“Have Everything And Die”, 2009, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 39 x 24 x 16 in

“The Girl and the Bear, 2008″, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 108 x 108 x 22 in

Artist’s Approach:

Through her tri-dimensional works designed to evoke the virtual modelings simulating reality, Susy Oliveira questions our habits of replacing nature with fabricated replicas. In her works, there is a playful dynamic which associates the characteristics of photography with those inherent to sculpture. Their structure incorporates the angles and features of some giant origami. The photographs are mounted on each face of a volume to restore the three dimensions of the image. Through this process, the shape is both simplified and amplified, giving the photography a volume, an ambiguous character oscillating between reality and fiction. (via)

“Night eyes open”, 2007, c-prints on archival card and foamcore, 20 x 24 x 6 in

“Time is never wasted”, 2006, c-prints and foamcore, 144 x 58 x 15 in

See more of Oliveira’s work here

posted by: Brent Carter

In 2003, Florian Jenett and Valentin Beinroth placed about 50 of their handgun replicas made from tinted ice in downtown Frankfurt for a project entitled Freeze!. Bringing the idea back in 2009 with a new edition called Freeze revisited, the two created these edible guns using coke, licorice, cherry and food coloring.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Last Sunday morning, artist Laura Keeble dumped this fantastic sculpture outside an Essex Starbucks – their consumer avatar mermaid drowning in coffee beans, grounds, half-molten Styrofoam cups and filth. The installation Wish you were here?… lasted a few hours until Starbucks hauled it away. The effigy was the artist’s contribution to UK’s first annual ARTSIDE project.

posted by: Harold Johns III

click photo for a larger version

Between 1992 and 1996, environmental artist Agnes Denes created Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule.  The project consisted of a series of architectural renderings on vellum featuring designs for a new forest to be planted in Pinziö, near Ylöjärvi, Finland. These works  on paper became planning documents after the Finnish government decided to make Denes’ project its official Earth Day contribution at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, 1992.  This major earthwork and reclamation project was designed by the artist as a community building project that also made use of waste from a nearby gravel pit.  To accomplish the massive undertaking, Denes invited 11,000 people to plant a tree. Each person became the custodian of a tree and received a certificate recognizing their role in the project. The forest, which is to remain a living legacy for the next 400 years (20 generations), has spawned additional projects in Australia and the Netherlands.

The 11,000 trees were planted according to an intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and sunflower/pineapple pattern designed by Denes. The tree mountain is 420 meters long, 270 meters wide and 28 meters high.

See more of  Denes’ work via Chelesa Art Museum

posted by: Brent Carter

We Are Dust
Monica Canilao
April 30 – May 30
Opening Reception Friday, April 30 from 7-10pm
Cinders Gallery (103 Havemeyer St. Store#2 Brooklyn, NY 11211)

Artist Statement:

The past is not something you can choose to leave behind. It guides your hand and sways your gaze, it is blood and tears and bliss. Paint chip trails and ghost images are left behind in abandoned places, lived in to death and pieces. Every life leaves an imprint. Plants  shoot out roots and break through foundations, found under the floorboards. You rub your eyes clear for the first time and see the war paint that has always been there, running rainforest colors across your cheeks.

These past histories unearthed are not a thing that you’ve lost, it’s a veil sitting just behind your eyes, weaving, running, somewhere just beyond the treeline. These Old faces are your faces, and Your hands have built things without permission. Every tiny effort feeds and is recycled… The universe is so large that all we can do is hold on and take care of one another… because In the end We are just dust and more dust.

Monica Canilao hails from Oakland, CA where she spends her days stitching, painting, printing, and breathing life into the refuse that dominates our time and place. She received a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts and has shown in galleries, community spaces, and abandoned places worldwide.

Read and see more about the show here
See more of Canilao’s previous works here

posted by: Brent Carter

A mask from Mozambique

Exhibition Statement:

This exhibition explores the artistic consequences of the variations and dynamics of cultural exchanges between Africans and Europeans over 500 years, making it the broadest analytical overview on the subject to date. Through African Eyes will illustrate how African artists from diverse cultures have used and continue to use visual forms to reflect their particular societies’ changing attitudes toward Europeans, as the latter evolved from stranger to colonizer to the more inclusive Westerner.

The exhibition features 100 of Africa’s finest three-dimensional artworks and utilitarian objects executed in wood, ivory, metals, and textiles in diverse materials from the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) and other leading American and international museums and private collections. The DIA is the opening venue.

Through African Eyes will offer broad insights into various strategies that diverse African cultures have employed to engage the European outsider. In particular, it will explore Africans’ delicate balancing of assimilation and confrontation of European culture when stimulated by shifts in the relationship. Moreover, the exhibition will show that dynamic cultural exchanges that occurred not only produced new African art forms but also stimulated new social values and modes of governance.

Read more about the exhibit here

A flag from Ghana

A pair of glasses in the show, cast in gold by a 20th-century Ghanaian artist, with wire mesh in place of lenses, was an essential component of a chief’s regalia. They had no optical function, but as symbols of political acuity and cosmopolitan taste, their magnification value was great.

A mask of a white colonial officer, from Nigeria

For more preview images check out NY Times’ slideshow of the exhibit here

posted by: Harold Johns III