Like the stratified rock on the Navajo reservation, where I spent much of my childhood, the forms in my work are often analogs to the methods of their creation. They take root in the physical properties inherent within specific, mundane materials such as Elmer’s glue, correction fluid, ballpoint pen ink and resin, whose limits are stretched by subjecting them to non-traditional applications, generating structures whose complexity belies the elegance of their creation. This process reflects the physical forces that are constantly working to fashion and sculpt the natural landscape, and, by bracketing these forms with hand-rendered and conventionalized images, I hope to evoke the duality between the actual and the artificial as it is conveyed through idealized representations of order and beauty.

An amazing piece of street art (inspired by the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China) has brought the Lego figures terracotta army to life. The ’3D’ child-friendly version of the life-sized terracotta legion was drawn in chalk on a flat street, giving the impression the Lego figures have been unearthed from the middle of the road.

The 3D street painting has been made by Leon Keer, Ruben Poncia, Remko van Schaik and Peter Westerink duing the 4th Sarasota Chalkfestival in Forida US.

Brian Hart creates amazingly using light beyond its practicality, hart sets up living scenarios for which he applies the photographic technique,
capturing domestic and whimsical scenes., sometimes spending nearly 20 minutes exposing a single one.

Aka Shaka

“For however briefly, I am trying to offer people a chance to step into a different New York than they are used to seeing, and in turn, momentarily escape from routine schedules and lives,” he explains. “We all need the opportunity to see the city more playfully, as a world dominated by the interplay of very basic color and shape.”

Hush returns to Los Angeles with a new collection of work reflecting his unique blend of street and cross-cultural aesthetics. Playing primarily with the idea of duality, the exhibition is a carefully calibrated experience of Twin paintings—15 mixed-media woks on canvas. Using the symbolic subject matter of the female form, Hush has produced a large-scale installation in which the gallery walls capture the essence of “action painting” and “pure expressionism” along with traditional elements of fine art.

As a body of work, TWIN explores the nature of duality. By varying his approach to the same image, Hush exposes nature’s inherent polarity. The juxtaposition of light and dark reveals the complexity of conflict and unity—and dichotomies present within the human ego. TWIN is a fascinating confrontation and debate on common conceptions of power, innocence, beauty and sexuality. The collection also represents the blending of the street art aesthetic- as simultaneously destructive and beautiful.
Via [Wooster]

Orrico says:

“I marvel at the composition of nature and cycles. I am not versed in the convergence of art and mathematics or sciences, but find myself instinctually attracted to this relationship. I try to dilute my efforts and find an experiential point of entrance. I like to experiment with both embodied and cognitive systems that yield beauty. my favorite art is somewhat accidental and overwhelmingly concise.”

Tony Orrico

Felice Varini is a Swiss artist who is known for his geometric Anamorphic Illusions. Anamorphic Illusions are images which only make sense from one view and can only be truely appreciated from a certain vantage point. His pieces range in scale from covering a small area in a room to covering a cityscape.

Varini tends to use simple geometric forms: squares, triangles, ellipses, circles, rectangles, and lines. These forms are usually created in one of the three primary colors: red, blue or yellow, occasionally employing some secondary colors, as well as in black and white. He justifies his choice of simple geometric shapes and basic colors by saying “If you draw a circle on a flat canvas it will always look the same. The drawn circle will retain the flatness of the canvas. This kind of working is very limiting to me, so I project a circle onto spaces, onto walls or mountain sides, and then the circle’s shape is altered naturally because the ‘canvas’ is not flat. A mountain side has curves that affect the circle, and change the circle’s geometry. So, I do not need to portray complicated forms in my paintings. I can just use the simplicity of forms, because the reality out there distorts forms in any case, and creates variations on its own accord.

The streets of Vercorin, a small ski town in Switzerland, were painted by design legends Lang Baumann. The painted streets were intended to be a powerful juxtaposition against the old world feel of the charming town.

She loves color and pattern and the faded look and romance of vintage imagery. Kathe Fraga’s paintings are acrylic on frescoed canvas, finished with lacquer a style that was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Kathe Fraga

Artist and Central Saint Martins graduate Nick Gentry creates recycled art with obsolete media storage as his medium. After assembling canvases by puzzling together floppy disks with all kinds of different data, he paints portraits of over them.

“The floppy disk stands firm and lives on as a metaphor for the increasing pace of the modern life cycle, mass production and the throwaway culture of today.”

Via [Trendland]

Hockney executed the drawings mainly with the edge of his thumb; you can’t use the thumbnail, he says, because the device is sensitive to heat, not just touch. The second innovation is in the method of distribution. He sends these techno-sketches out to friends, who may then pass them on, collect them or do whatever they want.

Each image as it appears on another iPhone or laptop is virtually identical to the original, although Hockney points out that even with a manufactured item such as this, there will probably be minute differences. Even so, the drawing on my phone not only looks like the one on his, digitally and in almost every respect it is the same. This is profoundly subversive of the art market as we know it, with its focus on the signed original work.

But this is David Hockney, an influential contributor to the pop-art movement of the ’60s who has spent decades working with oils on canvas.While he has experimented with digital art before, Hockney started working with the iPhone just two years ago and said he was struck by the immediacy of being able to create a painting and e-mail it friends within hours. He prefers to use his thumbs and fingers, rather than a stylus, to layer brush strokes of varying widths and thicknesses and says he believes tools like Brushes will revolutionize art.

Now, more than 200 of his images of plants and cut flowers are on display through January 30, at the Foundation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent in Paris.
Foundation Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent
David Hockney
Via [The First Post]

Kazuki Takamatsu