christo :: the big air package

 

 
The Big Air Package in the Gasometer Oberhausen is the latest project by Christo and the largest indoor sculpture in the world. It consists of 20,350 m2 of fabric shaped in a giant balloon 90m high and 50m in diameter, which is installed inside the space that was originally designed as an industrial gas tank. Two air fans keep the package upright, while 60 additional projectors create a diffuse light throughout the interior. Inside the sculpture, an extraordinary experience of shape, space and light is provided. The material is translucent so that the light can penetrate from the above into the interior, where it develops an indirect, mysterious effect on observers. The sculpture can be viewed both from inside and outside until 30th December 2013 and it is accompanied by an additional exhibition in the ground floor of the Gasometer, which shows a selection of the most important projects by Christo and Jeanne- Claude from the last five decades.
 

 
During the period of the exhibition seven original design drawings of the Big Air Package will be on display in the cabinet of the ‘Ludwiggalerie’ in Schloss Oberhausen. These predominantly large-format works provided the model for the Big Air Package. They were produced in Christo‘s New York studio and show the development of the idea from 2010 up to its implementation in 2013. Click here to watch a video, where artists explains how this work was made.
 

 

www.gasometer.com

www.christojeanneclaude.net

 

Quayola :: Strata #4 : Excerpt 1

Strata #4 is a multi-channel immersive video-installation commissioned in 2011 by Palais de Beaux Arts in Lille. The subject of this work is a series of iconic pieces from the museum’s Flemish collection, focusing specifically on Rubens’ and Van Dyck’s grand altarpieces. Strata #4 is the result of a study and exploration of the paintings themselves, delving beneath their figurative appearance and looking at the very rules behind the composition, colour schemes and proportions of each piece. It is a precise process aimed at creating new contemporary images based on universal rules of beauty and perfection. Documenting the improbable collisions between classical figurations and contemporary abstraction, Strata #4 aims to create a harmonious dialogue between worlds that may seem very distant from one another, but in fact share so much in common. Strata #4 is part of the ongoing Strata Series.

More info+pics: quayola.com

Additional Credits:

Matthias Kispert: sound design
James Medcraft: photography
Kieran Finch, Cai Matthews: animation assistants
Mauritius Seeger, Evan Bohem: programming
Beccy McCray: producer
Patrick Hearn: technical support

Commissioned by Palais des Beaux Arts, Lille
Produced by Nexus, London

david dimichele :: pseudodocumentation : photos of imaginary installations

Pendulum (2005)
40×50″ ultrachrome

Bark (2005)
42×55″ chromogenic digital print, edition 6

Branches (2006)
42×60″ lightjet print

Lightrods (2008)
40×65″ lightjet print

Hose (2005)
42×55″ lightjet print

Broken glass (2006)
40×60″ lightjet print

David DiMichele’s series Pseudodocumentation depicts imaginary art installations in monumental exhibition spaces. These pseudo-documents, which are actually photographs of small models in the artist’s studio, playfully engage scale and perception, while blurring the lines between fact and fiction, and questioning how we experience art. DiMichele’s work addresses the role of photography in documenting temporary installations; most people experience these artworks through photographs rather than first-hand. His constructed spectacles are homages to the grand ideas of artists like Richard Serra, Michael Heizer and Robert Smithson. “The works deal with issues of abstraction, conventions of documenting art, and the ideology of the gallery space,” DiMichele says. His rich, dream-like images draw the viewer in, to imagine oneself in the exhibition hall. Dramatically shot from an omniscient perspective, the dwarfed figures are overwhelmed, suggesting that the idea of art is perhaps, unsettlingly, larger than life. (edit from Robert Koch gallery)

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www.daviddimichele.com

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hc gilje :: snitt

‘Snitt’ is H.C. Gilje’s installation made for Galleri 21 in Malmö. A straight light line moves slowly through the three rooms of the gallery space, cutting it into different sections (snitt). The movement of the line is “attacking” the room from different angles and it focuses the attention of the viewer on the physical qualities of the space. The physical properties of the gallery’s space (walls, ceiling, floor, door openings, light fixtures etc.) modulate/break up the straight line into a continuously evolving pattern of line fragments, depending on the position of the viewer and the angle of the line in relation to the architecture.

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H.C. Gilje works with realtime environments, installations, live performance, set design and single channel video. He has presented his works in concert halls, theatre and cinema venues, galleries, festivals and on several DVD releases, including ‘242.pilots live in Bruxelles’ on the label Carpark and ‘Cityscapes’ on the French label Lowave. He was a member of the video-impro trio 242.pilots and the visual motor of the Norwegian dance company Kreutzerkompani. In October 2006 Gilje started a 3 year position as a research fellow at Bergen National Academy of the Arts in Norway, exploring how audiovisual technology can be used to transform, create, expand, amplify and interpret physical spaces.

H.C. Gilje’s current exhibition Light space modulators is open until 22 May in iMAL center for digital cultures and technology in Brussels.

hcgilje.com

Olafur Eliasson: Playing with space and light

Olafur Eliasson creates art from a palette of space, distance, color and light, his works tend to involve each viewer in his or her own unique experience. In this video he talks about an experiment in the nature of perception, it was recorded during his TED lecture. Click here to read comments (or translation subtitles provided by TED).

www.olafureliasson.net
www.ted.com

united visual artists :: light installation for Y-3 fashion show

Established in 2003, United Visual Artists are an art and design practice based in London, they produce works at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, live performance, moving image and digital installation. UVA’s team members come from many disciplines including fine art, architecture, communication design, moving image, computer science and engineering. The cross-pollination of diverse skills inspires new fields of exploration, which is core to their ethos.

As part of New York Fashion Week 2010, United Visual Artists created a light installation for the Y-3 fall 2010 fashion show. A clean, sharp performance was designed for Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto’s innovative Y-3 brand. Starting with a white monolith of light, a void was created out of which the models emerged. White lasers were then used to define the catwalk area, building an illusion of architectural forms that shifted in shape and composition over the course of the show.

More info: unitedvisualartists.co.uk

the light surgeons :: The Modern Vision of Sartorial Spirit

Audio visual installation produced in collaboration with Ron Arad associates and commissioned by fashion company Notify for the Pitti Uomo 77 mens fashion fair in Florence in 2010. The project explores the various manufacturing processes involved in the production of Notify jeans and shoes, turning these hand made and mechanical processes into an abstract piece of futurist art. The final installation used a 30m long wall of 6mm pitch LED covered with a thin membrate of plastic with an additional set of video projection over the top.

Camera & Direction: Chris Allen, Jude Greenaway & Barney Steel
Editing: Jude Greenaway & Jolyon Greenaway
Motion: Jolyon Greenaway
Music: digitalaudiodesign.co.uk
Production: Alice Ceresole & Miranda Davis

U.V.A. :: canopy + connection

Inspired by the experience of walking through the dappled light of a forest, Canopy is a 90m long light sculpture spanning the front façade of the building, using mass production and precise fabrication to evoke and reflect the nature. Thousands of identical modules, their form abstracted from the geometry of leaves, are organized in a non-repeating growth pattern.

During the day, apertures in the modules filter natural light to the street below. After dusk, particles of artificial light are born, navigate through the grid and die, their survival determined by regions of energy sweeping across the structure. The result simultaneously recalls the activity of cells within a leaf, leaves in a forest canopy, or a city seen from the air.

Materials: powder coated steel, anodised aluminium, injection moulded polycarbonate, LED, Code
Dimensions: 90 x 3m

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Connection is a responsive light installation. The work consists of an array of vertical luminaires integrated into a pedestrian bridge, used to create oscillations of colour and geometry based on human movement. This transforms the rigid structure of the bridge into a fluid entity that transmits the rhythm of the crowd to its surroundings.

Materials: Aluminium Extrusions, LED, Lensing, Custom Electronics, Code

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www.unitedvisualartists.co.uk

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artpopulus :: barbara kruger video slideshow + quotes

Power is the most free-flowing element in society, maybe next to money, but in fact they both motor each other. And it’s everywhere. And it’s in this room right now, it’s at every dinner table, every board room, every bedroom … every social situation is rife with the consequences of power. And I feel compelled to address that, because it is the major constituent in determining what our lives feel like, what our every-days feel like, what our days and nights feel like.

Words are powerful, and we speak them every moment, so why not exercise that medium? But I’m really interested in questions more than answers. Everybody’s got answers, and I think it’s more generative and engaging for me to think about questions and to think about doubt. Not to the point that it becomes crippling and self-destructive, but it’s a definite balancing force. Power slices in lots of ways, you know. And it can deal with the inequities of money; it can deal with the inequities of color; it can deal with the inequities of gender. And how some voices have been unheard, and some faces unseen, and I’m interested in how that plays out in culture, and how it changes, and how that change changes culture, and how America is a different place now than it was thirty years ago because of those changes, and how those changes in fact become [of] global and not just national interest. But we’ve seen how the battles around difference, around sexuality, around color, around nationalism, are daily changing the character and the balance of power globally.

Pictures and words seem to become the rallying points for certain assumptions. There are assumptions of truth and falsity and I guess the narratives of falsity are called fictions. I replicate certain words and watch them stray from or coincide with the notions of fact and fiction to suggest changes, and to resist what I feel are the tyrannies of social life on a certain level.