Illustrator and designer Peter Nencini created an edition of 50 Hand Werk boxes, each containing a set of materials and forms, for abstract play.
Wood, plastic, ceramic, rubber, fabric. The components, mostly designed and cut to combine with counterparts sourced from school science lab suppliers for example, have a character that sits somewhere between board game bits, measurement tools, ambiguous accessories for clothing, for eating.
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Xavier Mañosa, the 28-year-old Spanish ceramicist who goes by the name Apparatu, works every day alongside his parents.
Upon moving back home last year after a five-year stint in Berlin, Mañosa set up camp with his father, Juan, and his mother, Aurora, inside a dust-covered workshop in the affluent Barcelonan suburb of Sant Cugat.
The elder Mañosas work with more traditional forms, flecked with Miró-like strips of color, while Xavi finds inspiration in readymades, his cast objects taking the form of traffic cones, fire extinguishers, cow udders, beer bottles, inner tubes, or the sleeves of hideously unattractive puffy coats.
It took moving 1,000 miles away to convince Xavi of the value of his upbringing. He opened a studio in Berlin, and when he began collaborating with the digitally obsessed trio Mashallah Design, he realized he could experiment with materials and push the boundaries of the medium to make things that were nothing like the vases of his childhood. His most recent collaboration is with Alex Trochut, the Spanish graphic designer and illustrator who’s created drippy Dalí-like typographic campaigns for the likes of Nike and Estrella beer. Mañosa contributes mold-made forms (the aforementioned inner tubes and sleeves) while Trochut applies his signature brash graphics.
For all of Xavi’s experiments with decoration and design, though, in the end it comes back to the original form.
Read the whole post here on Sight Unseen
The Sprüth Magers gallery in Berlin is currently showing a new series of work by Andreas Gursky, inspired by the blue void of ocean displayed on an in-flight monitor during a flight from Dubai to Melbourne.
The Ocean I-VI series is on show from 1 May until 19 June and features six new large-scale works by the German artist. The work apparently originates from Gursky being struck by the pictorial quality of the back-of-seat display as it showed the wide expanse of water that he was flying 35,000ft above (with the Horn of Africa to the far left of the screen, a tip of Australia to the right).
A text on the Sprüth Magers website explains the processes involved of creating the resulting series of images. ”Gursky used high-definition satellite photographs which he augmented from various picture sources on the Internet,” say the gallery. “The satellite photos are restricted however to exposures of sharply contoured land masses. Consequently the transitional zones between land and water – as well as the oceans themselves – had to be generated completely by artificial means.
“Given that they make up by far the largest part of the works, this resulted in a gigantic project that only compares with the efforts Gursky lavished on the series F1 Boxenstopp (2007). That all these pieces nevertheless convey the feeling of real subaquatic depths is due solely to the precision of Gursky’s visual work. He even consulted shoal maps to get the right colour nuances for the water surfaces.”
Read the original post here on Creative Review
If you’re heading to London, check out this arty exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It features some of 4’s favorite designers.
It’s an exhibition of limited-edition designs including work by Atelier Van Lieshout, Boym Partners and Studio Makkink & Bey. It’s running until 18th October 2009 and is definitely worth a visit.
The work on show is divided into three sections; the Forest Glade presents work inspired by fairytales, myths and nature, the Enchanted Castle displays objects usually associated with wealth and status that have been subverted, and the last section explores themes of mortality.
Each tells a tale through their use of decorative devices, historical allusions or choice of materials, sharing common themes such as fantasy, parody and a concern with mortality.
Above: The Fig Leaf wardrobe, 2008. Designed by Tord Boontje.
Against all the evidence of an industrialised, globalised, high-tech world (or perhaps because of it) some contemporary designers are retreating to the pastoral setting of fairy tales, myths and nature. In so doing they return us to our most primitive state. No doubt their designs are escapist, even naïve, and can be quite deliberately childlike.
Above: Flower Pyramid, 2008, Studio Job, © the artists. Courtesy of Royal Tichelaar Makkum Photo: Studio Marten Aukes.
To view the original article visit: Dezeen.com
A Magazine #7 landed on our desk today…
This recent issue of A Magazine features Kris Van Assche as guest curator.
The various collaborations with photographers, authors, stylists and models in A MAGAZINE #7 are the result of Kris’ search for true human contact within the creative process.
The words ‘poetic’ and ‘romantic’ recur constantly in reviews of Van Assche’s work. In A MAGAZINE #7 Kris wanted to highlight the various facets of the poetry in his work. For the two fashion shoots in this issue, one featuring the Dior men’s collection and the other Kris Van Assche’s own women’s collection, Kris asked his friend, Mauricio Nardi, to be responsible for the styling and to portray his own interpretation of the collections, a task he has never trusted to anyone but himself until now.
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