after prufrock

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I do wish this exhibition was still running – my heart pounds with diabetic intention at the mere thought of it. Originally showing at Gallery 21_21, Chocolate showcased a handful of exquisitely talented artists flirting with the sickly sweetness of the cacao bean. In particular, Gaku Otomo’s chocolate pumping organ below makes me wish some designers moved permanently into food (transient/digestible art = win). Gaku’s design portfolio can also be located here.

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The memory of the earth permeates the exceptional portfolio of abstract sculptor and naturalist Bryan Nash Gill. Across both his installations and paper works is a deep affinity and respect not only towards the beauty of nature, but also the history embedded within each root, leaf and branch engaged within his art. Whether using organic material or synthetic counterparts that mimic nature, the artist remains faithful to lyrical aesthetic of the materials he is working with- an ability that renders his works as honest as the rich New England soil they sprung forth from.

The particular piece above, created exclusively for online gallery Ashes & Milk, provides an intimate cross-section to the life of a Hemlock tree. Nash Gill is able to translate both the science and the art of the trunk through the intricate growth-rings that mark the passages of time of the tree’s life. The geometry of the piece at once symbolises both enlightenment and an impending void – simultaneous characteristics of the circle. But there is also a cracked element to Nash Gill’s Hemlock print; a fracturing of its life lines and junctures of discontinuity. These opposing characteristics lend the work its powerful hypnotic quality and heighten the viewer’s experience of the relief print.

Nash Gill is also represented by Margot Rose Fine Art.

(Originally discovered via lost)
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Silhouette Masterpiece Theater by Wilhelm Staehle via Design Scene

{Visit his darkly darling online shop too}

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A couple of forgotten gems from the Life archive, currently resurrected by Google and available for perusal by all. The above two photographs were both taken in 1946, the year when the first United Nations General Assembly meeting convened and also when Japanese women were first given the right to vote.

The image taken by Gjon Mili on the right is from the surrealist motion picture entitled “Dreams Money Can Buy“. German born director Hans Richter collaborated with a slab of his much esteemed peers, including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray (whose sequence of a film audience imitating an actor on stage is captured above by Mili).

This is also the year of Hitchcock’s well received Notorious, which starred the impeccable Ingrid Bergman and suave Cary Grant and garnered two Academy Award nominations.

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“With a smile on the face we do tricks with much enthusiasm. We run in circles, we roll over, we pose as a triangle. At last we lovingly give each other the ultimate slapstick treatment. A cream cake in the face.”

- Performance. The Basel Art Fair, Switzerland, June 2004.

The Icelandic Love Corporation. How deliciously inept words are to describe the breadth of their diverse oeuvre. From their neon crochet costumes designed for Björk’s Volta, to their eclectic video installations and performance pieces, the trio cover the wide spectrum from the intense to the mundane. Themes and convictions include celebration, transience, nationalism, anonymity and of course, variations and adaptations of love. Between trying not to appear supericelandic and embracing their homeland’s exquisite landscapes, the black humour that often colours their work reflects their ability to juggle the paradoxes of life. Or as the girls like to say, “absurdity can point out the most obvious truth”.

& on another tangent, this letter from Iceland sets the economic meltdown in perspective.

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[Updated; MACRO/MICRO list.]

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“The Taisho Era, sandwiched between the Meiji and Showa, was short, lasting only 15 years. However, in those years, the budding ethos to respect the individual’s subjectivity and romanticism became a trend along with Taisho democracy. A unique culture and artistic expression that was influenced by Western Modernism and Art Deco also blossomed . . .

“Although the bathing suit today seems impossibly prim, the form-fitting, one-piece suit constituted a dramatic change from the full-cut, multi-piece bathing costumes popular a decade earlier. This beauty’s swimsuit displays the shape of her body as well as the skin of her forearms and legs” – Art Gallery of New South Wales.

View the exquisite full set here. Via Lifelounge.