Commune

Case Study Homes by Peter Bialobrzeski is intended to serve as more than a visual study of huts erected in a place called Baseco, a squatter camp near Manila, home to about 70,000 people. The ramshackle contraptions are also “good solutions”, affordable to live in, but they lack the cool and glamour of Case Study House no. 22. Biablobrzeski writes that “these images remind me of something completely unhip: the long-forgotten word ‘humility.’”

We came across the book, Color Form and Theory by Wana Derge, in search of inspiration for unique floral arrangements and were surprised to find a selection of painted color swatches depicting color theory and combinations. The book illustrates how to achieve maximum color vitality versus “dull” or “crude” pairings, but each color composition seem to us to have a beauty of it’s own.

The gracious art form of floral design is handled with the ideal that each flower, bud, stem, leaf, rock and accessory will fit perfectly together to create a blend of intriguing color and form.

Color Form and Composition by Wana Derge

A follow up to our Gutai post, Mono-ha was the subsequent Japanese movement in the late 1960s that continued, expanded and distilled the ideals of its predecessor.

Their aim was simply to bring ‘things’ together, as far as possible in an unaltered state, allowing the juxtaposed materials to speak for themselves. Hence, the artists no longer ‘created’ but ‘rearranged’ ‘things’ into artworks, drawing attention to the interdependent relationships between these ‘things’ and the space surrounding them. The aim was to challenge pre-existing perceptions of such materials and relate to them on a new level.

During the 1980’s a group of activists began “ACT UP: a diverse and non partisan group united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis”. They essentially took the idea of a corporate Identity and turned it on its head: Using a uniform typeface, a typographic style, set of colors and a way of handing imagery to create a graphic identity for their activist movement. Like their corporate counterparts, every piece of propaganda was unified under a single visual language, giving a relatively small movement unity, impact, and recognition to their cause as well as the tools for their  followers to spread a cohesive message (that was always set in futura).

The Mastaba, a proposed project for Abu Dhabi, was conceived by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in 1977. A mastaba, meaning house for eternity, was a type of ancient Egyptian tomb usually constructed out of mud brick or stone. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s colossal mastaba will be made from 410,000 multi colored barrels to form a mosaic of bright, sparkling colors, echoing Islamic architecture. The Mastaba will be the largest sculpture in the world and Christo and Jean-Claude’s only permanent large scale work; standing in the desert just south of the city of Abu Dhabi at a towering 492 feet high, 11 feet taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

check out more images and projects by Christo and Jeanne-Claude at www.christojeanneclaude.net a great site designed by our friends NoFavorite in New York.

We are going to check out the Calder opening at L&M Arts in Venice this Friday 6 - 8pm..you should too.

Inspired by Blum & Po’s recent show: Requiem for the Sun, we decided to do a little research into modern art movements in Japan.  Somewhere between Kabuki Theatre, Jackson Pollock, and an early Paul Mcarthy performance exists The Gutai (“concrete”) Movement: An 1950’s ab-ex movement focused on the expression of materials.

“Gutai art does not change the material: it brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice.”

Stage Director, choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, sound/lighting designer, and needles to say genuis. 

Cuban artist, Carlos Garaicoa explores the parallel between the architectural/political state of present day Cuba and the imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia.