A New Video Captures Mossy Corona in the Sun’s Atmosphere in Extraordinary Detail
European Space Agency (ESA) reveals the riotous activity of the sun’s atmosphere in unprecedented detail. Taken by the Solar Orbiter in September, the footage captures a lush blanket of “corona moss” met by bright arches, or the magnetic field lines that shoot from the interior. Researchers say the brightest regions reach a whopping one million degrees Celsius—the cooler spots appear darker because they absorb radiation—and the “fluffy” hair-like structures are made of charged plasma. More
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In an Emoji History of Art, ND Stevenson Playfully Recreates Iconic Paintings
More than 100 years after it was first exhibited, art historians still debate whether Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” submitted to the 1917 Armory Show in New York, was a wry joke or sly commentary on modern art—or both. That’s because the sculpture, a urinal the artist signed “R. Mutt,” was just a standard piece of plumbing. But Duchamp is also known to have coined the term “readymade,” in which he displayed objects like bicycle wheels or snow shovels as artworks unto themselves, posing the fundamental question that still thrills theorists: “But is it art?”
ND Stevenson’s take on “Fountain,” composed of a slew of what we might consider 21st-century digital readymades. More
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In an Emoji History of Art, ND Stevenson Playfully Recreates Iconic Paintings
More than 100 years after it was first exhibited, art historians still debate whether Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” submitted to the 1917 Armory Show in New York, was a wry joke or sly commentary on modern art—or both. That’s because the sculpture, a urinal the artist signed “R. Mutt,” was just a standard piece of plumbing. But Duchamp is also known to have coined the term “readymade,” in which he displayed objects like bicycle wheels or snow shovels as artworks unto themselves, posing the fundamental question that still thrills theorists: “But is it art?”
ND Stevenson’s take on “Fountain,” composed of a slew of what we might consider 21st-century digital readymades. More
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Used Envelopes Hold Thriving Potted Plants in Fidencio Fifield-Perez’s ‘Dacaments’
Fidencio Fifield-Perez’s Dacaments series began as a response to the bureaucracy of the U.S. immigration system. The Oaxaca-born artist immigrated with his family as a child, making him eligible for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). To qualify and retain his status, he needed to collect official documents, the envelopes from which became the substrate for his paintings.
terminated the policy in 2017, people like Fifield-Perez were thrown into limbo before the Supreme Court reinstated it in 2020. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/fidencio-fifield-perez-dacaments/
Petrit Halilaj’s Scratchy Doodles Grapple with Childhood Innocence on The Met Rooftop
When visiting his hometown of Runik, Kosovo, back in 2010, Petrit Halilaj realized that his elementary school was being demolished. He went to the site—which had miraculously survived the Yugoslav wars that spurred his family to flee to an Albanian refugee camp in 1998—and found a pile of desks, many with doodles and notes scratched into their surfaces.
The Met’s rooftop garden for Abetare, which translates to primer, as in the early education books used for learning basic literacy. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/petrit-halilaj-abetare/
May 2024 Opportunities: Open Calls, Residencies, and Grants for Artists
Every month, Colossal shares a selection of opportunities for artists and designers, including open calls, grants, fellowships, and residencies. If you’d like to list an opportunity here, please get in touch at hello@colossal.art. You can also join our monthly Opportunities Newsletter.
$3,500 Artist Grants | The Hopper PrizeFeatured
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/may-2024-opportunities/
The James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Details of the Horsehead Nebula in Unprecedented Resolution
Focused on the part of the sky where you can spot the constellation Orion (“The Hunter”) on clear nights, the James Webb Space Telescope’s latest dispatch blinks in astonishing images from an area known as the Orion B molecular cloud.
quadrillion miles from Earth—the cloud is the closest star-forming region to our solar system. And rising from the turbulent field of gas and dust is Barnard 33, commonly known as the Horsehead Nebula. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/webb-horsehead-nebula/
Suzanne Saroff’s Playful Bubblegum Photos Capture Delicate Forms on the Brink of Bursting
“You know how when you smell a fragrance that brings you to a specific time—like if you wore a certain scent for a year in college or if your grandmother always smelled like Channel No. 5—each time you smell that fragrance it brings you right back,” says Suzanne Saroff. “The process of chewing the gum for this series did that in a jarring way.”
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/suzanne-saroff-bubblegum/
Children and Animals Merge with the Natural World in Willy Verginer’s Whimsical ‘Lost Garden’
Whether deep in slumber or perched on ornamental pedestals, Willy Verginer’s bold, whimsical sculptures (previously) invite us into a surreal dream world. His latest series, The Lost Garden, draws on the paradisiacal notion of Eden and the alpine landscape and animals of the Dolomite Mountains near the artist’s home in northern Italy.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/willy-verginer-lost-garden/
Jamie McGregor Smith Illuminates Europe’s Most Striking Brutalist Churches in ‘Sacred Modernity’
In the mid-20th century, a bold, angular architectural style emerged as a celebration of post-war renewal, innovation, and symbolic strength. Brutalism, known for its bare, monochrome, industrial materials like concrete, brick, and steel, became a way for centers of influence like municipal hubs, government buildings, and cultural institutions to convey magnificent resilience and contemporaneity. Religious architecture was no exception.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/jamie-mcgregor-smith-sacred-modernity/
Lauren Fensterstock’s Cosmic Mosaics Map Out the Unknown in Crystal and Gems
When a massive star dies, it collapses with an enormous explosion that produces a supernova. In some cases, the remains become a black hole, the enigmatic phenomenon that traps everything it comes into contact with—even light itself.
Lauren Fensterstock, who applies the principles of such stellar transformations to human interaction and connection. From her studio in Portland, Maine, she creates dense mosaics of fragmented crystals and stones including quartz, obsidian, and tourmaline that glimmer when hit by light and form shadowy areas of intrigue when not. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/lauren-fensterstock-mosaic-sculptures/
Yuko Nishikawa’s Sprawling Mobiles Mimic the Rambling Growth of Moss and Plants
For the last two years, Yuko Nishikawa (previously) has prioritized traveling. Chasing the unbridled inspiration that new environments bring to her practice, the Brooklyn-based artist has found herself in Japan, participating in residency programs and appreciating time on her own. Using local materials, crossing paths with people, and immersing herself in different landscapes has become the starting point for much of her recent work.
Mossy Mossy, returns to the classic paper pod mobiles she’s known for and evokes a physical reflection of her musings from Hokuto-shi. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/yuko-nishikawa-mossy-mossy/
Dudi Ben Simon’s Playful Photos Draw on Visual Puns and Humourous Happenstance
When Dudi Ben Simon observes the world around her, visual puns and parallels are everywhere: a cinnamon bun stands in for a hair bun; the crinkled top of a lemon is cinched like a handbag; or yellow rubber glove stretches like melted cheese. “I see it as a type of readymade, a trend in art created by using objects or daily life items disconnected to their original context, changing their meanings and creating a new story from them,” the artist says. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/dudi-ben-simon-photos/
The Burden: A Darkly Funny Musical Punctures Existential Dread with Unusually Cheerful Song and Dance
Niki Lindroth von Bahr, “The Burden” is a wildly wry musical that skewers loneliness, greed, beauty myths, and the existential woes of modern life through a lively cast of animal characters.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/the-burden-short-film/
Two Decades After Its Release, ‘The Art Book for Children’ Gets a Vibrant Makeover
First published in 1997, Phaidon’s The Art Book has long been a go-to source for introductions to some of the most influential artists. Spanning medieval to modern times, the volume contains more than 600 works and is available in 20 languages. About two decades ago, the iconic title received another type of translation geared specifically toward younger art lovers when editors released The Art Book for Children.
The Art Book and was recently updated and revised. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/the-art-book-for-children/
Jason Limon Gets to the Heart of Human Emotion in His Soul-Stirring Skeleton Paintings
Reaching toward universal experiences unclouded by specific identities, Jason Limon strips his recurring characters to the bare bones. The San Antonio-based artist (previously) continues his uncanny paintings of skeletons, who find themselves in precarious, startling, and genial situations. Recent works include “Peas In A Pod,” which features two friends adopting new heads from a large, curved shell. Similar smiling orbs appear in “The Right Grape” as a character chooses and fits the cheerful green fruit onto its neck. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/jason-limon-paintings/
Stéphane Thidet Challenges Physics and Social Norms in His Site-Specific Installations
Paris-based artist Stéphane Thidet invites viewers into wondrous worlds that skew perceptions and distort the laws of physics: a small wooden boat appears to arise from hard planks, flat stones nest inside a bookcase where paper tomes once stood, and water cascades from a Nantes theater making it impossible to enter without being drenched. Crafted with familiar materials and subject matter, Thidet’s site-specific installations and sculptures twist common scenes into unexpected territories.
his website. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/stephane-thidet-installations/
In His World-Building Series ‘New Prophets,’ Jorge Mañes Rubio Cloaks Basketballs in Beads
Beginning with an iconic yet common spherical form, Jorge Mañes Rubio reimagines basketballs as powerful entities in his series New Prophets. Ornamented with stylized creatures, botanicals, and figures, each sculpture tells its own enigmatic story, drawing on the inextricable link between past and present. “These works, although familiar in visual language, seem to come from a dream-like dimension,” the artist tells Colossal, “as if offering a chance at re-enchanting the world we live in.”
New Prophets began with a fascination with an 8th-century Spanish illuminated manuscript called the Commentary on the Apocalypse that’s decorated in a Mozarabic style, which originated in Spain and represents a blend of Romanesque, Islamic, and Byzantine traditions. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/jorge-manes-rubio-new-prophets/
Informed by Research Aboard Ships, Elsa Guillaume Translates the Wonder of Marine Adventures
Whether capturing the sights of a dive in the remote Mexican village of Xcalak or the internal mechanisms of a sailing ship, Elsa Guillaume’s stylized sketchbooks record her adventures. Glimpses of masts, a kitchen quaking from shaky seas, and a hand gutting a fish create a rich tapestry of life on the move. “Daily drawings (are) a ritual while traveling,” she tells Colossal. “It is a way to practice the gaze, to be attentive to any type of surroundings. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/elsa-guillaume-travel-sketchbooks/
Ronald Jackson’s Masked Portraits of Imaginary Characters Stoke Curiosity About Their Stories
Six years ago, Ronald Jackson had only four months to prepare for a solo exhibition. The short time frame led to a series of large-scale portraits that focused on an imagined central figure, often peering directly back at the viewer, in front of vibrant backgrounds. But he quickly grew uninspired by painting the straightforward head-and-shoulder compositions. “Portraits, which are usually based in concepts of identity, can present a challenge for artists desiring to suggest narratives,” he tells Colossal. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/ronald-jackson-masked-portraits/