Painter, sculptor and maker of extraordinary hypnotic wind sculptures Anthony Howe invites the nice people at Creator’s Project into his workshop to discuss art, computer design, alien creatures and the challenge of getting a piece of metal to spin at one knot in a fifty knot wind.
Every year since 2000, London’s Sepentine Gallery has invited a leading architect or artist to create a temporary structure on its front lawn. Last year, it was Ai Weiwei. In 2008, Frank Gehry had a go.
This year, it’s the turn of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, who created a 350 square meter lattice of steel poles, illuminated by LED lights installed by London-based United Visual Artists, which are designed (along with suitable sound effects) to mimic an electrical storm.
Moves from Street Fighter (including the iconic Hadouken) transformed into spectacular abstract motion sculptures by animator Dan The Ad Man.
But not an actual beached whale.
An incredibly lifelike 55 foot long sculpture of a beached sperm whale by Belgian art collective Captain Boomer (complete with performers playing the parts of scientists and environmental cleanup workers) installed by the Thames at the Old Royal Naval College as part of the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (which ends this Saturday).
(Pix: Mike King)
Jason Allemann’s wonderfully bonkers LEGO walking (or, more accurately, scuttling) machine, inspired by Theo Jansen’s giant kinetic Strandbeest sculptures.
You can build your own, if you’re so inclined.
A ‘sound installation’ inside an abandoned toluene tank in Dottikon, Switzerland by sound artist Zimoun, who (with a lot of help) installed329 DC motors connected to cotton balls to create this walk-in, thrumming, mesmeric perma-din. From Zimoun’s artist’s statement:
Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena in Zimoun’s minimalist constructions effortlessly reverberates.
Obviously, to experience the full effect, you’d have to be there.
The man’s a genius. Here’s one he did earlier.
Indonesian sculptor Ichwan Noor’s 1953 VW Beetle folded ( along with a little extra polyester and aluminium) into a perfect sphere, currently on show at the Art Basel Exhibition in Hong Kong.
More shots of the exhibition here and here.
Australian sculptor and former puppeteer (on Jim Henson’s Labyrinth) Ron Mueck spends hundreds of hours perfecting the fine details of his hyper realistic pieces, rendering them identical in appearance to the human form in virtually all respects but one – scale.
Mueck’s disconcertingly intimate figures are either oversized (as in Couple Under an Umbrella, above) or miniaturised.
In April, Mueck unveiled three new works at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. The exhibition runs until the end of September.
(Photos: Thomas Salva courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.)
Osaka-based barista Kazuki Yamamoto – already a master of plain old two dimensional latte art – takes it to the next level with milk-froth mini-sculptures.
