Aesthetica
The Art & Culture Magazine
www.aestheticamagazine.com
Issue 81 February / March 2018
natural Consideration
embracing modification
cultural perspectives
A growing demand for bespoke items sparks a revival of artisanal designers
Reassessing the importance of water as a tool for architectural innovation
Digital customisation is foregrounded within sustainable fashion production
An exploration of how photography creates new layers of understanding
UK ÂŁ5.95 Europe â‚Ź9.99 USA $13.49
Charting Individualism
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Welcome Editor’s Note
On the Cover India-born Vikram Kushwah (b. 1983) now lives in England where he practises as a fine art and fashion photographer, working for the likes of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, and producing images that illustrate the complexities of the subconscious, deeply influenced by the Freudian theory of The Uncanny. (p.120) www.vikramkushwah.com. Cover Image: From It Was All Yellow for Vogue India. Model: Liza Golden. Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn. Stylist: Priyanka Kapadia. Hair & Makeup: Mira Parmar. Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
It’s overwhelming to look at the current state-of-play. There is so much happening, from technology and the environment to politics and society. What is happening to our notions of culture and identity? It’s a time of unprecedented change, something I can’t distance myself from because everything is interrelated. Sometimes, I feel like we need to get a reality check, but the ways in which communication and humanity are evolving (for the good or the bad) are worth understanding. We also need to talk about plastic (although when delivered by post this magazine comes poly-wrapped, it’s in oxy-biodegradable plastic). The statistics are staggering. We must all cut back, even though that means choosing less convenient options. This issue pays homage to the power of the individual, promoting and demonstrating the idea that there is still hope. We aren’t, in reality, becoming a conveyer belt of human beings; the one thing that makes us special is our ability to continually create and innovate. London-based fashion company Unmade is tackling mass production and fast fashion by offering consumers the chance to create bespoke items through digital customisation. Similarly, Emre Yunus Uzun is using organic materials to construct beautiful objects that resist the idea of disposable furnishings. His foray into the design world also highlights the resurgence of “making” and how we need to support new and emerging artisans. Along the same lines – but at the other end of the spectrum – we look at how water can enhance architectural projects. Although the budgets are steep, there is a growing interest in how natural and manmade environments can co-exist. In photography, we re-assess the nuance of structures with George Byrne, Yener Torun and Sallie Harrison. Anastasia Cazabon, much in the tradition of Cig Harvey, looks at the details of everyday objects and how they define who we are. Our cover photographer Vikram Kushwah works between fine art and fashion photography, leaving images that are both beautiful and conceptually rewarding. Finally, in Last Words, we speak with David Drake about 40 years of the Ffotogallery in Cardiff. Enjoy! Cherie Federico
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contents
Art 16 Regular Sections Highlights include The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s retrospective of William Eggleston and Andreas Gursky at the Hayward Gallery, London.
24 State of Transcendence Berlin-based photographer Anastasia Cazabon translates domestic spaces into live, performative arenas that reflect the ephemerality of childhood.
34 Charting Individualism Emre Yunus Uzun, an emerging designer, looks to the future of production through simplicity, material integrity and timeless sophistication.
40 Distinct Geometry Comparable to the likes of Ellsworth Kelly and Lewis Baltz, George Byrne’s practice centres on the process of reduction and multi-dimensions.
52 Presenting the Unknown Façades #3, a series from Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, focuses on the ever-imposing superficiality that is attached to the wider human consciousness.
64 Cultural Perspectives A new book and exhibition, titled Image Building, looks at how photographic compositions create multiple layers of perception and understanding.
70 Hidden Narratives Retuning to America’s midwest as a spectral and indefinable landscape, Eric Ogden’s images reflect dark, elusive and psychological themes.
82 Natural Consideration Living on Water, published by Phaidon, considers how architects are combining both manmade and organic worlds through complex projects.
88 Empirical Landscapes Translating the movements of the literary flâneur into a photographic diary, Sallie Harrison offers a view into the city as a subjective experience.
100 Embracing Modification Looking to the future of retail through the model of customisation, Unmade, a fashion technology business, promotes customer led e-commerce.
106 Kinetic Structures In the works of Yener Torun, repetition is presented as a monumental force: colourful high rises and apartment blocks unfold timelessly for the viewer.
120 Symbolic Compositions Vikram Kushwah’s playful imagination translates Freud’s theory of The Uncanny into metaphorical worlds that are open to wider interpretation.
Exhibitions
Film
Music
132 The Latest Shows Reviewed in this issue: Jeu de Paume, National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Galería de Alvear, Whitechapel Gallery and Ikon.
136 Flexible Viewpoint Jupiter’s Moon, directed by Kornél Mundruczó, is a visually assertive story that taps into the refugee crisis through a fantastical point of view.
138 Conceptualising Truth Essaie Pas’ latest album is influenced by Philip K. Dick’s 1977 novel, A Scanner Darkly; dystopian, sci-fi tropes can be heard throughout the record.
Books
Artists’ Directory
Last Words
140 Emotional Documentation A monograph of Jean Pagliuso brings together photographs and stills from over half a decade, pieces inspired by the Pictorialism movement..
152 Responsive Practitioners Raising questions about the structures that exist within creative and social worlds, the artists in this edition use various media to break down barriers.
162 Ffotogallery Director David Drake highlights the gallery’s upcoming projects, whilst reflecting upon 40 years of outstanding events and exhibitions.
Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2018.
The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Assistant Editor: Kate Simpson Digital Assistant: Eleanor Sutherland Staff Writer: David Martin
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ISSN 1743-2715. All work is copyrighted to the author or artist. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher.
Advertising Coordinator: Jeremy Appleyard Marketing Coordinator: Hannah Skidmore Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira
Artists’ Directory Enquiries: Katherine Smira (0044) (0)844 568 2001 directory@aestheticamagazine.com
Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley. Aesthetica Magazine PO Box 371, York, YO23 1WL, UK (0044) (0)844 568 2001 Newstrade Distribution: Warners Group Publications plc. Gallery & Specialist Distribution: Central Books.
Production Director: Dale Donley Designer: Laura Tordoff Administrator: Cassandra Weston Marketing & Administration Assistant: Sophie Lake Technician: Andy Guy Events Assistant: Roisin Mullins Editorial Intern: Saffron Ward Contributors: Bart Bryant-Mole, Max L. Feldman, Anna Feintuck, Sarah Moroz, Charlotte R.A, Beth Webb, Gunseli Yalcinkaya.
Printed by Warners Midlands plc. Reviewers: Kyle Bryony, Grace Caffyn, Ashton Chandler, Tony Earnshaw, Rubén Cervantes Garrido, Virna Gvero, Annabel Herrick, Sarah Jilani, James Mottram, Selina Oakes, Paul Risker, Verity Seward, Matt Swain.
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William Eggleston, En Route to New Orleans, 1971-1974. From the series Los Alamos, 1965-1974. © Eggleston, Artistic Trust 2004. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York, London.
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The Democratic Image William Eggleston: Los Alamos Whilst driving through New Mexico in 1973 with his friend, and time, a series of moments continually in the present. “Shooting images of This selection from the series includes the first colour pho- ordinary life in the the curator and critic Walter Hopps, pioneering US colour photographer William Eggleston stopped at Los Alamos, the tograph of the artist’s career, featuring a grocery store worker suburbs, Eggleston forested site where, during WWII, the atomic bomb had been pushing a shopping trolley (Untitled, Memphis, 1965). It goes draws out a sense of developed in the utmost secrecy by the Manhattan Project. on to trace Eggleston’s travels, from his home turf in Mem- the complexity and Fascinated by its connotations of both a private quest and phis and the Mississippi Delta to New Orleans, Las Vegas and strangeness inherent a clandestine laboratory, he took the title Los Alamos for ending up at California’s Santa Monica Pier. In all, it features within everyday life, imbuing these what was developing into perhaps his most significant body 75 dye-transfer prints created from the colour negatives. Initially inspired by the work of Robert Frank and then, most scenes and objects of work, a series which ultimately drew upon around 2,200 significantly, by his discovery of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The with a sense of danger images which he shot between 1965 and 1974. Born in 1939 in Memphis, the artist emerged to promi- Decisive Moment, Eggleston began working in black and white and darkness.” nence in the 1960s. Since then, locating the hidden depths before switching to colour in the mid-1960s. He came to swift of seemingly commonplace subjects, his photographs have prominence when MoMA bought a print in 1969. It was when become touchstones for generations of artists, musicians teaching at Harvard in the early 1970s that he discovered one and filmmakers, from Nan Goldin to David Byrne, the Coen of his trademark techniques – dye-transfer printing – and its Brothers and David Lynch. Shooting images of ordinary life vivid, saturated colours were translated to some of his most in the suburbs, Eggleston draws out a sense of the complexity famous images. Most notable of these is The Red Ceiling and strangeness inherent within everyday life, imbuing these (1973), with its intense and menacing hues. A 1976 MoMA exhibition secured his stature and he remains a key figure scenes and objects with a sense of danger and darkness. Like fellow colour pioneer Stephen Shore, Eggleston cap- after five decades at the forefront of his field. Of the origins of the Los Alamos series, Hopps later re- The Metropolitan Museum tures and explores a post-war American vernacular of gas stations, diners and parking lots. He has spoken of his approach counted: “That day in New Mexico, passing through the piñon of Art, New York as “a democratic way of looking around, and nothing was woods of the Jemez Mountains, past the guard gates of the 14 February - 28 May more or less important.” Throughout Los Alamos, the images National Laboratory, Eggleston turned with a small smile and seem geographically non-specific, independent of both place said, ‘You know, I’d like to have a secret lab like that myself.’” www.metmuseum.org
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A Defiance of Genre Guy Bourdin: image maker and sinister atmosphere. The films of Alfred Hitchcock were “His hyperrealistic, another influence and, just as the great suspense director saturated pictures coined the idea of the “Macguffin”, an arbitrary object that brought high art provides the catalyst which drives the plot of a movie, in Bour- into the realm din’s images the clothes and shoes become merely the point of commercial of departure for provocative scenes, often exhibiting signs of photography, violence and graphic sexuality. His compositions show a pro- drawing deeply found understanding of the double-page magazine spread, upon the influence inventively exploiting the constraints of the printed page. of Surrealists such Both Bourdin and Newton rewrote aesthetic conventions, as Buñuel, Magritte achieving a sense of timeless glamour in their work for the big- and Balthus.” gest names in fashion. During the 1970s Newton shot the collections of clients such as Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Thierry Mugler, Mario Valentino and Blumarine, whilst Bourdin photographed for Versace, Ungaro, Chloé, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent as well as forging a relationship with the French shoe brand Charles Jourdan that was to last more than 15 years. For both artists, it was never merely a fashion shoot which was being produced, but an unexpected, complex and cinematic story – though never forsaking the autonomy of the image. Image Maker includes Vogue Paris layouts as well as the Helmut Newton campaigns for Charles Jourdan. When taken alongside the Foundation, Berlin comprehensive overview of Newton at the Foundation, the Until 13 May common vision of these two figures emerges, in which it is often unclear where reality ends and staging begins. www.helmutnewton.com
Guy Bourdin, Charles Jourdan, 1978. © Guy Bourdin Estate 2017, courtesy Louise Alexander Gallery.
The Helmut Newton Foundation is dedicated to promoting, presenting and preserving the practice of the influential German-born fashion photographer (1920-2004). In 2018, it showcases one of Newton’s great contemporaries, creating a dialogue between their groundbreaking bodies of work. Guy Bourdin (1928-1991), like Newton, was a mainstay of Vogue Paris and in demand by leading international fashion houses. He extended the possibilities of what a fashion photograph could be, creating images both cinematic and unforgettable, defined by an intense interplay of light and shadow, alongside a striking use of colour and composition. In this Berlin presentation, Guy Bourdin: Image Maker appears alongside Helmut Newton: A Gun For Hire (as the photographer selfdeprecatingly referred to himself). A third exhibition, in the smaller “June’s Room” (named after Newton’s widow June, who continues to create portrait photography under the name Alice Springs) features images by Newton’s former assistant Angelo Marino, under the title Another Story. Born in Paris, Bourdin transformed the vocabulary of fashion on film, boldly rendering the highly desirable products entirely secondary to the image, with his powerful narratives and theatrical mise-en-scènes. His hyperrealistic, saturated pictures brought high art into the realm of commercial photography, drawing deeply upon the influence of Surrealists such as Buñuel, Magritte and Balthus, and creating an erotic
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Mark Steinmetz (American, born 1961), Untitled, 2016, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist and Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia. © Mark Steinmetz.
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Representations of Identity Picturing The South: Mark Steinmetz The last few years have seen the racially charged iconography of the American South become a political battleground as a resurgence in far-right and white supremacist activity has led to violent clashes over the question of removing historic memorials to the Confederacy. With such divisive images from the past being thrust back into the politics of the present, the need for narratives that represent the realities of life in the South today has never been greater. Since 1996, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, has been home to the Picturing The South series, in which established and emerging photographers are invited to create work inspired by the region. This year’s commissions see Mark Steinmetz, Debbie Fleming Caffery and Alex Harris joining the impressive roll call of contributors. The three are steeped in the culture and landscapes of the South and have each found new approaches to bringing out aspects of its complex identity. Steinmetz (b. 1961), the first to be featured in the 2018 series this March, has chosen to focus on a major global crossroads of people and commerce, Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport, which has the highest volume of traffic in the world. The black and white prints explore the human interactions within the public and private spaces of this transitional environment, demonstrating the global status of Atlanta as a city and as a gateway to the world. “At the airport, people from all over the world and from all walks of life can be
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found in the midst of their journeys,” says the photographer. “With such divisive Debbie Fleming Caffery (b.1948) grew up in Louisiana’s sug- images from the arcane country, which inspired her lifelong project of docu- past being thrust menting the lives of African-American workers in the fields and back into the politics mills. Here, she presents portraits and landscapes capturing of the present, the the decline and desertion of agricultural communities. These need for narratives crumbling settlements experience high rates of unemploy- that represent the ment as young people move out. Caffery says: “I look beneath realities of life in the surface at the people who live in these places. In the midst the South today has of burned-out houses and deserted store fronts, many of my never been greater.” works peer into the spaces where people who remain gather.” During a 40-year career Alex Harris (b.1949) has taken images around the world, from Inuit villages in northern Canada to the fish markets of Mumbai. However, the South is a constant theme, and he has taught at North Carolina’s Duke University since 1980, where he founded the Center for Documentary Studies. It was his experiences taking on-set pictures for Steven Soderbergh’s film Che (2008) that inspired this project, for which he followed independent filmmakers in the South, drawing attention to the importance of visual storytelling in creating a sense of identity and representing The High Museum realities. The artist notes: “My goal is to use still photography of Art, Atlanta to immortalise quintessential moments … and, by seeing ways 3 March - 3 June in which photographs from different productions resonate with each other, to see the South in a new light.” www.high.org
Concealment as Narrative Then They Came For Me than being prevented from continuing, became the camp’s “The camps were most official photographer. Many years later, his photographs ap- famously documented peared alongside Ansel Adams’s in Two Views Of Manzanar. on film in officially Adams (1902-1984) published his take on the camps sanctioned visits before the war was over, in Born Free and Equal: The Story of from the renowned Loyal Japanese-Americans. Invited to photograph the camp documentary in 1943, the acclaimed artist was drawn to the austere beauty photographers Ansel of the desert scenery and, as he was not allowed to photo- Adams and Dorothea graph the guard towers, made use of the elevated perspec- Lange, whose images tive of shooting from on top of them. The pieces are often are amongst those close-cropped portraits of the inmates which, present them as featured here.” resilient, dignified and patriotic figures. By contrast, Lange (1895-1965) was commissioned by the government in the hope of depicting the internment process as humane and efficient. Instead, the photographer considered it a grave injustice and produced hundreds of images capturing the stress and confusion on the faces of those crowded onto buses to be transported to the camps, leaving their houses and businesses behind. Her images were seized and suppressed by the government. Bringing together these and other perspectives with new research into the life stories of the camp inmates, the exhibition ICP, New York revisits a troubling moment in history when wartime security Until 6 May concerns allowed a programme based solely on racial prejudice to override citizens’ rights and the due process of law. www.icp.org
Ansel Adams, Owens Valley, California, 1943. Courtesy Library of Congress.
In Then They Came For Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, a dark and controversial chapter in American history is revisited, and the stories of those who lived through it told, both by documentary photographers looking in from outside and from the point of view of those who were incarcerated. Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the eruption of hostilities between Japan and USA, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which set in motion a programme of forced removal and imprisonment based purely on race. People of Japanese ancestry – regardless of citizenship or the legal protections of the American Constitution – living around the west coast, were subject to removal from their homes. Around 110,000 Japanese Americans were subseqently incarcerated in remote prison camps. The camps were most famously documented on film in officially sanctioned visits from the renowned documentary photographers Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange, whose images are amongst those featured here. Providing necessary counterpoint, an inmate’s perspective comes from the images taken clandestinely by Tōyō Miyatake. Miyatake ran a photographic studio in Los Angeles and, on learning he was to be incarcerated in the Manzanar desert camp, employed a carpenter to create a concealed camera in a small wooden box. Many of the compositions were shot early or late in the day to avoid discovery. The artist was eventually caught but, rather
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Julian Faulhaber, Tankstelle (Gas Station), 2008. ©Julian Faulhaber/VG Bildkunst Bonn/RAO.
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Subverting the Arena Julian Faulhaber: Ideal spaces Faulhaber has photographed public spaces in Germany, “Whilst the spaces The fleeting, strange moment between the completion of an architectural structure or environment and the first time a Japan and the USA, carefully choosing and researching his were designed visitor enters the space is the territory that has been claimed by locations whether through walking around the city streets, precisely for German photographer Julian Faulhaber (b. 1975). His practice browsing the internet or scouring architecture and design activity, these eerie captures newly completed shopping centres, petrol stations, magazines. The artist then interacts with the construction renderings translate cinemas and car parks, transfixed by a brief instant in which an process, observing and responding to any changes to its mundane everyday absence of all human traces takes over. Whilst the spaces were appearance, awaiting the right moment. The photographer environments designed precisely for activity, these eerie renderings translate says: “This is also part of the work process – monitoring the into strange and mundane everyday environments into strange and haunting development of construction, changing surfaces. It’s like haunting planes of planes of ironic existence. The hyperreal large-format images working in a studio over a painting that changes every day.” ironic existence.” The final images are shot using long exposures and no adplay with expectations by resembling the computer-generated “artist’s impressions” of future construction projects, yet they are ditional light sources. The absence of figures creates a tension shot from life, on film, using no digital processing whatsoever. and an expectation of action, as though observing a theatriFaulhaber’s work has gained much acclaim to date including cal stage set, whilst the strict composition and precise detail the Reinhart Wolff Prize (2006) the Real Photography Award throw attention onto the geometry and forms present in the (2006), as well as being nominated for the Deutsche Börse structures. Faulhaber’s focus on architecture and public space Photography Foundation Prize (2011). Now, his first solo ex- suggests a modern take on the legacy of the influential Düshibition in Russia is held at The Lumiere Brothers Center for seldorf School of Photography, which emerged in the 1970s. This movement saw figures including Andreas Gursky and Photography. The exhibition, Ideal Spaces, primarily focuses on Faulhaber’s project LDPE, which has been in existence since Thomas Struth develop and update the New Objectivity-in2003. The title is a reference to low-density polyethylene, the spired approach of their own tutors Bernd and Hilla Becher. The Lumiere Brothers Center commonplace material used for plastic bags. By foreground- Ultimately, the show demonstrates the latest technical devel- for Photography, Moscow ing the idea of packaging over content, the name heightens opments of this lineage; the maximalist approach to detail in Until 15 April the viewers’ awareness of highly artificial, hermetically sealed these portraits of deserted, pristine spaces rendering quotidian environments as profoundly uncanny landscapes. spaces presented in the routines of daily life. www.lumiere.ru
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Globalisation as Rhetoric Andreas Gursky the eerily empty display shelves featured in Prada II (1997). “The elevated The Hayward Gallery’s retrospective marks the beginning of perspective and the Southbank Centre venue’s 50th anniversary year; it is the uncannily sharp first exhibition to take place following its two-year refurbish- focus across the entire ment. For the first time since the gallery’s original opening, the scene, hallmarks of Gursky’s work, pyramid roof lights allow natural light into the spaces below. Six new works by Gursky are on display, in addition to serve to create around 60 of his best-known photographs. Highlights include a dispassionate Paris, Montparnasse (1993), an immense image of a seeming- and slightly ly endless block of flats, and Rhine II (1999/2015), a digitally- distanced view.” tweaked vision of the river as a minimalist symbol. Meanwhile, Kamiokande (2007) features the underground water tank at the heart of the Kamioka Nucleon Decay Experiment in Japan, and May Day IV (2000/2014) depicts hundreds of revellers at Germany’s long-running Mayday techno music festival. Gursky continues to innovate. In recent years, an interest in digital manipulation has led to works of “fictional photography”, challenging the viewer’s faith in the veracity of images and observing that “reality can only be shown by its construction.” Other recent images further develop an emerging strand of abstraction, moving away from the documentary tradition. Untitled XIX (2015) depicts acres of Dutch tulips which blur Hayward Gallery, London into bands of subtly variegated colour. Straddling the line be- Until 22 April tween abstraction and representation, such pieces underline the formal concerns that run through Gursky’s practice. www.southbankcentre.co.uk
Andreas Gursky, Les Mées, 2016. C-Print, 22.9 x 367.2 x 6.2cm. © Andreas Gursky/DACS, 2017. Courtesy: Sprüth Magers.
“I only pursue one goal: the encyclopedia of life,” said Andreas Gursky. Born in 1955, this leading figure associated with the Düsseldorf School movement takes the varied forms of collective human existence in the modern world as his subject, creating vast, panoramic large-format images of manmade structures and huge gatherings of people, ranging from financial trading floors to revellers at festivals and nightclubs. The immense scale and detail of the images rival that of monumental paintings and, in their composition, evoke the formal power of 19th century landscapes, though their ultracontemporary subject matter may be the exterior of a block of flats or a vast retail space. The elevated perspective and uncannily sharp focus across the entire scene, hallmarks of Gursky’s work, serve to create a dispassionate and slightly distanced view, in which equal weight is given to the central figures or structure of a scene and to action on its periphery. Over the past three decades the artist has shifted the boundaries of what is technically possible in photography, making use of computer-enabled post-production techniques to create images whose scale, precision, composition and complexity are unprecedented. These images capture our relationships with the natural world, the infrastructure of globalised commerce, and the ways in which we live within these, from the frenzied stock exchange seen in Chicago Board of Trade III (2009) to the vast distribution centre of Amazon (2016), or
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10 to See 1. Anthony McCall, Face to Face (II), 2013. Installation view, Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam, 2014. Photograph by Hans Wilschut. 2. Devyn Galindo, We Are Still Here, 2017. © 2018 Devyn Galindo, photo courtesy of the artist. 3. Sensorium Tests, 2012. 16mm film, 10 minutes. © Daria Martin, courtesy Maureen Paley, London. 4. Åsa Sjöström, Iosif and Mihail, Chetrosu, 2016. Image: © Åsa Sjöström. 5. Ragnar Kjartansson, God, 2007. Photo: Rafael Pinho. Courtesy the artist, Lubring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.
Recommended Exhibitions this Season
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Anthony McCall
The Hepworth, Wakefield 16 February - 3 June
www.hepworthwakefield.org Anthony McCall (b. 1946) describes his practice as existing in the space where cinema, sculpture and drawing overlap. He is best known for large-scale, immersive sculptural light installations. Solid Light Works is his first major UK exhibition in over a decade. Exploring all facets of his career to date, it includes three new installations, which employ digital projections through a thin mist to create sculptural forms in space.
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www.lacma.org As part of the multi-site exhibition A Universal History of Infamy, Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents a show curated by Vincent Ramos in which contemporary Latino artists, writers and activists address the political potential of poetic expression, alongside complementary pieces from LACMA’s collection. Amongst those featured are Isabel Avila, Roberto Chavez, Victor Estrada and Maria de Los Angeles.
www.wellcomecollection.org The infamous institution continues its mission of encouraging new synergies between science and the arts in Somewhere in Between: Four Collaborative Projects. These installations by Martina Amati, Daria Martin, Maria McKinney and John Walter collectively address the ways in which practitioners can give shape to the human experience, created through collaborating with scientific researchers.
Those of This America
LACMA, Los Angeles Until 6 October
Somewhere in Between
Wellcome Collection, London 8 March - 26 August
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www.fotografiska.eu Åsa Sjöström is one of Sweden’s most celebrated documentary and news photographers. Silent Land is a portrait of life in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest and least-known countries, which she has been visiting since the early 2000s. Returning to the region in 2014, Sjöström realised that though she had documented its social problems, she needed to better understand the nature of its everyday life.
www.museum.wales/cardiff Born in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1976, Ragnar Kjartansson creates installations and performances that draw upon the full spectrum of art, from music to theatre, and which often unfold or repeat over durations of weeks or months. A Sky In A Room makes use of the museum’s 1774 organ and features a durational performance of the Italian song Il Cielo In Una Stanza, in a dreamlike, surreal environment.
Åsa Sjöström
Fotografiska, Stockholm Until 4 February
Ragnar Kjartansson
National Museum Cardiff 3 February - 11 March
6. Joanna Piotrowska, XXXI from Frowst, 2013-2014. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy the artist and Southard Reid, London. © 2017 Joanna Piotrowska. 7. Matthew Brandt, Stepping Stone Falls, 2016. Triptych C, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. 8. Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon, Destroy London, 1977. Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London © Karen Knorr and Olivier Richon. 9. KERNEL (Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, and Theodoros Giannakis), Torrent, 2016. Disposed plastic cable jackets, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artistt. 10. Pipilotti Rist, Administrating Eternity, 2011, installation view. Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, Hayward Gallery London. London, 2011, courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine. © Pipilotti Rist, photograph: Linda Nylind.
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Being: New Photography 2018
MoMA, New York 18 March - 19 August
www.moma.org The latest iteration of MoMA’s longstanding New Photography series takes as its theme the complex and layered concepts of personhood and subjectivity, and the representation of human experience. An international selection of 17 artists, including Sofia Borges and Yazan Khalili, address these questions and others, such as the tensions between privacy and exposure, and the agency of the sitter and of the artist.
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www.foam.org The foundations of photography and the works of its 19th century pioneers are placed in dialogue with their reinvention by contemporary artists in Foam’s Back to the Future. Here, the key techniques of light, darkroom and chemistry are used in nontraditional ways, blurring the boundaries of analogue and digital technologies. The aim is to demonstrate what the photographic medium was, is, and will be in the close years to come.
www.ysp.org.uk Visitors are summoned to the YSP’s Bothy Gallery by Susan Philipsz’s tentative version of The Internationale (1999) for a show giving insight into anti-establishment and countercultural movements, from the age of punk to the age of Trump, and celebrating the vanguard role played by art and creativity in offering a voice for change. Revolt & Revolutions begins in the mid-1970s, charting an alternative cultural history.
www.newmuseum.org Songs for Sabotage, the fourth New Museum Triennial, focuses on how images and culture both express and manifest the power structures of society. Considering ways to disrupt rather than reinforce this, the show creates a call for action, bringing together 30 artists from 19 countries. They offer models for dismantling the political and economic networks that envelop young people in a globalised world.
Back to the Future
Foam, Amsterdam Until 28 March
Revolt & Revolutions
YSP, Wakefield Until 15 April
Songs For Sabotage
New Museum, New York 13 February - 27 May
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Pipilotti Rist
MCA, Sydney Until 18 Feb
www.mca.com.au A pioneer of experimental video art and multimedia installations for more than three decades, Pipilotti Rist (b. 1962) creates trademark immersive and dazzling environments in which viewers are plunged into colourful kaleidoscopic projections. The MCA presents the most comprehensive exhibition of her work in Australia to date. Sip My Ocean reveals the full spectrum of Rist’s practice, concerning the relationship between nature, the body and technology.
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State of Transcendence Anastasia Cazabon
Anastasia Cazabon is a photographer and filmmaker from Cambridge, Massachusetts, currently based in Berlin. The featured images are constructed around the surreal. Each mysterious, cropped composition is inspired by cultural narratives and the subjective experience, drawing from memories, fairytales and cinema, the last of which ties into Cazabon’s other project – a film festival that highlights short films and video art made by women – GRRL HAUS CINEMA. The series is based on the photographer’s childhood, specifically the transitional period before crossing into womanhood. Fear and longing are tangible emotions in each vignette: anonymous figures swept into a rapture of secrecy and emotion. At a time of intense change, the characters are becoming acutely aware of the world around them. Domestic spaces are translated into responsive playgrounds, becoming an arena for tumultuous self-awareness. www.anastasiacazabon.com.
Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, Stories, 2005.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, Stories, 2005.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, I lost something in the hills, 2009.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, I lost something in the hills, 2009.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Hand on couch, Love and Rivalry, 2009.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, I lost something in the hills, 2009.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Bug on window, Love and Rivalry, 2009.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, Stories, 2005.
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Anastasia Cazabon, Untitled, I lost something in the hills, 2009.
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Charting Individualism Emre Yunus Uzun deeply influenced by modernist canons, Emre Yunus Uzun, an emerging designer, looks to the future of production through material integrity.
Beauty and usefulness were long considered to be two separate qualities. William Morris (1834-1896) – a pre-eminent figure in textile design – perhaps promoted this thought with the infamous quote: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” This idiom sparked a wealth of new ideals surrounding the home, presupposing that our possessions should be one or the other, or indeed, could simply appeal to our own sense of aesthetics. However, underpinning recent global attitudes is the need for both, and, by extension, a new attraction and respect for materials. Perhaps what designers should now be considering is Morris’s less-circulated idea: “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” Having been featured in magazines such as Vogue Turkey and Sight Unseen, as well as speciality websites like Design Milk, Emre Yunus Uzun – a product and interior designer – has been widely praised. With pieces that take consumer needs into account, he honours the importance of the artisan through elegant objects that let the materials speak for themselves. Whilst Morris’s 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement originated in England, it’s easy to see how some of the ideas are now being revived, worldwide, through a desire for bespoke items. Uzun lives and works in Izmir – the third largest city in Turkey after Istanbul and Ankara. Having graduated from the city’s University of Economics in 2014, he specialised in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design. The two practices, he notes, are “different in terms of scale, yet by understanding how structures work and how objects relate to different geographies helps the development of ideas.”
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This knowledge base – one that accounts for multiple forms – provides the crux of Uzun’s methodology, one which relies on flexibility between media. Ultimately, he notes: “My curiosity directs my creative process.” This appetite promotes finding joy in materials. Spontaneity – a technique that encourages one-off products – is informed by a fascination with the smaller, building blocks of design: traditions and techniques. “Material integrity is all about returning to the origins,” he says, adding that this stance is a means of showing “respect for the world we live in.” Focusing on glass, wood, stone and metal, a spectrum of raw, organic matter combines intuitively with traditional craftsmanship. Uzun’s unvarnished approach is an attempt to “reduce the materials to their very essence.” This aspiration is also linked to sustainability by asserting a premium on high-quality products that people can enjoy for years. The hope is that, in the future, instead of relying on mass production, “designers can combine innovative technologies and traditional crafting techniques.” Favouring timeless forms over disposable objects is also forming part of a new wave of consciousness in the 21st century. Following the ethos that products should be emotionally responsive to humanity’s needs – creating solutions whilst inspiring ideas – Uzun, amongst other emerging visionaries, is offering more than contemporary furniture: he provides a way out, back into tangible experiences. Citing an article entitled The Return of “Raw” Materials in Home Design (by Trish Lorenz, Financial Times, 2016), “what makes today’s approach different is that it goes beyond aesthetics: it is instead a lifestyle choice, a rejection of the faux and the virtual, and a celebra-
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Perforé Side Table, 2016, Izmir.
“Focusing on glass, wood, stone and metal, a spectrum of raw, organic matter combines intuitively with traditional craftsmanship. Uzun’s unvarnished approach is an attempt to ‘reduce the materials to their very essence.’”
Previous Page: A rche Collection in light grey aluminiumfinish,2017,Izmir. Left: Living Room, 2016, Izmir.
tion of the real. This engages the senses beyond the visual: textured stone demands to be touched, wood has a lingering scent and patented brass has a warmth that comes from age.” The New York Times piece notes how pervasive this philosophy has become: restaurants have swapped formal interiors for a lived-in feel, and cosmetics company Aesop has implemented reclaimed wood shelving and metal display counters in storefronts. Brands are listening to the customers; people want – despite the rise in VR and augmented reality – to feel something with their fingertips. The feature also mentions a wide range of product designers who epitomise this school of thought: Norwegian duo Torbjørn Anderssen and Espen Voll (who make cast iron candleholders), Lithuanian designer Evelina Kudabaitė (who has used tree bark for a series of bowls), and Irish duo Superfolk (who fashion trivets from oak and beech). Uzun could easily fit in this list. Balancing longstanding artisanal methods and innovative perspectives, however, requires a number of complex techniques, especially if the designer is to create something truly unique, not just adhering to tradition. Uzun defines his minimalist style as making “classic pieces with a modernist approach”, aspiring to make objects that go beyond the scope of current fashions, and remain not only relevant but attractive “50 years from now” (more than double the metric French designer Philippe Starck suggests.) How does one maintain a sense of freshness that stretches for half a century? Uzun adheres to Dieter Rams’ Ten Commandments of Design – a set of guidelines that define success as a mix of innovation, usefulness, intelligibility, honesty, durability, environmental friendliness, and restraint, amongst other key notions. Today’s audiences are increasingly respectful of truthful,
deliberate choices, forgoing mass production for something indelible. Uzun satisfies this – whilst considering ecological impact – by keeping to fundamental geometric forms and clean lines over unnecessary embellishments. The Arche Collection, for example, is characterised by sinuous U-shaped curves – a three-piece tabletop series consisting of a vase, a candle holder and a bowl. The three objects share elegantly undulating silhouettes, certainly worthy of the graceful name. Each item, anchored by slices of white and grey marble, is rendered in two ways: brushed aluminum or brushed brass. Such refined examples, however, aren’t achieved without influence. Uzun frequently recalls the works of acclaimed visionaries. Notably this includes Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn, Jean Prouvé and Ettore Sottsass. Nods to the latter can be seen in the Perforé Side Table (1959). With a marble top, a perforated copper magazine rack and powder-coated metal base, the product playfully switches between presence and absence: the sturdy flatness of the marble finds its opposite in the dip of the copper, the design equivalent of a dress with a surprising cut-out. The speckled resin-topped side table, with metal legs and available in three colours, feels like a modern-day cousin of Sottsass’s 1980s Casablanca Sideboard. Contemporary comparisons include Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec – a successful duo whose practice follows not only a similar aesthetic but a similar approach to Uzun. The brand’s emphasis on materials was recently showcased for Danish textiles manufacturer Kvadrat, creating a showroom with “no colours, just materials,” to highlight the quality of fabrics produced by the brand, paired with natural materials such as oak and concrete flooring. The duo also follow Morris’s idiom – the joy of design is ultimately found in the detail.
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Gloom & Mist L ighting Family, 2017, Izmir.
Ronan Bouroullec got his big break in 1997 when his tal platforms like Behance and Instagram, sites that not only customisable Disintegrated Kitchen was spotted by Giulio enable the designer to share his various production phases, Cappellini at the Paris Furniture Fair. Since then, they have but promote the work beyond the borders of the country, won multiple awards, exhibited internationally and been reaching new customers (“clients with common values always included in many publications including 50 Designers You find you to collaborate in new projects,” Uzun remarks). As Should Know (Prestel, 2017) – a title previously featured in Farhad Manjoo states in How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It: “In just about every cultural medium, whether Aesthetica – alongside Starck and Rams. It’s therefore important to note the ways in which practition- movies or music or books or the visual arts, digital technology ers now break into such a competitive industry. For some, like is letting in new voices, creating new formats for exploration, Bouroullec, it comes from large-scale fairs such as Design and allowing fans and other creators to participate in a gloriShanghai or London Design Festival; the latter of which re- ous remixing of the work” (The New York Times, March 2017). cently housed pieces by Flynn Talbot and Camille Walala Such websites provide opportunities for showcasing ideas at – artists that are becoming increasingly popular for their at- an international level, which is crucial for those attempting tention to detail. Walala is renowned for bright, patterned to break into the industry. Commissions, wider circulation environments, whilst Talbot created one of LDF’s most visited and e-commerce are rife within online communities. Uzun has had more visibility since connecting with London-based exhibitions: a neon space entitled Reflection Room. These types of events are a huge contributor to artists’ suc- &Ratio – self-described as “a platform for creating a link becess, and are prevalent internationally. Closer to Uzun is the tween the creative market and design conscious individuals” Istanbul Biennial, which, having recently celebrated its 15th (in fact, Aesthetica discovered the designer on this very site). year, is one such example that proves the established pres- There, Uzun’s works feature alongside those by Álvaro Díaz ence of Turkey amongst other design-centric centres. Indeed, Hernández (Spain), Sayar & Garibeh (Lebanon), Elena Xanas Uzun notes, “there are some really impressive Turkish fash- thopoulou (Greece), Erickson Aesthetics (USA), MannMade ion designers that are making a mark on the international (UK), and fellow Turkish DAY Studio. “There is a ‘maker’ movescene.” Textile, leather and clothing production has been in ment growing all over the world,” Uzun confirms. Ultimately, across a number of countries, the excitement place for centuries, but Turkey’s reputation is still growing, encompassing visionaries with a Western aesthetic, including and hardship of design remains the same: the métier Hussein Chalayan, who was awarded an MBE in 2006. Whilst requires wrestling with a lot of trial and error to achieve the landscape and locality are certainly a contributor to achiev- “right” outcome, building pathways between emerging and ing wide-spread acclaim, they are undeniably, not a conclu- established practices. For Uzun, that will always mean, instead of simply finding a balance between Morris’s aesthetic and sive or even measurable factor for success. Practitioners can have their work seen by millions on digi- function, he will continue to push boundaries.
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Right: Arche Bown in dark grey aluminiumfinish,2017,Izmir.
Words Sarah Moroz
www.emreyunusuzun.com
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Distinct Geometry George Byrne
Sydney-born George Byrne (b. 1976) creates large-scale images that depict landscapes as painterly abstractions. Comparable to the works of Lewis Baltz and Ellsworth Kelly, Byrne’s collage-like images – taken from the New Order and Color Field series – utilise the process of reduction. Flattened lines and interjectory shadows become part of a wider dimensional puzzle that revels in texture. An alluring interplay between concrete and colour is at once minimal and deeply complex; through abandoned sidewalks, luminous bollards and pastel awnings, the seemingly anonymous nature of Los Angeles architecture is illuminated. Ultimately, surfaces become a hive of possibility; the banal metropolis is translated into a multi-tonal playground. As the artist notes: “Whilst the images remain portraits of the city, they also become more abstract in their intention – based on a true story but open to interpretation.” www.georgebyrne.com.
George Byrne, detail of Burton Way, 2015.
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George Byrne, Virgil, 2016.
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George Byrne, Blue Awning with Pink, 2017.
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George Byrne, Sth. Murwillumbah #1, 2016.
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George Byrne, detail of Echo Park, 2017.
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George Byrne, detail of Palm Springs #1, 2016.
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George Byrne, detail of New Order, 2017.
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George Byrne, Blue Awning with Yellow, 2017.
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George Byrne, East Hollywood Carpark, 2016.
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George Byrne, Hollywood Toyota, 2017.
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George Byrne, Bank, Palm Springs, 2016.
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Presenting the Unknown Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy
Façades is an intriguing conceptual series that focuses on the ever-imposing nature of superficiality and visual preconception. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy (b. 1986) re-imagines streets through the eyes of city-dwellers; initial appearances become lasting memories. The result is captured in these foreboding yet beautiful images: a two-dimensional world that offers only an initial glimpse into its secrets, where aesthetics are the only refuge for the viewer. Devoid of intimate details, the flattened houses linger in an oddly scintillating void where onlookers live only amongst scenery. The artist pulls the eye into a space between reality and fiction – a land somewhere between dusk and darkness, haunted by limitation. Purgatorial, the landscape becomes a shadow of itself. Gaudrillot-Roy has exhibited as part of festivals such as Circulation(s), Paris; Voies Off, Arles; and Fotofestiwal, Łódź. www.zachariegaudrillot-roy.com.
Façades #3 - 06. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2013.
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Faรงades 3 - 09. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2014.
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Faรงades 3 - 08. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2017.
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Faรงades 3 - 05. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2013.
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Faรงades 3 - 19. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2017.
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Faรงades 3 - 17. Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy, 2017.
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Cultural Perspectives Image Building a new book and exhibition delves into the recontextualisation of images, considering how photography creates layers of understanding and perception.
“Photography is not about capturing reality,” explains art his- testament to the successes of American capitalism, pointing torian Therese Lichtenstein of Image Building (Prestel), a book upwards and onwards beyond the Depression. Placed next that accompanies shows at Parrish Art Museum, New York, (18 to Sugimoto’s Rockefeller Center (2001), it’s a sober remindMarch - 17 June) and Tennessee’s Frist Arts Center (27 July - er that war, victory and America’s mid-to-late 20th century 28 October). “Even documentary photos are illusory because peak were all still to come, reflected in the use of analogue there’s always a separation between real and projected worlds manipulation: a 19th century 8x10 inch camera using long as our perceptions shift between past and present.” These exposure times to get tonal depths, the richly blurred com“transformative oscillations” move between the static structure position conveying the crushing force of time and memory. in front of the camera and its subjectively decoded “look”, and “The focus is architecture after photography, because our demonstrate how mixing sensuous analogue and clinical digi- world is image-mediated,” says Lichtenstein. This captures tal techniques can transcend distinctions between design and what we might call structural “recoil.” Early experiments, art, hazily remembered nostalgia and potential. like Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le For Lichtenstein, the medium creates and sustains a glam- Gras (1826/1827) used buildings as a stable reference point. orous fictional space, using lighting and technological choic- Unlike people or nature, the constructions stayed still long es – vantage points, textures, planes, lines, size – to transfig- enough for the long exposure times. However, as Walter ure reality into a composition with a feel of its own. “Even if Benjamin famously pointed out, the human mode of percepwe have seen a building before the image,” she explains, “the tion changes with technological advances and the eye has photograph shifts our perception, either culturally or sub- become co-extensive with the camera’s apparatus. Architecjectively”. She suggests here that we are constantly revising tural photography has thus turned various spaces into pheour impressions of both the physical world and its intangible nomena, not just something with intense visual impact, but nature along two fault-lines: “modernity” and “spectacle.” an art form that can (and does) offer a social relationship This can be seen in the juxtaposition of Samuel Gottscho in Guy Debord’s classic sense. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s differing versions of New York’s RCA Museum Bilbao, for example, can exist if only to be disBuilding (now part of the Rockefeller Centre). Alongside played and captured, and indeed, marvelled at. “We always each other, the already dissimilar feelings that accompany add to our perceptions,” Lichtenstein says, “never abandondifferent versions of the same structure are intensified: a clas- ing them.” It’s important to also consider shared ideas of how sic example of the muscularity of progress, almost 70 years a place might look based on the era in which we live or the apart. Alone, Gottscho’s New York City Views, RCA Building contextual expectations that we maintain. Floodlighted (1933) is an art-deco cathedral, an optimistic Time is a fluid concept that is deeply self-conscious and
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Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991). The Night View, 1934 (printed 1974). Gelatin silver print, 13 ¾ x 10 ¾ inches. The Museum of the City of New York, 79.147.2. Image courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art. © 2018 Estate of Berenice Abbott/ Getty Images.
“For Lichtenstein, the medium creates and sustains a glamorous fictional space, using lighting and technological choices – vantage points, textures, planes, lines, size – to transfigure reality into a composition with a feel of its own.”
Previous Page: Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009). Academy Theater, interior (Inglewood, Calif.), 1940. Gelatin silver print, 10 3/16 x 8 1/16 inches. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2004.R.10. © 2018 Estate of Julius Shulman/ J. Paul Getty Trust, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. Left: Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009). Case Study House No. 22 (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1960. Gelatin silver print, 9 15/16 x 7 15/16 inches. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2004.R.10. © 2018 J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
referential in the pieces; even the evolution of the camera and ded with cultural references, synonymous with the notion of its possibilities is drawn into question across the timelines of the mechanical paradise, producing something mournful, as artists’ careers. Thomas Ruff’s blend of analogue and digital if we didn’t really know it in the first place. Period pieces reappear throughout the book in four techniques, for example, make the clean lines of his subjects look at once glossy and impressionistic. Documenting the renderings of post-war American suburbanisation projects, Swiss cough-drops manufacturer Ricola’s headquarters in each emblematic of a “1960s look.” Lewis Baltz’s Tract House Mulhouse, France, includes drawing the eye to the edifice’s series (1971), for example, captures the almost pre-emptively sculptural reliefs, made evident against a regal violet sky. unfashionable frontages and empty driveways of the east d.p.b 02 (1999) and w.h.s. 10 (2001) from a series about Mies Los Angeles suburbs as if it were a ghost town. Meanwhile, van der Rohe’s buildings splice together different versions Robert Adams creates stark uniformity in bungalows that of the Barcelona Pavilion and Stuttgart’s Weissenhof Estate, pepper a valley in Colorado Springs, and James Casebere defamiliarising our ingrained ideas about the Bauhaus style, shows us cookie-cutter suburbia – the quasi-Alpine pastelwhich reappears in Julius Shulman’s images of the style’s shade kitsch of Dutchess County, New York – just after the 2008 financial crisis dented dreams of home ownership. entry into the California hills in the 1960s. Andreas Gursky’s Paris, Montparnasse (1993) combines For Lichtenstein, the point is that “juxtaposing time and memory,” lets one reflect the other, “producing a cinematic two separate photographs of the Mouchotte Building, a classensibility where the past becomes the present and the pre- sic example of post-war social housing projects, into one sent becomes the future.” She notes that an analogue photo- seamless composition. Collapsing the depth of field, the picgraph lets us look back and see houses, cinemas or offices as ture turns a grim edifice into a colourful patchwork full of life. “period pieces” with an era-appropriate aesthetic, whilst ma- Avenue of the Americas (2001) applies the same approach as nipulated digital images create a sense of a life that is fleet- Paris, Montparnasse, but sets it at night. However, Iwan Baan’s ing and based on chance. Gottscho and Shulman might give Torre David in Caracas, Venezuela, tells the story of this 45us modern rationality, but Sugimoto presents a sphere that storey skyscraper, named after developer David Brillemencourages “time-consciousness” – opening up the possi- bourg, which portrays the struggle and resilience necessary bilities for the future through constant renewal and rebirth in for collective housing. Construction began in 1990 but was each new moment. Ruff, however, sits somewhere in between. interrupted by the collapse of the Venezulean economy, and w.h.s 10 shows the building out of focus, set on a diagonal the housing shortages that followed led to a building once against an artificially tinted blue-green sky, so it looks like a intended to house financial institutions and luxury apartglimpse through the window of a fast-moving train. This ul- ments being occupied and squatted by people who would timately suggests a sense of movement, speed and decline. rather live in a half-finished skyscraper than the dangerous Sugimoto’s Eiffel Tower, by contrast, takes a structure embed- favelas. Meanwhile, Baan’s The City and the Storm (2012),
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Balthazar Korab (Hungarian, 1926-2013). 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, IL, 1960. Chromogenic print with metallic paper base, 11 x 11 inches. Courtesy Korab Image, Christian Korab, Minnesota. © 2018 Korab Image, Christian Korab, Minnesota.
taken during the New York City blackout, shows how planned urban life is “teeming with irrationality” – the shades of light and dark as an index of economic inequality. Lichtenstein says these complex pieces have a beautiful exuberance; they offer us stark polarities like despair and hope, and represent the dehumanisation of the individual in contemporary life. This is where Lichtenstein’s project might come unstuck. She’s right that photographs mediate fantasies about places we’ve never seen, projecting meanings onto locations we’ve never visited. This elaborates on Immanuel Kant’s classic distinction between “knowing the world” (the remote universe “out there” realised through stories) and “having a world” (the one which we experience in actuality). However, the substance of the modernity / spectacle juxtaposition is at times unclear. How does the “beauty” of the artworks co-exist with the “dehumanisation” of the people in them? There is perhaps something to be said for the critique of spectacle, falling afoul of the late theorist Mark Fisher’s comments on the problem of “formal nostalgia” at the start of the 21st century. Lichtenstein’s “nostalgic sensibility” amounts to what Fisher called the “technologically burnished classicism” of retro products. For Fisher, the sheer prevalence of “time-montage” techniques make them unnoticeable, rendering Image Building’s non-linear organisation – the same practitioners located in different scenes, the exhibition’s three spaces of “modernism”, “public places”, and “domestic spaces” – merely what Fisher calls the “performance of anachronism” because the new is no longer truly “new” and the future does not really feel that out of reach. Far from making us question what constitutes our knowledge about the world, as Lichtenstein says, nostalgia in fact retreats from the challenge to “make it new”, embraced not merely by the artists, but permeating their
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whole ethos by using digital technology to obfuscate archaic forms or disavow any explicit references to the past. The pieces chosen by Lichtenstein are certainly unabashedly beautiful, presenting our participation in “the seductive sensuousness of materialism” as something abstract from contemporary life. This may dampen her claim that the publication is a critique of late capitalism: if the camera turns architecture into an ornamental monument, then the documentation of structural photography only deepens the meaning. “The images are spectacles, and they are also about spectacles,” she says. “Large, colourful, abstract, disorientating, they’re fundamentally about how the individual is submerged in these structures, becoming symbolic for corporate systems.” Casebere and Shulman’s works make us think about the hopes and dreams of the residents, creating a sense of intimacy, but Lichtenstein warns us against taking these compositions for granted as naturalistic representations of a period. Instead of telling us the bare facts about a particular social setting, she wants these unique pieces to shift our thinking about how we relate to them and the shared world they create. The artworks aestheticise life, but she wants them to make us think beyond mere surfaces. Ultimately, this publication and indeed the accompanying exhibitions reveal the interior lives of the subject matter, sitting on the boundaries that are set by other kind of image-making – between the sublime and the everyday, as in landscape photography, or glamour and expenditure as in fashion – and relentlessly questioning itself. Whilst there are multiple layers to be found in this deeply profound and thought-provoking text, the overarching result draws attention to man-made spaces as poignant creations, whilst allowing us to visit or revisit places where we have never been.
Right: Ezra Stoller (American, 1915–2004). Seagram Building, Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson, New York, NY, 1958. Gelatin silver print, 20 x 16 inches. Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. © 2018 Estate of Ezra Stoller/ Esto.
Words Max L. Feldman www.prestel.com
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Hidden Narratives Eric Ogden
Eric Ogden returns to Aesthetica with compositions that centre around palpable psychological histories. Returning to the midwest as a spectral, indefinable subject, each image reflects dark, immeasurable themes that are experienced, decoded and deciphered from childhood right through to adulthood. Viewed alone, or as part of a wider tableau, the photographs offer a multitude of options for the characters and locations involved – akin to a storyboard of ideas that are infinitely subjective and altogether human. In every scenario, each nocturnal plane – whether domestic, suburban or natural – reaches outwards to the viewer as the setting for stories waiting to be uncovered. Hallowed, metaphysical and magnetic, Ogden’s scenarios are beautifully choreographed and colour schemes deeply considered. Shadowy blues and earthy browns are accented by the bright whites – a colour palette that is at once suggestive of danger and innocence. www.ericogden.com.
Eric Ogden, Backyard (Amherst), 2016.
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Left: Eric Ogden, The Runner, 2013. Right: Eric Ogden, Alina (#1), 2015.
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Left: Eric Ogden, TV, 2017. Right: Eric Ogden, Corner House, 2010.
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Left: Eric Ogden, In Bed, 2011. Right: Eric Ogden, Night Basketball, 2010.
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Left: Eric Ogden, Slip, 2015. Right: Fog (Mom’s House), 2011.
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Left: Eric Ogden, The Apologizer, 2014. Right: Eric Ogden, Detriot, after Election, 2016.
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Natural Consideration Living on Water For contemporary architects, water is a complex tool through which one can sculpt and re-imagine domestic structures within organic environments.
Over 80 years ago, in the Laurel Highlands located in the Allegheny Mountains, Frank Lloyd Wright created what many consider to be his masterpiece: a house balanced on the edge of a waterfall. With deep cantilevered eaves that seem to hang precariously over the stream below, Fallingwater (1935) demonstrated the powerful potential of combining modern design with the most fundamental of nature’s elements. This synthesis is the subject of Living on Water, a new publication that aims to highlight the diverse ways in which 21st century architects have integrated fluidity into their blueprints for contemporary homes. As the author, James Taylor-Foster, summarises: “Architecture is underpinned by four core components: the wall, the roof, the window, and the door. Each of these is bound by a single common purpose – to act as a barrier between a controlled interior space and an altogether less predictable wilderness beyond. The act of building, therefore, has a rather conflictual relationship with water; dependent on location – be it the arctic north, tropical south, or any of the temperate climes in-between – snow and ice, rain, and atmospheric humidity are considered to be amongst the architect’s greatest adversaries. Where there is water, however, there is always infinite scope for innovation.” There are a multitude of options for such creativity and construction therefore the volume is divided into three strands – Built On, To Look At, or Reflect Water. This systematic approach, Taylor-Foster observes, looks at these categories as being interconnected. He notes: “A good building does not begin and end at the perimeter of its site, or the boundary of its walls. As such, the three categories
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intermingle and coalesce whilst, at the same time, offering readers a lexicon with which to parse the different possible relationships that architecture and the element can enjoy.” Paul de Ruiter Architects’ Villa Kogelhof (2013) is an example that could arguably be included in any one of the book’s chapters. Straddling a reflective pool and supported by a steel V-frame, this single-volume structure is balanced by its mirror image, enhancing the serene symmetry of minimalist design. The uninterrupted glass façade and openplan interior combine to provide continuous panoramic views of a vast artificial lake which lies to the north. Water not only defines the view of the house, but also the view from the house – an interesting social concept that promotes a sense of transparency and integration with the surroundings. As the opening text from the villa’s chapter – Built To Look at Water – recognises: “The best homes challenge the dominance of their artificial presence in the context of natural landscapes. It is only when the ephemerality of life by the water – breezes, scents, and sounds – is folded into the design that a more rooted sense of belonging can emerge.” Located on a protected ecological zone, Villa Kogelhof is also energy neutral and, according to the architects, will eventually become self-sufficient. With electricity provided by solar panels and eventually by a planned windmill, the house is to be heated by a range stove fuelled by the wood from a young forest that has been planted on the site. This focus on sustainability is, perhaps unsurprisingly, at the heart of many examples featured in the publication, since the incorporation of water necessarily entails a
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John Pawson, Paros House I, 2016, Paros, Greece. Image credit: Douglas Tuck.
“The large majority of projects assembled in this book are retreats of one sort or another for the mind, the soul or the body. Water has a beguiling capacity to captivate; it can create real-world environments that verge on the spiritual.”
Previous Page: Paul de Ruiter Architects, Villa Kogelhof, 2013. NoordBeveland, The Netherlands. Image credit: Jeroen Musch. Left: Atelier d’Architecture Bruno Erpicum & Partners (AABE), AIBS, 2002, Ibiza, Spain. Image credit: Jean-Luc Laloux.
harmonious relationship with nature. As Taylor-Foster can also offer salvation from the chaos of 21st century life. notes: “For a building to converse with its context, it must Through considered composition and careful manipulation be capable of responding to the challenges posed by its of sightlines, water can be visually introduced into spaces, particular environment. Water is an ever-changing visual imbuing buildings such as John Pawson’s Paros House canvas, absorbing and reflecting all shades of colour and I (2016) with a cooling and calming aesthetic. As the able to transform from planar to sculptural in a moment. publication argues, “bodies of water – be they immeasurably The ‘golden troika’ of water, landscape, and architecture can – large, quantifiably small, or in a state of constant motion when approached with conviction and a certain intelligence – – represent a particular sort of serenity. In the same way lead to homes of elevated technical prowess and exceptional that open skies provide a sense of space and spaciousness, beauty, a formula that only a rarefied few ultimately achieve.” unbroken aqueous planes render a meditative point of focus.” At the level of residential construction, environmentally Situated on the Greek island of Paros, the aforementioned conscious designers are finding innovative ways to marry villa comprises a cluster of cubic volumes which overlook the nature and structure in their eco-homes. Unit’s Dama zAmya sea. As this pure white structure bakes under the heat of the Villa (2010) is a stunning example of tropical contemporary Mediterranean sun, it becomes a brilliant beacon within the architecture on a remote island near Phuket, Thailand, dry climate of a hilltop setting. Taylor-Foster describes it as “an with no access to mains services. “Given this restriction (or oasis at the heart of a hot, empty landscape.” Those who enter opportunity, in this case),” says Taylor-Foster, “it is entirely discover a tranquil setting, where the opaque exterior dissolves self-sufficient: a well provides a water supply, renewable into the sky by means of a pergola, exposing sweeping vistas energy sources provide electricity. A grass-covered roof of the sea. A solitary tree protrudes through the slabs of a allows the building to blend into leafy surroundings whilst paved terrace, recalling the interior courtyards of traditional cooling a self-contained microclimate. Even though green Japanese homes and adding to the Zen-like quality. “The large considerations remain too few and far between, projects such majority of projects assembled in this book are retreats of as this demonstrate that it is very much within our grasp.” one sort or another for the mind, the soul or the body. Water With more than half the planet covered by oceans, and has a beguiling capacity to captivate; it can create real-world most major towns located either on the coast or by a environments that verge on the spiritual,” the author observes. river, the majority of the world’s population lives in the Further to tapping into the human experience – or indeed vicinity of a body of water. However, due to the rapid pace our task of reducing environmental damage – the book also of urban development, many citizens have lost touch with looks at the idea of innovation and flexibility as a measurable these natural lifelines, subsumed by the ever-advancing element. Indeed, there is no shortage of ambitious projects borders of the metropolis. Whilst cranes and construction to be found in the pages of this collection. Remarkable feats sites are a typical hallmark of the modern city, architecture of engineering are performed by F2 Architecture’s Pole
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Stinessen Arkitektur, Manshausen Island Resort, 2015, Manshausen, Norway. Image credit: Steve King.
House (2017), a beachfront home atop a 13-metre column. in their appearance, they are “defined by a modest character The unprecedented possibilities of technology are also which attests to the simple life to be led on the islands.” At the opposite end of this spectrum lies AIBS (2002). found in examples such as FLOATWING (2015), a motorised modular floating house by Friday/University of Columbia, Realised by the Atelier d’Architecture Bruno Erpicum & which reconsiders the conventions of residential architecture. Partners, a bold geometric form dominates a rugged clifftop Elsewhere, dwellings perch on clifftops, cascade down site. The horizontal orientation is emphasised by a single hillsides or, in the case of Florida Beach House (2011) by ribbon window which spans the southward-facing façade and, Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects, sprawl across sand dunes. from the living area, frames the expansive seascape below. These structures make bold architectural statements with Soaring 159 metres above the Balearic Sea, this home exists their unmistakeable forms, but they are not the work of any at the intersection of three elements: land, sea and sky. “starchitect.” The majority of the featured homes have been The natural borders of the coastline and the horizon that designed by relatively small firms, and are notable not for ordinarily divide these entities are dissolved by an infinity the fame of their creators but for their intrinsic architectural pool which mediates a seamless transition between the three. Ultimately, this compendium invites the reader to merit. Whilst they may not generate the same headlines as Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, David Adjaye or Zaha reconsider the complex relationship between nature and Hadid, this volume draws well-deserved attention to these humanity via the versatility of water. Evoking tranquillity in underappreciated gems. Its gaze is not limited to homes some properties, lakes or pools can also inspire awe or fear, of show-stopping extravagance; more restrained structures be relegated into the background as a decorative feature or, are also featured, such as the four timber-clad cabins that as at House on the Cliff (2015) by GilBartolomé Architects, make up the Manshausen Island Resort (2015). Realised by elevated to become a centrepiece. Buildings are typically Stinessen Arkitektur, these compact holiday homes cling thought of as static; water, by its very nature, is fluid. The to the edge of a rocky outcrop in the Steigen archipelago homes featured are proof that this apparent dichotomy is in northern Norway. Their timber cladding, which affords not insurmountable. Taylor-Foster quotes the poet Johann privacy from the other residences, gives way to full-height Wolfgang von Goethe, who “described architecture as ‘frozen glazing as the cabins cantilever over the water, maximising music’, which has always implied – to me, at least – that it their remarkable coastal views. “A good building deals with can be liquid. Structures can be as flexible as the minds of its particular location in an intelligent way,” says Taylor- those involved – and creativity, like fluidity, has an uncanny Foster. “Sometimes that might demand a gentle form which way of finding its way through the smallest cracks.” As they says very little; at other times that might demand a louder, strive to achieve a harmonious interaction between the more boisterous piece of design.” These understated cabins built environment and the organic world, these visionary clearly fall into the former category; simple and unassuming designers have turned silent structures into dynamic forces.
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Right: GilBartolomé Architects, The House on the Cliff, 2015, Granada, Spain. Image credit: Jesús Granada,
Words Bart Bryant-Mole
www.phaidon.com
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Empirical Landscapes Sallie Harrison
Geometric Los Angeles is a celebration of the city and a discovery of a multi-dimensional culture. Translating the physical movement of the literary flâneur into a photographic diary, Sallie Harrison’s (b. 1989) series offers a view of the topography that is at once aesthetically pleasing and conceptually withdrawn. Rendered through a pared-back simplicity, the sprawling terrain is observed through details rather than as a whole, much like the exploits of 21st century wanderers and street dwellers who encounter, experience and remember only portions of the metropolis. Harrison provides fleeting memories of a sprawling, highly sensory environment, resting at the periphery of the landscape – rather than offering an omniscient perspective. Reflecting the human condition, the images are tinged by perceived dichotomies of masculinity and femininity. Sharp angular shapes are met with complementary pastel palettes. www.sallieharrison.com.
Sallie Harrison, Glendale, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Frogtown, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Silver Lake, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Frogtown, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Pasadena, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Beverly Hills, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Atwater, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Frogtown, LA, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Melrose Ave, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Salk Institute, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Sallie Harrison, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 2015-Present. From the series Geometric Los Angeles.
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Embracing Modification Unmade promoting customer-led fashion through customisation, innovation and sustainability, unmade present a new, flexible model for contemporary retail.
Unmade, a fashion technology business, was launched in version of the Unmade platform launched, quickly garnering 2013 by Kirsty Emery (a Textiles and Knitwear graduate), Hal interest – and accolades. Beginning by collaborating with Watts and Ben Alun-Jones (both Innovation Design graduates), “several emerging designers,” within a few months they who all studied at the Royal College of Arts, London. Offer- “started getting a lot of interest from much bigger businesses.” ing customisation through e-commerce interfaces, the trio’s In 2017, they were invited to reinterpret the Breton shirt for organisation facilitates the development of a dialogue be- MoMA, a huge achievement and opportunity, for which they tween designers and customers, bringing together all of their were selected to demonstrate “what fashion can mean in the specialisms to synthesise craft and innovation. They are now future, the vision of mechanised, one-off products.” The firm’s able to work directly with production lines in factories, where contribution turns an iconic piece of fashion into something an order can be made exactly to a buyer’s specification and very different: “all the stripes become fluid flows, and when sent directly to them. Alun-Jones describes this as “unlocking you touch the sweater in the exhibition, all the lines will move around your fingers and become distorted and disrupted.” an amazing opportunity to create one-off pieces.” In terms of the journey from design to production, Recent clients include Opening Ceremony (a global fashion community which is inspired by the Olympic Games) and Far- customisation is a complex process, but Unmade make it Fetch (an online retail platform), along with a collaboration with look simple. Essentially, upon visiting the website of one MoMA, New York. Now, through embracing new technologies, of the firm’s clients, a shopper selects a product, opts to they are engaging with key issues in modern design – namely, change it, and the Unmade system loads up. The platform sustainability, and the development of forward-thinking tech- is inherently flexible, but in terms of its general use, it is at this point “you can take one of the products and there are niques for reducing mass production and its related waste. A project with UK Sport for the British Olympic cycling team a number of options available on entering text, or a name, provided the initial impetus for exploring the possibilities of or a letter. You can take a graphic and move it around, in industrial knitting machines. “We realised,” Alun-Jones says, order to make a particular print. You can scale or rotate it. “that these machines were amazing, and that you could make There are also more interesting things you can do, like take a bespoke item using technology, but there was this big a grid and bend or warp it. The result is that buyers might problem in terms of how to develop the software to unlock choose something they know very well but create a new its potential.” After applying for grants, the team founded version based on their own individual input.” Once the item Knyttan, a prototype firm, which “essentially showed what has been purchased, the order goes directly to a factory you could do with the technology we were making” and and is produced according to their specifications. In many enabled investment-raising. In October 2015, the first ways this chimes with fashion’s increasing use of augmented
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Courtesy of UNMADE.
“We believe that with digital technology you can treat people much more as exclusive customers – and with that you’re no longer guessing for an audience, you’re working for an individual.”
Previous Page: Courtesy of UNMADE. Left: Courtesy of UNMADE.
reality and the capacity to visualise – and indeed, nearly, to fashion, the company toes an interesting line between the past and future of design: “Clearly much of what we do exists experience – something personalised prior to its purchase. One critical implication of this process relates to sustain- because of the logistical tools that we use, and the web is ability and thinking more widely about the environment. By a platform you can use to connect all of these different producing garments on demand, Unmade offer one solution factories and all of these diverse machines together,” Alunto a big issue in modern industrial production: waste. This Jones explains. He also praises e-commerce, which means is something the team see as comprising one of their main the firm can “launch something very cheaply and quickly, so responsibilities: in their approach, no item is ever surplus to we can try ideas out in different locations without committing requirements. Much of the fashion industry, of course, has to overproducing.” They can, in fact, offer a product for sale now moved away from the use of landfill, preferring to re- before it has ever been made: “It’s only when the customer cycle, sell on, or donate, but overproduction does remain a places an order that we actually manufacture it. The fact they problem – and, as Alun-Jones highlights, so does the con- can do that from mobile phones, tablets, the sofa at home or tinued prevalence of clothing that is, essentially, designed their desk demonstrates exactly how things have changed.” to be disposable by its very nature. Indeed, the ability to buy This means, crucially, that no item produced goes unsold. Responsive practices of this kind may seem somewhat something with an element of self-design represents a longterm personal investment in financial and emotional terms futuristic, but in many ways Unmade’s work harks back to that is in fact the antithesis of fast fashion. In rallying in this the process of garment production which prevailed prior way, the young company has the potential to offer a strategy to the rise of industrialisation and mass production. “The both for reducing waste and making production more effi- fundamental part of what we’ve done is to use technology cient. “The system at the minute has a lot of opportunities to to go back to a very old-fashioned idea,” Alun-Jones says. be more responsive and therefore sustainable. So that’s what “Before the Industrial Revolution, people would just go and we’re aiming towards. We believe that with digital technol- buy a product from the shop and it would be made to order. ogy you can treat people much more as exclusive customers And that whole process was lost with the rise of machines and – and with that you’re no longer guessing for an audience, mass creation. We’re trying to use the new digital tools to be you’re working for an individual.” This is a much more per- able to bring this option back for everyone. What if you can sonal and direct method of communication than the use of use technology to offer bespoke items to the wider public?” This opportunity taps into a growing need in the fashion trend-forecasting agencies – such as WGSN – (which fulfil a similar role on a much larger-scale, also contributing to industry to communicate directly with customers – as seen in increased efficiency in production). In Unmade’s approach, a the increasing use of social media in recent years – allowing consumers to feel engaged not only with the items they buy, conversation is facilitated between producer and consumer. By offering industrially produced yet still custom-made but also with the producers. Design is increasingly personal.
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Courtesy of UNMADE.
None of this should, however, be seen to signify a diminishing role for the imaginations behind the clothes. In an age when a sweater can be customised at the touch of a button – or a few finger swipes on a touchscreen – it might seem that the customer’s creative agency, rather than the designer’s, is everything. Whilst acknowledging that this idea, if extended, could be seen as a threat to those who work behind the scenes to create garments, Unmade is adamant that expertise is still critical in the industry. “It’s actually amazing to be engaged in a significant and new conversation. It means that you’re not offering static pieces anymore, but the opportunity to be part of a story that ends in a product. “Basically, companies now have the capacity to make a unique product with ease. One example is a hound’s-tooth scarf where you can break apart all the individual teeth. So, a level of disruption is chosen – but clearly every single item is part of the same collection. If the pieces were placed next to each other you’d know that even though each specific garment is different, they all mirror each other through a consistent theme.” Evidently, the role of the designer is still key: “We’re providing the interactivity, but we’re not replacing the humans behind it – all the expertise is still held by the people – dictating the material, shape, and all those integral aspects. The idea is to enable more efficient methodology, and in doing so we allow the buyer to be involved.” This outcome links back to sustainability: production is possible at the same speed and cost, but with a vital layer of interactivity. Clearly, Unmade is at the forefront of a number of exciting new areas of development. Their practice forms an intersection between fashion, online identities and modern businesses. This is reflected in the variety of awards which
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they have won in the past four years. Alun-Jones sees this as an endorsement of their team, which, numbering 24, has grown significantly since the firm’s early days, but still remains close-knit. “It’s a validation of everyone,” he says of their success with the British Fashion Council, D&AD, and Drapers Digital Award, to name just a few. “It shows that we’re going in the right direction, and that this isn’t just something that we think is a good idea! It’s good to know. But other than that, it’s a massive honour, particularly to be recognised by the British Council, or the Yellow Pencil (D&AD), which is one of the best awards that anyone can win for digital design.” In 2018, Unmade will continue to expand: they recently agreed to work with the luxury British cycling label Rapha on a long-term basis, along with a number of other prestigious and thought-provoking collaborations, which, Alun-Jones states, cannot be revealed to the public at this stage. “We have just launched a major partnership with a well-known global brand – a customisation programme in knitwear.” They’ll be bringing the company’s individual touch to these high-profile new partners. Alun-Jones says: “The opportunities that we’re creating for these other labels is to enable a platform that offers unprecedented interfaces between customers and manufacturing, connecting all the dots, so that factories can directly ship products to the end consumer and therefore all the steps and complexities between a unique order and industrial production are removed. That’s the idea.” In other words, they will use their technological platforms to streamline purchasing processes, whilst adding a layer of individuality even to mass-produced garments. If this is the future of fashion, it’s certainly an appealing prospect: sustainable, responsive and inclusive.
Right: Courtesy of UNMADE. www.unmade.com
Words Anna Feintuck www.unmade.com
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Kinetic Structures Yener Torun
In 2014, Turkish-born Yener Torun (b. 1982) began an Instagram account (@cimkedi) focusing on the lesser-known buildings and side-streets of Istanbul. He studied architecture at Istanbul Technical University and worked as a designer for eight years, which enabled him to develop a vision of structural asymmetry, creating satisfying balance in vibrant compositions. Repetition presents itself as a monumental force: high rises, apartment blocks and resort complexes unfold timelessly before the viewer. On occasion, purposeful figures can be seen permeating the building’s glassy and colour-blocked surfaces, alleviating a sense of stasis. Standing behind closed windows and balconies, characters move beyond domesticity, suggesting psychological introspection and playful intent. Torun’s expansive portfolio, acclaimed for its clean-cut shadows and flourishing forms, has been recognised by publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post and CBS News. www.yenertorun.net.
Yener Torun, Contagion. A dormitory in Eyup district, Istanbul, May 2017.
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Yener Torun, A Room With a View. Hotel in Beyoglu district, Istanbul, July 2015.
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Yener Torun, Neverwinter. Hotel in Marmaris district, Mugla, April 2016.
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Yener Torun, Rubik’s 3.1. Office building in Beykoz district, Istanbul, June 2016.
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Yener Torun, Formation. Social housing in Karsiyaka district, Izmir, July 2017.
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Yener Torun, And The Survey Says... Elementary school in Yenimahalle district, Ankara, November 2017.
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Yener Torun, This House Is A Circus. Dormitory in Bornova district, Izmir, June 2016.
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Yener Torun, Fair Enough. Social housing in Maltepe district, Istanbul, April 2015.
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Yener Torun, Totally Edible. Elementary school in Cigli district, Izmir, July 2017.
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Yener Torun, Wall Of Serpents. Apartment building in Sisli district, Istanbul, April 2016.
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Yener Torun, With a Little Help From my Friends. Multi-storey car park in Konak district, Izmir, August 2017.
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Yener Torun, Rhythm Is Love. Shopping centre in Bahcelievler district, Istanbul, June 2015.
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Yener Torun, Flock. Social housing in Maltepe district, Istanbul, April 2015.
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Symbolic Compositions Vikram Kushwah
India-born Vikram Kushwah (b. 1983) now lives in England where he practises as a fine art and fashion photographer, working for the likes of Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, and producing images that illustrate the complexities of the subconscious. Kushwah is deeply influenced by the Surrealists, the Freudian theory of The Uncanny, and fantastical childhood stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Both his personal and commercial series offer an alternative sense of time and place, self-consciously reflecting on the ways in which daydreams can merge with reality. This is translated into playful, meticulouslystaged compositions that carry an imaginative thirst for creativity and a desire to inject a sense of visionary freedom. A previous Aesthetica Art Prize longlistee, Kushwah has been recognised widely, including being featured in Vogue Italia amongst their New Talents in 2012 and winning a Young Lions Award at Cannes in 2013. www.vikramkushwah.com.
Vikram Kushwah, from the series It Was All Yellow for Vogue India. Model: Liza Golden. Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn. Stylist: Priyanka Kapadia. Hair & Makeup: Mira Parmar. Photography: Vikram Kushwah
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Vikram Kushwar, from the series Hook, Line and Sinker. Originally appeared in Vogue India. Model: Smita Lasrado; Stylist: Ria Kamat; Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn; Hair & Makeup: Sandhya Shekar; Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwar, from the series Hook, Line and Sinker. Originally appeared in Vogue India. Model: Smita Lasrado; Stylist: Ria Kamat; Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn; Hair & Makeup: Sandhya Shekar; Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwah, from the series It Was All Yellow for Vogue India. Model: Liza Golden. Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn. Stylist: Priyanka Kapadia. Hair & Makeup: Mira Parmar. Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwah, from the series It Was All Yellow for Vogue India. Model: Liza Golden. Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn. Stylist: Priyanka Kapadia. Hair & Makeup: Mira Parmar. Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwar, from the series Hook, Line and Sinker. Originally appeared in Vogue India. Model: Smita Lasrado; Stylist: Ria Kamat; Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn; Hair & Makeup: Sandhya Shekar; Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwar, from the series Hook, Line and Sinker. Originally appeared in Vogue India. Model: Smita Lasrado; Stylist: Ria Kamat; Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn; Hair & Makeup: Sandhya Shekar; Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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Vikram Kushwar, from the series Hook, Line and Sinker. Originally appeared in Vogue India. Model: Smita Lasrado; Stylist: Ria Kamat; Art Director: Jolie Wernette-Horn; Hair & Makeup: Sandhya Shekar; Photography: Vikram Kushwah.
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exhibition reviews
1 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 A group show
NPG’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 presents an extraordinary collection from across the world for its 10th anniversary. Celebrating diversity, the exhibition sets to galvanise and question the current political climate. The theme of national identity stands at the core of the collection; Adam Hinton hunts for Brexit supporters, Owen Harvey subverts skinhead stereotypes, whilst Camille Mack and Craig Bernard bring London’s black community to the forefront. Yet perhaps the most striking coupling is that of Georgie Wileman’s Endometriosis, highlighting invisible disabilities, set alongside the grotesque reality of childbirth in Sophie’s First Breath by Sean Smith. Both challenge the traditional representation of the nude female form by representing the strength, suffering and capabilities of women’s bodies. This theme continues with an ethereal image of a mermaid-like mother by Matthew Hamon.
Anchored down by her two children, the action contradicts the surreal scene as she wades towards her hair bands. The winning portrait, Amadou Sumaila by César Dezfuli features a migrant rescued off the Libyan coast, his gaze burning. The sea behind seems endless; the subject is floating above no solid land. Redefining the portrait, Alva White’s Some Survive. Thousands Die shows a tessellation of refugee bodies with one solo figure turned away However, the endearing portraits of youthfulness imply hope: Ugandan children are illuminated by education in Tommy Hatwell’s Night School and Monika Merva’s daughter is caught in a moment of contemplation. The most poignant pieces focus on the personal and banal: subjects bathing or studying, and sandwich-snatching dogs on the British seaside. Revelling in our messy tangle of cultures, it both evokes and questions national pride.
Words Annabel Herrick
National Portrait Gallery 16 November - 8 February www.npg.org.uk
2 Geometry of Light Lucien Hervé
If Lucien Hervé (1910-2007) became a photographer almost by accident, filling in for Miklós Müller at Marianne magazine in 1939, his images leave nothing to chance. Organised by Paris’ Jeu de Paume at the Château de Tours, Geometry of Light offers a thorough introduction to the artist’s work, influenced by Bauhaus and modernist architecture, characterised by attention to composition and infused with humanism. The exhibition’s first floor, presenting works chronologically, traces the development of Hervé’s creative process from his arrival in France in the early 1930s to a decisive meeting with Le Corbusier in 1949, an encounter that marked Hervé’s shift towards architecture as subject matter. Early pieces from the series Paris Without Leaving My Window, show a marked interest in the interplay of light and shadow as well as a preference for black and white photographic techniques, which would remain the two defining aspects throughout the artist’s career. Organised by theme, the rooms on the second floor more
prominently feature pieces that break away from traditional modes of representation, building on earlier experimentations with perspective and challenging the objectivism of structural photography. A series on New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar observatory comprises vertiginous points of view, almost creating a sense of trompe-l’oeil that leaves the viewer without clear points of reference to navigate these carefully constructed spaces. Profoundly subjective, these unique compositions seem to suggest one thing: the artist is present. Whether they’re strangers, family members or fellow visionaries, individuals are given a primary role in these compositions. Tightly framed within the salient features of their architectural surroundings, these silent characters – factory or construction workers, passers-by, tourists – are one with their environment. Acting at the same time as both the invisible spectator and discreet protagonist of the compositions, humanity always remains at the heart of Hervé’s practice.
Words Virna Gvero
Jeu de Paume, Château de Tours 18 November - 27 May www.jeudepaume.org
3 Room for Art Matt + Fiona
Architectural educationalists Matt + Fiona (Matthew Springett and Fiona MacDonald) have collaborated with year six pupils at Lansbury Lawrence Primary School to produce Room for Art, a project commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery, London. The physical site of the commission is the Modernist Lansbury Lawrence Primary School, where together they are building the school’s new Art Room. The Lansbury Estate is located in the London borough of Tower Hamlets near Canary Wharf and the Olympic Park, an area on the edge of swift redevelopment. In 1951, the Festival of Britain featured major projects on the South Bank of the Thames. Part of this was the Live Architecture exhibition, which re-envisioned the urban renewal of East London, including the creation of the Lansbury Estate, in a design that proposed a new model for community-focused neighbourhood planning. The duo has paired with the pupils for 12 weeks to realise a dream space for creating art. In galleries five and six, the
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Whitechapel reveals the processes and products of the collaboration, one that captures and echoes a sense of utopian optimism through the selection of this particular site. The post-war architecture of the building both inspires and contextualises the pupils’ ideas and the final design. Drawings and maquettes featuring various individual visions for the space are shown alongside a vibrant site model and prototype ceramic tiles. A lattice timber skeleton section model of the art room with bright yellow cladding towers in full-scale whilst photographs of the collaboration in action are displayed on the surrounding walls. The gallery offers a glimpse of the design in situ, as well as of the children experiencing the materials and critically engaging throughout the creative process as they form their own space for visual expression. This practice further illustrates how applying creativity can potentially extend beyond the school and into the local neighbourhood.
Words Ashton Chandler Guyatt
Whitechapel Gallery 5 December - 4 March www.whitechapelgallery.org
1. Prism, Scout by Cig Harvey, 2017. © Cig Harvey. Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2017 is at the National Portrait Gallery from 16 November 2017 - 8 February 2018. 2a. Lucien Hervé, Beach, circa 1960’s. © Lucien Hervé, Paris. 2b. Lucien Hervé, Cathedral, Brasilia, Brasil (architect: Oscar Niemeyer), 1961. © Lucien Hervé, Paris. 3. Matt+Fiona, Made in Oakfield. Photo: Matt+Fiona.
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4. Edmund Clark, In Place of Hate, HMP Grendon, 2017. Courtesy of the artist, Ikon and Flowers Gallery. Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 6 December 2017 - 11 March 2018, www.ikon-gallery.org. 5a. James Casebere, Yellow Overhand with Patio, 2017. Archival pigment print, 112.7 x 168.9 cm (Framed 119.4 x 175.7 x 5.7 cm.) Ed. AP 1/2. © Courtesy by the artist and Galería Helga de Alvear. 5b. James Casebere, Vestibule, 2017. Archival pigment print, 157.5 x 112.7 cm (Framed 164.3 x 119.8 x 5.7 cm.) Ed. AP 1/2, © Courtesy by the artist and Galería Helga de Alvear. 6. Awoiska van der Molen, #274-5 from the series Sequester, 2011 ©Awoiska van der Molen.
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4 In Place of Hate Edmund Clark
Hundreds of backlit flowers and their intricate veins, are exposed in an expansive light-box. Picked from the grounds of HMP Grendon, pressed between prison-issue paper towels and displayed in a cubic vitrine, this lineageladen botany incarcerates an area which corresponds to the size of a Grendon cell – hence the piece’s title, 1.98m2. This interior, accessed by a slim entry point, invites us to observe the flora from the “other” side. It’s an abstract yet apt introduction to In Place of Hate, the culmination of Edmund Clark’s four-year-long residency at the prison. Grendon’s status as Europe’s sole entirely therapeutic prison offers an ideal starting point for Clark, whose interests lie in softening the boundaries between “us” and “them.” In Vanishing Point, viewers delve into the prison’s architecture: five vertical monitors display partially-redacted content of corridors and exercise yards. And Oresteia screens a psychodrama session across three TVs in
a therapeutic circle of chairs. The former engages with incarceration’s physical limitations, whilst the latter draws on inmates’ psychological progress and development. Meanwhile, My Shadow’s Reflection unites the physical and emotional through projections of architecture, flowers and persons associated with the prison onto ceiling-hung bedsheets. The most intriguing imagery is a series of pin-hole camera portraits which compound six minutesworth of inmates’ responses to questions about their past. Ghostlike, these projections withhold each sitter’s identity, their facial movements blurred by Clark’s medium. The audience acquires a mere a glimpse of those “behind the wall.” The artist notes: “‘We’ on the outside cease to see ‘them’ on the inside, as if humanity stops at the exterior wall.” By placing 1.98m2’s translucent flora and My Shadow’s Reflection’s redemptive subject matter into the gallery, he softens the stark divide between good and evil.
Words Selina Oakes
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham 6 December - 11 March www.ikon-gallery.org
5 Emotional Architecture James Casebere
James Casebere (b. 1953) is both a photographer and an artisan. From the very beginning of his career in the late 1970s he has worked in the field of constructed photography. With infinite patience, he creates table-size models of structural spaces to photograph. The precision of these models is impressive, to the point that viewers have to constantly remind themselves that the life-size pictures are the result of hours of design and construction. Casebere has portrayed hand-made prison cells, suburban neighbourhoods and Islamic architecture in recent years. However, the gallery’s latest series sees Casebere turn his attention to the work of Pritzker-winning architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988), an individual who advocated the creation of an “emotional architecture” (a term coined with artist Mathias Goeritz), seeking to add a sensual quality to the often cold functionalism of Modernism. Colour and light
were essential to this philosophy, drawing inspiration from both Mediterranean architecture and the popular culture of the visionary’s own native Mexico. For anyone who has visited any of Barragán’s buildings, they will be instantly recognisable in the recent photographs on display at Helga de Alvear. Casebere has perfectly captured the qualities which make the Mexican’s work so unique, not least its spiritual nature; Barragán aimed to create spaces for silence and meditation through beauty, a notion that is entirely replicated in the hand-made scenarios which are exhibited. Emptied of all human presence; cavernous rooms revel in geometric and spatial expanse. This austerity allows the architecture speak for itself, pointing towards events that may be just about to happen and revealing the influence of film on Casebere’s work. He is an artist that knows that some things are best said when they are merely suggested.
Words Rubén Cervantes Garrido
Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid 30 November - 10 February www.helgadealvear.com
6 Into the Woods: Trees in Photography COLLECTED TECHNIQUES
Tucked away in a secluded corner of the V&A, Into the Woods: Trees in Photography surveys the evolution of photographic craftsmanship through the lens of humanity’s enduring fascination with trees. Comprising works by 40 celebrated artists including Agnes Warburg, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tokihiro Satō and Tal Shochat, the selection showcases milestones in early technological developments alongside surrealist, scientific, experimental and highly abstract approaches. Whether experiencing nature in primal wonderment or meditative solitude, the practitioners’ unique perspectives are present in each image. Awoiska van der Molen’s monochrome study of looming branches from the series Sequester (2011) penetrates the encroaching shroud of dusk using a long exposure. The velvet matte quality of the print enhances the foreboding impression of an engulfing darkness and the artist’s profound isolation. Bae Bien-U’s
contribution from the series Sonamu (Pine Tree) (2014) expresses a sense of mystery, clarity and contemplation which draws upon the ancient symbolism of the pine tree in South Korea – gnarled, lichen-encrusted trunks and shadows are captured with an inky, calligraphic softness. Many works interrogate human interactions with the environment – witnessed in the lurking, grave-like stumps of Gerhard Stromberg’s Coppice (King’s Wood) (1994) or the gangly silhouettes of trees backlit by a murky suburban expanse in Robert Adam’s On Signal Hill, overlooking Long Beach, California (1983). With these environmentalist undertones, the show marks the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest and the launch of the 2017 Charter for Trees, Woods and People, which aim to reconnect people to British woodlands. Through a diverse range of analogue, digital and printing techniques, the exhibition records the minutiae and grandeur of the natural world.
Words Verity Seward
V&A, London 18 November - 22 April www.vam.ac.uk
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Film still: Curzon Artificial Eye 2018.
film
Flexible Viewpoint jupiter’s moon
“The socio-political context that comes hand in hand with Aryan’s heritage and forthcoming mission is unavoidable, bringing what could be a cutting and bold take to the sci-fi genre.”
Words Beth Webb
www.curzonartificialeye.com
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A Syrian refugee, shot down when trying to flee his home- young girl raced through the city to find her dog, blind faith land, resurrected and seemingly immortal, has to be a sce- leading her to believe that their friendship will overcome all nario that, regardless of your investment in sci-fi, will raise obstacles. Aryan is on a mission to find the father he lost an eyebrow. The follow-up to Kornél Mundruczó’s Prize Un during their escape, driven by a similar thirst for the familiar. If this alone was the premise of the feature, Jupiter’s Moon Certain Regarde-winning White God, Jupiter’s Moon is at best would be home and dry. The socio-political context that an entirely unique and visually assertive original story. Set in Hungary in the present-day, Mundruczó’s film kills comes hand in hand with Aryan’s heritage and forthcoming off the hero Aryan within the opening chapter, gunned down mission is unavoidable, bringing what could be a bold conby a crooked soldier who is not at all concerned by the fact tribution to the sci-fi genre, and opening up questions on the that his target is unarmed and has the face of a woodland conflict in an entirely new way. Cinematically, the film shines animal caught in the headlights. Rushed into a medical in the scenes where Aryan’s takes flight – creative resourcefacility, Aryan swiftly recovers and acquires the ability to fly, fulness compensates for the limited budget – however, the feature unfurls rapidly, weighing down a clean and effective a miracle soon capitalised upon by his shady doctor Gabor. The seeds of this just-so-bizarre-it-could-work concept were concept with weary subplots. The story becomes excessive, planted when Mundruczó re-read a childhood book about a packing in subculture dealings, gratuitous nudity and a terflying boy – raising questions about believing past physical rorist attack that sits outside of the overall tone completely. Mundruczó’s next feature takes him to Hollywood, with limitation – a novel he was reminded of when filming in refugee camps some years later. The cruelty embedded in the Bradley Cooper playing a former astronaut opposite Wonder crisis of the film is shown with the eyes of someone who has Woman’s Gal Gadot. The filmmaker’s vision, it seems, is alseen this firsthand; the desperation and the displacement are ready over there; Jupiter’s Moon feels, in the end, a little harrowing and authentic. Mundruczó also has a winning lead forced. Fans of the director and previous feats such as White in Zsombor Jéger, whose sombre disposition and innocence God may see this feature as a gateway between a promising make him a believable person of substance amongst the cor- debut and Mundruczó’s intended journey to bigger things stateside. As a standalone chapter, however, it’s a promising ruption orchestrated at the expense of his fellow refugees. In White God, again written and directed by Mundruczó, a idea that is ultimately clouded by ambition beyond its reach.
Diversifying Programming London Short Film Festival
short filmmaking. Chris Kraus, now more relevant than ever “‘We felt that we thanks to Amazon’s adaptation of her bestselling novel I wanted to develop the Love Dick last year, received an evening dedicated to her idea of the ‘auteur’ short filmmaking this year, with her undeniable humour and filmmakers who may honest approach to sexuality clearly present throughout. perhaps fall through And Ngozi Onwurah, a pioneer of black British cinema, took the cracks, not to the stage to talk about her earnest, arresting shorts from making mainstream the 1980s and 1990s that capture the painful experiences work but not on the that come with growing up in a time of hatred and ignorance. artist filmmaker Occasionally controversial, devastating and consistently circuit either.’” striking, the event shows its eye for films that need to be dusted off and presented in the modern day. “For me, it’s important to show work by filmmakers we admire, who we feel should be exposed to new imaginations,” says Ilson. “I was excited by our Harmony Korine focus two years ago, and since then we’ve opened that out to bring in lesser known but equally talented and original filmmakers.” LSFF also showcased a diverse platter of work covering everything from Muslim punk subculture (Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam) to a gay Russian teen who finds hope in Words American movies (Little Potato). Ilson further notes: “We’re on Beth Webb the lookout for work that surprises. It’s important to search out what’s there beyond the straight white male demographic and, with the current climate and debates, this is hopefully happening right across the board of the film industry.” www.shortfilms.org.uk
Film still from WOLVES. Director: Maria Balduzzi, courtesy LSFF.
There is a strong chance that of the budding filmmakers who presented their work at this year’s London Short Film Festival (LSFF) one will be the next Peter Strickland. One might be the next Francis Lee, whose feature debut God’s Own Country stormed the British Independent Film Awards last year, or Alice Lowe, director of acclaimed pregnant assassin film Prevenge. It’s a strong chance, because such directors had also showcased their early short work at LSFF, an event now into its 15th year that is able to not only recommend bold and exciting new short cinema, but also celebrate the careers that they helped to make. A retrospective called We Dare To Fail: 15 Years of LSFF included work from Strickland, Lee and Lowe as well as Hope Dickson Leach, director of The Levelling, and an early entry from Nina Forever directors The Blaine Brothers. As well as acquiring shorts, the annual event has taken a notable step into commissioning over the past few years with the launch of its With Teeth fund. “We felt that we wanted to develop the idea of ‘auteur’ filmmakers who may perhaps fall through the cracks, not making mainstream work but not on the artist filmmaker circuit either,” explains Philip Ilson, Festival Director. This year’s commissions were an all-female selection, with animation, documentary and multi-screen fiction from Kim Noce, Zoe Aiano and Tash Tung respectively. Auteurism is a main pillar of the event’s programming, with exciting bodies of work from some of the boldest voices in
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Image: © John Londono.
music
Conceptualising Truth Essaie Pas
“Compassion is central to the album, the pair say, citing both the work of addiction specialist Dr Gabor Matém author of The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and their own experiences.”
Words Charlotte R-A
www.essaiepas. bandcamp.com.
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Over half a century on from his heyday, sci-fi author Philip Guerineau says that the plan was to create a conceptual K. Dick’s work continues to speak to us. Why? “Because he album, one that mined someone else’s universe. “In a very was a visionary,” points out Marie Davidson, one half of solipsistic way, you always end up talking about yourself, I electronic Montreal duo Essaie Pas. There’s also something guess. We’ve both had issues with self-destructive behaviours, timeless about Dick’s search for the truth, adds bandmate mostly via substance abuse, since our teenage years.” ComPierre Guerineau. “Novel after novel, Dick was building his passion is central to the album, the pair say, citing both the own cosmology, exploring different realities, different selves, work of addiction specialist Dr Gabor Maté, author of The looking for answers to universal and eternal existential Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and their own experiences. “I see addicts in the streets, in clubs where I play live,” says Davidson. questions: who am I? Or, is this reality the only reality?” Dick’s druggy, dystopic 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly is the “I know how easy it is to fall in deep and never come back.” Like Dick, the duo are concerned with surveillance culture. “If central touchstone behind the duo’s striking new album on DFA Records, New Path. They’re far from the first musicians to draw you cannot be yourself, in all your contradictions, if you can’t on the author’s work – everyone from Sonic Youth to Janelle explore your fantasies, unpopular opinions or beliefs, be ecoMonáe has folded the Dick’s worlds into their music. But whilst nomically unproductive, or just try and fail, without being anaMonáe uses these android dreams to liberationist ends, Essaie lysed or judged, it leads to alienation,” says Guerineau. In A Scanner Darkly, the Narcs have to spy on the junkies Pas prefer to offer up questions rather than answers, echoing the novel’s darkest themes – addiction, loss, espionage – via through objects called holocameras. “Today”, as Davidson observes, “we commit this surveillance ourselves, through their hypnotic, mind-bending synth reveries. “We decided to pay tribute to the book because we find the mobile phones, social media, facial recognition and profiling.” Despite the heavy themes, New Path is more shadowy thrill story compelling,” says Davidson. “We’re deeply touched by protagonist Bob Arctor’s drama. The double-lives the charac- than hand-wringing treatise, spiked with sly wryness. “Humour ters lead, especially Arctor’s, are an illustration of an addict’s is key to keep doing what we do,” says Davidson. “I believe everyday pain and misery. Paranoia; the eternal search for this, alongside compassion, is the only way to stay mentally drug money; treachery among friends; fear of authority – it all healthy in this era.” Guerineau agrees. “When it comes to resisting the crush of existence, comedy is one of the best tools.” leads to their isolation and dissociation from society.”
Charting Human Journeys Son Lux
two sittings. The recording and production is another matter, “The gift and of course.” Mourning is a strange and personal passage, some- responsibility of thing we all face eventually. For Lott, there has been no tidy bringing new life into resolution. “I don’t mean to be grim, but I’m still waiting for the world is explored consolation in the form of a lesson.” He credits his son, Remy, to poetic ends on the born before the album was completed – “snuck in at the last album; it’s something minute, on 12 December” – as his hero. “He came through Lott takes seriously. at the end of 2016 to save the day. He kept me smiling, and ‘As we freefall into looking for a purpose beyond myself and the moment.” madness as a country, The gift and responsibility of bringing new life into the world the burden to change is explored to poetic ends on the album. “As we freefall into course becomes madness as a country, the burden to change course becomes exponentially greater.’” exponentially greater. That burden is on my son’s shoulders. He was born with it. Because of the many privileges afforded me by my parents, wealth, and whiteness, I had been sheltered from having to imagine that possibility. The first time I apologised to my son was election night. He was still in the womb.” Promo for the album is the next step, says Lott. “I’m excited to tour, but I’m also terrified. I’ve travelled some, but I haven’t toured since Remy was born. It will be hard on my family. I’m nervous about the live show, but I’m always nervous about the Words stage performance. That’s the job. It’s always been a thrill, in Charlotte R-A the end, discovering the “other” life inside of the songs, and feeling them resonate in the atmosphere of a new place every night, through the ears of thousands of strangers.” www.music.sonluxmusic.com
Son Lux. Image: Alix Spence.
Last year, whilst discussing her last two records with Pitchfork’s Sasha Geffen, Björk spoke about how emotional wounds can become gates, the pain of the former leading us to loving, transformed selves. It’s comforting, then, to think there might be a similar, healing note in the title of the new Son Lux album: Brighter Wounds. Ryan Lott’s American trio have been crafting a shifting, experimental, falsetto-clad sound since their 2008 debut, At War With Walls & Mazes. Their sixth album is just so, a deeply personal work with “a distinctly soulful quality that I hadn’t expected,” says Lott. Brighter Wounds was conceived during a time of extreme emotional crosscurrents for the frontman. Preparing for the birth of his first child, Lott found himself simultaneously losing his best friend to cancer. Against all this, was the fraught backdrop of American politics in 2016, with its frothing presidential election. How, I wonder, amidst such personal and political flux, did Lott find a creative compass, a direction in which to create? “The goal is to be honest,” says Lott. “Music is breathing, it has to be done, and we breathe as our bodies demand it. At the end of the day, we just created, listening as we went, and obeyed the impulses and visions that formed collectively.” The resulting record is fittingly complex, both muted and expressive, devastating and hopeful. Did the songs come easily? “Several songs came easily at first, or maybe ‘quickly’ is a better word. Forty Screams and Aquatic were both written in one or
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Gramercy Park Balcony, Avenue Magazine, New York City, 1978.
books
Emotional Documentation IN PLAIN SIGHT
“Dilapidation or decomposition is another trope that has become central to the practitioner’s technique, achieved through the study of fragile structures such as pyramids.”
Words Gunseli Yalcinkaya
Damiani www.damianieditore.com
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This comprehensive monograph of Jean Pagliuso titled In overlapping images gives the piece a phantom quality that Plain Sight brings together over 50 years of photographs evokes the passage of time. Pagliusio notes: “The result is a and film stills, ranging from commissions for fashion mag- gorgeous anomaly that becomes immediately otherworldly.” Dilapidation or decomposition is another trope that has azines such as Mademoiselle to personal works that feature particular environments. The aesthetic movement known as become central to the practitioner’s technique, achieved Pictorialism – with its emphasis on creating an image rather through the study of fragile structures such as pyramids. “Enthan simply recording it – is mentioned as a key influence vironmental decay, turbulent social and religious upheavals on the photographer. This is further considered through the and general disregard is an inescapable theme of my works,” medium: gelatine applied by hand to fragile rice paper. The she explains. By capturing deteriorating settings, the pieces artist notes: “When I began to travel, I was fascinated by are given a nostalgic quality that suggests a rich history of how I could personalise the landscape that we were observ- past achievements, for example, the Step Pyramid in Egypt. Pagliuso describes revisiting the site and seeing how it had ing,” she says. “I was not simply documenting a place but I was adding my emotional reaction to what I had recorded.” changed: “The second time I came upon the structure – in This idea is explored in the book’s introduction, where the 2007 – it was no longer an imposing silhouette on an empty artist cites the trial-and-error approach fundamental to her plain,” the artist says. “I could see that a large section of it practice. When personalising a photograph, “a mistake offers had deteriorated. The scaffolding looked futile, like matcha new meaning.” Spontaneous or involuntary outcomes sticks. Here was this magnificent monumental structure.” Providing a carefully curated collection of images, In Plain reveal something different, giving the composition a force separate to its visual intentions. “I feel closest to the art when Sight reveals the emotive weight and powerful potential of photography as a mode of expression. The works have a I have lost some control. It feels like divine intervention.” The notion that miscalculations or flaws can be revelatory hallowed quality that evokes what the late cultural theorist or significant is explored in Pagliuso’s 1997 diptych depict- Mark Fisher has described as a “nostalgia for lost futures.” ing the Bayon Temple. “When I tried to sew the two sections Following this mode of thinking, each composition prompts together, the edges curled uncontrollably but I went with the viewer to consider the pathways that failed to come to it,” she explains. As a consequence, the line that divides the fruition, or the landscapes that never fully materialised.
The Subject Revealed Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins
tender – comprise one of the earliest photographic portrayals “The compositions of rebellious American youth culture,” says Pardo. Unlike speak the language Arbus, Davidson’s muses are self-styled outcasts whose of the 1960s in many resistance – in attitude, style and behaviour – is an active ways: through a raw rejection of the post-war American dream. “In the intervening intensity, by asserting years, some of these works have gained a kind of iconic status that the present due to their encapsulation of the now familiar iconography of moment is crucial 1950s youthful rebellion,” Pardo explains. and by denying a In contrast, Soth’s Broken Manual focuses on individuals who safe distance from have self-imposed their outsider status by living in isolation. the observer.” Pardo notes: “We see a number of grainy portraits of the faces of hermits. These are details of photographs shot from very far away and then enlarged to the point of blurring all details.” In this process, the artist forces the viewer to project a certain identity onto the person who is documented. The author expands: “Unrecognisable, they could belong to anyone: to the photographer or to the viewers. All of a sudden, as if placed in front of a mirror, we see ourselves. We are ‘the others.’” As revealed through the scope of the subjects, as well as the Words many photographic styles which feature in the book, the indi- Gunseli Yalcinkaya vidual on the margin is shown as a universal concept across time and space. By identifying this notion, Another Kind of Life casts a caring lens on humanity as a compositional ele- Prestel ment, projecting the Chekhovian idea that any character, if he www.prestelpublishing. is worth describing, must display some form of genuine virtue. randomhouse.de
Paz Errázuriz, from the series La Manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), 1983.
The theme of the outsider is explored in Barbican curator Alona Pardo’s latest book, Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins. Following the work of 11 practitioners operating on the fringes of society, including Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson, Larry Clark and Alec Soth, the publication gives a compassionate account of marginalised groups, from female impersonators to gang members and survivalists. Arranged in order, the book puts humanism at the centre, presenting the subject beyond its representation as the “other.” Images by Diane Arbus of circus performers, for instance, portray the outcasts as a type of muse, as opposed to an object of revulsion. “The compositions speak the language of the 1960s in many ways: through a raw intensity, by asserting that the present moment is crucial and by denying a safe distance from the observer,” explains Pardo. By narrowing the gap between voyeur and subject, the observer is forced to regard the portrait with compassion. The author continues: “What is essential to understand is that the photographer was not interested in blunt, obscene facts, but how the psyche of the person was shaped.” The portrayal of the outsider in Davidson’s work reveals otherness as symptomatic of a deeper discontent, politically. In the Brooklyn Gang series, Davidson charts the lives of teenagers in Brooklyn, New York, in 1959. “The resulting images – grainy, monochrome and yet often surprisingly
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film reviews
1
The Final Year Greg Barker
Depending on your politics, viewing this documentary about the last days of Barack Obama in the White House is an unsettling experience. What begins as an upbeat flyon-the-wall film trailing the former American president and his foreign policy team across 2016 concludes with the unexpected – certainly for all these Democrats – election victory for the Republican renegade Donald Trump. Shot over 90 days in 21 countries, Greg Barker’s film takes great pains to trumpet the foreign policy work during the late Obama years – the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate change accord, soothing diplomatic relations with Vietnam and Cuba, and so on. Yet as the film emphasises, the landscape is ever-shifting. Agreements can easily be broken (especially if your incoming leader is Trump). As cameras travel in private planes alongside officials, The Final Year does feel like a rose-tinted Democrat-
endorsed PR exercise. There is none of the behind-thescenes hysteria of a satirical show like Veep; everything is well-oiled. Barker gets one interview with Obama, and shows little inclination to scratch the surface. However, there are unguarded moments. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and a key figure in The Final Year, is lost for words on the morning of Trump’s win – quite something for the president’s speechwriter. Meanwhile, an exhausted Samantha Power, US Ambassador to the United Nations, expresses her need to re-connect with her loved ones. For many here – like John Kerry, Secretary of State and former antiwar protestor – politics is entwined with experience. A year on, with the US backing out of the Paris accord and reintroducing the Cuba embargo, you can’t help but sympathise that their work has been so brutally unpicked.
Words James Mottram
Magnolia Pictures www.magnoliapictures.com
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Thelma Joachim Trier
Joachim Trier’s fourth feature is a detour from previous works by way of a supernatural drama. Shy student Thelma (Eili Harboe) departs her religious family home to attend university in Oslo. There she experiences a violent and unexpected seizure, whilst also finding herself encountering a strong attraction to her fellow student Anja (Kaya Wilkins). As the intensity of the seizures and her feelings grow, the young heroine’s journey to understand her supernatural abilities and navigate these reactions and their consequences reveals the unexpected. The film, visually and musically, makes a positive impression on an aesthetic level. More deeply, the storytelling here chimes with the themes of oppression and the individual’s journey of self-discovery. These are ideas that possess a natural appeal and whilst touching upon nothing new, they nevertheless remind us of their timelessness. Trier seems to understand the gradients of
a narrative, and much of his film is structured in layers, of what lies on the surface versus what lies beneath. Harboe’s performance perfectly captures this with an attentive sensitivity, a peaceful delicacy that is then viscerally shattered by the violence of her seizures. Thelma is a character symbolic of the journey towards the authenticity of identity. She peels away one skin to step into a more mature skin defined by new experiences, as her world awakens, forcing her to retune. Shrouding this journey is the shadow of fear, the hesitation to separate oneself from the youthful and formative heritage of moral and spiritual, social and cultural, as well as sexual acceptability. This gives the film its sting, complemented by the bleeding together of a coming of age story with shades of Carrie, and body horror that never feels indebted to cinema, alongside Trier’s wisdom in not condemning religion and family structures.
Words Paul Risker
Thunderbird Releasing www.thunderbirdreleasing.com
3 Hotel Salvation
Shubhashish Bhutiani
Ostensibly a tale of an elderly man deciding to die and seeking the milieu for, and manner of, his death, Shubhashish Bhutiani’s Hotel Salvation (Mukti Bhawan) is, in actuality, a celebration of life, and all the joy it encompasses. Lalit Behl (Titli, 2014) plays Daya, a character who is weary of life. Enduring each day as a houseguest of his own son, there are some difficult themes approached in the feature, notably the relationship between father and son, parent and child, age and youth. Adil Hussain (perhaps best-known for his role in Life of Pi, 2012) is Rajiv, an office drone perma-welded to his mobile, who finds the notion of accompanying dear old dad on a road trip to the afterlife difficult to comprehend. A wry consideration of what it means to be old and obsolete in the modern world, Hotel Salvation (the name of the waystation packed with oldies awaiting journey’s end in the holy city of Varanasi) is a leisurely amble
through emotions. Initially irked and frustrated, Rajiv witnesses the late blossoming of his father, discovering a man that either never existed or one that rests within memory. And Daya? He enjoys a second bite of life even as the days begin to fade into the sunset. Although seemingly distracted, and at times far apart, the characters do indeed enjoy a burgeoning chemistry as they tentatively reach out to one another for empathy and understanding. They do so in a convincing way: comfortably slow and slyly comic as a two-hander that relies as much on silence and glances as it does on communication. (Audiences will find something deeply relatable in these moments.) Witnessing a growing intimacy over the iconic Ganges river – flowing in and around the hotel – is, however, tinged by the impending, darker themes. Death is always but a step away. However, and perhaps prevailingly, the end, it’s all about love.
Words Tony Earnshaw
BFI Distribution www.bfi.org.uk
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music reviews
1
Pasar De Las Luces Mint field
Innovative Leisure is one of the most accurately titled record labels of our era, continually constructing a platform for some of the most boundary pushing and yet pleasurably and potently different artists they can find. From the future jazz of BADBADNOTGOOD to the Palestinian-Filipino multi-instrumentalist Hanni El Khatib, the label roster is as varied as it is progressive, specialising in left-field yet accessible, luscious soundscapes. Fitting this eclectic bill perfectly are Mint Field, who are firmly stuck between two historically (and currently, politically) at-odds worlds – residing in the Mexican border town Tijuana, the shoegaze twosome has created a muddy, glitchy and satisfyingly warm melting pot of a modern rock record with Pasar De Las Luces. The eerily etherial Estrella Sanchez stars on lead vocals dashing each song with “oohs” and “aahs”
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Words Kyle Bryony
Innovative Leisure www.mintfield.bandcamp.com
Great Big Blue Geowulf
Listening to Geowulf’s debut LP Great Big Blue during the depths of winter gives either a welcome burst of aural Vitamin D (if you’re an optimistic type) or an unwelcome reminder of life lived without thermals (if you’re not). To say it’s sunny is, without a doubt, an understatement. From the first blissed-out chords of opening track Sunday to the final tambourine shake of Work In Progress, the influence of the duo’s Instagramready upbringing on Australia’s Sunshine Coast is clear. From the off, Star Kendrick’s vocals set a saccharine, dreamy tone. This, combined with her confessional lyrical style, evoke the likes of Lana Del Rey and Beach House vocalist Victoria Legrand. Meanwhile, guitarist Toma Banjanin and producer Duncan Mills (Spector, Peace) layer a smattering of glittery synths and a heavy dollop of shoegaze-inspired reverb magic over the top. Whilst the duo has a clear and contemporary
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that sound like they were recorded through a misty, mountainous valley far in the deep distance, and occasionally toying with spoken word in places, which evenly get lost in the hazy, heavy mix of her guitars. On songs like Cambios Del Pasar the whole listening experience feels like a stoned, slow meander through a busy house party in a part of town that has lost its way. The album is equally as lit up by drummer Amor Amezcua’s blinding percussion, bringing a noisy, lively contrast to songs like Boötes Void and dark, static drum machine beats to instrumental opener El Parque Parecia No Tener Fin. The epic Viceversa feels as smoky and orange-hued as one could imagine the Mexican sunsets it was conceived to. Mint Field’s debut album is unhindered melancholy, wrapped in atmospheric, almost at times discordant rock, and it is glorious because of it.
Chillwave sound, Great Big Blue also makes subtle nods to earlier eras, for instance, the pared-down 1980s funk and clunky Hall and Oates-style off-beat of Don’t Talk About You. Meanwhile, on track Only High the influence of 1960s girl groups like The Shangri-Las is obviously referenced, with the sharp pangs of Banjanin’s guitar giving a welcome rough edge to the smooth sound. But it’s not all tan lines and BBQs. By probing into obsession, failure and alienation, Kendrick’s lyrics pierce through all the dreamy heat with something real. On single Hideaway she croons: “Darling please why’d ya shut me out? / I tried to show you love / All you do is hide away.” This contrast draws on something universal: the idealised, blissful summers that we yearn for versus the reality of summer that we know – a period which is often tinged with apathy, disappointment and heartbreak. It’s refreshing to hear a band do it so well.
Words Grace Caffyn
37 Adventures www.soundcloud.com/geowulfmusic
Here Come The Runts AWOLNATION
Here Come The Runts is the follow up to the platinum-certified debut album Megalithic Symphony, which featured the hit Sail and 2015’s Run, supported by festival appearances and a headlining tour. AWOLNATION’s third studio album sees Aaron Bruno once again at the helm producing and writing a set of songs which take their cues from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and The Cars. Bruno spent 2016 crafting the album in his home studio in the coastal mountains separating the Pacific Ocean and the suburbs of Los Angeles where he grew up. The location is reflected throughout the album, influenced by the landscape in which it was created and which in part helped to drive the shift from electronic elements to a more guitar-driven sound. By late 2016/ early 2017, AWOLNATION had started posting cryptic messages to their social media, hinting at new music.
The album is liberally peppered with artistic, stylised ideas fused with the raw energy of rock ‘n’ roll, reaching out for newness while also acknowledging its influences. There are moments such as the fluctuating tempo and shifts in mood on the title track where the band sounds completely unshackled in a way that is perfectly suited to live performance. The hypnotic and almost psychedelic verses set against the more free-spirited chorus of Passion is an engaging juxtaposition, whilst Miracle Man edges into ZZ Top territory albeit a warped version. Lyrical uniqueness and some celebratory pop darkness lie at the heart of the radio-friendly Jealous Buffoon, exemplifying the fact that the AWOLNATION sound is at its most spirited and vital on the up-tempo tracks here, although the overall journey for the listener through the album is one of consistently satisfying aural peaks and troughs.
Words Matt Swain
Red Bull Records www.awolnationmusic.com
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book reviews
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Radical Matter Kate Franklin & Caroline Till
The name of the recently proposed geological epoch, “Anthropocene”, recognises the unprecedented impact of human beings on the Earth’s ecosystems. Radical Matter acknowledges this shocking insight, whilst offering an optimistic, alternative vision of the future. The book chronicles practitioners working towards solutions to environmental problems, foregrounding those who place sustainability at the heart of their work. Celebrating the interconnection between design and ecology, the volume inspires new approaches to making. Featured projects promote cyclical, collaborative modes of production that look simultaneously backwards and forwards, taking inspiration from the past whilst addressing the issues of tomorrow. For example, Dutch start-up StoneCycling fabricate bricks from building waste and Meike Meijer turns surplus newspaper back
into wood. Other notable companies, such as Super Local, work with communities on meaningful issues with a view to global change. Bottle-Up in Zanzibar tackles the issue of glass waste in the region, upcycling that which the country’s infrastructure cannot currently process. Highlighting stylish products created from non-virgin origins – as well as those designed to harmlessly degrade – Radical Matter proposes more renewable options for consumers. Furthermore, it uses a multidisciplinary method to survey the work of designer-makers alongside the innovations of scientists and engineers. The publication investigates biological advances in material technology, tracking the ways in which practitioners work towards a closed-loop, zero-legacy future. By placing the artist as an agent of change, it expands notions of what is possible, unearthing new approaches.
Words Eleanor Sutherland
Thames & Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com
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The Displaced Viet Nguyen
This collection of essays on displacement – geographical, political and emotional – is beautifully introduced by Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose novel The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Reflecting on entering the United States as a refugee in the 1970s, he emphasises themes of fear and isolation, but also gentrification and detachment. He makes clear the difficulties inherent in remembering his early life, even questioning whether forgetting could be, in itself, a form of violence. The essays that follow, then, are critical: memories mediated through print. Each of the contributors is prominent in the literary world. David Bezmozgis, whose work includes novels, feature films, and the directorship of a school for writers in Toronto, describes leaving the Soviet Union in 1979. He evocatively describe the role of language: people he and his family left behind said “proshchay” (goodbye forever),
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not the more common “do svidaniya” (until we meet again), but much of this piece strives for neutrality. His parents are not heroes, he says, but flawed individuals, conservative in their politics and skeptical of refugees from different backgrounds. Fatima Bhutto’s contribution, by contrast, is emotionally charged. It focuses on a virtual reality encounter with the Mexican-American border: her fear and desire to run are palpable. The nightmarish simulation mingles with her own life experiences (her father, a Pakistani exile, was murdered outside the family home when she was 14). On opening the book, the reader is confronted with Viet Thanh Nguyen’s statement that literature does not give speech to the “voiceless.” Refugees are speaking, but much of the world refuses to listen. This collection, then, offers a means of developing a compassionate emotional vocabulary that also encourages its readers to take action.
Words Anna Feintuck
Abrams Press www.abramsbooks.com
Significant Others Whitney Chadwick & Isabelle de Courtivron
If the myth of solitariness in creating art prevails, can only one partner be the genius? And if the reality of community prevails, how is genius to define itself? Creating can be solitary and arduous but, more often than not, is full of the complexities of collaboration and competition. This collection of essays explores lives of 20th century creative couples. Those featured here – including Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West, Sonia and Robert Delauney – challenged the established frameworks of family, matrimony and heteronormativity. Often microcosms of societal sexual and class tensions, these partnerships drove the rapid evolution of the 20th century art world. Camille Claudel – who often carved the marble, modelled for, and completed parts of sculptures signed by her teacher and lover August Rodin – herself created nudes that exuded life and eroticism. They were often only read for traces of her master – not uncommon, consid-
ering the persistent stereotype that women provide a mere supplementary role in these creative partnerships. Some artists responded to double-standards by amplifying the signifiers of femininity in their work: Frida Kahlo often synthesised visceral evocations of nature, birth, history and memory, whilst Diego Rivera shared Marxist convictions with the power of women in Mexican spirituality. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns challenged Abstract Expressionism’s exaggerated masculinity – but accounts of their six-year relationship are still riddled with omissions that suggest they faced a culture of damaging homophobia. Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership reveals the pressures of societal assumptions, whilst revealing the limitations such constructions place on both male and female creativity. That reified narrative of an individual’s struggle for self-expression leaves much unsaid; artists are, more often than not, created thanks to others.
Words Sarah Jilani
Thames & Hudson www.thamesandhudson.com
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Teresa Lawler, Blue Pool
DERWE NT ART PRIZE 2018 CALL FOR ENTRIES Prizes worth £12,500 Closing deadline 8th May 2018
Enter online now www.derwent-artprize.com
CBT16346_Derwent Art Prize Ad.indd 1
15/01/2018 16:53
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artists’ directory
Ming Lu | www.minglu.art
London-based Ming Lu is a multidisciplinary artist who combines contemporary techniques with an examination of social and cultural expectations. Her works assess how everyday objects that are often associated with women – such as cosmetics – are built around the body as icons for metaphor.
Jane Gottlieb | www.janegottlieb.com
The Californian artist uses her colourist skills to create an idyllic vision by enhancing, collaging and painting her photographs with Photoshop. The solo exhibition Jane Gottlieb Photographs France is at the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, until 29 April.
St Paul’s Looking East. London Collection. Acrylic on canvas, 60in x 48in.
Angela Wakefield The work of Angela Wakefield has twice been on the front cover of Art of England and featured in ARTnews, garnering international attention and critical acclaim with her urban landscapes of New York, London and the north of England.
Harry Bunce, Sorry… #35. Mixed media on recovered plywood sheet, 50cm x 67.5cm
Sorry…
www.harrybunce.com
Her style of painting has been described as contemporary realism and is often favourably compared with Edward Hopper by collectors and art critics. Wakefield’s work is held in private collections in the UK, throughout the rest of Europe and the US. Her collectors include leading figures in international business, filmmaking and media, as well as the British Royal Family. www.angelawakefield.co.uk | www.ascotstudios.com
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artists’ directory
Alina Zamanova
Andrew Harris
Alina Zamanova is an artist who seeks to question perceivable notions of beauty. She explores the concept of non-stereotypical aesthetics and believes that visually attractive and repulsive subjects can co-exist, considered as synonyms. Working in mixed media, she experiments with painting, illustration, sculpture and art direction; Zamanova’s artworks are the representation of her beliefs and wider influences. www.alinazamanova.com | Instagram: @alina_zamanova
Andrew Harris’ mythological paintings are created through a combination of observational thought and emotive intuition. Each work begins in his sketchbook and is then moved through various stages of development. In his practice, Harris simultaneously draws upon traditional methods and instinctive reactions from the materiality of paint. www.andrewharrisart.com | Instagram: @twomilk1sugar
Anke Bruse
BARRY GOODMAN
Anke Bruse is a Berlin-based artist and architect who designs graphics and patterns inspired by typical Berlin locations: streetlife, structural and landscape details come to the fore. Bruse’s intention is to create snapshots – visual and sensual impressions of the vibrant, everyday city. www.berlinpattern.de
Barry Goodman originally trained to become an architect, before studying graphic deisgn and becoming a successful illustrator. Later, he looked towards printmaking, which has granted him acclaim through international exhibitions and publications. Goodman’s work is held in private collections including The Library of Congress in Washington, DC and The China Printmaking Museum in Shenzhen. www.barrygoodman.com
BERRY KIM
Brian Tozer
Berry Kim is a Seoul-based visual artist whose detailed illustrations consider the stereotypes of beauty, fashion and luxury brands in the most complex sense. Each image provides deeper reflections on consumer culture through intricate detail. Shown here is the artwork Fake Life 5F/Luxury Brand Shop, part of fictional city called Berryland. www.berrylandstyle.com I Instagram: @berrykim_berryland
Brian Tozer originally trained as a ceramicist and moved over to painting, drawing and photography in the 1990s in order to reflect the visual and textural details of multiple subjects. His explorations of subjects include depictions of landscapes, portraits and moments from daily life. www.studiotozer.com | brian@studiotozer.com
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Antithesis No.9, No.2 and No.11. Digital prints, 120cm x 180cm.
Cascione & Lusciov
Charlotte Pann
Cascione & Lusciov are multidisciplinary designers who create fine art pieces by utilising diverse techniques belonging to the worlds of sculpture, design and the craft of goldsmithing. Upcoming exhibitions include Paratissima Bologna Art Fair 2-4 February and their solo show at GRAFO Gallery in Vilnius 4-28 April. www.cascionelusciov.com | info@cascionelusciov.com
Conceptual artist Charlotte Pann is based in Vienna and focuses on the phenomenon of relation as a base for, and as a result of, spatial constellation. In her latest series Antithesis, she explores the illuminating and the obscuring dimensions of light – the accumulation of knowledge and the loss of field of vision. www.charlottepann.com
Christina Galbiati
dodda maggÝ
Christina Galbiati is passionate about emphasising the importance of tangible communication. Paper and printed word are her main choices of media – juxtaposing chaotic patterns with minimalist forms through collage. The result is a subtle homage to craft and pop art with contemporary allure. Her latest project is a melodic visual series inspired by dreams. www.ChristinaGalbiati.com | Instagram: @tgalbiati
Dodda Maggý’s audio-visual works explore the complex artistic language of time-based media, in an attempt to externalise the internal dimensions of dreams, memories and imagination through installation, film, music, sound art and silent moving imagery. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and she was recently awarded the Young Talent Award by the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark. www.bergcontemporary.is/artists/dodda-maggy
howard kingsnorth
Jen Keenan
London-based Howard Kingsnorth’s practice straddles advertising and art photography. For over 20 years he has created a unique style of imagery. He has recently applied his vision to aerial photography, creating dynamic images of cityscapes and architectural structures. His work is sought after by global creative agencies, architectural clients and collectors of photography. www.howardkingsnorth.com I Instagram: @howardkingsnorth
Jen Keenan is a Brooklyn-based illustrator whose work celebrates hand-drawn compositions and lettering with a quirky sophistication. She strives to create artworks that capture a childlike playfulness; inspirations and subject matter include vintage treasures, children’s picture books, food, pets and daily urban life. Keenan is also the creator behind Charming.nyc paper goods. www.jenkeenan.com | Instagram: @charming_nyc
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
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Plantation House, 2017. Oil on canvas.
artists’ directory
Julia Aurora Guzmán
Julie Moss
Amsterdam-based Dominican artist Julia Aurora Guzmán utilises mixed media to create sculptures and installations that play with scale and the audience’s perception. The work ignites an imagination within spaces through the phenomenology of immensity. Guzmán creates active and conscious relationships between human, architectural and sculptural bodies. www.juliaurora.com | Instagram: @juliaguzmanconde
British artist Julie Moss explores landscapes for both painterly and symbolic possibilities. Using the importance of an experience within the landscape as a motif and subject matter, she incorporates light and colour to explore and illuminate the fluid nature of memory. www.juliemossfineart.co.uk
LIDWINE TITLI Paris-born Lidwine Titli produces intricate hand-crafted collages that transform elegant imagery into surreal, cyberpunk compositions. Currently based in London, her art questions the representation of glamour; human desires become symbols of psychedelia. Titli’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. www.lidwinetitli.com I Instagram: @lidwinetitli_collage
Lagos Dog Show, 2015.
Kerry Zacharia Kerry Zacharia investigates the relationship between the inner and external environments that represent past and present experiences. A solo exhibition, London in Different Dimensions, demonstrates a journey through familiar urban scenes in unique, personalised ways. From 20 March until 6 April at The Salvation Army International Headquarters in London. www.artistkerryzacharia.com
Markus Gollner
Olayanju Dada
Photographic and artistic alterations are at the centre of Markus Gollner’s creations. Producing eye-catching, thought-provoking images that utilise both fantasy and technicality, Gollner offers creative solutions to visual design. Imaginative, conceptually striking pieces tread a line between reality and a dreamlike plane. www.markusgollner.com
Olayanju Dada is a Nigerian artist who graduated from Leeds Beckett University with an MA in Contemporary Fine Art Practice. Dada currently lives and works in Germany, where he manipulates discarded and displaced objects. The resulting works revel in the everyday, inspired by the visual poetics of textures and materials as experiential collages. www.vangoart.co/dayanju I www.dayanju.com
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Left: Painter’s Tapes on Blackish Green. Oil, acrylic on Belgium linen, 116.3cm x 80cm x 2 pieces. Right: The Verge. Mixed materials, 85cm x 128cm.
Sheau Ming Song
shelley theodore
Sheau Ming Song has a PhD from LICA at Lancaster University. His artwork demonstrates the essential issues of two-dimensional representation and documents the visual possibilities of painting materials. He has shown at Art Taipei 2015, Gwangju Biennale 2015 in South Korea, Art15 London, ART.FAIR Cologne 2014 and the-solo-project 2013 in Basel. www.sms1967.com
An artist working across the mediums of film, photography and drawing, Shelley Theodore’s particular interest lies in the “act of looking” within the everyday. She has exhibited widely, including being selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2013 and shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2012. Her window scene and featured work Love Nest draws attention to the space of the image. www.axisweb.org/p/shelleytheodore
Shijing Shen
Sun Hee Moon
Shijing Shen’s practice provides an assessment of Western aesthetics. Taking the intangible concept of beauty with the solidified notion of texture, the artist finds a connection between the body and the universe – a relationship that is increasingly complex and subjective. www.shijing-shen.com
Sun Hee Moon’s series of portraits explores human nature in all its diversity. Born in South Korea, raised in Brazil and currently based in Italy, Moon combines the subjects, colours and experiences from the cultures she lived in and belonged to, careless of how they may or may not fit into established standards and stereotypes. Instagram: @sunheemoonart | www.facebook.com/sunhmarts
Thomas W Kuppler
Yigit Yazici
Thomas W Kuppler is a German artist with an MA in Photography from Central Saint Martins. In his practice he experiments with scientific methodologies, exposing bacteria as a deconstructive organism. Interpreted as a metaphor for global political systems, the compositions tread a line between the visible and invisible. www.dadaxus.com | info@arttwk.com
Through layers of detail and textural consideration, Yigit Yazici’s images are at once chaotic and deeply harmonious. An amalgamation of cluttered colours and structures reflects the chaos of everyday life. Art, as he sees, is only a simulation of nature. Yazici has exhibited in a number of art fairs and his work is held in numerous private and public collections. www.yigityazici.com | Instagram: @yigityazici Aesthetica 157
AGNÈS ricart
Alysia Davis
Agnès Ricart is a Spanish artist based in Valencia. Her illustrations and digital art examine feminism and queer culture, as well as contemporary iconography. A bright and bold aesthetic combines with unexpected angles to provide a fresh perspective on image-led societies. www.agnesricart.in Instagram: @agnesricart Facebook: @agnesricartillustration
San Francisco-based Alysia Davis romanticises an apocalyptic future. Her work is imbued with escapism, play and tumultuous colour harmonies. Focusing on digital drawings and soft sculpture, the compositions are reminiscent of dreamscapes. Recurring themes include identity and self-gratification. Davis considers her practice to be a combination of styles, resulting in Pop-Povera. www.alysiadavis.com
anca stefanescu
Ben Dobson
For Bucharest-born Anca Stefanescu, time is a constructed concept and painting is a practice through which she finds a universal connection of life, devoid of context. Her latest work, shown here, is entitled The Gift of Vision. Stefanescu has exhibited at World Art Dubai, artexpo New York and Spectrum Miami; she looks forward to showing at numerous fairs in 2018. www.ancastefanescu.com
Ben Dobson explores texture, colour, perspective, light and shade using mineral, vegetable and animal matter prepared with skill for the microscope and camera. He is based in Cambridge where he is co-organising the SciArt Exhibition at the Cavendish, the world-renowned physics laboratories, in March 2018. www.themicroscopeman.com Twitter: @microscopeman74
Beth Horner
elinora schwartz
Beth Horner is a London-based artist whose work navigates the relationship that painting can have with digital interfaces. Personal photographic images, that take suburban settings as their subject matter, have been digitally combined and manipulated – offering multidisciplinary, graphic worlds. www.bethhorner.co.uk Instagram: @beth.horner
Based in Jerusalem, Elinora Schwartz’s practice includes experimental short videos, photography, sculpture and installation. She investigates female identity with a desire to give expression to the feminine experience of repression, silencing and loss of identity. She performed at the 2017 Naughty and Nice Exhibition (Sweet ‘Art) in London, and is also a member of female artists’ group Studio Her Own. Facebook: Laloosh Baruch Schvartz
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Maiden Lane, San Francisco, 2017. Digital vector drawing.
artists’ directory
The Red Shoes. Part of a visual and conceptual study of three stories: The Red Shoes, Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, in which Schwartz explores female sexuality in relation to herself and the male object.
GENE CHIH-YANG CHEN
gilles
Gene Chih-Yang Chen is a graduate of the Royal College of Art and is based in London. He works between art and design, adjusting symbols to communicate speculative concepts. Chen creates platforms to examine the possibilities of subtle relationships that occur between individuals. The work shown here is from the series Humans Can Only Confess to Something Rather Than Somebody . www.chihyangchen.com
Gilles is a designer of humanoids. In 2017, he published the foundational work Positionism, which was15 years in the making. His prototype female is based on research and analysis of ancient and modern sources, thus she has a look that can be seen as both classical and fresh. www.positionism.com Instagram: @positionism
Hannah Mooney
HAYAH sheps avtalion
Highly acclaimed Irish artist Hannah Mooney sensitively investigates natural organic forms through landscape and still-life oil painting. Identity is a key theme in her work; despite being based in Glasgow, Mooney’s Irish heritage informs the deeply expressive, rugged compositions. www.hannahmooney.co.uk
The photography of Israeli artist Hayah Sheps-Avtalion explores the potential of the medium. Transforming light, by direct photography, into drawing and sculpture, she creates contemplative abstract images. She currently studies art at Beit Berl College, after a photography course at Blake College, London. Sheps-Avtalion has exhibited in solo and group shows in Tel-Aviv. www.hayahshepsav.com Instagram: @hayahsheps
jamie cooper Multidisciplinary artist Jamie Cooper often draws on science fiction to create immersive environments that mix sculptural objects with light. In the Future Relic series, he uses humour and language as mechanisms to provoke deeper critical engagement. Artificial lights are often used to create uncanny objects that resemble cultural artefacts from the real world, invoking an alternative “art” reality. www.jamie-cooper.org
Jason Clarke
KHAIREEN ELLYNA
Jason Clarke uses art therapy to manage his bipolar disorder. It helps to release the pressure in his head from disturbing voices and visions. Exhibiting his work brings mental health issues to a wider audience; better understanding and education can reduce stigma. www.jasonclarke-bipolarart.com Instagram: @bipolar.art Pinterest: @bipolarart0305
Malaysian-born Khaireen Ellyna is based in Wales. Upon completing her debut novel Shilagon in 2017, she created the book’s cover, which unearthed a long-lost passion for painting. Ellyna has since continued her art practice and believes that “creating art gives me peace and it explores the world beyond imagination.” Etsy: KEllynaFineArt Facebook: @fourgraces
Apocalypse. Acrylic on canvas.
ilaria bochicchio Italian artist Ilaria Bochicchio started her career as an illustrator and graphic designer. In 2014, she moved to painting, commencing an investigation into the female body and the complex iconography surrounding gender and physicality. The work shown here, entitled #chambre Scilla, builds texture and colour as fundamental tools; the acrylics are at once suggestive and expressive. www.ilariabochicchio.com
Liisi Eelmaa
Mandira Bahl
Liisi Eelmaa (b. 1982) is an Estonian artist. In her series Replicate an Effort she blends photography and painting. Throughout the works she examines the nature of painting and its boundaries: where we see paint as a substance or when it begins to be the image. Eelmaa simultaneously transforms the object into different scales, weights and subjects. Instagram: @liisieelmaa
Mandira Bahl is an Indian photojournalist based in New York. A recent graduate of the International Center of Photography, her practice is a blend of documentary and commercial. The series entitled Garbage City focuses on the business of waste after it has been collected, considering its economic value and the impact on those involved. www.mandirabahl.media Instagram: @mandira_bahl
For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com
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artists’ directory
Miyoung Kim
NADIA SKORDOPOULOU
Miyoung Kim is based in London and South Korea. Focusing on photography installation, video and sculpture, she explores the relationship between memories and materiality, questioning the effect that time has on creation and demolition, referencing Proust’s theory. The shifting and unstable borders between memories are expressed with geometry and through loss as part of her own experience. www.miyoung-kim.com
Nadia Skordopoulou studied painting and scenography at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She has since delved into photography, sound and video work. Her current focus lies in lighting and multimedia, which has informed her latest series Seascapes, in which she transforms images of the sea into geometrical forms that interact with colour. Skordopoulou notes the result is about “thinking versus feeling.” nadiaskordopoulou.wordpress.com
Elephant Festival, 2012. Unpolished lacquer on wood, 87cm x 180cm x 1.5cm. Blue Seahorse, 2013. Unpolished lacquer on wood, 60cm x 261cm x 1.5cm.
Nguyen Thi Mai
Nicole Moss
Nguyen Thi Mai’s works draw inspiration from symbols associated with Vietnamese culture. Each composition – achieved with lacquer or acrylic paint – is both progressive and traditional. A unique aesthetic is framed as a reflection of identity.
Toronto-based Nicole Moss explores relationships, feminism and Western culture through traditional cut and paste collages. A surreal narrative is created within each piece, challenging preconceived ideas through the modification of images. The arrangement of pictures is a romantic process for Moss based on what she believes to be objective chance. www.nicolemossart.com Instagram: @nicolemossart www.facebook.com/nicolemossart
www.NguyenThiMai.com www. theartstack.com/artists/ nguyen-thi-mai
RosaCristina
Rose McMurray
RosaCristina is a collaboration between Justin Smith and Sonia Janin, which looks at the ideas surrounding a sense of place and identity, through multidisciplinary approaches to body / space ecologies. Currently based in Andalusia, Spain, they recently completed a year-long exploration of the littoral both as a geographic and a narrative space. www.rosacristina.eu
Rose McMurray juxtaposes the ways in which men and women are often displayed within classical painting. The female – usually languid – embraces a dominant stature whilst the male becomes modest and passively awaiting adoration. This role reversal is established through body language that suggests strength or subservience.
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From the series Les Noces, 2017.
rosemcmurray11.wixsite.com/paintings Instagram: @rosemcmurray_paintings
SARA CHYAN
Sophie Walker
London-based Sara Chyan recently graduated from Royal College of Art, where she trained to become an artist and jeweller with a minimalist, conceptual approach. Chyan’s pieces respond to the human body, using physicality as the basis for multilayered designs. To view a video of a gallium bangle being created, visit: www.vimeo.com/228459382. Instagram: @sarachyanjewellery www.sarachyan.com
Sophie Walker’s paintings are a manifestation of mindfulness, cultivating a presence through texture and colour that is at once meditative, universal and deeply personal. Brushstrokes permeate the surface of the canvas whilst multichromatic palettes create visually satisfying and non-descriptive compositions. www.theattentiveartist.com Instagram: @attentiveartist
Subscribe & Save 30% Intelligent, beautiful and informative. Start your collection of Aesthetica today. One year subscriptions from £16.99 www.aestheticamagazine.com/subscribe
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From Value © Marta Mak.
last words
David Drake Director of Ffotogallery
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This year marks Ffotogallery’s 40th anniversary, a milestone celebrated through a series of special exhibitions, projects and events. Some of these look back to 1978 and the developing photography scene in Wales, for example The Class of ’78, open from May to July. Others speculate how image creation and circulation will evolve in the next four decades. Zeitgeist (open from March to April) foregrounds emerging artists from five continents, including Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize-winner Cesar Dezfuli, whose Passengers series comprises striking portraits of migrants rescued from a rubber boat in the Mediterranean Sea. Also featured is Marta Mak’s Value (above) a piece that explores how, like alchemy, we can create new value out of plastic packaging, transforming waste into a social resource. www.4040.ffotogallery.org.
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