print building

I want so much to like this project but there is just something???? A joint intervention or let’s just say it a styling of a modern new apartment with some evocative ideas. Artists Elizabeth Duffy and Cheryl Yun have appointed the apartment that is DM Contemporary with some high conceptual ideas. Duffy has produced a number of decorative ideas with the pattern of the inside of a banking envelope, Yunhas made bikinis out of fabric that has catastrophic events digitally printed on them. I get it but what does it do beyond,beyond. If I were their teacher I would have them really collaborate and make decorative pillows out of wild-fire fabric. A finer example of making disturbing images into beauty, see the film on printmaker Amos Kennedy and review his artist book, Strange Fruit.

bauble building

From Benjamin

“Indiscreet”, director Stanley Donen’s elegant 1958 trifle of a romantic comedy, features Ingrid Bergman as an accomplished stage actress thrust into an affair with the possibly married, NATO economist Cary Grant. While the characters are beautiful, polished & famous, they are also shown to be normal, open and approachable. As though to offset the hard-to-believe ordinariness of the players, the sets & costumes are as opulent, colorful & urbane as any of us would hope and expect these people to deserve. Of particular note in Bergman’s London flat is the expensive looking, rather neutrally hued furniture, enlivened by bright & saturated multi-colored pillows and salon-style picture matting, along with (real) paintings by Picasso, Roualt, John Piper and Raoul Dufy, all in rooms that are subtly articulated with lightly stained, but Baroquely shaped mouldings, casings and trim. Gowns and outfits are by Christian Dior. So while the pacing and plot are the movie equivalent of easy listening, the visuals are a fully orchestrated concert well worth attending. Art Direction by Donald M. Ashton, Set Design John Graysmark.

flora building

On a very decent blog Interior Monologue, I recently found this inspiring article about wallpaper designer and printer Marthe Artmitage. Her practice did not get into full swing until her family was grown and at 83 she is on the top tear list of “must haves” for decorators everywhere. I was reminded of my grandmother’s house with each room carefully designated by wallpaper, the pink room and the yellow room. She seemed to assign the grandchildren’s temperment to a room; I really wanted to be in the pink room but was often assigned the brown one….(I was quiet and moody). Historian Amanda Vickery discusses the cultural reading that Victorian Wallpapers could avail themselves. Visitors to a home could map the family’s resources through the type/brand/source of paper.

tower building

Sorry I could not resist the associative formal quality of this body of work to Andrea Graham’s work from yesterday. And evidently,Brooklyn based “coilmaster”, Doug Johnston has an architecture degree. His web site maps his thinking on spatial issues and I predict that larger scale coil space is the next endeavor.

just building

For awhile now I have been working on a thesis regarding fiber artist’s foray’s into well let’s just say it architecture. I also have, with Tami, illustrated how those of us with an architecture background have investigated textiles as a medium and have looked to it as a new way to build. Architects and architecture schools have dipped their toe in the water on this, see the show Curtains  at UT Austin last year. But often the architectural manifestation can not go beyond the sun shade or the etherial room partition.  I find that fiber artist’s actually have a more heightened ability to build with fabric than architects. Above is the ,I think, ground breaking work of fiber artist Andrea Graham, now on view at Modern Fuel in Kingston, Ontario. Andrea has gone from small, John Hedjek like towers models to now these full scale totems. All I can say is powerful.

building glow

Working closely with the TextielLab at the TextielMuseum, Samira Boon and NEXT architects designed a space divider for the main hall of the Theatres Tilburg.  A luminous yarn interwoven in the screen material causes the screen to subtly glow during concerts.  The structure (also foldable and easily packed away) transforms the large main hall of the Theatres Tilburg into an intimate space suitable for smaller concerts and gatherings.  I find the TextielLab so inspiring.  See video here – I know, they aren’t speaking English.  I’ll just have to go see for myself.  Next year – TextielMuseum or bust.

building volumes

I have to highly recommend this book by eminent historian Jean Louis Cohen. A perfect example of historic research uncovering the current contemporary conditions, this volume is packed with amazing connections and shocking manifestations. Please read my review in E-Oculus this month.

biennial building

From Benjamin

The Whitney Biennial is up and has much to be expected: de rigeur, plaintive-voiced, blabbering tape recorded lectures about class & sexual identity politics; de rigeuer blabbering wall-mounted collages about class & sexual identity politics; the de rigeuer room full of hanging & piled, brightly colored, toy-like, furry, fabric, stuffed animal-like, totems of class & sexual identity politics.

But there are also a few gems that make the trip especially worthwhile: Ricky Swallow ‘s wall-mounted sculptures of folded cardboard, (“Reversed Pitcher”, top left), are easily enjoyed for the palpably straightforward process of their construction, and still have a light-handed lyricism.  Another favorite, (perhaps because also so easily apprehensible) iss Zoe Leonard‘s work entitled “945 Madison”. By covering a darkened gallery’s single window with a cardboard panel peirced by a 6 inch hole, she simply & immediately turned the entire room into an camera obscura, throwing upon the opposite wall the live, upside-down, color projection of the view across the street.   And on the ground floor, the group My Barbarian’s papier mache masks, showing deceptively childlike craft in the service of primordial drama & humor.

This was the last of the famously uneven Biennial exhibitions to show in the intimately scaled Upper East Side Breuer building before the new Renzo Piano building
takes over downtown. The collection may not be groundbreaking stuff. But that in itself may be its attraction. Through May 25.

 

building fantastic

Its taken me a while to “unpack” the totality of this current exhibition at London’s John Soane museum but now that I get it its taking everything for me not to pack my bags to get to see it. Diverse Maniere: Piranesi, Fantasy and Excess is an exhibition that weaves the drawings of Piranesi, the interior of John Soane and the technical circus that is  of 3-D printing all into one. For me, it’s a triumph, see a student project that I worked on where 18th century drawings spurred the imagination and became objects from the 3-d printing activity. This exhibition also really speaks to history as a lens for examining very current cultural conditions.

building wrap(s)

From Tami

This week I stumbled on the exhibit of Diane von Furstenberg’s Celebration of 40 Years of the Wrap Dress. Diane von Furstenberg was just 26 years old when she created the wrap dress.  “Feel like a Woman, Wear a dress!” became her catch phrase – and wear it they did…a symbol of new found female power and femininity, it was worn by women around the world.  Fittingly, DVF owes her own power and independence to the dress.  It’s popularity came as a surprise to her – but she says “it paid for my children’s education”.  The web site asks women to share their Wrap stories.  My wrap story is that when I entered the show, and saw the dress shown front and center here in my photo it instantly sent a wave of familiarity.  I realized it was part of my mom’s wardrobe in the seventies.  Indeed, she confirmed she owned that one – and three others.

Through April 1st at the May Co. Building in LA.