May 20, 2013
Figolu, 2005–11. Photo: Jerry L. Thompson/Courtesy of Storm King Art Center
We’re closer than we’ve ever been (and now we’re even closer!) to the SFMOMA expansion, which will break ground on May 29. The official last day to appreciate the Mario Botta building’s intactness is June 2, at the close of a four-day countdown celebration with free admission for everyone.
To kick off its series of off-site programming, which must carry SFMOMA (and the rest of us) through early 2016, the museum fittingly went with something monumental. Director Neal Benezra organized a retrospective of Mark di Suvero’s large-scale steel sculptures at Crissy Field, a former airfield on the waterfront near the city’s Marina district. The show doesn’t officially open until Wednesday, but joggers and pedestrians will be forgiven for noticing the eight enormous steel assemblages hulking over their usual dog-walking routes. Read more!
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May 6, 2013
French artist Arik Levy has designed this series of geometric pendant lighting fixtures called Wireflow for VIBIA lighting company. The chandeliers which vary in shape and size, are formed by thin rods and LED terminals (3W), which run parallel to one another and frame physical shapes out of the immaterial. Levy then molds the rods to create hanging minimalist sculptures that finish with a set of tiny capsule-like bulbs.
Wireflow reinterprets classical approaches to lighting fixtures in a highly contemporary manner that creates compositions that play with two and three-dimensional space. According to Levy, Wireflow symbolizes presence and absence, transparency and luminosity, light and fluidity. Like much of Levy’s work, Wireflow is a sculptural meditation in the ways humans interact with and understand objects. Click through to see more.
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April 16, 2013
Behold “Pisces,” an enormous worm-like sculpture made of 10,000+ balloons! The piece, created by the New York-based artist Jason Hackenwerth, was unveiled at the National Museum of Scotland during the recent Edinburgh International Science Festival. According to the site Colossal, the artwork was inspired by the Zodiac sign Pisces, which itself was inspired by the story of Aphrodite and Eros escaping “the fearsome monster Typhon by transforming into a tightly woven spiral of two fish.” It reportedly took a small team six days to blow up the balloons for Hackenwerth’s installation. Click through to see more images!
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March 12, 2013
Two years ago, the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami swept across the country’s coast wreaking untold amounts of damage. One of the quake’s victims was an old forest in Rikuzentakata, Iwate, which was obliterated by severe ground tremors and the crashing sea waves that followed. Of the 70,000 timbers that were felled, a sole tree survived. The ”miracle pine,” as it’s called by locals, withstood one of the greatest natural disasters recorded, only to perish in September 2012 after it succumbed to toxic levels of saline that had been deposited by flooding.
Now, a sculpture commemorating the miraculous 88-foot-tall tree is set to open in an event that will mark the second anniversary of the disaster. Continue.
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February 15, 2013
Project: Rock Strangers
Architect: Studio Arne Quinze
Location: Ostend, Belgium
The often overlooked coastal town of Ostend hugs the English Channel, and can seem more sea than town—the sweeping views out to sea draw focus away from Ostend and to the horizon. To contradict this tendency, architect Arne Quinze developed the Rock Strangers, a series of monumental metal sculptures scattered across the seafront plaza. Their electric orange hue and ineffable forms are visually magnetic. Exploring the themes of otherness and alienation, the sculptures radically transform the public space of the town and act as an anchor to the town-at-land’s-end.
Read more about this project in the Architizer database!
Images courtesy Studio Arne Quinze
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February 11, 2013
Photo via flickr
Having survived the great Nor’Easter of 2013 (otherwise not known as “Nemo”), and now with the near foot-yield of snowfall virtually erased by rain, we’re already feeling a little nostalgic for the powdery stuff. (True, had we been just that much more north and east, we’d probably be singing a different tune.) These photos of Japan’s Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, for instance, have us hoping for many more canonical blizzards, sled rides, and snowmen.
The route, which links the Tateyama and Omachi municipalities, is a tourist destination. Where the road passes through the Hida Mountains, monolithic walls of packed snow bound either side of the motorway. The 20-meter-high corridor was sculpted using snowblowers and backhoe. The path was completed in 1981 and continues to draw tourists, actually only tourists—the road only services charter buses of gawking visitors—to this day. Click through for more photos!
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January 29, 2013
Attention acoustics nerds, sculpture enthusiasts, and optics buffs: If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to start your own sculpture park, are holding out for a really great chuppah, or just need a superlative Valentine’s Day gift idea, this may be the deal for you. The British inventor and public-art mastermind Luke Jerram is auctioning off Aeolus, a 10-ton steel-and-string acoustic wind pavilion that whirs and whistles in the breeze like a giant mohawk-shaped harp. Jerram spent three years and £250,000 (about $392,575) constructing the sculpture. Bidding, which opened yesterday, starts at just £1. Read more!
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January 23, 2013
“Sketching with a band saw” is how artist James McNabb describes his process for making his micro-lumber-cityscapes. McNabb’s sculptures are all painstakingly carved out of wood and typically consists of two components: a large frame—either circular, rectangular, pyramidal—that delineates the boundaries of the miniature cities inscribed within. Each of the tiny skyscrapers are individually formed and intricately detailed; they assume their own character, with some zig-zagging this way and that, while others twist and curl. The towers are aggregated in a “skyline” that’s organized along a grid or single axis, producing a dizzying, zoetrope-like effect. Click through for more photos!
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January 22, 2013
“Paper architecture” is typically derogatory, used to describe the architect who designs much but builds very little. Christina Lihan’s paper sculptures of architectural landmarks and iconic cityscapes is a nice play on the term. Lihan hand carves sheets of watercolor paper to build real, three-dimensional structures that pop from the picture frame (or shadow box in this case). She begins by drawing out the scene in charcoal, using this template as the starting point for her paper works. She constructs the “building” in layers, and usually from the oblique, so as to amplify the 3D effect. Here, miniature skyscrapers and lilliputian basilicas are rendered in great detail, with every spire, column, and mast perfectly in place. Click through for more photos.
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January 21, 2013
Photo: Gareth Cooper
No, that ominous photo above isn’t a film still from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (our preferred alien-movie reference). It isn’t crystal-clear photographic evidence of martian touchdown, but rather, just a cleverly lit art installation. Darn. By day, the 18-meter wide structure appears unassuming, even a bit clumsy, while at night, the project takes on a more menacing air. Continue.
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