I feel like I’ve been posting About Christoph Niemann a lot lately, but he’s been creating such a wide range of interesting pieces that I feel like it’s warranted. He created a large scale mural in collaboration with The Horst Janssen Museum in Oldenburg, Germany, illustrating a person drawing, with their creations springing to life along the outside of the building. What’s quite novel is that what you see during the day is then transformed at night because of a carefully laid out white neon, giving the space an entirely new meaning. Such a wonderful public intervention, I bet this is lovely to see throughout the day and the night.
New Poetry is a recent addition to Rashid Johnson’s ongoing series of steel-grid sculptures, which he began in 2004. This installation, which is located at The Whitney in New York, consists of an illuminated grid structure made of steel bars, spanning both indoor and outdoor spaces of the museum. The grid features live plants nurtured by grow lights and placed in ceramic pots handmade by the artist.
Additionally, the installation incorporates poetry books, carved blocks of shea butter, and TV monitors displaying Johnson’s 2010 silent short film titled Black Yoga. The intention behind this work was to create a brain-like space that combines diverse materials and information, enabling the generation of new connections and modes of thinking. The living elements and exposed location of the installation explore the boundaries of institutional stewardship and engage the empathy and responsibility of viewers.
I love how the piece bisects the space, living both inside and out, transporting your eye through. His work reminds me of a contemporary version of that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with each shelf holding some kind of wonder or curiosity. I’m sure the work is even more impactful now, as New York in winter can be quite cold and snowy, and this exhibit gives you the exact opposite feeling.
I stumbled upon an interview with artist and writer Justin Chance, who has a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a BA in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His series of quilts are fascinating, combining his love for making with his interest in painting.
These quilts are so ethereal, like stitched together memories, assemblages of random fibers and feelings coming together to tell a new story. I love the colors and textures he’s able to achieve, they’re so stunning. I keep seeing a resurgence of tapestries and knit pieces living on walls as fine art, which I think is great. Pieces like Chance’s are beautiful because of the warp and weft of the material. They’re imprecise and a bit chaotic and it leads to such gorgeous character.
The ever-inventive Christoph Niemann has released a 2024 calendar called “On The Road II”, featuring a series of pieces of Niemann made of iconic locations. The calendar is meant to be a minimal in it’s presentation of information, only the month and location are jotted on the bottom of each. I assume most people use Google Calendar at this point, so you can think of this calendar as a piece of art that helps mark the passage of time. It helps justify the steep price tag, €120 each, so you may want to consider this an investment for future you, who will have twelve beautiful pieces of art framed around your home.
Craig Green, you wild for this one. In collaboration with Dover Street Market, the avant-garde designer, who’s known for his extremely creative take on fashion, released a limited edition series of “JUMBO WOODEN TOOLS”, of which, only 11 were made. Their phallic appearance certainly grabbed a lot of attention, many sites calling them “sex toys” which is pretty laughable. I think they look pretty rad, the colorways are especially amazing, and I love that you can see the natural wood grain showing through. Honestly, these would fit in perfectly in my apartment, though I’m also a stylish queer person ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I will always love art like this that makes certain kinds of people uncomfortable.
This is the sort of thesis for Akiko Nakayama’s “alive paintings” where she combines different liquids combined with projectors to bringing painting to life. The stills of her work look like galaxies or alien micro-organisms, while her live work is like a fascinating journey through an alien universe. I’m so impressed by the way that she’s been able to figure out, I’m assuming through trial and error, how to manipulate these liquids to do such extraordinary things, while also putting on a captivating show at the same time. Be sure to watch the video below in it’s super high-res, full-screen glory for the optimal experience.
Linda Nguyen Lopez, a first-generation American artist of Vietnamese and Mexican heritage, creates “abstract works that uncover the emotional depth within ordinary objects, revealing the poetic essence of the everyday.” There’s a lovely organic, kind of alien vibe to her pieces, or perhaps like something out of a children’s book. Her ceramic pieces are so full of life and whimsy, and the gradient color palette she creates is mystifying. I want to own one of these so that I can walk by and run my hands over the surfaces, I bet they feel amazing.
There’s something old and familiar in the paintings of Lausanne-born artist Nicolas Party. His new show at Hauser & Wirth New York, simply titled Swamp, feels like wandering through a dream, with tinges of arcane wisdom and occult-esque imagery. His use of pastels, employed at incredibly large scales, and his oil-on-copper paintings, are evocative of pieces you may see in a museum. He’s exploring familiar ground, building off the primal elements of life, and bringing them to life in such a contemporary way.
For me, there’s something so magical about his jewel toned palette that’s extremely alluring, especially the contrast of colors. And of course, playing with scale is always an effective tool for making things feel grandiose and beyond the norm. If you’re in New York, please go see this show for me, it runs until 21 October.
I was talking with a friend yesterday about the art and creative surrounding 90s and early 2000s skateboarding, and he reminded me of someone I hadn’t thought of in a while — Thomas Campbell. A key figure in the “Beautiful Losers” movement, I was always so impressed with Campbell’s ability to dabble in so many mediums. Paintings and ephemera sewn together in abstract quilts (literally), charming hand painted lettering, and pattern-painted ceramics all were part of his creative worldview. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, I’d highly recommend this interview with Campbell by Chloe Roth who goes deep on the artist. He has such a unique POV.
Ben Newman is a UK-based illustrator and artist who’s primary work is focused on illustrations for children’s books and toys. Yet, I want to focus on his newly burgeoning fine art that began to crop up in late 2022. The pieces are somewhere between paintings and assemblage, with random shapes building together in some fascinating ways. He’s created pieces that seem to focus on the macro, lots of circles and blobs and triangles coming together in a chaos of shapes, as well as the micro, seemingly close-up details of larger compositions which are equally as delightful.
This series of objects by Yuri Mo, which have been 3D rendered in a kind of “hyperpop” aesthetic, for lack of a better term, immediately caught my eye. I love how fantastical these are, somewhere between the throwback “transparent everything” trend and if Karan Singh did more acid trip inspired work in 3D. And the complexity of each of the surfaces and how the colors change really blows my mind, this is such beautiful work.
Tim Teven is a Dutch designer who graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2018. He has a technical and material-driven approach to design, and he uses unconventional methods to create functional yet interesting objects. The one that caught my attention, though I’d say all of his work is quite remarkable, are the Pressure Vases he creates.
He’s created an array of these vessels, in a myriad number of sizes and shapes, as well as materials, including stainless steel, chrome, and zinc. It’s fantastic that he’s able to take such mundane materials and give them such an interesting twist. In some cases the forms look almost cartoon-ish, like Wile E. Coyote after a run in with an Acme product gone wrong. Yet an elegance still remains in these pieces, and I can quite clearly imagine how many of these would look with a lovely bouquet of flowers in them.
