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

 

Richard Broomhall and Maria Niro :: W O R D S – S U R F A C E

Click the image to watch an online installation/collaboration between Richard Broomhall and Maria Niro.


WORDS is an evolving moving image collaboration, exploring language, cultural context, chance and the nature of online artistic relationships. Entirely remote from one another, the two artists investigate the power of synchronicity in art. The artists never met in person, never seen the others face or heard the others voice.

Each artist takes a turn in proposing a word. Then they are to create a two minute video with original sound interpreting the proposed word. The work has to be shot in each artist’s lived environment and be a response to said environment. All images and audio must be original. There is no discussion of content or production techniques or direction. Neither watched the others work until both were finished. The videos are then composited as a diptych, with no tweaking to adjust synchronization, and is then uploaded to the internet and available for viewing world wide.

Maria is based in New York, USA and Richard is based in Bristol, UK. They don’t know where the project will go or how it will end but ask you to accompany them in finding out by checking back regularly and giving your feedback. These are links to other 3 parts of this project: FOOD , DISRUPT and BIRD

www.marianiro.com

www.fracturedether.co.uk

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

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

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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barbara kruger :: past / present / future

photography:©brancolina

Fragments of Barbara Kruger’s installation Past/present/future from the exhibition Taking Place at The Temporary Stedelijk museum in Amsterdam.

Barbara Kruger’s work with pictures and words addresses mass culture’s representations of power, identity and sexuality. As she has stated, “I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are, what we want to be and what we become.” The range of Kruger’s works is broad—from photographic prints on paper and vinyl to videos, room-size installations, public commissions, printed matter, and a variety of merchandise. Using the language of direct address and words like “you,” “me,” “we,” and “they,” her works reach out into the social space of the spectator. In this installation, designed especially for the building’s largest gallery known as the Hall of Honor, Kruger wraps the floor and walls with printed texts that “speak” directly and loudly to the spectator in a chorus of voices. Her provocative, emotionally charged statements about how people regard and treat each other disrupt the decorum of a traditional museum space. Bringing the world into her work and her work into the world, she confronts stereotypes and clichés, shattering them with a rigorous critique, a generous empathy and a sharp wit. (edit from the Temporary Stedelijk museum’s website).

www.stedelijk.nl
www.barbarakruger.com

daniel palacios :: waves

WAVES utilizes a basic construction of a long piece of elastic string and two motors to visualize the presence of people close to the installation. The string between the two motorized chambers reacts to the people presence and movements, it twirls to produce a sine-wave simulation that eloquently resembles both the digitization of real-time sound waves and patterns of flow and connectivity found in natural systems.

The simple act of making the ‘invisible’ visible can produce profound effects in both our understanding of the world around us and the close relationship we have to the natural and built environment that we occupy daily. Although the project may seem like a simple visualization of intangible forms, it nevertheless connects to our visceral side by creating unique sound output and striking visual stimuli that engage with persistence of vision and our connection to the spaces we occupy and their sonic and electromagnetic inhabitants.

More info: danielpalacios: relationships between art, science and technology applied to space and perception

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It is advisable to listen to this in the headphones.

Felice Varini :: perspective-localized paintings

Felice Varini is the master of anamorphosis style of painting. He applies geometric shapes to architectural spaces in perspective-localized manner, an image appears in its true shape only when viewed from a very specific spot. These are extracts from Gil Dekel’s interview with Felice Varini, where he explains his artistic point of view.

G.D.: You do not paint on canvas but rather on architectural and urban landscapes such as buildings, walls, streets. Your works have only one view-point, or a vantage-point, from which the viewer can see the complete painting, which is usually a simple geometric form (a circle, square, triangle). From other view points the viewer will see ‘broken’ fragmented shapes. Why do you use this simple geometric shapes, as well as basic colors?
F.V.: If you draw a circle on a flat canvas it will always look the same. The drawn circle will retain the flatness of the canvas. This kind of working is very limiting to me, so I project a circle onto spaces, onto walls or mountain sides, and then the circle’s shape is altered naturally because the ‘canvas’ is not flat. A mountain side has curves that affect the circle, and change the circle’s geometry. So, I do not need to portray complicated forms in my paintings. I can just use the simplicity of forms, because the reality out there distorts forms in any case, and creates variations on its own accord. The same goes for colors. Usually I use one color only, and the space takes care of altering the color’s hue. For example, if I use one type of red color on a mountain side, the result is many kinds of red, depending on the mountain’s surface and the light conditions. Sunlight will affect the different areas on the surface and the same red color may become stronger or darker or clearer in certain areas, depending on how the sun rays hit the surface. The sky can be bright or dark. And if the surface has its own color or a few colours then that will affect the red that I apply on it. So, I do not need to use sophisticated colors. The reality exists with its own qualities, shapes, colours and light conditions. What I do is simply add another shape and color in response to that.

G.D. : Are your paintings meant to be permanent in the space where they were created?
F.V. : Once I make a work it can be removed and remade in a different place, as long as certain guidance is followed. I do not make an object and move it, but I move the concept, and can remake it in the new space, in the same way that there is a written play and a theatre company can stage it in a few different ‘environmental theatres’.

G.D. : Did you ever consider to construct or create the space itself?
F.V. : No, because I am not an architect. I am a painter, and painting is my main concern. I do not intend to create the reality or manipulate it. The reality is complex enough. Every day you can discover something new around you. It is an ongoing surprise looking at old churches, sub-stations, houses. There are many types of architecture around the world, with new relations and new perspectives created all the time, and once I choose a space I start a new thinking process with it.

G.D. : You work directly on space but you do not define yourself as an installation artist.
F.V. : I am a painter. I consider the reality itself to be the installation and I work on that installation with paint. The reality is an installation work which belongs to all of us and I am working with it or sometimes against it, in order to reach for new forms, new lights and new colors.

G.D. : How would you describe your relation with the space that you paint?
F.V. : With my paintings I am trying to discover more things that we cannot normally see. The vantage point of the works is really very fragile. It is a mechanical point of view in a way, it does not encompass reality. In reality our eyes move all the time, and we cannot see with our eyes like the camera does, taking snapshots. We cannot retain a freeze frame with our eyes, so it is difficult for anyone to stand at the exact vantage point of my paintings. For me, the work is outside the vantage point, where reality allows for all shapes to live. I find it very limiting to paint on a canvas which is closed within a frame of four sides. There is no relation to reality there. When I experience reality outside I do not know where it starts and where it ends. It is open, just like my work.

For more info: felicevarini.org

Kilian Rüthemann :: architectural interventions/sculptures

‘Architectural spaces and the appearance of building materials are the two poles between which Kilian Rüthemann develops his sculptural interventions. His point of departure is usually a concrete place whose tectonic shell provides him with the occasion to reshape it. Rüthemann works with simple substances, such as plaster, sugar or bitumen, often changing their aggregate state in the course of the creative process. Plaster is mixed with water, sugar melted with heat and then broken up when it has cooled. This gives rise to works that testify to their own mutability and transience, that occasionally embed themselves in the existing architecture, but sometimes also thwart it. By handling these simple materials in different ways, Rüthemann repeatedly tests their formal and sculptural potential. He avails himself of their variableness to reorganise space and surprise the visitors with new formations.’ Stefanie Böttcher

ruethemann.net