly of moving images from scenes of everyday 

  

Each frame of this 19th century film by the Lumière brothers was hand-colored to create an early color moving picture. And the dancing was inspired by Loie Fuller, a modern dance pioneer

Born in Chicago in 1862, Loie Fuller began her stage career as a child actress. During her twenties, she performed as a skirt dancer on the burlesque circuit. In 1891 she went on tour with a melodrama called "Quack MD," playing a character who performed a skirt dance while under hypnosis. Fuller began experimenting with the effect the gas lighting had on her silk skirt and received special notice in the press. Her next road tour, in a show called "Uncle Celestine," featured this new version of the skirt dance. By emphasizing the body was transformed by the artfully moving silk. One reviewer described the effect as "unique, ethereal, delicious...she emerges from darkness, her airy evolutions now tinted blue and purple and crimson, and again the audience...insists upon seeing her pretty piquant face before they can believe that the lovely apparition is really a woman."

She was an inventor and stage craft innovator who held many patents for stage lighting, including the first chemical mixes for gels and slides and the first use of luminescent salts to create lighting effects. She was also an early innovator in lighting design, and was the first to mix colors and explore new angles.         

…the female dancer will eventually return to the cultural and even intellectual center stage with a vengeance. Described as a poet and metaphysician in her own right, she appears in nineteenth-century Paris as the true muse of poets and philosophers.

Before our very eyes she turned to many-coloured shining orchids, to a wavering, flowing sea-flower, and at length to a spiral-like lily, all the magic of Merlin, the sorcery of light, colour, flowing form… She transformed herself into a thousand colourful images before the eyes of her audience. Unbelievable. Not to be repeated or described 

Coloured lights and projections playing on silk… were not new. The Panarama, Diarama, phantasmagoria, and magic lantern were popular entertainments in Paris and London in the late eighteen hundreds. Central to Fuller’s performance was a moving image made animate by the projection of coloured light and slides. But one is the inversion of the other. Those early motion picture performances moved the light or projected images on to a static screen. Instead, [Fuller] moved the huge screen, moulding it into fantastic shapes and forms

First [Fuller] increased the size of the skirt until it became ‘draperies’. This allowed a radical shift in emphasis to take place and changed the performance matrix… the skirt itself became the central focus as the most important and the most essential mobile image… By carefully choosing and arranging twelve coloured lights of great intensity, she further abstracted and enlarged the image, creating a new dance

From the unearthly appearance of my dances, caused by the light and mingling of colours… the being flitting about there before them among the shadows and flashes of light belongs to the unreal world

Maarten Kolk

He (1980) is currently working as an independent designer. He spent his youth in the countryside of the province of Overijssel. Considering the environment of his childhood years, it is not surprising that a subject like bolted vegetables intrigues him. 

With this work, he aims to show that flowers, plants, and nature manifest themselves in very different ways. Instead of using plants and flowers as decorations or illustrations, he incorporates nature and its organic properties into the design.

He took the initiative for this publication during the completion of his graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven on 2008.

The concept for this publication arose from his fascination with vegetable gardens and the conviction that common everyday things are all too often taken for granted. People eat vegetables everyday, but many of them are ignorant of the origin and growth of vegetable plants. 

For this book, he simply let himself be guided by the daily goings-on in his vegetable garden. He observed what happened, and wrote down his findings, registering bolting vegetables with a designer's eye. Proceeding from this conceptual line of approach, he highlighted the unexpected hidden splendor of vegetables and the extraordinary colors and shapes of bolted vegetables. The result is an exceptional photo document containing intriguing images.

Here is another project of him and his partner Guus Kusters on 2009

‘Avifauna’ is about bringing two common worlds we love together, nature and textile. 

We've started to materialize the beauty, shape and language of form that we see in animals and what's better to start this search than to mold on the animal itself.

The 'Dutch' Grey Heron, Tawny owl and Blackbird were stuffed without their plumage and used as dummies to design on. Right now we're working on designing still animals out of paper. We're trying to find new shapes, techniques and textures from the motion of flying owls, fighting hares, walking storks and other animals. None of the animals were killed for this project.

Actually his work isn't that artistic of how you think

Those are the things we see we eat and we touch everyday

He just remind us the natural beauty that people always missing

Don't praise his work

Please blame yourself

Here is their website: www.mkgk.nl/

That is really interesting because you can't understand any words on their site and you still find they're great

I think that is the power of art

Jeremy Scott Fall2011

Enjoy God
"Fashion shouldn't be a church  that you pray to"
why not to have some fun on it

Geoffrey Beene

I read this book in my school library and i think he is different,

simply and perfect.

A good designer doesn't mean he/she has to put everything on the garment

I always agree with the point of "less is more"

but the fact is, 

how many people will believe on such "joke"

i just quote something what he said in the book

"The more you learn about clothing, the more you learn about what must be taken away."

"Simplification becomes a very complicated process."

" It is not easy to find

In this business called fashion

Someone who designs as an art form

And believe with such passion......"

"I am compelled to begin this book with my own very personal snapshot of the designer Geoffrey Beene, because I knew this complex man in a slightly different way than most of the world did," writes Kim Hastreiter in Geoffrey Beene: An American Fashion Rebel, her intimately replete record of the designer, culled from memories, photos and interviews with his colleagues from Alber Elbaz to Agnes Gund to Tom Ford. 

Beene, who defied fashion etiquette by rejecting mainstream media and refusing to show anywhere other than in America, was something of a misleading figure in the fashion world. Most thought he designed clothing "for fancy ladies who lunch," Hastreiter says, when in reality, "he was a hero for young and underground designers because of his rule-breaking, anti-establishment streak."

After Beene sent Hastreiter a fan letter in response to a quirky "Teen Loves Beene" Paper article, the two began a 20-year friendship. Hastreiter recalls that she was "constantly stunned by Beene's genius and his radical ideas both in life and in fashion." Adding, "He'd attack an idea, resolve it and as soon as it was perfect, he would destroy it. He was an artist who never, ever repeated himself." 

Meet Robert Clergerie in Lane Crawford

TRADITION AND MODERNITY
PASSION AND ORIGINALITY
QUALITY AND SAVOIR FAIRE
MADE IN FRANCE

Robert Clergerie is associated with style, simplicity and purity of the design, as well a good fitting.  
Established since 1981, Robert Clergerie’s first store opened in Saint – Germain – des Pres in Paris, 
and until today is closely involved in the creative development of the Robert Clergerie collections.

And now in the Lane Crawford ifc mall, 

there is a photography exhibition providing an insider’s view of a day in the 

life of him.  Photographed by French photographer, Laurent Segretier.

I am really glad to see him today and listen his sharing experience on his work and life. Before having a sharing session with students, he did introduce his latest collection S/S 2011. Those shoes he designed are mainly focus on beauty, style and comfort. But when we ask him about is it possible to make a balance within beauty and comfort, he answer it as "Never".  

On his philosophy, he says, " In my creations, i always respect the basic principle, learned from the famous boot maker Andre Perugia, that you carry a garment, but for a shoe is different: the shoe carries you, and all the difficulty is here."

He cares about how the wearer feel and design what they need. People keep asking him about where his inspirations come from, what is your design elements, have you forecast the trend before you start to design the following collection,do you know what people need.....and so on.  He just say he has a feeling on what he should design, and never rely on the trends and market. He aims to design ageless shoes rather than the shoe which is only hot or trendy in a specific period. And i'm quite impressive when he, who has been the top designer over 30 years said " You are not a god, you cannot do everything right or wrong, because you are just a human, all you can do is keep going and never give up." He said " Being a designer,you should require two thing: imagination and taste."  People can teach you how to make a shoe, but they never teach you how to design it. 

“Clothes can be accessorized, but the shoe is essential, and that’s where the challenge lies”

 – Robert Clergerie