Archive for the 'Sculpture' Category
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Lowride to High Art :: Dzine at The Bass Museum
(All Images © Jeff Newman/TheArtCollectors)
Chicago based artist, Dzine (Carlos Rolon) appropriates the aesthetics of lowrider “Kustom [car] Kulture” into high art circles. In doing so, he redefines these objects, deeply rooted in Chicano ethnic and communal identities, as vibrant and viable works of sculpture.
As noted by Denise M. Sandoval in Cruising Through East Los Angeles: Chicano Lowrider Stories, “lowriders can be seen as embodiments of Mexican-American or Chicano social history, a heritage that is often misunderstood by other segments of the American populace…and speak to the creation of cultural space[s] within the urban environment…” While celebrating this heritage, Dzine simultaneously urges the viewer to see beyond such connections. “On one level its a folkloric tradition, but its also just one degree away from a Mariko Mori sculpture,” the artist reflected. “To put my work in a different environment where people might look at it as its Starke or Gerhy did it, is to make it aesthetic rather than sociological – to see this like I do, as a sculpture (Paper Magazine; Carlo McCormick, May 2008).
Dzine’s works are currently on view at The Bass Museum of Art, Miami (he also had a new work on display earlier this month with Deitch Projects at Art Basel, Miami – pictured below). The most innovative piece in the exhibit it a customized chandelier, tricked out with 24 karot gold, crystals, speakers, velvet, and rear view mirrors. Here, Dzine has flipped his usual method appropriation on its head, taking a high culture status symbol and reworking it into the lexicon of the street. With such compelling and instantly accessible works of art, we can’t help but imagine one of his wheeled-wonders bulldozing over Damien Hirst’s Diamond Skull. Here’s to wishful thinking.
Read on for our extensive images – click for larger views. Read the rest of this entry »
Saturday, November 28th, 2009
Expect Delays for Koons’ Train
Train – Production Model © Jeff Koons Production / Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Bloomberg reports that due to budget constraints and a drastically shrunken endowment, Jeff Koons’ $25 million commission for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been postponed, and may come to a complete halt altogether. Dubbed by The Art Newspaper as most expensive museum commission ever, the proposed sculpture would dangle a full-scale motorized replica of a 70-foot 1943 Baldwin locomotive from a crane in front of the museum’s entrance. Three times a day the train’s wheels would start up, while sounding its whistle and blowing off steam. “We wouldn’t do it unless someone funds it; someone has to write us a check,” said Barbara Pflaumer, LACMA’s associate vice president for communications and marketing.
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Phaidon Releases Anish Kapoor Monograph
Phaidon has just released the most up to date and comprehensive monograph on Anish Kapoor, covering 30 years of the sculptor’s work over 528 pages and 446 color photos. The publisher is also running a 20% discount on all purchases in their webstore, now through December 11. Sign up to their email list to receive a discount code.
Monday, October 12th, 2009
Let There Be Light :: Monumental Times for James Turrell
Roden Crater, view from southwest. (Image: © James Turrell, Photo: Florian Holzherr, 2003.)
James Turrell is about to unveil a new light work and his largest ever museum installation at The Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg, Germany. James Turrell: The Wolfsburg Project opens Oct. 24 and runs though April 5, 2010. In addition, Pace Wildenstein, NY, is currently holding its fourth solo gallery exhibit with the artist, featuring fifteen large-scale light works on view for the first time.
Ganzfeld Piece, Begehbare Installation, Stuttgart, 2009. (Image: © James Turrell, Photo: Zooey Braun.)
The most anticipated events, however, are still a few years off. After more than three decades of development in Arizona’s Painted Desert, Turrell’s Roden Crater will finally open to the public for the first time. The unveiling is scheduled sometime during the course of the artist’s upcoming museum retrospective, which will debut in 2012 at the Guggenheim before traveling to LACMA, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and several international institutions. Since 1972 Turrell has been transforming the extinct volcanic crater into an open-air observatory that will enable visitors to witness celestial phenomenon with the naked eye, viewable from only a handull of locations around the world.
An interactive book entitled Turrell World Tour will coincide with the opening of Roden Crater. The publication will highlight 137 public works across 18 states and 23 countries, and will function as a passport that is signed and stamped at each of the 85 destinations. Upon completing the tour, readers will be invited as a personal guest of the artist’s to the site.
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
KAWS & Sorayama’s Silver No Future Companion Sells Out
Image: kawsone
Following an in-store release at OriginalFake in Tokyo this past Saturday, KAWS and Hajime Sorayama’s silver No Future Companion went on sale this morning on kawsone.com. The metal figure’s sale was announced by an email that arrived in subscribers’ inboxes around 8:30am EST and as expected, was gone in under an hour. Contrary to collectors’ speculation that spread rumors of 300 pieces, the second color version was produced as an edition of 500 – the same as the earlier black chrome release late last month.
Monday, July 13th, 2009
Anthony McCall Steals Show at Plot09
If the landscape of Governors Island isn’t already enough to transport the visitors who voyage here by ferry from the tip of lower Manhattan, Anthony McCalls’ Between You and I certainly is. Housed within the Medieval-like St. Cornelius Chapel, McCall’s sculptural light projection is without a doubt the most visionary contribution to Creative Times’ Plot 09: This World and Nearer Ones, comprised of 19 site-specific artworks installed throughout the island.
Inside the stone architecture of the church, two slowly morphing volumes of projected light cut through the dark misty air, slicing out shapes on the ground beneath, creating three dimensional pockets of space in the pitch-black void. Between You and I so completely interacts with time, space and viewer, that once one finds himself enclosed within the panes of light, feeling on the verge of being beamed up and away is not far off. The effect is nothing short of spectacular, and affirms the significance of McCall’s reemergence in the early millennium after a two decade disappearance from art.
Plot09 runs throughout the summer and is open for view Fridays – Sundays. McCall also has dual exhibits running alongside Icelandic artist Finnbogi Petursson at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York and i8 in Reykjavik. Both run though July 31.
Read on for our exclusive images of Anthony McCall’s Between You and I at Plot09. Read the rest of this entry »
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
Fourth Owner of Hirst Skull Outed
As you may recall, shortly after unveiling Hirst’s For the Love of God in 2007, White Cube Gallery reported that the $100 million diamond emblazoned skull had in fact sold to a private investment group for the initial asking price. It didn’t take long for details to surface – to date, Hirst, along with his business manager Frank Dunphy and White Cube’s Jay Jopling are the majority owners.
Now, The Art Newspaper reports that Russian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk was recently outed by the Washington Post as a fourth part-owner of the skull. No wonder he is currently hosting a major Hirst retrospective at his own Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev.
Friday, June 5th, 2009
There Will Be Blood – Anish Kapoor to Fill Royal Academy
Anish Kapoor – Svayambh, 2007 at Le Musée des Beaux Arts. Image: Exporevue
This coming September, London’s Royal Academy of Arts will host a major exhibition by acclaimed sculptor, Anish Kapoor, representing the first time the main exhibition galleries will be filled by a living contemporary artist. Here, Kapoor will present several new works, alongside signature pieces representing his accomplished career. The exhibition’s focal point will be Svayambh (Sanskrit for self-born), a site specific work comprised of mammoth block of red wax that slowly trudges along on motorized tracks, morphing to the shape of the gallery arches it passed through and staining the walls along the way. An earlier version of the piece debuted at Le Musée des Beaux Arts in 2007. Also on display will be Shooting Into the Corner, a new work that sees an air-powered cannon continually firing red pellets of wax at a wall.
The pieces represent Kapoor’s recent exploration of art that is both transient and self-generating. In an interview for Tate Magazine, the artist noted, “I am interested in sculpture that manipulates the viewer into a specific relation with both space and time. Time, on two levels; one narratively and cinematically as a matter of the passage through the work, and the other as a literal elongation of the moment.”
Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy of Arts opens September 26 and runs till December 11, 2009.
Image: The Royal Academy of Arts
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
KAWS 4 Ft. Dissected Companion Has Arrived
Image: Nigo / Honeyee
The piece avid KAWS collectors have been waiting for has finally arrived. The 4 Foot Dissected Companion has already sold out at OriginalFake in Tokyo, and a very small amount have quietly made their way stateside. No official word on how many were produced, but we speculate no more than 100, perhaps less, as Medicom’s got to keep the product mold intact long enough to produce the other two color-ways. If it pops up anytime soon, expect to see a secondary market price of at least 7k on this one. The one pictured above belongs to Nigo – of course.
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
Yoskay Yamamoto’s Koibito @ LeBasse
koibito by yamamoto
Rightfully well-supported, Yoskay Yamamoto’s release of his ‘gallery’ edition Koibito drew in an eager league of fans. Dropping at LeBasse Projects, the vinyl rendition, sculpted by Yamamoto himself, is a co-production with Munky King. Limited to 150, the white version of this artist-multiple follows on the heels of a phenomenally successful solo art show at the same gallery. For a young artist to be viably defying the present sad state of the economy is indeed impressive and shows the promise he holds for future conquest. A very small portion of prints, also offered at the event, were set aside for release on Paper Tiger at 12:30PM PST on 05/28/09. Word is that a new original painting by Yoskay will be available at the gallery for its opening during this weekend’s Culver City Art Walk. Photos follow: Read the rest of this entry »