Pinar's Blog – May 2012 Archive (62)

You might remember French artist Daniel Firman's elephant balancing on its trunk that Alice introduced to us last year. Well, the acrobatic mammoth is back defying gravity. The sculptural installation titled Nasutamanus depicts an elephant once again performing a balancing act…

Beijing-based painter Mu Lei creates a dark and glossy world where women amassed with feathers reign. The surreal realm offers an unusual blend of dark, moody sensuality merged with video game aesthetics. It's like the unlikely crossroads where Black Swan meets…

Argentina-based artist Adrián Villar Rojas knows how to make a big statement. In 2009, Rojas constructed a massive public installation titled My Family Dead that depicts a whale in the middle of a forest in Ushaia, Argentina. The scene is a disturbing spectacle of a dead animal carcass that leaves the viewer saddened and baffled. How does an entire whale wind up in the woods?…

With a growing internet community and a slew of social media outlets, anonymity is diluted and nearly impossible to achieve. It's difficult for anyone to remain a mystery, especially if they put themselves out there. Somehow, however, a modern day mystery exists in Edinburgh involving a series of unclaimed book sculptures with cryptic messages. Who is the artist…

Have you ever seen a flower bed made entirely of paper? Well, look no further! Folding for Peace is a white paper garden in Nagasaki, Japan realized by Swiss designer Anouk Vogel. The patch of faux flowers are aligned in a circular bed, angelically standing tall and vibrant against a naturally viridescent backdrop. The piece was commissioned by the…

Paper is a tricky material to work with because of its fragility but Danish artist Peter Callesen seems to have mastered manipulating the medium. He manages to utilize the sheets of white paper he works with to not only present meticulously cut silhouettes that showcase the effectiveness of negative…

Romainmôtier is a small Swiss village that borders France. It is known for its modest population and picturesque town whose architecture is reminiscent of the Roman Empire. Like a small European village straight out of a movie, Romainmôtier holds a charming annual used book fair that takes place at the…

Gourmet dessert and pastry provider Qzina Specialty Foods has recently taken the title of the World's Largest Chocolate Sculpture in the Guinness World Records with its massive 18,239-pound structure. It is more than 7,500 pounds greater than the last record holder in 2010. The record-breaking chocotecture (chocolate + architecture) is inspired by Mayan…

We've seen sculptures made of unconventional products like vegetables and even lobster shells, but a giant figure made of chewing gum AFTER the gum has been chewed stands in a league of its…

The word "recycle" can be interpreted in many different ways. For designer Garth Britzman, recycling means creatively repurposing a used material. The resourceful Nebraskan makes great use of plastic bottles by stringing them up together to serve as a canopy. Adding his decorative touch, Britzman's eco-friendly architectural project labeled as (POP)culture incorporates an…

Information travels quicker today than ever and that is due, in part, to the growing popularity of Twitter. The social networking platform connects people across the world and allows everyone to share their thoughts, 140 characters at a time, with a wide audience. With hundreds of millions of Twitter accounts out there, it can be hard to have one voice heard…

There was a time, not too long ago, when the term "cinemagraph" was being thrown around and internet culture gravitated toward this amalgamation of still shots and modest yet aesthetically effective movement. New York-based photographer Jamie Beck and her counterpart Kevin Burg first coined the term last year, gaining a lot of recognition for their cinematic images with…

New York--based Japanese artist Sachigusa Yasuda reworks photos of cityscapes to produce incredibly busy 360° views of a city from above. The panoramic series aptly titled Aerial features a number of digital renditions utilizing up to 300 photographs each. The result is a dizzying look down at a long drop past skyscrapers mingled with the sense of freedom felt from soaring…

Thomas Poulsom is a Bristol-based avid LEGO builder with an affinity for birds. His penchant for the soaring, feathered creatures has merged with his enthusiasm for the toy building blocks to produce a series of 6 popular birds found in Britain constructed entirely out of LEGO pieces. The detailed "birds" were made with close attention to shape, color, and size. Poulsom now has the…

Late Italian artist Gino De Dominicis was a man of mystery whose works often exhibited a surrealistic look at the human form, elongating, contracting, and distorting physical elements. His enormous sculptural piece titled Calamita Cosmica, translated as "Cosmic Magnet", follows the multifaceted artist's scheme of work. The 28-meter-long anomaly depicts an anatomically correct…

Artist Julia Barello's swirling wall installation titled Swoop features a swarm of birds cut out of MRI film. The circling silhouettes create a galactic spiral against the white wall, reversing the colors naturally depicting outer space. There's something very organic and universal about the piece that is clearly inspired by nature. It is also interesting to think that the…

London is known to be a rainy town, which isn't thought to be an ideal location for uplifting inspiration, but Londoner Gavin Hammond finds captivating beauty in his city's soaked streets. Hammond's series entitled London in Puddles depicts a somber yet intriguing view of the damp town, focusing on puddles that reflect its surrounding citizens and architecture.

We've…

LA-based mixed media artist Brooks Shane Salzwedel assembles beautiful natural landscapes, often featuring some form of majestic architecture like bridges and oil drilling towers. The artist primarily works with graphite, tape, and resin to produce these layered images, giving each one a three-dimensional feel. The separation that defines the difference between foreground and background…

Tokyo Hotaru Festival 2012 took place recently, releasing 100,000 blue LED lights to float in the Sumida River. The bulbs rolled along the waves of the river bank, mimicking hotaru (the Japanese word for "fireflies"), for the festival that celebrates the Japanese tradition of watching fireflies float along a watercourse. The spectacular event lit up the waterway with a sparkling sapphire…

Dutch artist Nicky Assmann has taken the core ingredients of soap bubbles and created a mesmerizing cinematic installation around the swirling visuals in her piece entitled Solace. Like a work of robotic performance art, an automated mechanism reaches into a vat of soapy water with a metal rod and expands upwards to reveal a fragile sheet of soap film, reflecting its surroundings in a…