It’s commonly known that Picasso painted portraits of his many lovers, often with loads of style but less than realistic features… but what if he painted only what he saw? Flóra Borsi has creatively re-imagined four classic portraits with distorted subjects from famous 20th century painters. In each example she humorously (and a bit shockingly) brings to life the character in the painting – warped features and all – and places them posing next to their portrait. [Read more...]
Just imagine walking through the woods at twilight – the shapes of the forest beginning to merge as night sets in – and then coming upon a brilliant cluster of table lamps illuminating the glen in your path. Their beautiful yet eerie light fills the woods with a glow that brilliantly plays with the dim natural scene all around, and if you imagine hard enough, you might think you were in Alice in Wonderland or surrounded by strange terrestrial jellyfish. [Read more...]
Ian Berry is a British artist who we’ve covered before, but his new works are even more amazing. He creates monochromatic compositions that depict urban landscapes, the London Underground, diners, and even gets around to doing portraits — all out of varying shades of denim fabrics. His weeks of cutting, stitching, and gluing varying shades of denim fabric together create images that are uber rich in contrast and shadow. When you first look at his images, it’s hard not to be blown away by the detail and think his art must be a painting. Then, you find out they’re all created solely from denim, and your brain is thrown into a WTF tailspin; which makes the images so much more amazing. [Read more...]
If you thought our article earlier this week with guns and porcelain was an odd combination… how about guns and cake? San Francisco artist Scott Hove has been making unusual cake based sculptures as part of his Cakeland series since back in 2005. From high heels to taxidermy, he has given the fantastic frosting-coated treatment to a diverse range of subjects – even including entire art spaces. Now, for his show “Guns and Ecstasy,” Hove has turned his talents toward firearms and in particular assault rifles. It’s an appropriate topic as the debate on gun legality continues to rage in the US after a shocking amount of recent school shootings. [Read more...]
At first glance, and maybe even second, the birds in these images look real enough you don’t want to frighten them away. It’s a surprise then, when you find out that they are made entirely of flat pieces of paper, carefully folded and glued together to form precise replicas of real-life birds. Perhaps even more surprising, they aren’t even reproduced from photographs, but are hand-drawn on sheets of paper using tools as simple as colored pencil. [Read more...]
Mike Mitchell is a master of media… and by that we mean the celebrities that make media worth watching. From remixed superheroes, to childhood memories and portraits of celebs, his sharp images bring a touch of class to the things which entertain us so well. Now Mitchell is featuring a series of movie character portraits that are incredibly well done, each eliciting just the attitude you’d expect from each memorable individual. [Read more...]
For just over a year now Tilman Zitzmann has been daily exploring two of his design fascinations: geometry and minimalism. Each day on his tumblr blog he posts a deceptively simple geometric form in his tasty retro style. Most examples look like they could have been lifted from your parent’s 50s or 60s textbooks, the ones that featured beautiful geometric instructions and infographics on the world before the term was even coined. For anyone design related, this is inspiration gold. [Read more...]
When I first ran across the paintings of Jordan Piantedosi I was really having trouble nailing down how to define them. Her central female figures are made from a smattering of color in all kinds of shapes… and sometimes interwoven into the mix are playful elements like Can-Can dancers, seashells and superheros. Where does such work fit when there’s so much going on at once? It helped me out a lot when I found out Piantedosi considers herself a “maximalist” painter, which as you’d guess is the exact opposite of a “minimalist” painter. For Jordan Piantedosi it’s “more, more, more!” [Read more...]
What makes an object beautiful? Is it simply a case of the form, its hues and the patterns involved; or is there something deeper? Magnus Gjoen helps us reassess our preconceived ideas about this concept by combining what most would see as highly dissimilar objects. Many of his digital works combine classic paintings or prints with unfriendly forms – like insects and guns for example. In doing so, we are forced to contemplate these forms and images anew. [Read more...]
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas… and in the case of Candy Chang’s cathartic exhibition, those things stay there in the form of anonymous hand written sentences on squares of wood. Inspired by the likes of PostSecret, Shinto shrine prayer walls and the catholic church, “Confessions” was an event which encouraged viewers to enter private booths and write their secret on a veneer of wood. The collected words were then beautifully hung around the walls of the exhibition for all to observe and contemplate. [Read more...]
