Saturday 30 January 2010

Photographic bodies

Aimée Beaubien either got a lot of money from American Apparel or has a deep fascination for colored tights. All legs aside, I like it. A lot. 


































In the Realms of the Unreal.

A victim of child abuse and neglect, Henry Darger's works tend towards escapism, striking for their elements of fantasy and mythology.
The artist's style is innocent and playfully childish, taking the reader and beholder into a world of make-believe, far away kingdoms and knights, housing dragons and supernatural creatures. Even though the narratives appear to be very much like fairy tales, Darger's oeuvres are interlarded with underlying social and moral thematics. Moreover, because of the possible correlation of his childhood with his work, critics have often seen it as a self therapeutic process: the creation of a second life to communicate with a difficult past. 'The dragon' in the work below is a reoccurring character in Darger's books. These dragons or "Blengigomeneans" as the Chicago born artist liked to christen them, are gigantic winged beings with curved horns who occasionally take human or part-human form, even disguising themselves as children. 
I can't help but finding Darger's bibliography and his particular 'fantasy land' obsession to be reminiscent of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 'Le Petit Prince'. That is, the child within to cherish, to nurture, the necessity of every adult to hear the whispers of the voice of knowledge that stands closer to the religious belief that before one is born he is in that place where all is known, all is factual. The older one grows, the greater the distance becomes from that place, and the scarcer the input of knowledge from the outside world. "Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." (Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.)

Glass houses by seyna

Glass houses �by� seyna

Sunday 24 January 2010

Prada for truckers.

I might be blogger 109147 to come across this picture, but I fell in love with some feedback I stumbled upon and felt thus contemplated to post this anyway. 
The store was built on the side of a Road in Marfa, Texas, as a temporary art project. All things aside, I would've been more impressed by a Topshop at the bottom of Mount Kilimanjaro. Anyways...

Subject: MARFA STORE
YOUR STORE FRONT GOT OUR ATTENTION THIS LAST FRIDAY NIGHT AS WE HEADED INTO MARFA TO SEE THE LIGHTS...WE STOPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD AND TOOK A PICTURE OF YOUR PRADA SHOE STORE..AND THOUGHT WE SAW ALIENS WEARING YOUR SHOES INSIDE ONE SMALL ALIEN FIGURE LOOKED TO BE CARRING A PRADA HANDBAG...WHEN I CHECKED MY CAMERA LATER TO VIEW THOSE 
PICTURES THEY WERE GONE EXCEPT FOR THE ONE PICTURE OF THE ENTIRE STORE FROM THE HIGHWAY..YOUR PRODUCTS ARE NOW KNOWN THRU OUT THE GALAXY....WE LOVED THE STORE AND 
WONDERED WHERE THE GAS STATION WENT MAYBE NEXT TRIP WE'LL SHOP YOUR STORE DURING REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS....THANK YOU THE KLOCK FAMILY FROM FARMINGTON NM, January 08, 2006

Saturday 23 January 2010

Inside Davmo.

His name is Davmo, I want to step inside.

Have you ever felt like grabbing an image with your both hands but you couldn't? First, because it is impossible to grab an object within an illustration, second, because the characters and objects in Davmo's works appear to be liquid, as liquid as a puddle of oil or water. 
Try to imagine yourself standing inside of Davmo's works in an attempt to touch everything around you. Certainly, it would create a movement, a chain reaction, the shapes mutating into different beings. After seeing the whole tableau move like a giant construction made out of jello, a sort of excitement would arise. The intruder (you or me) would be faced with two options: a run for shelter or a fascinated gaze at the metamorphosis no matter the outcome. However, when taking a journey within an art work, one should always remember this: with the knowledge of standing within a fixed creation, there is no need to flee for, in the end, all will settle back into its original form.  

Text Rain.

If it were to rain words and sentences in real life, would you feel and hear them? Would they evaporate out of books that have been lying around for too long? What would their cycle be like? 

POSSIBLE CYCLE: A book deprived of thought - wandering of the words - disconnection of the letters - rising up into the atmosphere - falling down to the ground in search of a new meaningful combination - the words bump into a writer - = the writer's inspiration for a new book. 

With this in mind, I know that even for a brief moment, I will be smiling when it rains again.
Will you?

Thank you Camille Utterback.

Sunday 17 January 2010

'Folk Art': frightened fascination.

'Art, patriotism and religious fervour.' Benjamin Franklin Perkins managed to make them work together on paintings, facades and a whole church building. The Hansel and Gretel like cottage on the picture below may appear like novelty or a freak show, nevertheless the American artist's practice of combining art and love for ones roots can be classified under 'Folk Art'.
Perkins, a retired U.S. marine and Reverend born in Alabama in 1904, discovered art as a way to share his personal memories and deliver patriotic and religious messages to his surroundings. After retiring, the ex marine started to cover his habitat and many tableaus in red, blue and white, often including some text, sprung from his belief that "If art don't tell me anything it's not art". 

A fascinating freak..




Ted Gordon

I particularly like looking at these illustrations for the effect they have of creating volume within a volume. The different shapes and oddity of the facial expressions encourages the beholder to explore the work for hidden features. Although the art works were made on the back of cardboard boxes and scribbled down with simple ball point pens, through the usage of thin lines and small oval shapes the technique appears delicate and refined. Some pictures have no real delineation, but instead Gordon chooses to play with width, shape and colour contrast to obtain the same effect. Moreover, by using a different object for each facial feature the illustrator attracts the beholders attention to every detail. 





Ted Gordon was born in Kentucky in 1924. He attended high school in New York, then moved to San Francisco where he married and graduated from San Francisco State College. Until his retirement in 1987, Gordon was employed as a mental health worker in both San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Immortality and Art

Today I stopped to gaze at the rising influence of the long standing plague that rests upon mankind. It is not physical, nor is it completely mental, but a slumbering religious sentiment that we subconsciously decide to neglect: the ever so tragically 'human' suspension of disbelief in immortality.



Saturday 16 January 2010

I LOVE OUTLAW ART IN NY




Botanists of the Asphalt

What springs to mind when you hear London, when you stand still on the streets of the City and look up, down, behind you or in front of you? What happens when you halt your movement to capture the atmosphere, the movements, the crisscross of events with a brush, a lens, found treasures of the city, or by demonstrating its dynamics through abstract constructions?
'Botanists of the Asphalt' is the collection of snapshots of the city, through the eye of different artistic mediums. A true must for wanderers who like to pause the chaos and artistically dissect their view on London.

The City Arts and Music Project presents, 'Botanists of the Asphalt', Curated by Stephanie Pochet. 
City Road 70-74, London EC17 2BJ.