Collage as bas-relief: Handiedan’s contemporary Pin-ups

Berlin, Bülowstrasse 7 at the intersection with Zietenstrasse. A gigantic pin-up overlooks the passengers of the elevated railway with a languidly winking gaze. The weathpaste by Dutch Handiedan inaugurated last September as part of the initiatives organized by Urban nation. It covers the whole surface of the building and can be seen as an oversized version of Handiedan‘s astonishing art.

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Homebodies by Calvin Ma

Homebodies is the name that artist Calvin Ma has given to his series of ceramic sculptures and that perfectly sums up the delicate and intense poetics inspiring his art.

Nicole Dextras: where fashion and environment meet

Canadian Nicole Dextras is an environmental artist whose work stems out of her reflections on consumerism and its detrimental effects on nature. For part of her rich and varied artworks (from sculpture to installations, all realized with ephemeral materials) she uses fashion as a way of looking at and meditation about the human relationship with the natural world. Her series Iceshifts and Weedrobes give beautiful visual shape to her ideas.

Paper and other media: Kristi Malakoff

As an artistic medium, paper is doing very well. Canadian Kristi Malakoff stands out among the artists that have chosen it, thanks to the versatility of her skills. 

Carlos Meira’s paper bas-reliefs

In the hands of Brazilian Carlos Meira, paper is not confined to the role of support for artistic expression. With ever-surpring results, Meira‘s mastery assigns to paper the main role in his artistic practice:

Designer and art director in the advertising industry, Meira also developed his creative energies through learning paper sculpture with amazing results. Paper is an amazing medium, incredibly versatile and extremely fragile at the same time. Meira‘s art turns the basic flatness of a paper sheet into lively colourful  bas-reliefs. It takes extreme patience to craft paper in this way. The process consists in drawing, colouring the paper, marking it, cutting it and shaping it before the final assemblage. Loving, patient and gentle gestures are the vital ingredients that Meira masters with slow and precise movements of his hands and fingers. Surprisingly for such excellent results, Meira is essentially self-taught in the art of paper sculpture, an art to which he has started devoting more and more time after returning from Portugal to Brazil in the 1990s. And his visual universe is animated with the imagery and ravishing colours of his homeland, from the Carnival costumes to the luxuriant flora and fauna populating his art. You can find more of Carlos Meira‘s paper sculptures on his website, Behance page and blog.

Images courtesy of Carlos Meira.

(via Living Design)

Let me introduce its Frogness…

‘Most toads can swim if they’re forced to, but unlike frogs, they rarely enter water. Since the world is two-thirds water, where would you say the limitations lie: with the frogs or the toads? Frogs are smooth and sleek and moist; toads are rough and dry and warty’ (Tom Robbins, Half asleep in Frog Pajamas)

(a street-art frog via Street Art Utopia) (an illustration by David McLimans via Animalarium) (sculpture made of metal scraps in Oakland, Ca. Via Vallejo Independent Bulletin) (Illustration by Charley Harper, 1961. Via Unruly) (From the series New World Transparent Specimens by Iori Tomita. Via Felkx) (recycled frog by Andrew Mockett. Via Kickan and Conkers) (My tiled street art insertion that someone stole for me…)

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish — you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one’s name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

(Emily Dickinson)

(There is a pair of us – don’t tell! Via Smashing core) (3D street painting, via 3D Street Art) (Illustration from Leaves by Mehdi Mo’eeni, via Animalarium) (Stencil street art frog, via Migraciòn Total)

(Kiss that Frog by Peter Gabriel)

And my frogness stamped on my skin: (my one and only cherished tattoo)

Flora Metamorphicae – harmony between art and nature

The collaborative project Flora Metamorphicae reinterprets the traditional use of decorative ceramics and flower motives, creating incredibly beautiful installations that harmonically integrate within both nature and exhibiting spaces. The original idea for Flora Metamorphicae dates back to 2003, when a group of professional ceramists based in Bergen (Norway) were looking together at a catalogue of historical ceramic’s pieces. Inspired by their elegant and elaborate beauty, they decided to give new artistic life and an original ethos to the creation and use of ceramics. Since 2006, Flora Metamorphicae is a group of six women (Kari Aasen, Lippa Dalèn, Siri Haaskjold, Bjørg Hougen, Audhild Rypdal and Eli Veim). Each of them keeps working individually, but in this project they join forces and creative imagination in the name of a commune sense of beauty. There is just one imperative for the creation of the flowers: they must be handmade and no more than two hands big. In the years the variety of flowers – naturalistic or imaginative ones – has increased, mirroring the surprisingly incessant offer of colours and shapes of nature.These amazing installations appeal for their immediate vibrant beauty. But their meaning goes beyond being decorative and it is revealed through their ever changing aspect, when they are installed within the open environment. In the tradition of land art, they assume a deeper power in their co-existence with nature, in their response to it. When installed in water locations (like lakes, ponds but also dams) they astonishingly react to lights, reflections and the ebb and flows, offering a show that is never the same. Submerged and shining with reflections at times, blossoming out of water when the tides retire, these pieces of art harmonically enter into dialogue with the environment,  blurring the separation line between nature and artifact.But the work by Flora Metamorphicae has a joyful life also in the close of gallery spaces, where it re-asserts its status as art. The flowers are thickly assembled on floors, drawing elegant patterns or simply invading the space. In this second life, they bring with them the traces (grains of sand and similar) that they inherited from their life in the open.

With their collaborative production, Flora Metamorphicae seem to bring alive the idea that individuality and collective cohesion are not opposite forces, just like natural and manufactured can enter into harmonic conversation. All images courtesy of Flora Metamorphicae.

Flora Metamorphicae website.

Wire sculptures by Benedetta Mori Ubaldini

Visiting an exhibition of Benedetta Mori Ubaldini should resemble entering a playroom where the decorations on the walls have become alive and occupy the space.

Being Invisible: Jin Young Yu transparent people

Korean Jin Young Yu‘s sculptures are extremely delicate and melhancolic. Her gallery of characters exudes an almost excruciating discomfort in social exposure…

Rob Mulholland – Tide Flow, Time Flow

The new installation by Scottish Rob Mulholland conjures up imaginative universes, while  at the same time inducing a reflective space.