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Now here's a little weekend inspiration. "Lucid Stead" is an art installation by Phillip K. Smith, III in the beautiful desert landscape of Joshua Tree in California.
With some mirrors, LED lights, custom built electronic equipment, and Arduino programming, Smith transformed a 70-year-old homesteader shack into an architecture piece that complements and contrasts with its peaceful environment throughout the entire day.
— bustler.net
All images courtesy of Phillip K. Smith, III; photographers: Steve King, Lance Gerber, Lou Mora (see image gallery below for details) View full entry
The artists behind New York’s graffiti haven 5 Pointz have learned that their last-ditch legal effort to save the outdoor gallery will likely fail.
“The building, unfortunately, is going to have to come down,” federal judge Frederic Block said in New York’s eastern district court on Friday. [...]
“I’m getting the sense that the traditional academic way of looking at things needs to be updated,” Block said.
— The Guardian
China's wealthy patrons like Mr. Lu's family are underwriting a major cultural boom, spending billions of yuan on grand buildings to showcase impressive collections of art, antiques and other cultural rarities. Their largesse and ambitions echo American industrialists who sponsored the arts in the early years of the 20th century... — online.wsj.com
Recently in The Wall Street Journal, reporter Jason Chow interviewed real-estate developer Lu Jun and his son Lu Xun who finally opened the Sifang Art Museum for its first exhibition this past weekend in Nanjing, China after 10 years of construction. Spearheaded by Lu Jun and curated by... View full entry
The New Museum will be opening an incubator for art, technology, and design next summer in the institution's adjacent building at 231 Bowery in New York. SO-IL architects in collaboration with Gensler will design the new 11,000 sq.foot facility, which will be located inside a 19th-century... View full entry
It isn't clear what the artwork will look like, though a person familiar with the matter said it would have a "gathering" theme. But it will be expensive: Mr. Ross, chairman of builder Related Cos., has told friends and associates the company intends to spend as much as $75 million on the centerpiece and surrounding public space. — online.wsj.com
London-based artist Emma McNally will be showing her "drawing/space" works in the "Abstract Drawing" exhibition at London's Drawing Room beginning February 20, 2014. Delving into the idea of abstraction in the drawing medium, "Abstract Drawing" will be curated by artist Richard Deacon, making it... View full entry
The KAPLINSKI project is a collaborative work by filmmaker Benjamin Seroussi and architect David Tajchman. The film shows several different structures, made from the same repetitive wooden element, gathered around bodies, aimed at being mobile, articulated or demolished. View full entry
A jovial group of Red Guards bask in the golden glow of cornfields, waving their flags at the magnificent harvest, while a rustic farming couple look on, carrying an overflowing basket of perfectly plump red apples. In the centre of this vision of optimism, where once might have beamed the cheerful face of Mao, stands the twisted loop of the China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters, radiating a lilac sheen. — theguardian.com
The Beautiful Future sees icons of Beijing's skyline reimagined by a team of propaganda painters in Pyongyang View full entry
The best approach, it seems to me, is to say that the genre of “social practice” art raises questions that it cannot by itself answer. But it would be missing an opportunity not to join the debate, even if the goal is to take it in a completely different direction. — isreview.org
Nuanced critique of an art movement that is increasingly affecting discourse in architecture, design and urban practices. View full entry
From the sparsely dotted Chinese walking man to the top-hat-wearing, cane-bearing Dane, almost a hundred “walking men” are displayed life-size on banners that line the sidewalk.
“It’s important to me that they are on human scale because they really represent us,” said Ms. Barkai.
Only rarely are the icons depicted as women, she noted. Of the hundreds of images in her collection, Ms. Barkai has only “about six or seven women, mostly from European countries.”
— blogs.wsj.com
For the latest in their inventive visual mockery of Cooper Union president and unalloyed economic realist Jamshed Bharucha, the student activists of Free Cooper Union satirically reconfigured a Banksy work that popped up near the school’s campus over the weekend. — hyperallergic.com
In conjunction with the symposium, "Test Sites: Experiments in the History of Space", the California College of the Arts (CCA) Architecture Division will stage the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the recent works of artisans and historians who harness scents, essences and fragrances in the reconstruction and preservation of historical spaces — An Olfactory Archive. — California College of the Arts
Probably the most under-appreciated sense in the experiential toolbox (unless you count proprioception), smell is often maligned by aesthetic criticism as too ephemeral, too fleeting, to substantiate anything meaningful. But what if it opened the nostrils and minds of the sniffers to imagine... View full entry
A giant purple structure believed to be the world's first inflatable concert hall is to open on Japan's disaster-hit north eastern coast.
British sculptor Anish Kapoor and Japanese architect Arata Isozaki created the unusual Ark Nova, a balloon made of a coated polyester material that has been erected at a park in the town of Matsushima.
The structure, which organisers say is a world's first, measures about 18m and 35m wide when fully inflated with room for about 500 guests.
— dailymail.co.uk
When aircraft Shelter 610 opens its ruthless doors, a monstrous black behemoth slowly comes driving out. The object revives the mysterious atmosphere of the Cold War and its accompanying terrifying weaponry. At an almost excruciatingly slow pace, the artwork uses its caterpillar tracks to cross the seemingly infinite runway. — Rietveld Landscape
Lending a new meaning to "think tank", the formidable Secret Operation 610 is now slinking its way across Airbase Soesterberg in the Netherlands. Both art piece and educational practice, the structure is designed by Studio Frank Havermans and Reitveld Landscape for SKOR |... View full entry
Nearly eight years after opening, Prada Marfa has been classified by the Texas Department of Transportation as an “illegal outdoor advertising sign” because it displays the Prada logo on land where that is prohibited. This could lead to forced removal of the installation, although the department has not yet decided what action it will take. — nytimes.com
UPDATE: Prada Marfa saved View full entry
