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The New Contemporary Art Magazine
Australian artist Kate Shaw combines "paint pours", collage, glitters and inks to render psychedelic landscapes. The colorful images yield awe-inspiring effects, yet are accompanied with a dark undertone. While they may capture the "transcendent beauty" of nature, at the same time they hint at the troubling environmental changes brought on by human activity.
The words “spontaneity” and “fluidity” have informed the processes of countless artists. But there’s something else in the art of Ian Cheng, whose video simulations garner lives of their own. His virtual worlds are designed to self-evolve. Characters morph or go off-map. Showings can be engrossing and quick-moving, or they can be like one session of “Emissary in the Squat of Gods” last year, when a virtual girl simply stared at piece of volcanic ash for a couple hours, as viewers looked on.
What is a "weird girl"? If you look up "weird" in the dictionary, you get "fantastic, bizarre," which perfectly describes the girls in Iceland-based artist Kitty Von-Sometime's films. A decade ago, Kitty began using video as a visual means to test the restrictions imposed on women by the media. This idea led to her current series "The Weird Girls Project," which seeks to empower both the women who take part and those watching. Kitty's films have a loose story line that more closely resembles a music video, mixing elements of performance art, costume design, installation and painting. Her concept exists very much in its process. Played by "real women" volunteers, how her subjects react and transform through costume is part of how Kitty paints a moving picture of strength.
Although he is best known for his humorous graffiti and imagery, Kenny Scharf has long been interested in more serious political topics. His solo exhibition "Born Again", opening this Saturday at Honor Fraser gallery, highlights his unique ability to make the mundane more fun. In his latest series, bright and colorful palette and wacky shapes are painted onto repurposed, found art. It's not all fun and games for the artist, who sees his comical approach as an act of defiance.
Tokyo-based teamLab is a group of 9 creators- artists, video, sound designers, and programmers- who transform spaces with their interactive installations. Their most recent installation "Flowers and People – Gold and Dark" is now on view at the Japan Society in New York. It is part of a larger exhibition that includes works by Manabu Ikeda and Hisashi Tenmyouya, their "Garden of Unearthly Delights". A monster tsunami has just uprooted a major city. teamLab's contribution represents a perpetual blooming and withering of life.
Recently exhibited at Michael Fuchs Galerie in Berlin and Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul, Marco Brambilla’s 3D video collages use Hollywood’s spectacular visuals and monumental soundtracks to predict an apocalyptic end to the current environment of media saturation.