Artists & Art
bioephemera | July 18, 2008If you think that one inanimate shark is as good as another, your understanding of the art market is, as they say, dead in the water. Mr. Saunders's piece just didn't have the same quality or cache. (Although Mr. Saunders did claim his shark was more handsome.) Most important, it's not just about the work of art; rather, the value placed on a particular work derives from how it feels to own that art. Most art dealers know that art buying is all about what tier of buyers you aspire to join.
From The New York Sun's amusing review of Don Thompson's upcoming book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark:…
bioephemera | July 16, 2008
The brand-new Device Gallery is hosting a group show called "Fantastic Contraption" featuring artists like H.R. Giger and Christopher Conte. The show opens this Saturday, July 19, from 6-9 pm - check it out if you're in La Jolla!
Steam Insect
Christopher Conte
Via dark roasted blend.
bioephemera | July 11, 2008Michael Dax Iavocone
Another opportunity for DC-area readers: Michael Dax Iavocone's new show opens at flashpoint gallery tomorrow (Saturday), July 12, 6-8pm.
From the gallery press release (pdf):
Artist Michael Dax Iacovone investigates and chronicles his familiar DC environs using mathematical algorithms to govern the way in which he experiences space. Using these formulas, Iacovone creates a blueprint to follow, film and photograph the DC area. Iacovone's solo exhibition at the Gallery at Flashpoint, The Numbers Behind, explores spaces and image-making in a new and mechanical way and is on…
bioephemera | July 4, 2008GONE
Isabella Kirkland, 2004The sixty-three species painted in Gone have all become extinct since the mid-1800's and the colonization of the new world.
Isabella Kirkland's Taxa series are beautiful, intricate, large-scale indictments of humanity's destructive potential. Drawing stylistic cues from 17th and 18th century European still lifes, Kirkland's huge oil paintings depict species driven to extinction or near-extinction, introduced/invasive species, and illegally traded species.
GONE (detail)
Isabella Kirkland, 2004
Each of the paintings is accompanied by an outline key that identifies…
bioephemera | June 30, 2008
Cristina Vergano, 2006
Via the wonderful Phantasmaphile, I just discovered artist Cristina Vergano. Her latest series, "Figures of Speech," are like Old Masters crossed with children's puzzles - playful Renaissance rebuses that spell out their own titles (key at the bottom of this post).
Cristina Vergano, 2006
Vergano mixes trompe l'oeil with typefaces, clear-eyed, enigmatic people and animals, and allegorical landscapes to perfectly balance frivolity with the suggestion of deeper meaning. Vergano said in the artist's statement for an earlier exhibition, "Knowledge and our approaches to it…
bioephemera | June 26, 2008This is why I don't do digital art (click PLAY, or for a larger, higher-res version, go to the link below):
AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central
Higher-res version: "Animator vs. Animation" by Alan Becker
Sequel (via GrrrlScientist, thanks Bob O for the heads-up): "Animator vs. Animation II" by Alan Becker (this summarizes nicely why the second and third Matrix films were doomed to mediocrity).
bioephemera | June 20, 2008
"Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment"
Jean Kaleba and family
Last Friday I finally made it to Artomatic, a month-long gallery event that colocalizes hundreds of local artists under one roof, together with musicians, poets, wine and beer. But the real stars of Artomatic were pastel marshmallows - yes, Peeps.
In conjunction with Artomatic, the Washington Post sponsors a Peep-populated diorama contest, Peepsomatic. The entries were creative, hilarious, and occasionally esoteric, like Jean Kaleba's entry above, "Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment" -…
bioephemera | May 27, 2008White Plains Hospital Bus Wrap (detail)
Nick Veasey
Self-labeled "X-Ray Photographer" Nick Veasey created this life-size bus wrap by running a bus through a million-dollar device used to screen vehicles at border checkpoints, then superimposing individual radiographs of a single corpse posed in various attitudes. (If you look closely, you'll see that the passengers are morphologically identical - not as a bus full of men, women, and children of various ages should appear.) Veasey then patched the whole image together in Photoshop.
Originally deployed in New York, the bus wrap was withdrawn…
bioephemera | May 27, 2008After the long weekend, I'm catching up on links friends and readers have sent me. Artist Erik Nordenankar shipped a GPS device by DHL to create this giant tracking self-portrait (according to the project website, appropriately titled "biggestdrawingintheworld.com"):
This video shows how he did it:
My first question was prosaic: how could anyone afford to do this? I figured it was some wealthy Silicon Valley hobbyist's idea - how could an art student afford the shipping fees? Not unexpectedly, it turns out the project was conceived as both art and ad - Nordenankar describes it as "…
bioephemera | May 22, 2008(Index) Finger, 1997
Pens, Pencils & Polyester Resin
Tim HawkinsonAce Gallery
Tim Hawkinson's artwork is more than slightly disturbing to me. As part of his artistic quest to reimagine the body, he takes found materials like pencils and transforms them into distorted, dismembered parts like this giant fingertip. It's probably not Hawkinson's intent, but (Index) Finger reminds me of the classic quote by "Red" Smith: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Hawkinson's Fruit is a sort of fractal series of hands-on-fingers that, when I look at…
bioephemera | May 14, 2008Holiday of the Reindeer
Senya Koyakin
Watercolor on paper
The watercolor painting above is by Senya Koyakin, a middle school student in Zhigansk, Siberia. Senya's art, and that of other Siberian schoolchildren, is visiting AAAS in Washington, DC, as part of The Student Partners Project: Engaging Students and the Public in the Science of Climate Change.
AAAS hosts an opening reception tonight (May 14) at 6pm, featuring a lecture by Dr. Robert Max Holmes, Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, and a videoconference with the children. The artwork will remain on display until…
bioephemera | May 14, 2008Plate XVIII, 2002
Selena Kimball
From The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz
More disquieting collage art - this time from Selena Kimball. Her collage illustrations from The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz by Agniezka Taborska depict the surreal, sinister visions of a fictional 18th century Carmelite nun. I feel like I should make a creepy sound effect of some kind, but the collages are so lovely, it seems disrespectful. . . check out the subtle use of biological imagery throughout.
Plate II, 2000
Selena Kimball
From The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz
bioephemera | May 6, 2008Figureight Knot Complement vii/CMI (Clay Mathematics Award)
bronze
Helaman Ferguson
"We are living in a golden age of science and a golden age of art, and I like to celebrate that." -Helaman Ferguson
Back in March, I attended a talk by mathematician/sculptor Helaman Ferguson. He's one of the so-called algorists, artists who create art based on algorithms of their own devising (Ferguson is a co-creator of the PSLQ algorithm, among others). The Clay Mathematics Institute describes the algorithm used to create the sculpture at the top of this post, Figureight Knot Complement vii, thus:
The…
bioephemera | May 2, 2008
Animal Logic 2007
Richard Barnes
Richard Barnes' Animal Logic collection depicts natural history museums in a state of after-hours undress. Half-installed dioramas, partially wrapped specimens, taxidermy animals in shipping crates. . . each photo has an illicit From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler feeling.
Barnes' work is a reminder that, all our suspension of disbelief aside, there's nothing natural about natural history museums. Context is everything - stick a dinosaur across the firepit from a Neanderthal, and you'll get a generation of kids who think "The Flintstones"…
bioephemera | May 2, 2008This entry originally appeared November 24, 2007 on the old bioephemera. I was inspired to repost & update it after seeing this post over at Morbid Anatomy earlier this month.
Wounds (2007)
Nicole Natri
I ran across this collage by the talented Nicole Natri shortly after attending an interesting lecture, "When Sleeping Beauty Walked Out of the Anatomy Museum," by Kathryn Hoffmann, who is a professor of French at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. The connection here is pretty cool, but it's roundabout, so bear with me.
Dr. Hoffmann's talk was my introduction to Pierre Spitzner's…
bioephemera | April 29, 2008
Vollig Weichgestrikt
Sarah Illenberger
Those of you who enjoyed JPolka's crochet cabinet in Sunday's Cabinet of Curiosities carnival may also like these cloudlike knitted sculptures by Sarah Illenberger. I'm impressed with how effectively the yarn captures the delicate translucence of human tissues - particularly the vanishingly small arterioles on the heart's surface.
Via Adam in the World
bioephemera | April 13, 2008What did Leonardo look like? And why are people so obsessed with this question?
Greg Laden just posted a new video in which Siegfriend Woldhek (illustrator, founder of nabuur.com, and former CEO of Dutch World Wildlife Fund) uses simple logic to "discover" what he claims to be the Renaissance master's face. Basically, he takes all the male faces Leo drew and. . . well, watch it for yourself:
I'm not sure that qualifies as "sophisticated image analysis techniques." It certainly doesn't prove anything, even if it did get BoingBoinged. But it's less of a stretch than seeing Leonardo's face in…
bioephemera | April 13, 2008Madame Ovary , 2008
Collage, 3.5 x 5.5"Richard Russell
Following up neatly on my post about Nicole Natri's anatomical collage, artist Richard Russell mixes beeswax and book art to create provocative, creepily symbolic images like Madame Ovary (above). Russell describes himself as a serious ephemeraholic:
I can become teary-eyed over certain botanical illustrations, wallpaper designs, bird prints, astronomy maps, travel documents, the pattern of handwriting in a letter. I prefer the patina of use and age--smudges, the stain of cellophane tape, a child's doodles in a book, margin notes, mold.…
bioephemera | April 10, 2008Vanitas, 2008
Nicole Natri
My friend Nicole Natri has finished her new website, updating her blog and portfolio of collage art. Nicole has a somewhat dark artistic vision involving sinister medical implements and bizarre anatomical diagrams - which she seems to have no trouble finding in vintage books. I wonder what bookshops she frequents??
Halloweenhead, 2007
Nicole Natri
Anguish, 2007
Nicole Natri
bioephemera | April 8, 2008Hochgekocht, 2008Sarah Illenberger
Vertumnus (portrait of Rudolph II), 1591Giuseppe Arcimboldo