We are really liking these animal inspired oil paintings by San Francisco-based artist, Kevin E. Taylor. Born in Charleston, SC, Taylor attended The Savannah College of Art and Design and has had his dark and whimsical work published and exhibited throughout the U.S. as well as internationally.
Taylor’s work deals heavily with animal motifs, depicting a veritable menagerie of creatures from pandas to vultures. However, Taylor’s work transcends mere animal appropriation as the artist infuses his imagery with an overt edge.
There is almost a post-apocalyptic darkness to Taylor’s work, which has featured decapitated bears and monkeys swimming in bowls of formaldehyde. The end result is something ferocious yet somber. Perhaps Taylor is attempting to comment on the ways in which humanity has imposed on nature, or, the ways in which nature inevitably continues to impose on humanity with crises such as global warming and natural disasters. Whatever the artist is trying to say, Taylor has certainly got our attention. More information on Taylor is available through his website.
Amsterdam-based artist Cedric Laquieze has always been fascinated with creatures. Recently, this fascination has manifested itself in the artist’s flower skeletons. A Graduate of the Rietveld Academy for Fine Arts and Design, Laquieze artfully applies flowers to the skeletal frames of humans, cats, dogs and other creatures to create simultaneously grotesque and gorgeous works; art that is at once shocking and sensitive.
We love the contrasting concepts Laquieze brilliantly highlights with his work. A skeleton, perhaps the epitome of death, is placed in direct conception with the overt notion of life, seen in the fresh flowers. The sculptures almost translate as a dark satirical interpretation of the traditional use of flowers during funerals.
Ultimatley, we are all going to inevitably die. Perhaps that’s why it is so important to fully appreciate the beauty in life, rather than taking things for granted, as some of us tend to do in this desensitizing post-modern context of over-consumption and never-ending stimulation. Lacquieze proves that whether in life or death, the experience is something worth remembering and taking in.
Intensely beautiful and tranquil, Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto’s salt installations play on the inherent symbolic purity of salt within the Japanese culture. Born in Hiroshima in 1966, Yamamoto worked in a dockyard before attending Kanazawa College of Art at the age of 22.
After seeing the video documenting Yamamoto’s process, we can truly appreciate the time and exacting skill needed to create each and every installation. Many of Yamamoto’s installations require hours and hours of meticulous piping in order for the artist’s labyrinthine aesthetic to be realized, while others are more reminiscent of the precise lines and contours seen in Japanese Zen gardens. The sheer scale of his projects, too, are a wonder to behold.
This May, Yamamoto plans to honor his late sister with a site-specific installation at the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC. The untimely death of his sister at the age of 24 inspired the artist to forge a connection between salt as a symbol of purity and his sister’s memory. The exhibition will also feature a series of Yamamoto’s recent drawings, paintings, and sketchbooks. More information on the exhibition and Yamamoto is available through his website. In the meantime, check out this video of the artist hard at work:
We are still trying to decipher the intricacies of Boston-based artist Jenine Shereos’s leaf series. Shereos recreates the complex veining pattern found on the surface of a leaf by wrapping, stitching, and knotting together individual strands of human hair.
Shereos works as a sculptor and installation artist specializing in fiber and textile processes, but in addition to her studio practise, Shereos is a full time weaving instructor working alongside adults with disabilities. The artist’s primary discipline obviously informs her latest series as she manipulates the delicate nature of hair, knotting, tying and stitching the strands to create a new medium.
The artist creates her leaves by first stitching the individual strands of hair (like the blond strands depicted above) to a water-soluble backing; where the strands intersect, Shereos ties a knot. When the backing has been dissolved in water, the final product is a novel and stunning interpretation on humanity’s relationship to nature.
Shereos found the artistic process to be very meditative, losing herself in the detail of the naturally-occuring patterns. Ultimately, humans are biological organisms. In spite of all our advances, we are still at the mercy of mother nature. And it is this universal truth which continues to inform the artist’s work.
When photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia sent us some of his work for our latest issue of Corduroy, we were honored. As one of today’s most influential and innovative photographers, diCorcia’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at many of the world’s prominent institutions — most recently at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2008 — and having him in our magazine was so special.
As one of today’s most influential and innovative photographers, diCorcia is known for works that balance between documentary and theatrically-staged photography, while capturing the intimate moments in seemingly everyday occurrences. His practice takes these occurrences beyond the realm of banality, infusing what would otherwise appear to be insignificant gestures with psychology and emotion. Photography is thus employed as a fictive medium capable of creating uncanny, complex realities out of seemingly straightforward compositions.
The artist’s talent will be undoubtedly be on display as David Zwirner is presents the work of Philip-Lorca diCorcia at this year’s AIPAD (The Association of International Photography Art Dealers). 2012 marks the gallery’s first year of participation in this international photography fair.
On view will be recent works from the artist’s ongoing East of Eden series, begun in 2008, including a photograph based in New York which has not previously been exhibited (Untitled, 2011). Drawing from the Book of Genesis, the series takes the economic and political climate of the United States towards the end of the Bush era as a source of inspiration and depicts people and events as if existing or taking place just after “the fall,” conveying both a sense of disillusionment and a loss of innocence.
The opening night gala takes place, next Wednesday, March 28th from 5-9pm. The show will open to the public Thursday, March 29th, running until Sunday, April 1st at the Park Avenue Armory at 67th Street. Tickets and more information are available through the AIPAD website.
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