Mar 15, 2013 | photography
Dave Engledow is recording his daughter’s childhood in a way more creative than most, but then again he is a professional photographer. He calls this series World’s Best Father, and manipulates pictures of him and his daughter doing dangerous things together – the kinds of things people call Child Protective Services about as soon as they’re out the front door.
Keep an eye out for his not-so-deserved World’s Best Father mug that makes an ironic appearance in every scene.
His tiny daughter Alice always has the most adorable expression on her face, while Engledow’s is purposely overdramatic and hilarious, wide-eyed in wonder or weeping like a sad clown might. He endearingly calls her by her full name, Alice Bee, on his Facebook page and writes, “I love photography, and (to paraphrase Garry Winograd) my main drive to shoot is fueled by my eternal curiosity to see what the world looks like in photographs. I am fascinated by light and shadow, form and shape, lines and composition.”
Alice always looks like she’s having a good time though, except in scenes where she’s forced to do chores or fulfill her father’s expectation to raise an Olympic swimmer. Her bright blonde hair is always styled to fit the part too – tied up in cute little buns and ponytails on top of her head, and extra wild when she’s on the loose.
The manipulation on the photos matches the detail put into comprising the scenes too, often with a shiny surreal sheen over them that somehow just makes the scene look more realistic. In one photo he’s scolding her through an iPad even though he’s right across the couch, but Alice doesn’t care because there’s no way she’s eating those peas.
Images from Joe’s Daily, and the artist’s Facebook page. Like his page to keep updated on Alice’s new adventures.
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Mar 14, 2013 | design
Image from artist’s 2008 solo exhibition at Gallery HANGIL, in Paju, Korea.
Byung-Hoon Choi makes seats and benches that look too precarious for real use, but you can sit on them as long as they’re not part of an art exhibition. Someone might yell at you.
Some of these seats are made of one smooth solid piece of sculpted wood and others balance that wood on stones, playing with gravity as if it were a separate medium all its own.
Image from artist’s 2008 solo exhibition at Gallery HANGIL, in Paju, Korea.
These stools are abruptly flat on top while their legs curve elegantly outwards until reaching the floor, a matching pair in deep mahogany. The left-hand stool is punctured by an asymmetrical hole, like a perfect tree had grown around a dinosaur egg only to be turned into a chair. The stool on the right stretches higher, an upside-down tear shape cut out of its middle makes it look more like women’s legs cut off at the hip or a really groovy pair of flared jeans.
The chair below appears the most dangerous for actual sitting, but thanks to very heavy weights, balance only looks like it would be a problem. Have you ever gone to sit down when your friend pulled out the chair beneath you because he thought it would be hilarious to see you fall on your ass? That reactionary feeling of uncertainty – a subconscious verification of free fall, is what these works evoke, because to sit in them would mean trusting in the artist more than what your own eyes tell you.
Image from artist’s 2008 solo exhibition at Gallery HANGIL, in Paju, Korea.
Choi currently works as a dean and professor at Hongik University’s College of Fine Arts in Seoul, South Korea. He previously worked as the director of Hongik’s Museum of Art and his work can be found in nearly every museum in Korea including the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition to seating, he also constructs intricate sculptures along with tables and other kinds of furniture that can be improved aesthetically.
Image from artist’s 2010 solo exhibition at galerieDOWNTOWN, in Paris.
See more of Choi’s work on his website.
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Mar 13, 2013 | art fairs, painting
It’s arresting – seeing six symmetrical circles holding the faces of little scowling children, all spread across the wall, three red paired against three black. Cast in Renaissance clothing, these children wear the exact color of the background, making the definition between the two an act of magic. Your eyes tell you where the headdress stops and where her shirt begins, but they only know because of delicate shadows and folds that are obvious in some places, but left invisible where the painted fabric is as tight as the canvas.
It’s hard to tell whether these are all the same little boy or girl – all of their faces have the same elegant roundness, the same crystal blue eyes and the same smooth perfect skin. But their expressions are subtly different – the four within the smaller circles seem to hold more contempt in their eyes, like they’re upset with how small their worlds are compared to the two children within the larger circles, whose expressions lie closer to curiosity or suspicion.
The only element offsetting perfect symmetry here comes in the clothing of these two children within the largest circles. The boy in red is bare-chested, wearing only a headdress while the child in the large black oval wears a shiny black shirt that grips his little body so tight he might as well not be wearing it at all.
The largest circles are stretched wider to form more of an oval shape – the smaller perfect circles play a supporting role by framing their larger counterpart and interacting with the opposite color across the wall. The abrupt visual contrast of the black versus red, along with the dagger stares coming from intense perfect children makes the whole wall come alive with ideas about conflict and disdain, youth and maturity. And the Renaissance headdresses hint at an address of institutionalized religion or just religion as a whole.
Perhaps the most dynamic part comes where the two colors meet – both children with the exact same grimacing glare pointed right at us, although it really seems like their unhappiness is actually rooted in their physical closeness to the antidote – the opposite color with a contrast too strong to look directly at.
Born in Seville, Spain in 1965, Salustiano has an exhibition list too long for even multiple pages on his website. He’s shown between 10-20 exhibitions per year since 2001, and began all the way back in 1994. Beginning in Spain, then moving to Portugal in 1999, he showed in Italy in 2000 and New York City in 2001, and has since had work displayed all over the world, from Seoul to Salzburg to Moscow.
Salustiano’s VOLTA comment read:
“For me, emotion is a key word in contemporary art and should continue to be so in the future. In recent years in the art world, artists have tried to flee from ’emotion’: saturated with every kind of visual stimulus, they have been more concerned with making an ‘impact’ on the spectator than in touching an emotional fibre. I strongly believe that emotion should be the principal motivation and purpose of the artist. For centuries art has emotionally impacted upon, moved or even perturbed the spectator; and this ‘interior’ movement has contributed to the evolution of mankind. I also think that even if the artist intends to stimulate the intellect of his or her audience, then this should be done through ’emotion’….”
For more of Salustiano’s work, see his website.
All photographs taken by Lindsey @VOLTA NY ’13 where Salustiano was represented by KAVACHNINA CONTEMPORARY in Miami.
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