BEAUTY: Installation--Es Devlin

Extraordinary artist and stage designer Es Devlin (she and her team designed the incredible stage for U2's Experience + Innocence tours) recently exhibited Memory Palace, a large scale, mind boggling gallery installation at the Pitzhanger Manor and Gallery in London.

MEMORY PALACE
ES DEVLIN, 2019

CNC CUT BAMBOO, MIRROR, EARTHBORN CLAYPAINT, 3D PRINTED SLA
17500 X 6500 X 3900MM

MEMORY PALACE IS A NEW SCULPTURE WHICH FILLS THE GALLERY SPACE WITH A VAST CHRONOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE MAPPING PIVOTAL SHIFTS IN HUMAN PERSPECTIVE OVER SEVENTY-FIVE MILLENNIA.

FROM THE CAVES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA WHERE HOMO SAPIENS FIRST LEFT THEIR MARK, TO THE STEPS OF THE SWEDISH PARLIAMENT WHERE GRETA THUNBERG BEGAN HER CLIMATE STRIKE, THE LOCATIONS AND MOMENTS REPRESENT A PERSONAL AND SUBJECTIVE CARTOGRAPHY AND HAVE BEEN CHOSEN BY ES TO INVOKE OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORIES/HISTORY, AND ALSO TO PROVOKE DIALOGUE AND DEBATE.

IT IS NAMED AFTER THE CLASSICAL MNEMONIC TECHNIQUE, ORIGINATING IN ANCIENT GREECE, WHICH CATALOGUES MEMORIES WITHIN FAMILIAR LOCATIONS. ES IDENTIFIES THE ROOMS IN WHICH SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS IN HUMAN THINKING TOOK PLACE AND PLOTS THEM WITHIN IDENTIFIABLE FRAGMENTS OF CITIES AND BUILDINGS TO CREATE A PERSONAL ATLAS OF THE EVOLUTION OF THOUGHT.

CONSTRUCTION: DIAGON
LEAD ASSOCIATE DESIGNER: RUBY WAI YUE LAW

PHOTO CREDIT: PETER MALLET

https://esdevlin.com/
https://www.pitzhanger.org.uk/

BEAUTY: Installation--Kimsooja

South Korean artist Kimsooja has installed the most recent iteration of her meditative piece To Breathe in St Bartholomew's Chapel at the Yorkshire Sculpture Garden. Originally developed for the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid in 2006 and shown again at the 2013 Venice Art Biennale, this piece features a mirrored floor and film on the windows that diffracts sunlight into rainbows, bouncing colored light off the floors, and reflecting onto the walls and ceiling. A recording of the artist breathing plays in the otherwise silent chapel. It seems that the experience would be transcendent, transporting the viewer to a secularly holy place. To Breathe is on display until September 29, 2019.

http://www.kimsooja.com/
https://ysp.org.uk/

"You Are Already Everything You Want To Be"

Inspiration by Jeppe Hein.

http://www.jeppehein.net/

BEAUTY: Photography--Sebastian Magnani

Swiss photographer Sebastian Magnani hit upon a great idea. For his Reflections series, he photographs two different view points at once: by placing a mirror on the ground, he captures what is below but also what is above. I love seeing the sun-dappled, shadow-y forest floor as well as the tree canopy overhead!

His Artist Statement about the series is poetic, off-kilter, and meandering:
"It’s all about the great thing about mirrored mild. It’s like a universe, a small planet, with a number of risk’s in distinction of buildings, colors, moods and numerous lightnings, the fascination of interaction like nature and civilization, or the gravitation between life and death, such as in the rose blossoms, in which the tree in the mirror full of life and color radiates, on the floor, the sheet but already on is wilting. And finally, a really important thing, the key for self-development, the selfreflection, which is always crucial to progress. Compare new with the old, removed again, be fond of discovery, then back to the origins, an interplay that keeps us moving, we can feel the life."

https://www.sebastianmagnani.com/

BEAUTY: Installation--Christopher Bauder

Light artist Christopher Bauder created a truly dazzling installation called Skalar which just showed at the CTM Festival 2018 in Berlin.

From the CTM site:

"Skalar is a central piece within light artist Christopher Bauder’s body of work, reflecting his deep fascination with light. Light and darkness as endless cycles of day and night define our perception of time and influence our emotions. In "SKALAR," light is treated as a solid material that can be sculpted and shaped to architectural dimensions, evoking abstract emotional associations. Intertwined with musician and composer Kangding Ray’s tireless exploration of textures, rhythm, and sound design, the silence of darkness is filled with iridescent formations of spatial light and sound. Measuring 45m in length, 20m in width, and 10m in height, the generative luminous structure encompasses a perfectly synchronous interplay of 65 motorized mirrors, 90 moving lights, and a multichannel sound system – elevating creative possibilities to a whole new level.

Christopher Bauder is an artist and designer working in the fields of light and installation art, media design, and scenography. He focuses on the translation of bits and bytes into objects and environments, and vice versa. In 2004 he founded the multidisciplinary art and design studio WHITEvoid, which specializes in interactivity, media, interior architecture, and electronic engineering.

Few musicians manage to explore the convergence between techno and experimental as successfully as David Letellier, aka Kangding Ray. The aesthetic domains of his home labels, Raster-Noton and Stroboscopic Artefacts, epitomize his complex sound; an aesthetic that tests boundaries, evolving tirelessly in its exploration of texture, rhythm, and sound design.

The former power plant, Kraftwerk Berlin, will house this massive light and sound sculpture, fully immersing the audience into an otherworldly experience. Built approximately at the same time as the Berlin Wall, the building stood abandoned for many years before Dimitri Hegemann gave it a second life by relocating his world-renowned techno club, Tresor there."

Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of this post!

http://www.christopherbauder.com/
http://www.whitevoid.com/
http://www.ctm-festival.de

Kaleidoscopic Ivy

Created earlier this year by Japanese design firm Nendo headed by architect Oki Sato, this magical garden of Kaleidoscopic Ivy tumbles down a tiered stone space created by Isamu Noguchi for Ikebana Sogetsu, an ikebana school in Tokyo.

The Nendo website describes it:

"A space designed for the HANA SO exhibition held by Akane Teshigahara, fourth head of the Sogetsu school of ikebana, to commemorate its 90th anniversary.

While pieces to be exhibited are normally decided upon in advance and the space is designed to accentuate those elements, the client proposed to reverse the approach by instead using the design of the space as inspiration to create the ikebana pieces that would be exhibited there. A tiered stone garden created by Isamu Noguchi would serve as the exhibition venue, and making the most of this unique space would become an essential part of the design. 0.5mm thick stainless steel sheet with a mirror finish was cut into pieces shaped like collections of linked rhombuses. Each piece was then individually fitted to overlay the stone garden in order to create an 'ivy of mirrors'. The ivy would reflect the surroundings while also revealing glimpses of the texture and appearance of the stone garden beneath it, and the diffused reflections of the colours and outlines of the exhibited ikebana flowers would produce a kaleidoscopic visual effect.The addition of this extra layer between these two works – the ikebana flowers and the stone garden – would create a harmony between them, as if the flowers were gently enfolding the stone garden."

All images by Takumi Ota.

http://www.nendo.jp/
http://www.sogetsu.or.jp/e/