"What's the use?" #01: Executive Desk

Dale Mathis is a surprising artist. He carves wood, glass and mecanics to create objects that can really be qualified as marvellous...

Here's his "Executive Desk". A piece of art that's rather extraordinary, heavily "steampunk" influenced: this new mix of industrial revolution and victorian era.


The machinery is articulated in the shape of a desk that totally circles the worker.
A video shows the object in action: click here. You can click here for the artist's website.

Imagine R is back

This year's visuals are even better than last year's (check them here) for Imagine R. They really try to pull out something edgy with their agencies H and Lézilus.

The feminine visuals are signed by Jeanclode, a very cool collective whose blog can be seen here. I noticed their wonderful "Faisons Connaissance" campaign for France 5.


The masculine visuals are signed Cream and Hello.


Each teenager (let me remind you that Imagine R is aimed at high-school and college students) has their own personality and their own style. Without being too cliché, their universe displays different metro/train station in different fashions. A cute idea.

Dots Obsession

La Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris presents an installation by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama in the frame of its "intercultural dialog: when different types of madness meet".

Dots Obsessions is a multitude of inflattable pink baloons with black dots, some of which you can enter, see pictures below.

Kusama, who's considered at the avant-garde of Japanese art scene started her work in the 1950s with Andy Warhol. She stages her nightmares and child hallucinations (such as dots). She states that her "life is like a dot, lost among thousands of other dots".

Kusama hovers between minimal virtuosity and destructive madness... In 1973, ill, she goes home to Japan and destroys many of her pieces. She's been living ever since in an instution that treats insanity by artistic expression. She's had a workshop built next to her clinic.

These huge pink bubbles provoke a weird feeling in every visitor, they're first surprised and amused, walking through this light and imposing figures. The dots then almost subjugate and absorb the audience's attention. On a screen, a short movies shows us the artist in a pink wig reciting a daunting poem.


The artist's website: click here.
Through Aug. 17, 2008 only at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris (metro Porte de Pantin). Hurry, no entry fee, closes at 10 pm.

Erwin Olaf - Paradise

Erwin Olaf is a Dutch photographer born in 1959.


Olaf lives in Amsterdam since 1980, his work got praised in 1988 with the "Chessmen" series, showing naked bodies (obese or pregnant women, young and vivid young men) enbodying the different pawns of a dusty chess game.


Through his work, the artist explores different themes like gender, sensuality, humor, despair and grace...


"Paradise", that I chose to represent here, is a series of photographs from 2001 focusing on a dark and baroque world inhabited by obscure clowns that express both happiness and sadness.


Erwin Olaf also got some attention in 1999 with the flamboyant and provocative visuals of a Diesel campaign that won the Lion d'Argent in Cannes. We also remember his beautiful white and red creations for Lavazza.


Olaf twork on video too, he directed some more or less disturbing shorts in the 2000s.


To close the series, the artist presented a series of portraits of the characters of the scenes. Important: click on the images to enlarge them, they're quite big, enabling you to observe the details of those peculiar faces.


Erwin Olaf's website: click here!

Iko's Tainted Glass

While I was reading Libération's blog "Les 400 Culs", I heard of this rather peculiar artist who works on tainted glass. This media, generally devoted to religious artwork, is "hijacked" for more modern pieces of art, often being very provocative.


Diego Tolomelli has created a whole series of erotic tainted glasses in his IKO studio. More information and more pictures on his website: click here.

Obamart

The Democrat candidate to the US presidential election of November 2008 started a cultural and historical enthusiasm almost never seen before. Barack Obama revolutionize American politics with the hope he helped to revive and the incredible mobilization of a new generation. The Y generation.

El Mac

Go Tell Mama!

Hyperakt

Vivache

Go Tell Mama!

Eyesuck Ink

Munk One

Sam Flores

Xtrapop

Shepard Fairey

Date Farmers

Ray Noland

Shepard Fairey

Here, you'll find a Flickr page entirely dedicated to Obama street art, not to be missed!

Big Art Group

© Katya Valentini

Caden Manson/Big Art Group is a New-York company of performers created in 1999. They use the media language and mix their performances to create new culturally transgressive pieces. Since its beginning, the band has been touring in the US and internationally, they produced 5 main plays among which are "Real Time Film" with "Shelf Life", "Flicker" and "House of No More".

As far as I am concerned, I ran into a performance of "Cinema Fury: The Imitation" by chance during the EXIT08 festival at the Créteil Art Center in April 2008. I had never witnessed anything like that. An incredible mix of musical, theatrical and video performances. A hardly intelligible storylilne on 4 screens facing each others, dismanteled and almost osbcene bodies (swollen lips, dangling tongues, outrageous dubbing), the use of sadistic carnival-inspired props (wigs, liquids), 2 dancers on crack in dresses that could have be stolen from Cher, a platinum-blonde singer in black lace whose body was 95 per covered in tatoos, a guitar player who wouldn't leave his Manson Halloween costume... In a nutshell: a true UFO hovering on Créteil for an hour of visual and sonic delirium perfectly masterized with inventive, sensitive, crazy and subversive artists. Leading them, Justin Bond, the extraordinarily facinating androgyne actor from the duet Kiki & Herb, also seen in Shortbus. We're torn between the crafty universe of Michel Gondry and the gorey burlesque art of Paul McCarthy... When the underground New York scence settles in France!

Big Art Group's MySpace: click here
Website: click here
Justin Bond's MySpace: click here

Colin Christian

Dolls again! Even more vicious ones!


Colin Christian was born in London in 1964 and several experiences lead him to sculpting. He gets familiar with latex and, influenced by erotism and sadism, he works with that fabric in order to express his creativity through the portraits of young girls. He then moves to the US and initiates new project with his wife Sas Christian, a painter as well. In the 2000s, Colin Christian tackles a new matter: silicone. His themes: good & evil, sci-fi, H.P. Lovecraft or Asia.


The site he shares with his wife: here. His MySpace : here.