More from MoMA - Dan Perjovschi

Images: photographs taken of work by Dan Perjovschi for Projects 85: Dan Perjovschi at the MoMA.

"Dan Perjovschi (Romanian, b. 1961), who lives and works in Bucharest, has transformed the medium of drawing, using it to create an object, a performance, and an installation. In the last decade, Perjovschi has made his drawings spontaneously in museum spaces, allowing global and local affairs to inform the final result. For his first solo museum exhibition in the United States, the artist will draw witty and incisive political images, in response to current events, on one wall of The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium. Two weeks before the official opening, beginning April 19, Perjovschi will draw on the wall during public hours, allowing visitors to observe the creation of the work. The project is accompanied by a pamphlet created by the artist."

To learn more about Dan Perjovschi, visit the online exhibition or see videos of him installing the work at the MoMA go here.

Charity shop find

Yesterday was spent flying, today I got reminded I bought this wonderful, wonderful cushion just before we left - I love it!

There's nothing better then unique finds at charity shops or thrift shops... (charity shops preferred as you're supporting a good cause too).

This beautiful cushion is from Stockholms Stadsmission - the one peaking out from under is from the Sally Ann shop in Stockholm (Sally Ann not being a traditional - supported by charitable donations - charity shop, but instead a shop selling items made in the developing world and where the proceeds goes to charity).

Explorations & Optigrams.

Explorations & Optigrams. Photographs by Jim Krantz. Paper Mirron Press, 2007. 48 pp., 31 illustrations, 6x6". Signed copies available.

"Intrigued by redefining processes and formal explorations. I work with paints and resins on translucent materials creating images and arrangements, intuitively and spontaneously, that simply feel right to me. I begin with an agenda drawn from a specific image, then remap the surface, alternatively I rely purely on mood and chance; the intention is not abstraction but this is often the result. By casting light on the paintings, depth is introduced, throwing the image into new dimensions. This potential is realized further through manipulation in the darkroom, developing what I call Optigrams, an additional interpretation of the first instinctive effort. I aim at a synthesis of the natural flow of the materials with hand-and-mind, illumination and photography… to discover new worlds…" - Jim Krantz

For more about Jim Krantz and his work go to his website here.

Hong Kong. Front Door/Back Door.

Hong Kong. Front Door/Back Door. Photographs by Michael Wolf. Text by Kenneth Baker and Douglas Young. Thames & Hudson, London, 2005. 120 pp., 71 color illustrations, 14¼x11".

"Surprising and at times shocking, this visual journey takes us through the narrow streets and broad cityscapes of one of the most heavily populated corners of the globe. Yet it is also an insight into a peculiarly unpopulated place, inhabited only by the traces of city dwellers.

The scale of Wolf’s vision alternates between the grand and the intimate, capturing both the striking facades of the buildings themselves and the minute human interventions that mark them.

Wolf’s photographs reflect a deft combination of Western aesthetic formalism and Eastern wabi-sabi. The accompanying texts by Kenneth Baker and Douglas Young explore the choices people make of lifestyle, forms, functions, identity and design, as well as the notion of Hong Kong as a brand."

Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years

Images: photographs taken of works from Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years placed in the Sculpture Garden at the MoMA.

For my birthday amongst others we went to the MoMA for the Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years exhibition I've written about before.

The exhibition and works were overwhelming in their immediacy and I'm really really glad we made sure to spend so much time with them. I was especially impressed with Richard Serra's use of space in producing the pieces - you feel they exist solely in relation to space and to each others' position in space and to each other - something that almost makes you hesitate to use the word sculpture for them and rather see them as interacting with the room, space, environment and persons viewing them.

What really surprised me after seeing the photographs of Richard Serra's sculptures by Hiroshi Sugimoto from the book Joe was how serene, beautiful and uplifting I felt the sculptures were (whereas the images in "Joe" felt moody and almost broody). I suppose this highlight what I wrote the last time that "[the book Joe] to me goes to the soul of this: seeing your own forms and figures between the angles and shadows and lights of a set structure." Something Richard Serra does in producing his work, Hiroshi Sugimoto did in taking his pictures and I did viewing and photographing the exhibition - us all I'm sure coming away from it seeing and feeling very different things.

Images as before.

I hope the picture taken and shown here conveys some of my feeling for the works.

Extended birthday

Happy Birthday to me

Op Tics.

Op Tics. Photographs and text by Roger Newton. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2006. 40 pp., 30 four-color illustrations, 11x14". Limited edition of 500 copies (first printing).

"The first monograph of 1998 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography Roger Newton, Op Tics is compiled from 10 years of experimental work in the (un)nature of photographic experience. Three parts natural philosophy and two parts photography, Newton’s work proposes a photographic document based on a fluid definition of the lens. Newton makes material and geometric transformations of the photographic system by designing and constructing lenses of oil, water and corn syrup. Suggesting our world seen from the outside and from shifting or unstable reference systems, the images from Newton’s refracting liquid lenses explores the transformative effect complicit in the interaction of the human and mechanical visual apparatuses with the physical world. Part Nightmarish and part Wonderland, Newton takes us on a detour from the traditional photographic narrative directly to the unconscious and the limits of the physical world."

Roger Newton says: The object photographed may have nothing to do with the subject / though the object may be subject. / In its turn the subject is always the object. / I am a maker of objectives.

Fiera.

Fiera. Annamaria Sbisà, with illustrations by Michele Petoletti. Commisioned and produced by fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo.

"Adrift in a hot air balloon, Leonardo Leopard and his animal friends alight on top of the Duomo in Florence, accidentally tearing a hole in their balloon. Fascinated by the city, the animals descend in search of adventure.

[...]

Inspired by the wonders of the Florentine art, Leonardo alone recognizes the beauty in individuality, and is aghast that his friends have tried to hide their unique allure. He encourages them to tap into their innate personal style, helping each of them unearth their own special talent, and together they repair the balloon with great artistry and élan, allowing them to sail away together on new adventures."

This illustrated children's book (illustrations and characters based on Ferragamo's archives of iconic prints) was created for Ferragamo's 80th birthday

The book can be bought this autumn at Ferragamo stores in the US, with portions of the profits going to the Baby Buggy charity.

Sorry I haven't posted for so very long

I've been unwell, stressed and had absolutely too much that needed to be done - will try to not let it happen again though...

Neil Farber Growing Pains.

Neil Farber Growing Pains. Works by Neil Farber, introduction by Joshua Dawes Harnden. Richard Heller Gallery, 2005. 40pp., 16 illustrations, 8.3 x 9" (paperback). Limited edition of 1000 copies. (Images above from Book By Its Cover.)

"Taking a simple but expressive line drawing style that is reminiscent of children's book illustrations, Farber's work blurs the boundary between childhood fear and grown-up fantasy. The artist has created a world populated by an odd cast of characters that includes waif-like children, cats, dogs, and ghosts, combining innocence with a complicated and often foreboding sense of the absurd. Indeed, it is out of these contradictions that the work's dark humor is born. Farber's drawings remind us that among the range of emotions, humor is arguably the most complicated – and perhaps the most human."

I didn't know Neil Farber's work before I read about this wonderful book over at the equally wonderful Book By Its Cover - but I'm very happy I do now. To read more about Neil Farber Growing Pains (or other great great books) go to the post on Book By Its Cover. You can also go to the Richard Heller Gallery to view more of Neil Farber's work.

Journals as inspiration

Journals by Victoria Smith of SFGirlByBay; Marieke Berghuis of Treats + Treasures; Russian Illustrator Irina Troitskaya - all images from decor8.

I just love love love this post from decor8. I've always wished I could keep a journal - visual or otherwise. I've tried sporadically over the years, but never somehow been able to stick with it. All visual inspiration I like to keep lucid so I can change them around and find new, exciting combinations (kinda like a kaleidoscope). Strange as it might sound writing your life down to me seems to kind of change your outlook too much (or become just purely dramatisation), I can't really help but to think of it as a character - emboldening some things and softening others, writing what could've happened and not what didn't - and then it's a book really...

Early Summer Nerves.

Early Summer Nerves. Photographs by Kiyoshi Koishi. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2005. 50 pp., Spiral bound with zinc cover, 14½x11½". Limited edition of 100 numbered copies.

"In 1933, Japanese photography was highly institutionalized, and pictorialism was the overwhelmingly dominant mode. Kiyoshi Koishi’s work was a reaction against this; he explored the new path forged by his European counterparts László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, employing their photographic techniques but from a distinctly Japanese perspective. The ten images in this work – exhibited in Osaka in 1932 and published a year later under the title “Shoka Shinkei” (Early Summer Nerves) juxtapose movement with stillness, nostalgia with violence, and the appealing fluidity of water and light with the menacing rigidity of steel. Palpable energy and use of modern materials in his photographs reflect Japan’s shift to the Modern era, exemplified in the cover of the book, which is made of zinc. Koishi’s accompanying poems plead for Nature to have a less diminished place in modern life, but he acknowledges his fascination with “the birth of something new.”

With most copies of “Shoka Shinkei” having been destroyed through time, the elements and war, [Nazraeli Press] are delighted to offer an absolutely faithful facsimile of this important work."

Joe.

Joe. Photographs by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Text by Jonathan Safran Foer. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto. Prestel, Lakewood, 2006. 96 pp., 40 tritone illustrations, 11¾x15½".

"Sugimoto's photographs were all made in and around one of Richard Serra's torqued spiral steel sculptures, which is named Joe. Foer's text is broken up to flutter around the images, which are further abstracted by their soft focus. The effect, which we can only assume to be deliberate, can be as disorienting as, say, walking around in the shadow of a semienclosed, multiton ominously leaning, steel-walled space. [...] Foer's text doubles up on itself, bringing the reader back to where he or she started, but subtly changed?"

"Combining extremely soft light and blurred darkness, Sugimoto's pictures in this book capture the elliptical nature of Serra's piece. His images are complemented by the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, whose affecting prose poem-about an "average Joe" experiencing the circular passage of time-echoes, without directly referencing, Serra's sculpture. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto, this beautiful, large-format book features tritone reproductions printed on luxurious uncoated stock. The result is an eloquent and visually arresting commentary on time, impermanence, and memory."

I've always had an absolute fascination with architecture and the angles you can find and make your own when photographing. This book to me goes to the soul of this: seeing your own forms and figures between the angles and shadows and lights of a set structure.


UPDATE: If you're in New York at any time during this summer don't miss the exhibition Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years showing at the MoMA (one of MoMA's most ambitious sculpture exhibitions to date). It runs from June 3 to September 10, 2007.

Klaus Haapaniemi: Monsters.

Klaus Haapaniemi: Monsters. Klaus Happaniemi and Rosa Liksom. Gingko Press, 2004. 96pp., 135 colour illustrations, 7.2 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches.

The wonderful Finnish illustrator and designer Klaus Haapaniemi, who's range "Taika" for Iitala I've written about before, has his work displayed in this wonderful new book (book found via Bloesem) - not to be missed!

"Klaus Haapaniemi’s new monograph features illustration and design that draws on a surprising variety of influences that range from Finnish tribal culture to Scandinavian design and the works of French artist Toulouse Lautrec. Developing ideas put forward in his first book, Quattro Stagioni, Haapaniemi uses six distinct forms to explore a world that is baroque, hallucinogenic and startlingly inventive. This richly illustrated book also features a story by Finnish novelist Rosa Liksom which is based on a series of Haapaniemi’s surreal images – images that have seemingly been snatched from children’s stories and subjected to his own unique method of digital distortion."