Words // Staff Juxtapoz
Cleon Peterson just completed a large 2-color mural that shows his signature characters acting out in violent scenarios against one another. The artist was recently in London for his exhibition “There is A War” at the Outsiders London Gallery and has now returned to bring his savage imagery to this wall in the L.A. art district.
Phots via Cleon Peterson and Soze Gallery
Words // Alice My Modern Met
Budapest, Hungary-based photographer Sarolta Bán recently released a new set of images that all have that surreal quality she’s become known for. Bán’s photo manipulations never cease to amaze us both for their creativity and the way they stretch the imagination. The self-taught artist has now been a part of numerous art exhibitions all around the world including the US, France, Poland, Hungary, Japan and Ireland.
This new set includes one of an old man and a young boy walking hand in hand through a misty forest of giant paint brush trees. The bristles on the brushes reach high up in the sky, creating the fluffy white clouds overhead.
As for its meaning? Like all her pieces, that’s left up for you to decide. “In 2007 I discovered digital photo manipulations and I quickly fell in love with it, it is like playing and it gives almost unlimited possibilities to develop various ideas,” Bán states. “I like using ordinary elements and by combining them, I can give them various stories, personalities. Objects and little things are important for me. I think that they have own stories, probably this is the reason why I love what I do. I hope that the meanings of my pictures are never too limited, are open in some way, each viewer can transform them into a personal aspect.”
If you’d like to purchase an original print of Sarolta Bán’s, you can now do so here.
Words // sleepboy Arrested Motion
This last week brought new work from German street artist Case for the Wall Therapy event in Rochester, New York. Following up their 2012 rendition with even a stronger roster this year, the city was gifted many new pieces including two murals from the Maclaim crew member. Particularly stunning was the tribute seen above to Martin Luther King near Park & Colby featuring the colorful hand styles that he has been using recently in his walls.
Photo credit: Mark Deff & the artist.
Discuss Case here.
Words // Staff Juxtapoz
We love these paintings by New York-based artist Tom Sanford. Inspired by the colorful and eccentric residents of the great city, Staford’s characters range from famed rappers to Spike Lee, Steve Powers, and Mayor Bloomberg. “But I need New York City. I feed of the culture. All the amazing people who inhabit this magical place, doing fantastic things. They create an energy, or perhaps an anxiety, that nourishes me and I must be close to the source. Hopefully I am conributing that energy as well.” Amen, brother.
Sanford opens a show this Saturday the 7th at Kravets|Wehby in NYC, 6pm – 8m
Cafe des Artists
521 West 21st Street, NYC
September 7 – October 12, 2013
Opens Saturday, September 7, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Words // Andy Cush ANIMAL
Stop by Gowanus’s Serett Metal Works in the next few days and you may catch a glimpse of a Banksy. Not because the artist painted an original work on the building, but because it’s the temporary home of a piece hacked out of a Los Angeles wall, taken, and sold by the shady Hamptons gallery owner Stephan Kezsler (and it’s not the first time Kezsler has pulled this kind of thing).
After looting it, Kezsler sold the piece for an unnamed sum (the initial price was $400,000) to an anonymous buyer in Italy, and it’s currently in Gowanus being prepped for its overseas journey. The gallery couldn’t be reached for comment when DNAinfo initially reported the story. I wonder why?
(Photos: According2g, DNAinfo)
Words // Anthea Quay DesignTAXI
For the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japanese architects Tetsuo Kondo—in partnership with climate engineers Transsolar—has created a cloud in a transparent room.
The second of its ‘Cloudscapes’ installation series—that’s an experiment in creating new types of architectural space—museum visitors could climb into the cloud container that was located at the Sunken Garden.
When in the container, visitors could climb through the cloud using the stairs in the room—to make them feel as if they’re high above in the ‘sky’.
To create the cloud and keep it at a certain height, the architects controlled the temperature and humidity within the cube, with three types of air layers: cool and dry at the bottom; warm and humid in the middle; and hot and dry at the top.
“The edges of the clouds are sharp yet soft, and always in motion,” the architects wrote. “Their color, density and brightness are constantly changing in tune with the weather and time of day.”
Wouldn’t it be fun if all rooms had clouds in the future?
[Images via Ken’ichi Suzuki]
Words // Brittany High Incredible Things
Brent is a chimpanzee who paints. His technique is a little unconventional — he makes the art with his mouth using child-safe tempera paints. And this guy isn’t monkeying (!!!) around either: he won this year’s online chimp art contest put on by the Humane Society. Because the online chimp art contest is a thing that exists. And why shouldn’t it? You can’t think of a single reason, can you? Me neither. But I can think of at least 9 reasons to order pizza for lunch. One of which is extra cheese. Ooh, and pepperoni!
Words // Staff iGNANT
Ian Stevenson’s work is somewhat different to your average street artist or illustrator. He himself says his ideas are crammed into his head like toys in a popular middle-class boy’s bedroom. His very own view on the world lets him create slightly twisted characters, murals, sculptures and many more. He basically illustrates everything ‘from a coffee cup to a record sleeve.’ His inspiration or influence comes from his surroundings, everyday life, and the TV from which he reflects the reality of living in the 21st century. Stronger, faster, better and now with even more art than before. The unique subtle beauty of Stevenson’s art is what makes him one of the most exciting artists of today.
Words // Thia Shi Min DesignTAXI
JapaneseYouTube user Heibonkinoko has created a “Ninja Mansion” for his hamster, complete with secret tunnels and hidden trapdoors.
Designed to look like a traditional Japanese house with miniature hanging scrolls, tea tables and paper walls, this mansion is a veritable playground for the creator’s tiny friend.
Although the hamster was confused by his new surroundings, it quickly learned to navigate through the house—just like a ninja.
Watch this little critter make his way around his new home in the video below.
Words // Staff Juxtapoz
Ready to march in London for Greenpeace International’s day of action to protect the arctic is a massive people-powered Polar Bear. ‘Aurora,’ the giant puppet was designed by Christopher Kelly and manufactured by Factory Settings. Weighing 3 tons, the bear requires 15 puppeteers and 30 volunteers to operate. The head itself is the size of a smart car!
Words // Liv Siddall It’s Nice That
The sun’s gone, the summer’s over, get over it. Before everyone starts morosely washing the chlorine out of their swimsuits and chucking their flower headbands in the recycling for another year, perhaps check out this new show from Jean Jullien. In his typical style of being witty without being overly cynical, Jean has created a new collection of simplistic images illustrating humans struggling with life on the beach. If you know the feeling when you’re sunburnt, you feel like a beached whale, there’s sand in your hotdog and you’re perving at the opposite sex through the shadows of your cheap sunglasses, then this is for you. Jean, you’ve done it again.
La Plage is on show at London’s Beach Gallery until September 29. If you can’t make it along, his prints are on sale here.
Colour is such a pervasive part of everything we visually encounter in the world, that for many designers it becomes an intuitive choice. If you think back to primary/elementary school though, you’ll recall being told that there are three “primary” colours – Red, Yellow, and Blue. We were all taught that any colour can be created by mixing these three colours in varying quantities.
It turns out this isn’t quite right (although it’s still workable enough in practice to be taught the world over to five-year-olds).
Colour theory stretches back to at least the 15th century
Understanding how colour is formed and, more importantly, the relationships between different colours, can help you to use colour more effectively in your designs.
The Bauhaus school understood this in the 1920s and 1930s, with staff and students going on to develop colour theories for evoking particular moods and emotions through choice of palette in design and architecture.
The theory of colour is a discipline that stretches back much further than that – at least to the 15th century – and encompasses physics, chemistry and mathematics to fully define and explain the concepts. However, much of this is unnecessary to being able to use colour effectively. This quick primer will give you a handy overview of all the important aspects to help you start making informed decisions!
There are two primary colour systems – methods by which colour is reproduced: additive and subtractive (also known as reflective). We use both on a daily basis – the screen you’re reading this article on uses additive colour to generate all the colours you see, while the book you’re reading uses subtractive colour for its front cover.
In simple terms – anything that emits light (such as the sun, a screen, a projector, etc) uses additive, while everything else (which instead reflects light) uses subtractive colour.
Additive colour is based on red, green, and blue – RGB for short
Additive colour works with anything that emits or radiates light. The mixture of different wavelengths of light creates different colours, and the more light you add, the brighter and lighter the colour becomes.
When using additive colour, we tend to consider the building block (primary) colours to be Red, Green, and Blue (RGB), and this is the basis for all colour you use on screen. In additive colour, white is the combination of colour, while black is the absence of colour.
Subtractive colour is based on cyan, magenta, and yellow
Subtractive colour works on the basis of reflected light. Rather than pushing more light out, the way a particular pigment reflects different wavelengths of light determines its apparent colour to the human eye.
Subtractive colour, like additive, has three primary colours – Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow (CMY). In subtractive colour white is the absence of colour, while black is the combination of colour, but it’s an imperfect system.
The pigments we have available to use don’t fully absorb light (preventing reflected colour wavelengths), so we have to add a fourth compensating pigment to account for this limitation.
We call this “Key”, hence CMYK, but essentially it’s black. Without this additional pigment, the closest to black we’d be able to render in print would be a muddy brown.
The modern colour wheel has been in use since the 18th century
In order to make it easier to see the relationship between different colours, the concept of the modern colour wheel was developed around the 18th century. These early wheels plotted the different primary colours around a circle, mixing different primary colours together in strict ratios to achieve secondary and tertiary colours.
The colour wheel allows us to see at a glance which colours are complementary (opposite each other on the wheel), analogous (adjacent to each other on the wheel), triadic (three colours positioned at 120 degrees on the wheel from each other) and so on.
Each of these relationships can produce pleasing colour combinations. There are many more pleasing relationships between colours based on their position on the wheel. Software such as Adobe Kuler use to help you generate effective colour themes. Read our article on choosing an effective colour scheme to learn more.
The three component parts that help us define a colour are hue, saturation and brightness
Yellow is yellow is yellow, right? Well, actually, no; there are many different colours we could refer to as yellow. Different shades or tints, saturations and hues are all possible while still being within the yellow part of the colour wheel. As a result, there are three primary component parts that help us define a colour:
01. Hue
This is the position on the colour wheel, and represents the base colour itself. This is typically referred to in degrees (around the colour wheel), so a yellow colour will appear between 50 and 60 degrees, with the perfect yellow appearing at 56 degrees. Green, meanwhile, appears at 120 degrees on the wheel at so on.
02. Saturation
This is a representation of how saturated (or rich) a colour is. Low saturation results in less overall colour, eventually becoming a shade of grey when fully desaturated. Saturation is normally referred to as a percentage between 0 and 100%.
03. Brightness
This is how bright a colour is, typically expressed as a percentage between 0 and 100%. A yellow at 0% brightness will be black, while the same yellow hue and saturation at 100% brightness will be the full yellow colour.
Colour gamut describes the range of potential colours a system can reproduce
Colour gamut is a way of describing the full range of potential colours a system can reproduce. It may surprise you to learn that the range of colours achievable in CMYK is different to that you can achieve with RGB.
This is partially because of the nature of the two different systems, but also (in the real world at least) as a consequence of limitations in our technology – screens aren’t always capable of producing the same range of colours as each other, and pigments reflect light at a non-uniform rate as you reduce their saturation.
Finally, it’s worth looking at how different colours can affect the way we perceive other colours. A typical illustration of this features a mid-grey tone placed over a light grey background, and the same mid-grey tone shown over a dark grey background.
The apparent brightness of the mid-grey is altered according to the context in which you see it – a trick of the eye, working to make sense of its surroundings. Hues works in the same way as tones when placed adjacent to other colours, allowing you to create different effects using the same palette of colours.
Words // Sam Hampton Smith Creative Bloq
Words // Staff Eat.Sleep.Work
Mike Leavitt has designed a few shoe templates to make your very own cardboard version of some of your favorite classic kicks!
Cardboard Jordan IV
Cardboard Jordan III
Cardboard Jordan
This is the original Air Jordan replicated in cut, glued, and ink-stained cardboard to the exact size and scale of the vintage kick.
Cardboard Adidas Gazelle
Cardboard New Balance
Cardboard Chuck Taylor
Cardboard Vans
Cardboard Stiletto
Cardboard Nike Terminator
This Chuck Taylor template can be purchased at Intuition Kitchen Productions.
This Jordan template can be purchased at Intuition Kitchen Productions.
Words // Julie L. Belcove NY Times
COMING of age in San Antonio in the 1970s and ’80s, the artist Aaron Curry knew nothing about opera or ballet — or fine art, for that matter. His preferred entertainment was “Scooby-Doo” and “Jonny Quest” cartoons, “Star Trek” episodes and Iron Maiden heavy-metal music. “I grew up watching TV,” he said one afternoon in the shade of Lincoln Center’s leafy London plane trees. “I’d sleep with it on.”
Just hours later, after the Metropolitan Opera let out, Mr. Curry began to install “Melt to Earth,” his tableau of 14 ecstatically colored metal sculptures that will be scattered through Jan. 6 around Josie Robertson Plaza on the Lincoln Center campus, the city’s epicenter of highbrow performance. The greatly abstracted figures form a quirky cast of characters befitting the surrounding theaters. Constructed of whippet-thin panels that give the illusion of space, they also create a dramatic stage set, with passers-by becoming the players.
“I like the idea that as you walk around, it compresses and almost disappears from the side,” said Mr. Curry, 41, who has a hillbilly beard and a gentle demeanor.
Aaron Curry
Nicholas Baume, the director and chief curator of the Public Art Fund and a member of Lincoln Center’s curatorial advisory group, said that Mr. Curry’s work has “a musicality, a theatricality and a playfulness” against “the grand silhouettes of the modernist buildings.”
Mr. Curry, who was sitting midway between sculptures by Henry Moore and Alexander Calder, said he was not trying to be merely theatrical but to create a “visual language” that could give viewers a visceral experience.
Moore and Calder are among the many art-historical references in Mr. Curry’s work, which meanders from Picasso to Noguchi. “I love these artists,” Mr. Curry said. “I’ve looked at all of them excessively.”
But he noted the influences of two former graduate school professors at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.: Richard Hawkins and Mike Kelley. Mr. Kelley encouraged him to explore subcultures “and not be embarrassed by it,” he said; Mr. Curry applied Mr. Hawkins’s concept of collage to his own sculpture.
For “Melt to Earth,” Mr. Curry, who is based in Los Angeles, applied his typical sampling-like sweep of allusions: rudimentary World War I tanks, science fiction creatures, even Giacometti’s unrealized commission for Chase Manhattan Plaza. He credited Barbara Rossi, a Chicago Imagist whose class he took while an undergraduate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with inspiring broad-mindedness.
“She had this routine: Every week she wanted students to come in with something that had an impact on them,” Mr. Curry said. “It could be ‘Gilligan’s Island’ or some weird billboard. It resonated with me.”
He arrived at art school thanks in large part to the woman who is now his wife, Jennifer Chbeir. The middle of three sons, he was born to a teenage mother; his father, a carpenter, abandoned the family when Mr. Curry was 5. He was always drawing, and Jennifer convinced him to bring his portfolio to a local viewing that the School of the Art Institute was holding. When, a few years in, he failed to fill out some financial aid paperwork, he took six years off to work and pay a $7,000 debt. He eventually graduated, at the age of 30.
After switching from painting to sculpture, Mr. Curry gained traction, with inclusion in important group shows as well as solo outings at the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; and Ballroom Marfa in Texas.
After Lincoln Center approached him about a commission two years ago, Mr. Curry began brainstorming by downloading pictures of the plaza onto his iPad, then doodling on them with a stylus. He sensed that creating a single sculpture monumental enough to command the sprawling space would be impossible. His solution, he said, was to “activate” the plaza with a series of works in heights ranging from 4 inches to 19 feet, and colors that pop against the travertine backdrop.
Mr. Curry built the plywood maquettes by hand, and it was important to him that the fabrication process not result in a super-slick piece that erased evidence of his touch, “so I don’t meticulously cut,” he said. “I try to cut as if I’m painting. A lot is chopped up, bad cuts.” Mr. Curry, who has recently taken up painting on canvas again, left paint splotches and drips on some of the sculptures, along with his prominent “A.RRY” signature.
“Melt to Earth” is his most significant public sculpture to date, and he said that negotiating Lincoln Center’s requirements has been a learning experience. He adjusted some placements so as not to cover the names of any Lincoln Center donors in the pavement. But despite some concerns, he was able to preserve his sculptures’ silhouettes. “I think there could be some people getting stuck, if they want to put their heads in them,” he said. “In the end,” he added, sounding a bit surprised, “they were O.K. with that.”
Photography via Angel Franco
Words // Liv Siddall It’s Nice That
If a man can make white, plastic seating look enticing, then he’s surely some kind of wise oracle who knows too much. In Edouard Baribeaud’s (the name of a wise man) sketchbooks we find ourselves in parks and gardens across the world. Even though his drawings tend to be so simple that they’re almost a pile of wiggles, they’re also so self-explanatory that we know exactly where we are, what temperature it is, and what noises are drifting our way through the leaves. It would be children shouting, a distant chainsaw, a brief woof and the break of a wave.
Top: Edouard Baribeaud: Carnac
Words // Caroline Williamson Design Milk
Artist and filmmaker Morgan Fisher took inspiration from a booklet his father’s pre-fabricated housing company produced in the 1930s and produced a series of paintings called Interior Color Beauty. The collection of monochromes are minimalist with color palettes based on the suggested color schemes for the interiors and exteriors of the homes.
The booklet, one of Fisher’s most prized possessions, inspired the personal series and saw him enlarging the paint chips into paintings on wooden panels while keeping the original proportions.
The solo exhibition is on display at New York City’s Bortolami gallery in Chelsea through October 19th, 2013.
B1 (Oyster, Primrose Yellow), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
B2 (Cream, Tamorae), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
B3 (Cream, Aspen), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
C2 (White, Tamorae, Aqua Marine), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
C3 (Cream, Bisque, Apricot), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
C4 (Cloud, Moleskin, Rose), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
C5 (White, Heather, Iris), 2013, Acrylic house paint on panels
Words // SAL Arrested Motion
The Popular Workshop in San Francisco opened The Fall, a solo show by Francesco Igory Deiana on the 27th of September. The Italian born artist created a new body of work continuing and evolving his imagery and concepts. Using wide range of different mediums and techniques, he prepared different kinds of pieces from smaller drawings, paintings, prints or photographs, to sculptures and large size installation. With this diversity and collage of different works, Deiana is trying to show that his work does and doesn’t have a strict structure. The central point of the show is a Tree Sculpture installation, a step further in terms of mediums and genre, as well as the conceptual meaning of the work. The piece is created using his signature bright orange with ball point pen ink clouds of them, and a minimized pole that represents a tree. Deiana is hugely inspired by nature, but he likes to show the elements from nature in a more graphic and artificial way. The big branch or pole in this installation, painted with metallic glare ink, or human head painted the same way, are the perfect examples of this concept.
The walls of the gallery displayed his “flat” works, mostly combining his meticulous ball point ink drawings, with prints, photographs or other elements. Some of the pieces are very balanced, composed geometric drawings, and some are more organic, crude portrait drawings. Conceptually, the geometric drawings are more “design” than a painting, where the clouds are about earth, and the humans are small under the sky. Additionally, the portraits are about man, history, death, and falling down, which works perfect with the title of the show. Both abstract and very graphic, these works can be fully appreciated only when seen in person. That way you can fully notice Deiana’s masterful ball point pen work, hair thin line work, where only a slight difference of the angle or the pressure of a pen tip creates all the needed difference and effect.
The Fall will be on view until October 31, 2013, so make sure you check out this unique body of work if you’re visiting the Bay Area.
Discuss Francesco Igory Deiana here.
Words // Nina Azzarello Designboom
French artist Christian Boltanski presents ‘Grosse Hamburger Strasse’ at Kewenig, Berlin: an artistic archive which references many of the major works throughout his career. The exhibition features photographic installations throughout the gallery of images he collected during his research for ‘The Missing House’, an artwork which saw Boltanski create panels with personal data of former residents of a house destroyed during WWII mounted onto the walls of the ruined space. While working on ‘The Missing House’, Boltanski came across a picture that would become a source of influence for many artworks: a black-and-white photograph of a group of children from the former jewish school in Grosse Hamburger Strasse. The young students were born into an age of war and persecution, and it is likely that many of them perished over the next decade of destruction.
Christian Boltanski
Kewenig, Berlin
Now through November 9th, 2013
christian boltanski
stèles, 2012
photographic prints on linen cloth in metal construction, on metal steles
1 x 69 x 49 cm, h 202 cm; 5 x 49 x 39 cm, h 202 cm; 4 x 38,5 x 38 cm, h 181 cm
unique
image courtesy kewenig berlin, photo by simon vogel
Boltanski repeatedly uses the same photograph, manipulating it in medium and expression, each time finding a different artistic language. The portraits are mementos of other people’s lives, saturated with history, and witnesses to cultural memories. By using them in his artwork, Boltanski speaks through the personalities of the pictured, memorializing their fates. The exhibition showcases enlarged images of the children bearing smiling faces, translated into frames, and hung on the gallery walls. Each bears a small light pointed directly at them, somewhat obscuring them from view. The light that touches the anonymous face acts as a disturbing reminder that once, the child stood affront a camera and had their picture taken, in a time when perhaps their radiance wasn’t masked by the suffering of war. Iterations of the photos appear throughout the exhibition, some with electrical cords haphazardly draped around, others blown up to massive proportions. The haunting environment intermingles emotion and history, spotlighting the significance of each individual by meticulously reconstructing traces of the past.
portraits on the wall with a light directing onto the faces
image courtesy kewenig berlin
images of the schoolchildren
image courtesy kewenig berlin
a large-scale picture of a child’s face
image courtesy kewenig berlin
as part of the installation, the pictures are translated into colored frames and strung with lights
image courtesy kewenig berlin
electrical cords haphazardly draped around the images
image courtesy kewenig berlin
Words // Nina Azzarello Designboom
Using simple materials like cardboard, paint, and foil, french artist Benedetto Bufalino has humorously transformed an ordinary car into a Ferrari Testarossa replica. ‘La Ferrari Sur Voiture Sans Permis’ is modeled after the hot-red luxury vehicle, and is completed by hand painted rims and tires, metallic foil tailpipes, and the signature prancing horse logo fitted on the rear. The cardboard construction is designed to slide just over the hood of a regular car, attaching to its roof and sides. Cut-outs in the front and passenger windows allow for driver visibility, which makes the entire sculptural unit completely functional on the road.
the cardboard construction is designed to slide just over the hood of a regular ca
the ferrari testarossa takes to the streets
the cardboard model fits directly
detail of the driver’s side view
back view of the handmade vehicle
the cardboard car is complete with hand painted details
