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Art

Astounding and Interactive Sidewalk Art Around the World

By Alison Nastasi on

Alternative sidewalk design explores eco-friendly, minimally invasive ways to pave pathways for pedestrians. Artists take the concept in another direction and create a temporary reprieve from the daily grind by offering interactive spaces for play and pondering. Sometimes they’re in the concrete jungle, and other times new spaces are created in unlikely locations, allowing pedestrians to explore the terrain. The sidewalk becomes the art itself. We recently told you about a giant trampoline sidewalk, and it inspired us to search for other impressive and imaginative “sidewalk” art. See what happens when quiet footpaths, bridge walkways, city streets, and other places people tread are made over. … Read More

Art

Oddly Mesmerizing Orgiastic Encounters with Architecture [NSFW]

By Alison Nastasi on

Dmitry Paranyushkin and Diego Agullo made a pact. A “humping pact,” more specifically. “We were inspired by the architectural complexity of Zollverein and at the same time we were interested in exploring how pornography affects our work. We brought inspiration and interest together,” Agullo explained in a recent interview for GUSmen. The artists explore this concept through multiple media, including: film, installation, performance, lectures, and photography.

Although each “mission,” as it is described on website Trendland, depicts dozens of men engaged in orgiastic encounters with various architectural elements, there are actually only two men in action: Paranyushkin and Agullo. The artists are digitally multiplied in a “suspended act of affirmative persistence” in an “attempt to create an aesthetic meditation on the human desire to believe in the futile and to conceive the impossible.” … Read More

Art

Watch David Byrne’s Interactive Installation ‘Guitar Pedals’ in Action

By Alison Nastasi on

The always interesting David Byrne has created an interactive music-based installation created from a grid of 96 guitar effects pedals. The uber colorful creation rests simply on the floor and  invites people to literally walk all over it. The pedals are wired together, along with a guitar and amplifier, creating various layered sound effects that build the more it’s experimented with. The piece is playful and quirky and everything you’d expect from the Talking Heads frontman. Step on it (in video form) past the break. … Read More

Architecture

Pic of the Day: A Hairy Staircase

By Alison Nastasi on

Using the architecture of Hot Springs, Arkansas’ abandoned Mountainaire Hotel, artist Jessica Wohl created an installation that features a staircase covered in hair. We can reassure you that the locks are indeed synthetic, but the creepy feeling you’re experiencing right now while thinking about trying to climb the staircase is the real deal. Wohl’s love for the uncanny is evident, and the way she’s transformed this rotting architectural space into something sweet (you’ll see why once you get a glimpse of the girly hair barrettes past the break) and sinister is pretty great. Click through for more. … Read More

Art

Pic of the Day: A House Made Entirely of Vintage Books

By Alison Nastasi on

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are known for their all-encompassing installations — like the awesomely spooky one they did for Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, Pandemonium. This 2008 piece, The House of Books Has No Windows, is an installation of a house, made entirely out of antique books. Commissioned by Modern Art Oxford and the Fruitmarket Gallery, the house was created to offer ” … a space of infinite possibility where nothing may be read yet everything imagined. The work has no windows and in the absence of external stimulation, we must imagine the worlds of the books, and hear the voice in our head that talks to us when we read.” The piece was constructed over three week’s time and is composed of four different library collections gathered from across Scotland. As the video after the jump details, these books were going to be pulped, but Cardiff and Miller have rescued them to use as bricks for their house. Click on to find out how it was constructed. … Read More

Art

‘Super Mario Bros.’ Installation Made of Post-it Notes

By Alison Nastasi on

Take a break from the bazillions of 8-bit recreations, and enjoy this installation created by Seattle company, Filter — a digital solutions group who were recently inspired by Super Mario Bros. for this shroomy work of art. They went postal (sorry) and covered their 6th floor windows in Post-it Notes, recreating the original level one of the Mario Bros. NES videogame. You can check it out in person on Pike Street, between 4th and 5th avenues if you’re a local. Otherwise, level up and enjoy these images after the jump. … Read More

Art

Photo Gallery: Street Artist EVOL’s Underground City

By Alison Nastasi on

In Nordkreuz (“Northern Cross”), Berlin-based street artist EVOL has created a miniature, underground city in the fields of Hamburg, Germany. The installation — which took him eight days to complete — found the artist outside of his typical urban environment, digging into a picturesque meadow to create a grid that viewers could actually walk through. The buildings’ compound-like, grey facade provides a striking contrast to the scenic surroundings, complete with dirt “roads.” Click through below to see more of Nordkreuz, then check out the making-of the installation and the artist’s other work over here. … Read More

Art

Jennifer Steinkamp: Contemporary Art’s Madame Curie

By Shana Nys Dambrot on

Video artist Jennifer Steinkamp’s decades-long love affair with digital art is still as passionate as ever. Best known for gently swaying curtains of flowering vines, her large-scale video installations use pixels like a pointillist deploys pigment, creating immense images from millions of microbe-size dabs of color. The impact of her work is in large part due to her manipulation of CGI code simulating the organic movement of explosions, breezes, ocean tides, and the human body. … Read More

Daily Dose

Daily Dose Pick: Annette Messager

By Shana Nys Dambrot on

Celebrated French artist Annette Messager transforms everyday objects into sculptural installations that bustle with creativity, memory, melancholy, mystery, and obsession.

Messager enshrines the images of deceased friends and family, and knits little sweaters for dead birds. Her frequently interactive works are elaborately hand-crafted, with the sacrosanct OCD quality of private archives. Describing herself as “collector, every-task-doer, artist, woman in love, tale-teller,” she fashions her shadowy monuments from an endless accumulation of textiles, stuffed animals, photographs, newspapers, and other detritus that speaks to her from beyond. … Read More

Art

Exclusive: Artist MK Guth Talks Castaway Clothing

By Kelsey Keith on

Multidisciplinary artist MK Guth brings a homespun feeling to her video, photography, and sculpture pieces that act as channels of social exchange. She has braided fake hair into Rapunzel braids and driven a truck of red shoes around New York City; this fall Guth blends craft and narrative with a textile-based project in lower Manhattan. We went deep into the belly of One New York Plaza’s retail center to chat with Guth about her three-month residency “This Fable Is Intended For You: A Work-Energy Principle” — watch our exclusive video interview after the… Read More