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the artist says we should not “sentimentalise or romanticise” the crisis, which has seen more than 2,000 children die on their way to Europe. [...]
Ai first visited Lesbos on Christmas Day last year, and has since dedicated most of his life to helping refugees there, even moving his studio to the island. [...]
“The goal is to make everyone conscious of the struggle of refugees. We need to protect humanity. The fight is endless. If we don’t fight, our children have to fight,” he says.
— theartnewspaper.com
Related on Archinect:Ai Weiwei documents life in Greek refugee camp on social mediaUN Refugee Agency Commissions 10k Ikea-designed Better SheltersCurator of MoMA's “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter" on palliative refugee architectureWhat Does the Syrian Refugee Crisis Mean to... View full entry
Set to open on 17 June, the Tate Modern Switch House – named after the part of the power station that the new galleries occupy – expands the museum by 60% to accommodate the surging numbers of visitors, which reached 5.7 million last year, well over double the number the building was designed to cope with when it opened in 2000. But the arresting brick ziggurat is also a physical symbol of the effect the Tate has had on its surroundings. — theguardian.com
Read more relating article here:Future sustainable skyscrapers will be made of...wood?Fabricated robot installation at the V&A unveiled as part of their first Engineering SeasonHerzog and de Meuron in conversation with Rowan Moore View full entry
Inside 516 Sampsonia Way, a 19th-century row house in the Mexican War Streets neighborhood, there no longer appear to be any 90-degree angles. Any corners have become cavernous and rounded from the innumerable lines of yarn of Chiharu Shiota’s Trace of Memory, creating acute and obtuse angles.
And while some people try to cleanse spaces or their superstitious gateways by sageing doorways, this installation does the opposite, appealing to some kind of liminal god to crack open time
— hyperallergic.com
Related on Archinect:Florida rental home wrapped in foil for art's sake, confusion ensues as expectedChristo wins court judgement, keeping alive his vision for 5.9 miles of silver fabric above the Arkansas River8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin WallTen Top Images on Archinect's... View full entry
“2 wires + weights + tape + thin foam rubber” - one of Eva Hesse's shopping lists — the art newspaper
"LeWitt’s admiration of Hesse is well documented, and the two are the subject of a powerful travelling exhibition exploring their mutual influence, now at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Converging Lines, until 31 July). But one of the most memorable accounts of their relationship comes from an... View full entry
The greatest work of art at New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art is arguably the landmark building itself—and Louis Kahn’s last structure is due to reopen this month after a 16-month renovation of its public galleries and lecture hall, and an upgrade of its accessibility, security, mechanical and electrical systems. This is the third phase of a $33m conservation project that began in 2008. — theartnewspaper.com
"George Knight of Knight Architecture, who led the conservation work, says: “The thing that kept me up at night was [thinking] how can we preserve the building, which is so architecturally rich, and do all this surgery so as not to disfigure the patient in any way?""All images courtesy of the... View full entry
Bardell and Howe have been working together for the past decade and have started executing guerrilla-style living sculptures in the river, a project they call the River Liver Series. [...]
“One of the things that keeps us here is how exciting we think the next 10 years is going to be,” Howe says of L.A. “When they actually do this river revitalization, it’s going to be L.A.’s Central Park. Culturally, I think it’s the spot to be on the West Coast.”
— laweekly.com
Related on Archinect:Los Angeles River revitalization: prosperity for all or just a chosen few?Mayor Eric Garcetti on Frank Gehry's plans for the LA River: "a cooperative, collaborative, regional approach"Take a look at "6," an experimental documentary that memorializes the recently-demolished... View full entry
It once seemed like a herculean, if not insurmountable, challenge – raising $600 million or more for an ambitious modernist building to serve as the new home for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Skeptics abounded when plans were first announced three years ago. But momentum now seems to be shifting in LACMA's favor with the announcement this week of two major donations that will push the fundraising campaign near the halfway point.
— Los Angeles Times
The donations together amount to the largest the museum has ever received. Elaine Wynn, a major collector and co-chair of the museum, pledged $50 million. Former Univision chairman A. Jerrold Perenchio has promised to give $25 million for the project.Both donations hinge on the successful launch... View full entry
Höller wanted to show that you don’t necessarily get to know a sculpture better by literally travelling through it; that once inside it begins to look like something else entirely... The Slide, a permanent fixture at London’s Olympic Park, will give people a full 40 seconds to experience this and decide for themselves as they make their way down the 178m chute at an estimated 15mph. — wallpaper.com
... instead of its standard Kohler toilet, it will have a solid 18-karat-gold working replica of one, a preposterously scatological apotheosis of wealth whose form is completed in its function: You could go into the restroom just to bask in its glow, Mr. Cattelan said, but it becomes an artwork only with someone sitting on it or standing over it, answering nature’s call. — nytimes.com
Maurizio Cattelan, an Italian artist who famously retired five years ago, has returned with a solid gold (and fully functioning) toilet for the Guggenheim Museum. Perfectly paired with the late Tobias Wong's Gold Pills. View full entry
The way a building is envisioned to interact with people versus the way it actually does can be dramatically different, which is why the 16 films of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are both aesthetically stunning and humanistically delightful. MoMA has acquired the pair's entire collection of work... View full entry
Borderlife is a street art intervention by Biancoshock in which three abandoned manholes in Milan’s Lodi district have been transformed into miniature dwellings. [...]
With Borderlife the street artist wants to make us aware about the distressing living conditions of many fellow humans who are forced to live in confined spaces, especially manholes. He got his inspiration from the reportedly hundreds of people that are occupying manholes and sewer systems in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
— popupcity.net
Images of the BORDERLIFE street art intervention via Biancoshock's website.Related stories in the Archinect news:Giant "calligraffiti" mural unites community in Cairo slumSubterranean theme park: photographer Richard John Seymour captures the new life inside an ancient Transylvanian salt mineWith... View full entry
He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson to storm VersaillesOlafur Eliasson wins a Crystal Award for "improving the state of the world"Olafur Eliasson opens ship-themed pedestrian bridge in Copenhagenand in a way: Frank Gehry gives the crowd a piece of his mind (and his middle finger) View full entry
Who the fuck cares what Banksy’s real name is. You should care about his art instead, what he’s given you, and stop trying to take more than what’s to be had. Don’t deny yourself great artistic creativity simply to satisfy the curiosity of some blip of an itch that will deny him his anonymity to create. Doing that will make you less than the worst, you wouldn’t even be a super villain scientist, but a spectator searching for a sport to watch that you’re too inept to participate in. — davidchoe.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Banksy about to open "Dismaland" pop-up exhibition in British seaside resortAfter Banksy: the parkour guide to GazaAn interview with man behind the “Stealing Banksy?” auctionBanksy's unpublished NYT op-ed declares new WTC is the biggest eyesore in New York View full entry
Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent.
But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."
[...] in total secrecy from the Egyptian government due to the country's strict laws forbidding artistic expression.
— techinsider.io
All images by the artist, eL Seed. For more images click here.More Cairo-related stories in the Archinect news:Does Foster + Partner's Maspero District masterplan neglect the local residents?Egypt's challenges to build its new capital cityEgypt’s street artists now risk even more View full entry
The basilica of Siponto [...] in Italy’s Puglia region, has long been easy to miss—just another church among the thousands around the country. But these days, the 12th century structure attracts a crowd, sometimes even queues. [...]
Adjoining the newly renovated basilica, standing on the ruins, towers a full blown cathedral—with its imposing arches, columns, and volumes—completely built in iron-wire mesh. It gives the appearance of a hologram, or a 3D charcoal drawing of a time that was.
— qz.com
Find more images of Edoardo Tresoldi's wire mesh sculpture of the Basilica di Siponto on Quartz. Related stories in the Archinect news: "Kinetic" steel museum in New Zealand pays tribute to illustrious sculptural artist Len LyeArtist Carsten Höller to wrap world's longest tunnel slide around the... View full entry