Giant bold letters sit in a field. They should be easy to spot, but they’re covered in mirrors so from a distance they blend in, echoing the same colors and patterns as the grass that surrounds them. In a work like this one the photographer has all the power, because choosing an angle determines what’s reflected in the glass. In some photos you really have to search for it, but it’s always there – four giant letters that spell F-E-A-R. When we see the word from straight on, the outlines of the letters look like they’re just floating there, reflecting a shinier swirled version of the green-brown grass.
Up close you can see that the letters in “fear expanded” are plated in mirror that’s been cut into differently sized rectangles, which is what causes parts of the letters to reflect patterns differently when seen from far away. Fear doesn’t seem so scary when it’s just a few giant letters and not something deep inside us. Manifesting Fear as something this huge and unthreatening forces us to laugh at it, but at the same time the Fear is being sneaky with all those mirrors, lurking in the grass, and if you could see it up close in person you’d be faced with fragmented bits of your own reflection.
Ryan Everson is an artist from the midwest, who recently completed an MFA at the University of Colorado in Boulder. This work Fear Expanded was created in collaboration with artist Jason Garcia, who typically works as a painter.
His artist statement reads:
My most recent work comes from abstract emotional states stirred up from specific self reflective moments. These moments arise as I become more aware of myself in the present and my inability to control the future. (continue reading on Everson’s website)
UPDATE for all those close to the Denver area: Ryan has a new show titled Long Lost that just opened last week at Denver’s Gildar Gallery. Long Lost will be on view from April 12 – May 11, 2013.
Paul Friedlander is both a physicist and a light sculptor, using applied sciences to create art that’s both beautiful and interactive. He constructs kinetic light sculptures by quickly rotating a rope stretched from ceiling to floor through white light. The vibrating string becomes invisible, but the white light that’s being reflected off the rope becomes visible in an exchange that let’s our eyes see magic, as real as science can make it.
The colors change and twist, forming double-helixes that stem from the shape of the swinging rope. Some of these light sculptures are small and handheld, but many of the larger ones include touch screens that allow viewers to adjust the beams. All of them are spinning at very high speeds that result in a constantly moving body of light.
The light dances and vibrates before you, creating spectrums of color that turn science into performance art. Some of the lights spring from clear bowls that make them look like long shiny ribbons reaching down to us. In this video, the ropes of light spin rapidly, changing from one dense color to one another as the each seems to melt off in succession.
Friedlander wrote that he’s been obsessed with machinery and movement since he was little – with the memory of spending six months as a child in New York, surrounded by the skyscrapers and cars and busses developing in the 1950s. He came to New York because his father was a mathematician who was offered the chance to spend six months researching for New York University. (Even though it’s a huge school, having just graduated from NYU myself feels like I have one little thread of connection to the development of this Englishman who’s combined art and science.)
It’s interesting because after graduating from Sussex University, and learning under Sir Anthony Leggett who later was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work on superfluidity, Friedlander attended art school but found its culture completely backwards and its mindset surprisingly small. No one was interested in beauty, he wrote, apparently it was out of date, “passe”:
“The big new thing was conceptualism. I came to consider the art world as some kind of strange fashion following cult. Members of the art world all shared the same views, talked nonsense and froze out any one who dared to consider their own talent more important than following what every one else was doing.”
On a personal note: I find this incredibly interesting, because it’s that exact attitude I want to spend my life trying to change – people shouldn’t think that art can be this over here, but not that over there because it’s already been done. To me, art is the greatest because each time a different pair of hands make something, even if it’s intended to be a copy of something else, it will always be a completely different interpretation of what came before. Art, by nature, should always by new, instantaneous – capturing one brush stroke or one moment in time that deserves to be shared with the rest of us. And we should always be expanding our idea of what art is, since some of the best art sits right on the edge of nonsense.
But I guess in Mr. Friedlander’s case, his art made too much sense.
String Theory II
Now, Friedlander has shown his light sculptures in four continents and fifteen countries, his work having the unique benefit of blending it at both science and art museums. After a brief stint in stage lighting and starting a family, and after feeling a deep sense of being unfulfilled he began experimenting with light in his own way.
Once he “discovered the chaotic properties of spinning string and chromastrobic light,” Friedlander organized a group of artists for an exhibition they titled “Chaos” and he found that his kinetic light sculptures were actually in when it came to contemporary art tastes. He’s been creating, exhibiting, and winning awards ever since.
If you’d like to read Mr. Friedlander’s story for yourself, he wrote a bio page from which all of this information was gathered.
And for more kinetic light sculptures, see his website.
These are the walls painted by German street artist Dome, who first discovered spray paint in 1995 and his works have been shown in exhibitions all over Germany and Italy since 2001. He studied communications design at the Academy of Art in Mainz, Germany, and in 2010 he moved his focus from spray paint to drawing in ink. His website includes a page of pictures of Dome working in his studio in Karlsruhe, Germany – a city located near the country’s south-west side close to the French border.
His works all have the same dark, satirical style to them – black broken up bodies detailed with simple white lines that hint at the bones underneath, heads usually covered by the head of an animal, and the animal heads all have strings coming from their bases so that we know they’re just masks. There are lots of umbrellas and keys, and most have a sense of humor that eases the lament of the central figure that seems to symbolize what we’ve lost.
“ark istanbul”
Freedom is Painful 5m x 7m mixed media on wall at Leoncavallo in Milano/Italy May 2012
Body parts float like they’d been cast as part of a voodoo fortune charm, hovering and just for a second tricking your eyes into believing that magic is real. The floating sticks of black arrange themselves into a posture, lunging forward so that it’s tied on elk’s head can scream into a megaphone. There’s no one there though, just a pile of upturned umbrellas. Above his head, skeletons hold a ribbon reading “Freedom in painful,” and on the bottom of the framed scene lies another ribbon that commemorates a life lived from 1975-2012. (if you know the word or its translation, please comment!) Leaves fall around the entire scene – they’re a delicate white at the top, but at the bottom they’re black and roughly outlined.
Des Todes Bruder (death’s brother) 2,3m x 8,2m Karlsruhe/Germany-Entenfang-an der Alb 2012
“no titel” 3,5 m x 1,8 m stencil on wall june 2012 Vienna/Austria at Sabotage Films
“Holding Hands” shows a simplification of Dome’s aesthetic that integrates with the environment – street art at its best.
A giant hand reaches up, formed by the base of the column supporting the highway above, and long skinny fingers stretch on to the concrete’s underbelly with wrinkles and nails outlined in rough, swirled lines of white.
“Holding Hands” Karlsruhe/Germany Acrylic on concrete 2013 -04
