Why Does Art Matter? A New Crash Course Series Explores Art History
School might be out for summer, but for those of us needing extra credit in the world of aesthetics, objects, and their meaning, the team at Crash Course is offering bite-sized lessons in art history.
A new video series hosted by curator and educator Sarah Urist Green dives into the vast realm of visual culture to explore the techniques, people, and movements that have transformed how we see the world. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/art-history-crash-course/
Photos from 41 Countries Juxtapose Blocky Architecture and Verdant Gardens in ‘Brutalist Plants’
In the mid-20th century, during reconstruction following World War II, an architectural style emerged in the U.K. and Europe that favored bare, industrial building materials, a monochrome palette, and angular geometry. Both iconic and divisive, the hulking, concrete facades can be seen in the likes of London’s Barbican Centre or the National Theatre. In the U.S., think of Boston City Hall or Met Breuer. These stalwart structures represented modernity, resilience, and strength, serving as civic hubs and governmental centers—the opposite of “soft around the edges.”
Brutalist Plants comes in, a repository of photographs featuring gardens and greenery around these iconic buildings, which she has collected on her Instagram since 2018. More
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Tara Donovan Layers 200,000 CDs into Twisting Totems of Physical Data
Despite claims that CDs are raring back into the zeitgeist, only a small number of people today consume media through the slim, shiny discs. In an exhibition at Pace, artist Tara Donovan presents an ode to the outmoded, if not beloved objects through 11 towering works.
Slinkys that consider accumulation and aggregation. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/tara-donovan-stratagems/
Uncanny Phenomena Derail Domestic Bliss in Marisa Adesman’s Luminous Paintings
Marisa Adesman unsettles domestic stability by twisting common sights into the surreal. From her studio in St. Louis, the artist infuses still lifes evocative of the Dutch Golden Age with a strange animism: forks coil around lit taper candles, an upside-down terracotta pot appears to levitate, and an illustrated kitchen tile seamlessly morphs into the feathered flesh of a duck. The luminous oil paintings use food and dining to explore issues of gender, culture, and politics, including the invisible labor women historically have undertaken. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/marisa-adesman-still-life/
Anja Brunt’s Clever Collages Give Ephemeral Articles a Second Life
Inspired by Dada and Surrealism, Anja Brunt’s instinctive paper medleys evoke a sense of whimsy, spontaneity, and randomness. The Amsterdam-based graphic designer has been creating assemblages for six years as a way to relax. After falling in love with the many possibilities of the medium, she began to work intuitively, cutting and arranging vintage ephemera into iterations of bodies, buildings, and bold text.
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Open Call: The 6th VH AWARD for Emerging Asian Media Artists
Since its establishment in 2016, the VH AWARD, hosted by Hyundai Motor Group, has offered a platform for emerging media artists to showcase their artistic expression and discuss diverse cultural and socio-political issues.
VH AWARD website. More
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Frenzied Symbols and Vibrant Vignettes Overlay Sam Rodriguez’s Figurative Illustrations
Sam Rodriguez sorts his works into three categories: nouns, verbs, and typography. Nouns comprises his portraits that zero in on a singular person and their expressions, while verbs takes a step back to portray figures in action. Typography is more abstract and centers on letterforms and graphics informed by Rodriguez’s early forays into graffiti.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/sam-rodriguez-illustrations/
Using the Building Blocks of Myers-Briggs, Jason Boyd Kinsella Puzzles Together an Expressive Cast
“For me, the studio is a place of discovery,” says Jason Boyd Kinsella (previously). “It maybe sounds silly, but it’s a little bit like a Christmas morning when you get a gift, and you’re excited to open it because you don’t know what’s inside… Something is going to be revealed, and I am excited to see what it is.”
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/portraits-jason-boyd-kinsella/
Artist and Activist Zanele Muholi Grapples with Exposure in a New Monograph
Following their lauded 2018 monograph, South African artist and activist Zanele Muholi has released a second book collecting the most recent additions to their series Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness. Volume II features 80 self-portraits shot in Muholi’s signature saturated black and white along with writings by ten contributors and a long-form interview.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/zanele-muholi-somnyama-ngonyama/
Verdant Landscapes and Burgeoning Plants Crawl Across Walls in ONIRO’s Vibrant Anatomical Murals
Greenery abounds in the large-scale murals of Italian artist ONIRO, who often focuses on themes of interconnectedness and balance, especially between humans and the natural world. In “Coltivazione del Sé,” or “self-cultivation,” a human form emerges from the leaves and shadows of a burgeoning plant, while an opening of sky between branches reveals a facial silhouette in an untitled mural on an olive oil processing workshop.
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IED Firenze Launches a New Master Course in Future Store Design
When you decide to buy something, there are many key factors involved. Customer experience has become one of the most relevant aspects to consider when designing a retail journey, whether physical, digital, or both. It’s time to define how retail spaces will evolve in the next years and to do so, Istituto Europeo di Design (IED) Florence just launched a brand-new Master Course in Future Store Design.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/ied-firenze-store-design/
In ‘Zoophites,’ Les Lalanne Hybridize Beasts and Botany into Functional Sculptures
Now obsolete, the term zoophytes once referred to organisms that exhibited both animal and plant characteristics. It’s also an apt title for a poetic exhibition of sculptures blending beastly and botanical forms by the late Claude (1925-2019) and François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008).
Kasmin in New York, Zoophites brings together dozens of surrealist works from the French artists, known together as Les Lalanne, that bridge the divide between kingdoms. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/les-lalanne-zoophites/
Through the Work of More than 60 Artists, ‘The Golden Thread’ Traces the Rise of Textiles in Contemporary Art
In the historic South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, a former 18th-century mercantile warehouse sets the scene for a monumental exhibition of contemporary textile art. The Golden Thread: A Fiber Art Show, presented by BravinLee, gathers more than 100 artworks by 61 artists into the cavernous space, including ten site-specific installations that riff on the building’s history, character, and original machinery.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/the-golden-thread-fiber-art/
Nicolas V. Sanchez Captures Ancestral Stories and Memories in Meticulously Detailed Equine Portraits
When Nicolas V. Sanchez’s dad was young, he was partially raised by his grandfather in Mexico while his own father established roots in Michigan. “My great grandfather bred show horses for festivals and performances, and my dad told me about a specific horse in particular that did not meet my great grandfather’s ‘standard’ for showing,” Sanchez tells Colossal. “He gave that horse to my dad as a childhood pet.”
previously) was struck by this story and the connection to his relatives and ancestral traditions. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/nicolas-v-sanchez-horses/
This Thriving Terra Cotta Workshop Gets an Impressive Brick Makeover in Rural Vietnam
In the village of Dien Phuong in the Quang Nam Province of Vietnam, a thriving workshop received a striking expansion with the help of Ho Chi Minh City-based architects Tropical Space. In 2016, the design firm conceived of a cubic studio for local artist Le Duc Ha in the form of an airy, seven-square-meter brick structure situated among geometric gardens on the bank of Thu Bon River.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/terra-cotta-workshop/
Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel Cultivate Connections Between Sculpture, Nature, and Craft
The term “spoke” has traditionally referred to a piece of split log, like those used as supports in a wagon wheel. Traditional basket-making techniques draw on that same concept by weaving flexible material through a stronger framework. For French artistic duo Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel, notions of interlaced strands, patterns, ecosystems, and vessels shape their solo exhibition, The Weaver and the Spoke, at Antenna Space in Shanghai. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/daniel-dewar-and-gregory-gicquel/
Althea Crome’s Miniature Sweaters Test the Limits of Traditional Knitting
Have you ever sent a knit sweater through a dryer cycle and returned to find it a fraction of the size it once was? Well, think even smaller. Althea Crome’s incredibly detailed miniature sweaters didn’t shrink in a dryer but were instead created stitch by stitch with scrupulous dexterity over hundreds of hours.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/althea-crome-miniature-sweaters/
Puppy Dog Eyes and Playful Paws: Misato Sano’s Wooden Sculptures Capture Canine Attitude
From pudgy pugs to a precisely groomed poodle to a deliriously happy Shiba Inu, Misato Sano’s waggish pups emerge from single blocks of wood. The artist (previously) chisels expectant eyes and goofy grins, revealing individual personalities that showcase each breed’s distinctive look and attitude.
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/misato-sano-wooden-dogs/
Childhood Boredom and Wonder Abound in Aron Wiesenfeld’s Inky Post-It Drawings
When a friend asked for a small drawing on a Post-It note to add to his growing collection of artworks on the iconic yellow square, Aron Wiesenfeld obliged. The North Carolina-based artist rendered one of his introspective scenes and enjoyed the process enough to create an entire series on the 3 x 3-inch canvas.
his paintings onto the scaled-down surface. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/aron-wiesenfeld-post-it-drawings/
Picking Up Pixels: Rüdiger Schlömer Designs Typefaces for Knitting
Rather than build the letter “A” or “R” through digital layers, Rüdiger Schlömer constructs the alphabet, numbers, and basic symbols stitch by stitch. The Zurich-based designer devised Typeknitting, a project that interlocks two distinctive creative forms into a methodically constructed, tactile hybrid. “Typographic knitting to me is a process of translation between two very different fields, hand knitting structures and type design. This is what makes it so interesting to me,” he shares. More
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https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/05/type-knitting-rudiger-schlomer/