Kinetica

// February 5th, 2010 // Comments // b-scene, b-wired

Kinetica is an awesome showcase of Kinetic art with over 150 artists exhibited. I was astounded by the diversity at this show. There were flashing lights, colour-changing-gyrating ribbons, drawing machines, butterflies that followed my movements, pictures drawn by GPS and a Heineken keg robot! This is the top show for the weekend – but be quick – it ends Sunday! It offers wonderment by the bucket load for all ages.

It was excellent talking to the different artists who have greatly contrasting backgrounds from physics to painting. Many of them work collaboratively to achieve ambitious visions; successful through the different skill sets each bring. Roseline de Thélin was one of our favourites. She had produced some dazzling figurative sculptures composed of light. See picture below

Curator Dianne Harris has put together a show that doesn’t stand still. If we eventually pry the footage from yesterday (tech probs) be sure to see more accurately the wonders of kinetic art! I think this show is very exciting because you probably won’t see anything like its quality or scale till Kinetica 2011.

Have a look at the images below for a static viewpoint that cannot compare to the life and dynamic of this electro-charged experience!

Exhibition is near Baker Street Tube, only until Sunday 7th Feb

‘What If”

// February 4th, 2010 // Comments // b-scene

WATCH VIDEO

Be prepared to be stunned! In an american accent, “Oh my God, I mean WOW! At the rather brilliant, just finished Earth exhibition I saw this phenomenal video. Lemn Sissay delivers his potent poem considering our evolution or lack of it.

Art Euthanasia

// February 3rd, 2010 // Comments // b-scene

It does exactly what it says on the bin.

These must be the skips they’re using in Dubai on those colossal hotels. A 600 cubic meter, black steel-framed, transparent paneled ‘bin’ is presently rather empty. Well unless you are fond of work by Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin, Fiona Banner, Gillian Wearing or Gary Hume. As you enter the space in the South London Gallery the art tomb dominates. At the other end of the art aquarium there’s a platform accessed by that classic, fire exit staircase. Lemmings would no doubt queue up at this sacrificial podium. And Landy adds to his scrapping ceremony only entitling himself, high priest of art destruction. He has had to appoint an altar boy to perform the drop when he’s not around though.

When I first entered and saw the bin so unfilled, I was underwhelmed. I had a sudden urge to turn around and walk out. After all, why am I standing in front of an oversized, empty bin. Well I’m here now, I might as well find the Hirst. So I encircled the mass grave eyeing the bundled art.
On seeing the glass encrusted skull that Hirst deemed rubbish, I recalled something I heard earlier in the week. ‘Someone would pay good money for that.’ So as I thought about a night time burglary, I also thought how eloquent, “money is a fickle son of a bitch.”
Philip Hensher said “Landy’s important…because just at this moment we’re slightly disenchanted with money itself, we’re slightly disenchanted with money’s power to act as an aesthetic judgment in itself.”

There are things in this world that go beyond a ‘logical’ price. Bankers bonuses are one example and Art another. Seeing the Hirst in there was thought provoking. I’m glad he did it. In fact I now hope a pilgrimage begins for many arty cash cows out there. To emphasise money hasn’t got such a tight grip on art or artists alike. Come on; protest to the value of numbers and paper! Bring an offering to the gods, you never know it may save you yet.

***Applications to dispose of an artwork are open to everyone so why not take part

b-uncut will be following the ArtBin exhibition throughout so stay in touch with our blog. They’ll be an exclusive interview with Michael Landy and some slideshows documenting the growing submissions.

Exhibition runs until 14 March 2010 @ The South London Gallery.

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b-Loud: Annett E Bank: alive, boundless, divine

// February 2nd, 2010 // Comments // b-loud

This week b-uncut caught up with British artist Annett E. Bank.

Bank, a painter, lives and works in Brighton. Her work is both abstract and figurative. As she puts it, “one is not confined to one’s physical form alone, instead we are connected to all that is.”  Her philosophy can be seen in her art: female figures float and drift in a sea of color, often disappearing into their surroundings. Bank has exhibited at the UK’s Best Graduates Show, Salon Gallery (London), Cambridge Art Fair and the Affordable Art Fair in London & Brussels. She is currently preparing for a solo show at the New Steine Hotel in Brighton throughout May 2010. Read on to find out more about this fabulous artist!

b-Loud!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

AEB: A very early piece from 2001 was a charcoal and pencil drawing called ‘Awakening’ which encompasses all that is still present in my current work- namely vibrant physicality, sensitivity and sensuality within the human form. The composition was so successful that it has been re-used as a template ever since.

b-uncut: Describe the piece you love the most—why?

AEB: I love them all in a way as they speak to me about aesthetics, perfection, meditation, spirituality and poetry. I learn from them. They tell me about a particular feeling of holistic wellbeing. I consider it an artistic relationship and it makes the work genuine and memorable in my eyes. I am grateful for each one as I see people get completely captivated by their visual appeal.

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

AEB: Most recently I returned to working in oil on canvas again. I adore the fabulous qualities of that medium with which you can create those wonderful rich and sculptural effects. Oil is perfect for impasto application and pliable in designing different shades. I work very intuitively with a focus on spontaneous, highly dynamic pattern in order to create images of graceful living and contemplative beauty. I think there are enough ugly things in this world and so I see it as my responsibility to take care of that side of society and contribute to make it a little more enjoyable. I never experience such a thing as ‘fear of destroying’ the painting even whilst being very experimental and bold in my approach. I think this physical involvement with the design process produces authentic art that captures the imagination of the viewer, which I consider my challenge. In the past I have almost exclusively used unusual liquid paints and pigments in combination with other mixed media – and felt very comfortable with that method too. Essentially, I want my paintings to portrait a certain aspect of what it means to be alive- to have boundless energy, sensitivity, passion, awareness and enjoyment of one’s own body.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

AEB: Determination, personal strength, an irrepressible urge for self-expression, individuality and independence, an unwavering trust in my talent, and a total love for everything I do.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

AEB: The divine creative spirit who governs all. But apart from that: a life coach, many progressive thinkers, philosophers and writers, fellow students, my friends and my family.

b-uncut: Your work is vibrant and spiritual, and much of it focuses on the female form. Does your work reflect your personal life, does it define you?

AEB: With any creative person it is imperative to acknowledge the connection between the artwork and their personality. I discovered that nothing in life is separate – my paintings cannot be what I am not and so, of course they are a close part of me. I see them as transformational, inspiring and uplifting…the same characteristics that I wish to develop in my personal life. I would say that my gut feeling has shown me the way to paint – long before I was aware of different concepts such as spirituality, human potential movement, postmodern society, or the influence of a hidden agenda for our well being. I believe the world is changing and will be marked by men who are more subtle, and women, who are more powerful, so that there will be balance in the end. The female element in my work is therefore not by accident. In my opinion is the feminine principle on the rise and I feel contemporary art is a great way to express that esoteric tendency.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

AEB: Alex Grey, Joel Peter Witkin, Lucien Freud, Rex Church, Francis Bacon

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?

AEB: I don’t swear.

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?

AEB: compassion / unreliability

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?

AEB: it takes me far too long to compose articles and publications

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?

AEB: to live a sensible life

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?

AEB: I’ve got all the power I need

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?

AEB: I am not into celebrities, but I like to meet Alex Collier

b-uncut: Your least favorite question to be asked in any interview?

AEB: Where are you from?

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..

One month? Selling all the pieces that I currently have in exhibitions

One year? Moving into a new studio/home in the countryside

One decade? Still selling artwork that people appreciate

Latin American Art Market

// January 28th, 2010 // Comments // b-scene

Before the recession hit on that fateful day last September, the art market was absolutely booming. Almost in a scary the bubble-is-about-to-burst kind of way. Contemporary art had reached such gargantuan price points that art world insiders began to speculate about the next big market—emerging markets and under-rated arts. Among the top contenders that (obviously) included India and China was a surprise: Latin American Art. 30 years ago, this market simply  did not exist. In fact, this past year marked the 30th anniversary of selling Latin American Art (Latam) at Sotheby’s. The past decade has seen a major rejuvenation of the market—in 2006 Frida Khalo’s “Roots” broke records when Sotheby’s sold it for $5 million. Just two years later Ruffino Tamayo broke this record with “Trovador” when the hammer fell at $6.4 million at Christies in NY, doubling pre-sale estimates of $2-3 million. It’s no Basquiat comparison, but it’s certainly a start.

As of now the big players in this market are Sotheby’s and Christies on the auction front. There are some dealers in the field but they are mostly unknown. The best museum would be Museo de Arte Latino Americano de Buenos Aires (MALBA) but again this is relative–because the art world is centered around New York and London MALBA cannot compare with museums like MOMA or Tate Modern. Who are the buyers? Mainly Latin Americans, meaning they are forced to travel to another hemisphere to purchase local art. A strange process, but up until now it has been the only solution.  As the market grows, more and more European and American buyers are dipping into this genre, creating more demand. What is really needed is a better platform to sell emerging talents.

Phillips de Pury, generally considered the runner up to the auction duopoly but very specialized in what they do has conceived of a rather innovative approach to Latam. Their most recent auction (Oct. 2009) did not bring in huge revenues( $1.8 million) but it was clever: dedicated to Latin American ‘creators’ mixing artists, sculptors, photographers and designers. According to artprice, an online art market information source, “One of the best surprises at the sale was created by Adriana Varejao when her “Monocromo Branco” tripled its estimate with a hammer price of $90,000. In effect, this type of sale provides an excellent opportunity for collectors to acquire works by the new generation of Latin American artists at prices ranging from $500 to $100,000.” The message here: invest in emerging talents.

At b-uncut, our international artist community includes over 1,300 emerging artists–a number of whom are from Latin American, and we are excited to see their progression in this potential market giant. Magdalena Ladron de Guevara is a native Chilean and photographer, who is currently living and working in Buenos Aires. Her works recall the sentiment of fellow Chilean and surrealist poet Pablo Neruda. Her photograph “Pear” mixes the real with the impossible, resulting in a surreal visual that immediately conjures images from Neruda’s “Ode to an Artichoke” which leaves the reader with fantasies of an artichoke marching into battle.

Another stand out artist in the community is Tite Calvo, a young artist from Santiago, Chile who claims his art reflects “the man and their little hysterias and pathetic solutions to survive and be happy.” This talented Latin American artist has one of the most unique styles I’ve seen in contemporary art, but his theme is a familiar one: the real within the imaginary. Calvo superimposes paint on magazine pictures to achieve his final outcome, and the resulting imagery is dream- like yet familiar. “Micki Mouse” (left) is particularly intriguing.

For Latin American art collectors, passion is now just a click away. Online platforms have released the market from the strangle hold of auction houses and dealers and brought it into their living rooms. Buying art online is a relatively new phenomenon and adds a new and powerful dimension to the market, one that will enable it to bounce back from a downturn faster.

Corrupted

// January 27th, 2010 // Comments // b-scene

Walk into Willy Wonka’s factory and tickle your desires with an edible paradise. Fruits and flowers conjure temptations. Your eyes boggle and glands salivate uncontrollably. But hang on…there’s a clear box imprisoning these delights!

Welcome to the work of Rebecca Stevenson. A sculptor oozing with talent. You would normally expect such excitable ectoplasm in the edible creations of Ferran Adrià. Well for more than ten years Stevenson has been creating some of the most vivacious sculptures on the market. Marveling at her forbidden fruit is just the beginning of the journey. If you can peel your lust from these glistening joys a deeper narrative unfolds.

The first work on display, Folie en hiver features a bust embracing a lambs head. Your eye initially sees the glossy candy separate to the classical form. The bust in fact vanishes among this wild vibrancy. Fooled by sweet shop trickery you are lured in close. Only then, slapped with some sickly contortion. Realising the confectionery is bleeding from this serene and quiet figure. Spewing like fungus on a dead tree and dangling like flayed skin. These teasers suddenly take on a darker side…

There’s one other piece exhibited thats lurks around the corner in the Nettie Horn gallery. No less delightful and gross, Luxe Vert harmonises supreme beauty with its supremely ugly flaws. This time the Disney disease has consumed the carcass of a swan. Sweet plums and raspberries have swept through its core like burrowing worms leaving a gaping shell. This beauty contest between classical and the craze has stunningly ravaged a new elegance. While the details of her feathers are in tact and her neck and head stands proud, a flourishing fantasy world has formed throughout the body.

In these sculptures, Stevenson let’s natural beauty and a magpie’s fetish have a fling. She achieves a wondrous balance between beauties and horrors. Her work leads me to think how our modern aesthetic is more a series of hybrids than a set of fixed traditional values. That these long established pillars of perfection have been released from their limitations. I urge you to make a trip to Vyner Street and experience this sticky situation for yourself.

Showing until 21st Feb at the Nettie Horn Gallery.
Have a look at her website for more fantastical examples.

Banksy Takes Sundance

// January 27th, 2010 // Comments // b-shots

Banksy is the hottest ticket at Sundance this year, and he is not even officially part of the line up!  A late addition, the elusive graffiti artist has yet to be spotted around Park City, but his art certainly has.

The celebs and public alike were lined up for hours hoping to see his film debut “Exit Through the Gift Shop” check out the trailer below!

b-Loud: Simone Boscolo: past meets present

// January 26th, 2010 // Comments // b-loud

The artist in the spotlight this week is Italian appropriation photographer Simone Boscolo. Boscolo lives and works out of Milan and creates  work that is “research between memory and oblivion inspired by the history theories of Walter Benjamin and others.” His work is ephemeral and hauntingly familiar. Using images from the past the artist manipulates his medium, superimposing his own emotions, fears, and hopes on the photographs through his unique technique. b-uncut caught up with this talented illustrator turned artist for the scoop on his inspiration:

b-Loud!

b-uncut: What was your very first artwork?

SB: My first artwork was “Famiglia Deluca di Pozza di Fassa” (Deluca family from Pozza di Fassa), three years ago (2007).

b-uncut: Describe the one you love the most—why?

SB: My first, ‘cause in this work there are the aesthetic directions that I’ve tried to develop in all my works including my last work’s series.  However it’s difficult for me to love my works after too much time. When I finish a work I feel that it’s not mine anymore and when I see what I have done I see all the things I could do to make it better…

b-uncut: What are your methods? Your inspirations?

SB: It’s hard to talk about your own work because the picture is always incomplete. First of all I have to find a narrative starting point, then equally important is the choice of the pictures on which I plan to work. I get inspiration from historical and social changes that took place during the 2oth century, and more specifically within the context of a 2oth century Italian–very complex, controversial, and with the point of view often being one of countrymen. I work on survivals, on unsolved tangles of a sort of “historic unconscious,” or resistance in loss and persistence in loss deriving from changes that began in the 19th century and accelerated during the 20th. This was the century that produced junk and dizzy dreams destined to fail.

I have found in Walter Benjamin’s “Angelus Novus” a good starting point to channel this research. All this trying to set aside unjustified nostalgia and regret. I think that from my pictures emerges a kind of obsession for death but I believe  this belongs somehow to the dynamics or to the origin of the creative process. I also need a “soundtrack” when I’m working and it becomes part of the same creative process. Generally I work listening to Arvo Pärt, Fauré, Schubert, Einstuerzende Neubauten, Die Form or sacred music from 17th and 18th century. The soundtrack is vital for me.

b-uncut: What did it take to make it to where you are now?

SB: Some years working as an illustrator and three years as an artist. It’s a very short time and this has been a long way to walk.

b-uncut: Who has helped you along the way?

SB: The Art-Director of the gallery in which my works are in permanent exhibition (Galleria Zamenhof in Milan). Until three years ago I was an illustrator only. He suggested me to try to find an artistic way for my projects. And I have tried to do it.  Also my family try to support me and, over all, my wife that believes in what I do. Sometimes more than I do.

b-uncut: Do you consider your personal and professional life one and the same? Does your art define you, or do you define your art?

SB: This is a complex question. I can answer that what I do in the way I do is what I love to do.  It is a basic part of me. I must do it. But the artistic way is only a part of the symbolic representation codes through which I try to define the world and my role in it. I can affirm that in many ways my art can define myself, my perception of life, history, society, my personal fears and obsessions, my expectations, mistakes and illusions too. My “Weltanschauung” in other words. Perhaps art is the final product of every side of my life but I don’t live my life like an artwork.

b-uncut: If you were to design the ultimate dinner party, what 5 artists (dead or alive) would you include for stimulating conversation?

SB: Well, these fives could be it (not only painters or visual artists): Joel Peter Witkin, Peter Bruegel “the Elder”,  Jorge Luis Borges,  James Ensor  and Werner Herzog or Pier Paolo Pasolini (not very fun party indeed! I think I will also include five porno-actresses…)

b-Quick!

b-uncut: Your favorite swear word?

SB: I have a latin motto: “Nomina sunt consequentia rerum.”

b-uncut: Most attractive/least attractive quality in a significant other?

SB: It’s not a quality (I think) but in others I’m attracted by their contradictions. And I love the ones who can take themselves and their life with a touch (or a lot) of irony. Too much seriousness is not for me. But normally I don’t ask too much of other people. They are not born to entertain me and I’m not born to entertain them.

b-uncut: Your biggest (albeit endearing) flaw?

SB: A lot on the same level: like a human being I’m irremediably unreliable, often lazy, with a tendency towards selfishness and reasonably vicious.

b-uncut: Your parents advice you should have followed, but didn’t?

SB: My mother desired for me safe employment like every good mom but…

b-uncut: The superhero power you wish you had?

SB: ESP powers…

b-uncut: The celebrity you’d like to meet?

SB: No one, it is a very dangerous thing.

b-uncut: Your least favorite interview question?

SB: All good questions, really.

b-Honest!

b-uncut: Where do you see yourself in…..

One month? In Milan to finish the second and the third part of my Emanuele Gudester’s series.

One year? In Milan with some good exhibition and some more money (I hope).

One decade? I hope to be alive…and if it will be I should like to live with my wife in a cottage on the Hebrides, in Scotland, and, honestly, with a solid artistic career (not only in Scotland, obviously).

b-shots: Roa

// January 25th, 2010 // Comments // b-shots

Think we spotted a Roa work on Brick Lane…

b-shots: Old Hollywood Meets New Hollywood

// January 21st, 2010 // Comments // b-shots

“Woman-Movie” by Jason Ellis

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