Watch: “Karakuri” – A Mini Doc About Traditional Japanese Self-Operating Machines

According to the filmmaker Matthew Allard:

Japan has always been on the forefront of cutting edge robotics. Its roots can be traced back 200-300 years ago during the Edo period when skilled craftsmen created automata (self-operating machines). Using nothing more than pulleys and weights they were able to make the Karakuri (Japanese automata) perform amazing tasks.

Japan’s modern day robots can be traced back to the Karakuri. Today Hideki Higashino is one of the few remaining craftsmen who is determined to keep the history and tradition of Japanese Karakuri alive.

Learn more about Karakuri here

Artist Shout Out: Derek Weisburg (sculpture)

Derek Weisburg lives and works in Oakland, CA.

Artist Statement:

I create works of art that are emotional and psychological self-portraits. Through my work I aim to make sense of my life, my experiences, and the times I live. I do not wish to represent like a photo, instead to achieve an innerness. My goal is to create images, which are accessible and allow the viewer to have an experience which can not be easily articulated, but felt. Simultaneously igniting contemplation, reflection and a lasting relationship with the work. I attempt to express basic human qualities, which are universal and timeless. At its core the works reflect humanist ideology; searching for truth and universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition.

Through thought, feelings become knowledge. To know ones feelings is to know ones self. especially through experiencing feelings, which are uncomfortable and unfamiliar: pain melancholy, etc. When my mother passed away I began to include these feelings as well as themes of death, afterlife, spirituality and the metaphysical into my work. While still philosophically closer to a secular point of view, for my mother’s sake, I want to believe in an afterlife. In traditional Jewish thought, The voyage of the soul is dependent upon the actions of the ones who are living. in my case the actions are carried out through making my art. Making this work became a ritual to continue the existence of my mother or at least a spiritual existence. The actions are meant to bless, help, and accompany the deceased on its journey. (source)

*All sculptures are ceramic

See more of Weisburg’s work here and here

Ordinary People and Disposable Objects

Israeli-based designer Idan Friedman embosses portraits on cheap aluminum trays as part of his Profiles project. See more of Friedman’s delicately executed portraits here

Artist Shout Out: Jessica Harrison

Artist Statement (Excerpt):

The things I make are a complex description of simultaneous unmaking and making, deconstructing an object or a body before putting it back together again – this could be interpreted as a violent process, but is often a very delicate and fragile one, a process of transplantation rather than dislocation. The works are an attempt to change the relationship of the object to the body, making visible the invisible, opening up something normally closed, softening a usually hard surface.

I am exploring the significance of surfaces in our construction of knowledge through making and experimenting, playing on our instincts and assumptions built from an historical optical hierarchy and propensity to touch what catches our attention. Our surfaces do not just act as boundaries between our inside and outside, between ‘us’ and ‘that’, but play the most vital role in our perceptions of the world around us.  The objects I make attempt to unpack these perceptions and interrupt these interfaces to bring our assumptions to the surface.

From Harrison’s ”Breaking” series. All figures are mixed media.

Harrison’s sculptures, prints and drawings and  will be on display at the Jealous Gallery starting on April 28th.

See more of Harrison’s work here

Artist Shout Out: Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer was born in 1973, in Zurich, Switzerland.

Artist Statement (via Whitney Biennial 2006):

Urs Fischer’s artistic practice is founded on a consideration of the nature of substances, the act of making, and the unpredictable processes that can result from combining the two. With an extraordinarily wide range of materials—Styrofoam, clay, mirrors, fruit, wax, wood, glass, paint, sawdust, and silicone, to name a few—he resuscitates art historical genres such as still lifes, nudes, portraits, and landscapes in potent sculptures that reflect the complexity, wonder, and banality of everyday life. His works reverberate with material transformation and decay as well as with poetic internal collisions and contradictions that cause his sculptures to oscillate between seeming beautiful or ugly, elegant or awkward, graceful or burdened.

See more of Fischer’s work here and here

“Noisette” – mixed medium, 2009

“A Place Called Novosibirsk” – aluminum/epoxy resin, 2007