Spencer Tunick - the naked projects

 
(Aletisch Glarier, Switzerland, 2007)

A body is a living empathy. It represents life, freedom, sensuality, and it is a mechanism to carry out our thoughts. A body is always beautiful to me. It depends on the individual work and what I do with it and what kind of idea lies behind it - if age matters or not. But in my group works, the only difference is how far people can go if it rains, snows etc.” Spencer Tunick, from Wikipedia

Spencer is an American installation artist.  His interest in human body brings him a famous “nude installation” artist.  He creates his art work by recruiting huge number of volunteer and placing them in various cities or environment in their nudity. The nude bodies in Spencer’s work always look like “living sculpture”.  In his creations the nude form becomes abstract due to the sheer number so closely placed together.

His famous projects include the “Dream Amsterdam” on 15 April 2007 where his installation took place in a tulip field in Schermerhorn wuth around 100 participants.  In 2006, Spencer created serveral installations for the ArtCity events of Dusseldorf’s Quadriennalle of Germany.  In front of the museum building and oil paintings, the nudes either look inhuman or just like some real art work coming out from the paintings.
     

In 18 August 2007, Spencer just completed another astonishing project for the Green Peace:  photographing 600 nudes in the Aletisch Glarier of Switzerland.  This project calls for people’s awareness of the global warming and the shrinking of the world’s glaciers. 

Oops, at the Aletisch Glarier, the air is cold, but the hearts are warm.

“I will try to treat the body on two levels. On an abstract level, as if they were flowers or stones.

And on a more social level, to represent their vulnerability and humanity with regard to nature and the city and to remind people where we come from.”

  (Spencer Tunick, 2007)

If you are interested in Spencer’s project, do visit his official website.  He is now recruiting for his new project in Miami Beach on 8 Oct 2007 at the Sagamore Art Hotel.  See if you are brave enough to join this interesting project! 

sophie’s gallery

tokyo, japan, april 2007

100% Design London

100% Design is an important annual design event.  The exhibition takes place in London (Earls Court) from 20 Sept to 23 Sept this year.  Collectively 100% Design London provides an annual gathering of over 34,000 design focused visitors and exhibitors.

Together with the 100% Design exhibition, there are several other exhibition themes:  100% Detail - architectural and contemporary lighting event; 100% Light  and innovative materials exhibition; 100% Materials. In 2007, they will be joined by 100% Futures, a showcase of new up and coming design talent.

From the ehixibition units, I have found some interesting ones:

ABZ Bathroom Range, Simply Italian, Stand J110

Basket Bowl, Mixko,  Stand H74

Ceramic Baskets, Kiki Ceramics, Stand D20

Conversation Chair, Ana Linares, Stand Q182

Coral, Essenze, Stand C77 

Coming important design events:

• Milan: Fashion Week, 22 Sept to 29 Sept

• Paris: Fashion Week, 30 Sept to 8 Oct

• Tokyo: 100% Design, 31 Oct to 4 Nov

For the Tokyo one, I am planning to make it a trip.  For those who like art and design, or you are a dealer, the event is a must go.

Tokyo 100% Design

Address: Jingu Gaien Meiji Shrine Outer Garden 明治神宮外苑（東京　青山）
Date: 31 Oct to 4 Nov

Time: 10:00am - 9:00 pm

Pre-registration

sophie’s gallery

shinjuku, tokyo, 2007

b. wing - a child lost in the city

“isolated, loneliness, wandering, self-reflections”

b. wing is a Hong Kong artist focusing her work in installation art and illustration. 

After her graduation from the Middlesex University in the UK, b.wing returned to Hong Kong and began as a fashion designer.  Soon she discovered a love of, and a special talent for, creating installation art and illustrations.  And she started her life as a full time artist in 2002.

b. wing’s talent was soon recognise by the artist circle and she held her first solo exhibition, “if you don’t want to be perfect, you’ve come to the right place” at Agnès b. Librairie Galerie in Hong Kong.  The same exhibition was then staged at Agnès b. Gallery in Taipei, Taiwan as well as Agnès b. Aoyama store in Tokyo, Japan. 

After some more exhibitions, b. wing published her first illustration book in 2006, taking the same name as her first solo exhibition: “if you dont want to be perfect, you’ve come to the right place”. 

May be you have to lose everything and you’ll then realise you still have yourself. - b. wing, 2006

The character “A” in this book comes from b. wing’s previous exhibitions.  A keeps changing his identity and appearance.  One day he’s a rock star, and the next day he’s a solitary superhero.  The star he’s holding all the time is his only companion.
　　
Day in and day out, he’s often consumed by his feelings of inadequacy, of not fitting in anywhere.  A is so sensible but has an almost strange sense of innocence and imagination.  He has someone he’s really in love with, “B”, though he never knows that ‘someone’ is actually himself ……

Apart from “A”, rabit is  a recurrent theme in b. wing’s work.  She once said: “I was asked once to give my 3 favourite animals in order of preference and description as well …”

“And I said:
01 an eagle: unaccompanied, superior, accurate
02 a jagar: cool, silent, dangonerous
03 a rabit: empty-headed, doing nothing, funny looking

The first one is what you think of yourself
The second is what others think of you
the third is what you really are.

You don’t have to tell me if it is true.”

b. wing’s art work always communicated with her audiences the immense passions and emotions.  Her characters are in simple form but with strong and “impure” colours which represents the confusing of the childlike nature in human beings in the complicated world.  The beauty of the combination of horror and innocent is created in her work.

Loneliness, isolation, remoteness and self-reflections are the main themes in b. wing’s creations.   Through the big round eyes of her characters, we could see our own horror, worry, insecure and lack of confidence.  A, may be a projection of b. wing herself, and also a projection of all of us.  A child lost in the city, may be a protrait of me and you.

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b. wing’s illustration books: 

   If you don’t want to be perfect, you’ve come to the right place, 2006   (want to buy this book?)

   We all need someone to kiss us goodbye, newly released, 2007
(want to buy this book?)

sophie’s gallery

window with a view, hakone, japan, 2007

Herbert Bayer - the Sureal Photographer

   Lonesome Big City Dweller, 1932

I like taking black and white photos and I love the work of those famous photographers in the early 20th Century.  And Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985)  is one of those awesome photographers I love. 

Herbert Bayer, born in 1900 in Haag am Hausruck, Germany, began his career studying at the Bauhaus and subsequently developed further to become known as a Bauhaus “Master”.

Bayer started to work in Linz as a graphic designer in his early years.  He then moved on to Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, before he emigrated to the USA in 1938, where he worked as a graphic and landscape designer, until he died in 1985 in Santa Barbara, California.  In his time he has become one of the most renowned and influential artists in design as well as painting, photography and sculpture.

In fact, Herbert was an awesome artist with special visions.  He was not only a photographer, he was also a typographer, advertising artist, painter, sculpter, architect and designer of office lanscape.  Photography was his preferred means of expressions in the thirties.  Most interestingly, we could see in this Bauhaus “Master”’s photographic work, he was not only a representative of Bauhaus, he was also a surealist. 

Taking his creation, the “Lonesome Big City Dweller”, as an example, we could see the superimposition of two big eyes inside the palms on a city landscape.  The big eyes are staring to us through the palms, a somehow terrifying vision.  In his another work, the Stilleben, one would certainly recall the art creations of the Sureal Master, Dali.  Through his photos, Herbert shared with us his visions of a world of unreal, or sureal, out from the real world. 

  
Guten Morgan, 1936             Stilleben, 1936

sophie’s gallery

Another lovely drawing done by my friend, very pretty and cute, just to share with you.

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related post: sophie’s gallery on 17 Aug 2007

Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 - an artist obssessed with polka dots

  “Pumpkin”, 1994 - 2005, Yayoi Kusama, Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Japan.

“One day when I was young, I was looking at the pattern of dots on the tablecloth in front of me and when I looked up, I saw more dots. Everything around me, the whole world, had been swallowed by dots.”

“If I hadn’t painted, I’d be dead” says Kusama.

Yayoi Kusama (1929 - ), a Japanese artist, who is famous of using polka dots in her art creations.  Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. She claims that as a small child she suffered severe physical abuse by her mother.  Today she is living, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she is still producing her art work. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital.

Kusama’s paintings, collages, sculptures, and environmental works all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation: visions of nets, dots, and flowers that covered everything she saw.   She likes using single sharp colour dots in black background or sharp background colour with black or white polka dots or patterns in her art work. 

In the Benesse Art Site Naoshima in the Seto Island (直島) of Japan, Kusama has a famous piece of installation: a large yellow “Pumpkin”, her famous artistic icon, facing the pretty seashore of Seto Island.  One may first find the vision of a large yellow pumpkin filled with black dots locating at the seashore a bit strange and awkward, but soon you would find that the new vision experience creates a feel of fun and sureal in the real world. 

Kusama has a new project in the Hangaram Design Museum, Seoul, Korea for the “Snoopy Life Design: Happinessis the 55th Anniversary” Exhibition, where she has filled our beloved snoopy with her polka dots!  Cool and funny!    The Exhibition in the Hangaram Design Museum will last until 16 September this year, you may wish to pay the polka dotted snoopy a visit if you are dropping by Seoul. 

sophie’s gallery

remember this photo i took in harajuku (原宿) of tokyo in April this year that i have mentioned in my earlier post?

have a look of this pretty and lovely picture, that i am dancing with the lovely hanasakemee:

cool!  this is a picture a friend of mine has drawn for me, after watching my harajuku photo.  

thank you, my dear friend!

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related post: relaxing sunday