Artist (excerpt). Video. 2010

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all images © ERIC RUBY

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Here are some of my favorite shots by ERIC RUBY from Minnesota. He alos recently made a small edition hardcover book, and then a video of the book.

My working method is sometimes backwards, I make groups of photographs into a “project” months(or more) after they are created and I still don’t understand what it is until I come back to it much later.  I try not to think in a project mentality because I feel as though it limits what I can do creatively on a day to day basis; if I am creating something everyday, I can constantly perfect what it is that I am doing at the time.

Make sure to check out his work http://www.ericruby.com/

DIANE ARBUS skateboards (drawings). photos by DIANE ARBUS

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Few months and an exhibition after his first feature on WFW, it is definitely time to update the work of New York-based artist ASHER PENN.

Best known for his appropriations of images and his zine-like publications, ASHER PENN plays with the small ARBUS portrait photographs, as they had appeared in her first Aperture monograph and his desire to be a skateboarder, by drawing skateboards and skate logos on them. The result is challenging, sincere and reinvigorated a critical moment from the history of the photographic book.

I always wanted to be a skateboarder. I still do. There is something normal about skateboarders. Maybe it is because they all kind of do the same tricks… They look nice. They don’t look weird. Their clothing has logos and graphics for skate companies. They’re special, but in a conservative way.

When I was 16, on a trip to New York, my Dad bought me the DIANE ARBUS Aperture monograph. I spent a lot of time looking at it. I felt like I could relate to the subjects and the photographer at the same time. The beginning of the book had her talking about all these ideas about photography. You could read it over and over again and still not entirely get it. It was inspiring. (…) This year I started thinking about mounting photographs in grip-tape on skateboards. I liked the idea of a skateboard being a kind of frame. I didn’t want to use my photographs. Almost all the skateboard decks and t-shirts I can remember used other people’s photos, logos, characters… I felt like I was keeping with that tradition of the medium. The first name that came into my head was DIANE ARBUS.

– To read ASHER PENN‘s DIANE ARBUS Skateboard project statement click here

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all drawings © STEFAN MARX

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Six things you need to know about German artist and designer STEFAN MARX:

1. His work can be described as a crossover between DIY culture and Fine Art
2. His drawings are surprisingly mysterious and flexible for individual associations
3. at the age of 16 he had already started the Lousy Livincompany which presents his T-shirt collection as well as skateboards, both being produced in a small scale
4. in 2010, he presented  an installation in the entire building of the Kunstverein, Hamburg
5. where he lives and works
6. and where he enjoys making Zines and Books

One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly. 2010-2011
images courtesy of Martin Bromirski

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One Floor Up More Highly, at MASS MoCA, North Adams
until October 31, 2011. Image courtesy of MASS MoCA

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KATHARINA GROSSE reframes the basic question of painting like what is the place of painting? What are the relations between paint, colour and their support? What are the differences between painting and picture? through a language that is completely out of the ordinary and borders on the spectacular.

To create her large installations, the artist isolates herself completely from the outside world, wearing protective overalls, a breathing mask and often also earpieces, as she applies large amounts of colour with a spray gun. She describes spraying as endowed with almost aggressive force. The paint covers all existing realities and forms a new skin that always starts from a central point and spreads out over all the surrounding space. When covered with layers of paint, all the objects and elements seem to lose their original character and proportions with respect to space.

Rather than seeing the MASS MoCA installation as a site-specific project, I would say it’s more like my systems are running alongside the systems of the space. It’s as though something has moved inside the building from outside. I find the relationship of this idea to those held by certain American artists, like ROBERT SMITHSON  for example, fascinating. (…). I don’t think that a painting is a coherent, closed system that only takes place within its borders. And rather than choosing between painting being a window and painting being flat, I view everything as a window: You’re a window, the window is a window, the car is a window. For me, everything is an illusionistic surface, and painting is a mode of thought––a way to link these illusionistic elements together. That linking process constantly changes. I don’t create a set of rules through which the thinking has to happen. Neither a predetermined outcome nor the rules to realize it exist. – As told to ANTHONY BYRT for Artforum

Her examination of the fragile balance of the known and the new, attempting through the power of colour to create completely new experiences in known spatial realities is spectacularly beautiful and strangely eerie!

And good news you can view the installation presented above, One Floor Up More Highly, at MASS MoCA ((Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) until October 31, 2011

What is it that makes today’s people so different, so attractive?. 2003
c-prints (serie). 50 x 60 cm

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Through media ranging from large scale installations to meticulously done drawings, the French artist JEANNE SUSPLUGAS explores the body gripped in the irresolvable tension of contradictory forces. She is fascinated by how society freezes and locks us in useless and brief desires. Across the prism of obsessions, both therapeutic and cosmetic, Susplugas thus explores the sphere of the intimate – its desires, uncertainties, and wounds.

In her works she often mimics and exposes in particular the visual characteristics of medicine packaging and pills. A large amount of the medicine available on the market today comes in colours that do not differ much from those of candy. In the art works of SUSPLUGAS this is mirrored through a playful and somewhat childlike visual expression that at the same time displays undercurrents of pressing danger. The balance between critique and aestheticism is an ongoing theme.

Yushan and Green paper. 2005
© CHIH-CHIEN WANG

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Born in Taiwan, CHIH-CHIEN WANG has been living in Montreal since 2002. His works, mainly in photography or video, frequently contain subtle traces which might refer to personal, cultural or social concerns while dealing primarily with his everyday experience. Each photography is like a suspended moment in time, extracted from a continuous flux in which perception, memory and culture intermingle to create a personal trajectory and identity.

My work focuses on the everyday experience. I use photography and video to examine texture, smell or existence of life, and, accompanying with sensibility, I also express my concern about urban environment and cultural differentiation. These concerns sometimes resemble my understanding about people, sometimes reflect the space which I live in, and sometimes answer my doubt about the self. The intrigued signal happens so often that it seems normal to be ignored; however, once it opens up the awareness, the magic of recognition flows. – by CHIH-CHIEN WANG

A superb example of a poetry!

UNTITLED [CANVAS #16]. 2008
Canvas tape on Belgian linen / wooden stretcher
152,5 x 152,5 cm

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UNTITLED [CANVAS #17]. 2008
Canvas tape on Belgian linen / wooden stretcher
152,5 x 152,5 cm

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untitled (garbage bag). 2010
Courtesy: the artist, STANDARD (Oslo), Simon Lee Gallery, London and Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin. Photo: NILS KLINGER

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Young Is Better than Old. 2008
Lightjet print on Fuji archival grade paper. 37 x 49,5 cm

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UNTITLED. 2007
Insulation tape on paper
70 x 100

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UNTITLED. 2007
Insulation tape on paper
70 x 100

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DOUGLAS RAIN (WHAT DO YOU MEAN “WE”, FLESHTUBE?). 2007
Inkjet print on powder coated aluminum. 75 x 350 cm

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Abstracted Car
Installation view, Ikon gallery. 2009

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Installation view at Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch. 2010

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Untitled (Locker Sculpture #01). 2010

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Untitled (Locker Sculpture #01), detail. 2010

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Norwegian artist and writer MATIAS FALDBAKKEN leaves a trail of destruction across floors of galleries, splashing paint on the walls, writing semi-legible messages with packing tape, confronting us with an assortment of detritus. His seemingly throwaway gestures are transgressive, deliberately eschewing conventional display methods of art exhibitions.

Working through a variety of media including film, sculpture, installation, photography and wall painting and revolving around negation, FALDBAKKEN deliberately transforms acts of destruction into abstract forms. Within these works, acts of social and political uprising, and subsequently, the world of Contemporary Art, are reconsidered by manipulating the potent gestures into works of art.

“People often tend to see all sorts of subcultural or “underground” fascinations or allegiances in my work, but my approach to such phenomena is based on a doubt as to what the underground could be. It is hard to know what kind of activity would be truly marginal, what would be below zero, or where things are really situated.”

FALDBAKKEN‘s recent shows include solo exhibitions at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham UK, Kunst Halle St Gallen and The National Museum of Art, Design and Architecture, Oslo. And good news: his monograph “Not Made Visible” edited by Christoph Keller editions is now available in the WFW Store

The External World by DAVID OREILLY. credits

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After his 2009 short Please Say Something—which won the coveted Golden Bear at the 2009 Berlinale, the 2009 Cartoon D’or, the Golden Zagreb Award, the Grand Prix at Winterthur, Best Narrative Film at Ottawa Animation Festival and several other awards—DAVID OREILLY released online his latest twisted, hysterical follow-up venture, The External World.

Self-taught, without conventional schooling, this Irish born, Berlin-based animator experiments with software: “My technique is to basically cut out all the crap which holds other 3-D production back. In other words, I don’t polish the turd – I let a turd be a turd.”

The External World is 17 minutes of twisted world and total 3-D generated chaos. The film took nine months from start to finish to complete: a few months designing and modeling, three months for the actual animating, and a tight finish for the 67th Venice Film Festival where the film has been premiered. The film was co-written by collaborator VERNON CHATMAN and produced by HENNING HAMM.

Definitely a piece that you will watch again and again. Brillant!

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Lingerie Wrestling by TOMOO GOKITA
Published March 2000 by Little More
Paperback, 190 pages
ISBN: 9784898150191

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More than ten years after its release, one of the first book by TOMOO GOKITA published in limited edition was waiting me peacefully in a second-hand bookshop of Basel. This gorgeous softcover volume binding together charcoal and ink drawings makes me feel to have found a treasure!

Born in Tokyo in 1969, TOMOO GOKITA had his first major exhibition at Tokyo’s Parco Gallery in 2000, with releasing his remarkable book “Lingerie Wrestling” published by Little More. At that time he was mostly making drawings, but he was also experimenting of painting, which led to the development of his distinctive, freeform black and white images. His work mixes a range of references, from lingerie, calligraphy and Western pin-up girls, to professional wrestling, third rate porn and beer. The results are both noirish and surreal.

Lingerie Wrestling doesn’t have any story. It is really like a diary I kept when I was poor. There was no initial plan to make Lingerie Wrestling into a book. Every day, I draw things I like to draw, as well as things I care about. This book simply gathers all of these drawings.- by TOMOO GOKITA

I’m an angel too… . by MICHAEL MATTHYS
32 pages. 13,5 x 20,5 cm. published by Fremok
ISBN: 978-2-35065-035-7

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MICHAEL MATTHYS is a Belgian comic artist and an art teacher best known for his large scale lithographies depicting a soofy jungle, as foggy as his native land.

I’m an angel too… is the third book of MICHAEL MATTHYS and has been developped during the creation of his last opus “Ville Rouge” (2009), a powerful portrait of Charleroi drawn with bull’s blood. These preparatory documentations for large scale frescoes are drawn with pencil and charcoal and weren’t planned to be published. Thanks to Fremok, a Franco-Belgian comics publishing house, this small book has seen the light of the day!

1999

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1998

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Eva and Ruth. 1994

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Thomas and Ruth. 1988

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Eva. 2001

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1997

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2000

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2000

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P. 2008

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Discovered a few weeks ago at the Winterthur Fotomuseum, the pictures by Swiss artist and photographer RUTH ERDT are still haunting me.

For 25 years, she has been working on a photographic project that is intimately linked with her life, or what we assume to be her life. But it is not a realistic depiction of her particular world. RUTH ERDT is not very interested in the documentary, she regards photography as a kind of fiction. Instead the private and familiar provide her with material for fictional narratives.

Furthermore, I found fantastic how she photographed at an early age and for several years solely with the help of her imagination: “I was around 12 years old when I imagined a camera. This camera I conceived was attached to my head, could be used any time and ‘took pictures’ when I wanted it to, and from the angle I chose. The focus of that apparatus was outside me. I myself was often depicted in those first pictures. My aim was not so much to see, as to ‘feel’ an image. Somehow the moment when I pressed the release was extraordinary, a faltering in the course of the day, a deceleration, a dead point that engraved the image on my brain. These initial self-portraits were then joined by new images of objects bathed in a mysterious light, or images of people I wanted to get in contact with, to whom I felt somehow bound. There were no restrictions, just the compilation of a huge archive of imaginary images.”

RUTH ERDT studied graphic design and photography at the Zurich Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst and lives with her family in Zurich

The drop of my panties against your sweet face. zine by LAURIE FRANCK. 2011

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Receiving a xeroxed zine which begins with “the drop of my panties against your sweet face”  is never a bad thing. For sure, I’ve added French artist LAURIE FRANCK to my list of small presses to keep an eye on.

Make sure to check her photographic work at http://lauriefranck.tumblr.com/

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thank you LAURIE!

Eleven Blowups #10. 120 x 146 cm. 2006

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Implying a complete personal engagement and a real experience of the land, SOPHIE RISTELHUEBER‘s work borrows from journalism its tools (photography) and one of its major themes (war), but bends them to the processes of art: her oeuvre is not built around a documentary project to represent, but, starting from an aesthetic project, to interrogate the notion of trace/scars, on the body and on the place.

SOPHIE RISTELHUEBER’s picture of a bomb crater, one of a series representing the scars inflicted by conflict, is a reconstruction involving several images – a technique that has earned her a place on the shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2010.

Truffle project by ENSAMBLE STUDIO
Location: Spain – Laxe. Year: 2006- 2010. Status: Built

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La Trufa (The Truffle) is the brilliant result of an unusual design exercise involving straw bales, in-situ concrete and a cow called Paulina. Intended as a weekend retreat, the rock-like structure is perched on the Costa da Morte in north-west Spain.

Here’s the full story from the architect ANTÓN GARCÍA-ABRIL of ENSAMBLE STUDIO:

The Truffle is a piece of nature built with earth, full of air. A  space within a stone that sits on the ground and blends with the  territory. It camouflages, by emulating the processes of mineral  formation in its structure, and integrates with the natural environment,  complying with its laws.

To build it, we made a hole in the ground, piling up on its perimeter  the topsoil removed, and we obtained a retaining dike without  mechanical consistency. Then, we materialized the air building a volume  with hay bales and flooded the space between the earth and the built air  to solidify it. The poured mass concrete wrapped the air and protected  itself with the ground. Time passed and we removed the earth discovering  an amorphous mass.

The earth and the concrete exchanged their properties. The land  provided the concrete with its texture and color, its form and its  essence, and concrete gave the earth its strength and internal  structure. But what we had created was not yet architecture, we had  fabricated a stone.

We made a few cuts using quarry machinery to explore its core and  discovered its mass inside built with hay, now compressed by the  hydrostatic pressure exerted by concrete on the flimsy vegetable  structure. To empty the interior, the calf Paulina arrived, and enjoyed  the 50m3 of the nicest food, from which she nourished for a year until  she left her habitat, already as an adult and weighing 300 kilos. She  had eaten the interior volume, and space appeared for the first time,  restoring the architectural condition of the truffle after having been a  shelter for the animal and the vegetable mass for a long time.

“La trufa / The truffle” has been featured widely. However, today, I stumbled upon the video documentation showing the construction process of the project and I’ve been blown away. Additionally I suggest you to watch ANTÓN GARCÍA-ABRIL interviewed by HANS ULRICH OBRIST at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010.