Sdtrk: ‘Black holes are not completely black’ by Leyland Kirby

If there’s one thing I can be accused of indulging too much in, it’s artifice. Frankly I’ve no clue as to where people get that notion, but whatever. The other main attraction in my life would of course be design from the late Fifties to early Seventies. As the oft-neglected ‘This was the Future‘ series shows, I’m fond of architectural examples from that period, but I love the design as well. So it makes sense that I’m digging the hell out of graphic designer Julian Montague’s work.

Not only are his pieces arranged with exacting detail — the book covers alone are like a loveletter to the Marber grid, a design template that came to fame via Penguin’s paperback covers during the Sixties — but every title and every name used are completely affictitious.

In looking over his imagined covers, he seems to have a fascination with insects, particularly spiders. I don’t know what that says. Maybe set out more traps?

Not only does Julian’s work blur the lines between art and graphic design, but it also distorts things both real and imagined. We need more people like him! Go see the full website here, and Happy 23rd!

Sdtrk: ‘I’m Bruce (Dimension 5 Mega mix)’ by Fantastic plastic machine

I’d have to say this is pretty mental. Looks like someone Photoshopped something onto the picture of a courtyard, right? But there’s much more behind it…

They’re really small Toclafane! And THEY WILL END US ALL

Beginning October 23, 2010, MASS MoCA will present a new site-specific sculpture by Prague-based artist Federico Díaz. Created from 420,000 black spheres precisely milled and assembled by robotic machines, the 50-feet long by 20-feet high sculpture, Geometric Death Frequency-141, will fill MASS MoCA’s entrance courtyard with a fragmented wave seemingly caught between movement and stasis.

An interior installation of one of the robotic machines used to manufacture the work will accompany Díaz’s presentation at MASS MoCA. The robot will assemble additional spheres to be later added to the massive sculpture, providing viewers with the opportunity to experience the process by which Geometric Death Frequency-141 is created. The Díaz-developed process is unique-in addition to utilizing modern computer-aided manufacturing techniques, pure data and algorithms based on particle physics are the guiding forces behind the sculpture’s shape, texture and size.
taken from this article

Frankly, I’ve no idea which is cooler — the fact that it’s a solid thing that resembles something liquid, or the entire gigantic sculpture is assembled entirely by robots, or the title itself — ‘Geometric death frequency-141’. Sounds like the name of a piece by Masonna. Very nice!

*Yes yes, I apologise for the title

Sdtrk: ‘Thick as thieves’ by the Jam

Remember Cai Guo-Qiang, that artist bloke that I wrote about last year, with his cadre of Synthetik wolves impacting upon glass panes? Well, he did it again last year with another frozen-moments-as-installation-piece, entitled ‘Inopportune’. Nice!

Ford Tauruses… aren’t normally supposed to do that

The centerpiece of Inopportune, titled Inopportune: Stage 1, features a dazzling array of colored light pulsing from hundreds of long transparent rods. These rods thrust out from nine identical white cars which tumble in an arc through the gallery, suspended in mid-air as if by stop-action. Gradually the viewer perceives that an explosive event is unfolding in nine frozen frames. At the end of the sequence the car lands safely, unaltered, implying a closed and repeatable circuit.
taken from this article

I don’t know about you, but I’m looking at that picture above, and seeing album cover.
Cai Guo-Qiang, you’re building up an impressive CV! We’re going to have to keep an eye on you

Sdtrk: ‘Papercuts’ by Broadcast

By my own admission, I’m not altogether keen on most modern (i.e., anything after the mid-Nineties) art, but this is a notable exception by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang that I spotted on the Random board of WAKAchan:

AWHUMPA thumpa thump thud arf etc

The wolves were produced in Quanzhou, China, from January to June of 2006. The commissioned local workshop in Cai’s hometown specializes in manufacturing remarkable, life-sized replicas of animals. First, small clay models were created as movement studies, out of which Cai subsequently developed Head On’s artist editions of cast resin wolves. However, the realistic and lifelike 99 wolves that grew out of these models and drawings possess no literal remnants of wolves: they are fabricated from painted sheepskins and stuffed with hay and metal wires, with plastic lending contour to their faces and marbles for eyes.
taken from this article

Seems that when he’s not having RealWolves colliding with glass panes, he works a lot with pyrotechnics or gunpowder, as evidenced on his site on Artsy.net. These are concepts I can get behind!

Sdtrk: ‘G turns to D’ by Sloan

Usually when I’m on das InfoBahn, I’m either spending the majority of my time going through my bookmarks of RealDoll and similar Synthetik companion sites (twenty-one, at last count), or I’m wasting time on my two favourite image boards, 4chan and WAKAchan. It was on WAKAchan where I learned that some artist bloke that I’d never heard of before, by the name of Zdzisław Beksiński, was stabbed to death in his home in Poland.
Now, cos it’s an image board, someone had posted a couple of pics of Beksiński’s pieces, and at first glace, I thought they’d been done by H.R Giger. Pretty close, yeah, but Giger’s territories seem like they’d be more likely on an alien world, whereas Beksiński’s works somehow seem more suited towards our planet; albeit after Revelations.

Give his stuff a look-in. In their own nightmarish way, they’re beautiful paintings, and they tend to remain in your mind long after you look at them. It’s really a tragedy that Beksiński was senselessly murdered, but at least his works will always be around