Levi van Veluw plays with the boundaries between sculpture and photography, using his own skin as a canvas. His self portraits are remarkable - each seems to be like a live performance, captured on camera. Repetition features heavily in the artist’s self portraits - each angle is the same, each expression mirrors the last. Eventually, his face becomes secondary to the medium he has decorated himself with - the model loses his value, a twist on standard portrait photography. Interestingly, van Veluw has only recently left education, graduating in 2007 from the Artez Institute of the Arts, Netherlands. It’s worth keeping an eye out for his work, and it will be interesting to see his career develop.
Click through on the image for a link to his website.
Marlo Pascual is a photographer who takes prints off the wall and re-interprets vintage found images using sculptural intervention. She introduces a three dimensional element in order to change the way we relate to the images. Pascual frequently uses the tactics of previously established art movements, such as the Surrealists or the Minimalists. By firstly changing the size and scale of the object, and then by intervening on it, Pascual changes the relationship between photograph, sculpture and viewer.
Click through on the image for a link to her page on the Casey Kaplan Gallery website.
Daniel Arsham combines sculpture, architecture and performance to create wonderful installations that blend into the space seamlessly. One impressive element of his work is the craftsmanship - each piece is fantastically made, with attention paid to the smallest of details. His work walks a fine line between constructed and natural, intentional and accidental - because it’s so intricately related to the architecture of the space, sometimes it’s difficult to imagine the space without his slightly humourous interventions.
Click through on the image for a link to his website.
Zhang Huan’s Ash Head series is actually made of ash from incense. In this particular example, the ash was collected from Shanghai temples, resulting in a long process of collecting and sorting the ash. The sculpture actually smells like the incense burnt during prayers, filling the gallery space with the scent that immediately brings to mind the peace and meditation of the monks. By recycling this material, the artist brings the viewer some of the catharsis of those prayers.
Click through on the image for a link to the artist’s website.
Carolyn Salas’ Trophy engages the idea of the unattainable, the spoils of an impossible hunt. Salas is interested in the point where status become ludicrous, giving her work something oddly humourous, although this is not necessarily an intentional effort. There’s something quite fantastic about her work, which often draws on mythology as a reference. Salas frequently works with surprising materials which require a degree of craftsmanship and patience, such as her rug made from carpet foam (which is a horrible material!).
Click through on the image for a link to her website.
Jaime Pitarch takes ordinary objects and transforms them into something totally different. There’s something about his work which takes something normal and transforms it into something much more difficult to understand. There’s a playful element to his work, but also sometimes something a little darker - take the above example, named Chernobyl. His work can be small interventions, perhaps not something we’d necessarily notice straight away, but the element of the surreal, once it catches you, refuses to let you ignore it.
Click through on the image for a link to his website.
There’s something a little timeless about Min Jeong Seo’s work - like a moment that is just plucked from the air. She plays with classic imagery - for example, high heels or the Statue of Liberty - and gives them a modern, updated twist. In this example, To Live On, the stems of the roses are actually dead, but the blooms continue to thrive. There’s a commentary in there about life and death, and the advances of medical science.
Click through on the image for a link to the artist’s website.
Jason deCaires Taylor has created beautiful living sculptures under water. Their beauty goes beyond their craftsmanship - each person in this installation having been based on a real person. As the sculptures age, they begin to age and coral grows on them, encouraged by the pH neutral materials he uses. The artist started creating these when he saw the destruction of natural coral reefs, and felt compelled to create something which would draw tourists away from the fragile environment. There’s another advantage to placing his work under water - the viewer interaction becomes totally different. Instead of walking around them in the usual uninvolved way, the audience flies between the sculptures, interacting with their space and the life that has flourished around them.
Click through on the image for a link to the amazing Underwater Sculpture website where you can see much more of the artist’s work.
Polly Morgan’s work is exquisitely created, with attention placed on the smallest details, allowing her macabre constructions to come to life. While Morgan has been hailed as “leader of the next generation of YBAs,” I think it simplifies her work into a hot commodity and herself into a celebrity, as opposed to an artist. What I do love about her work is its quiet haunting feel, the uneasiness in the simple pairings of animal and object. Interestingly, she does not see death as the central focus of her work, rather the sheer beauty of the empty body is of interest to her. And, rest assured, all animals she works with have been either roadkill or died of unavoidable causes.
Click through on the image for a link to Morgan’s website.
Surprise surprise, I’m featuring yet another member of the arte povera movement, Giuseppe Penone, who brings it together with the raw nature of land art, emphasising the power of the natural world and the interaction we have with it. While his work is often not necessarily beautiful, there is something deeply elegant about the way he works with materials. Penone often works with trees, stripping layers from them to reveal, in a way, the inner character of something inside not previously visible.
Click through on the image for a link to Penone’s page on the Marian Goodman website.
