Community and Connection Center in Damien Cifelli’s Portraits of a Fictional World

“Greengrocer at Crow Road Market.” All images © Damien Cifelli, shared with permission

“I think it says a lot about humans that we have been creating alternative worlds as long as we have been around, whether it’s a way of escaping our reality or thinking of new ways of living,” says Damien Cifelli. From a stoic greengrocer to a gathering of friends to a bored shop clerk, vibrant colors illuminate a stylish cast of characters in the London-based artist’s paintings.

Cifelli’s work revolves around a fictional world called “Tarogramma,” drawn from his experiences traveling and living abroad, and many of the pieces shown here are part of the artist’s solo exhibition Welcome to Tarogramma at Moosey. “As a kid, I was fascinated by adventure novels, explorers, and the idea of discovering a new place,” he tells Colossal.

I love seeing the distinct visual cultures that are built up and refined over generations. There is meaning behind everything. It’s so nuanced, it would take forever to really understand it all. I realised that if I created my own world, based on my own history and ancestral stories, I could use it as a vessel for all the ideas I have.

Cifelli approaches his practice through narrative, primarily focused on painting but often incorporating additional elements like wood sculptures, clay reliefs, scarves, banners, badges, pins, architectural models, and sound. Tarogramma is “a fictional land with a detailed culture and its own aesthetic, way of living, and understanding of the world,” Cifelli tells Colossal. “The paintings are a visual representation of the place and the people, like documentary images of a new world.”

Welcome to Tarogramma is on view in London through August 31, and you can find more of Cifelli’s work on his website and Instagram.

 

“Downtable”

“Higher Ground General Store”

“The Cup Final (Pre-Game)”

“May You Live in Interesting Times”

“Dinner at the False Idol”

“Summiting Taro Mountain”

“The Congress (This New World Needs a Name)”

“Too Much Love”

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A Brief Lesson Explains the Art Historical Shift to Painting Everyday People

Evan Puschak of Nerdwriter brings us another dose of art history as he explains a profound shift in Western painting traditions. The insightful “Bruegel: Birth Of A New Genre” video explains how many works made prior to the 16th century dealt with religious and mythic themes or were portraits of the elite, all commissioned by the church or wealthy patrons. Protestant reforms in the church, political revolution, and a rise in the merchant class shifted the economic makeup, culture, and values, and as generally happens, art reflected this change. Painters like Pieter Bruegel The Edler began to render scenes and people that better captured this reality, focusing on the daily lives of regular people.

You also might enjoy Pushack’s lesson on realistic impressionism. (via Kottke)

 

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Papier-Mâché Critters Traipse and Trot in Delighful Sculptures by Diana Parkhouse

All images © Diana Parkhouse, shared with permission

Nuzzling against each other, moseying along, or convening with a group of forest friends, Diana Parkhouse’s papier-mâché personalities capture her passion for nature and love for animals. Based in Nottingham, the Australian artist is especially connected to the U.K. region, depicting its common woodland wildlife, such as foxes, hares, and badgers.

Swathed in words, each charming creature is formed using upcycled book pages and papier-mâché techniques. Increasingly aware of her impact on the environment, Parkhouse turned to found materials in an effort to render all of her sculptures biodegradable and repurpose as much as she could.

The artist has always enjoyed crafting miniature creations, and though small in stature, each figure presents a compelling and endearing nature. “Small things have always brought me great joy, I don’t know why,” she tells Colossal.

My father took me to an estate auction once when I was about 8 years old…There was a box with a miniature tea set in it which I’d admired as we looked about the lots before the auction started. He of course bid on it and won it for me…I remember spending an entire summer making tiny plasticine pies!

Make sure to visit Parkhouse’s website and Instagram for more forest friends and news about updates to her shop.

 

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Delphine Diallo Crafts Divinely Elegant Portraits of Black Women in ‘Highness’

All images © Delphine Diallo, shared with permission

In her series Highness, Delphine Diallo’s regal subjects don elaborate masks, headdresses, and jewelry. Captured in both color and black-and-white, the women are portrayed as timeless and noble, wearing body paint, jewelry, and attire that draw on mythology and spiritual symbols to explore what the photographer calls the “divine female body.”

Highness developed from an earlier project focused on presenting family members and friends as goddesses. As the series expanded, Diallo recognized the importance of connecting to her subjects and empowering them in the process, emphasizing deep conversations and building long-term relationships with her sitters.

In a practice spanning sculpture, design, photography, collages, and music, Diallo finds inspiration in collaboration and learning from others. Highness features intricate hair pieces made by Joanne Petit-Frère, including a towering form evocative of Nefertiti’s tapered blue headdress. Composed of numerous braids, Petit-Frère’s creations envelop the face or curl around beads, complemented by metalwork by L’Enchanteur.

Diallo recently released a new book titled Divine, published by Hat and Beard Press, and if you’re in London, you can see her work at Somerset House through September 24 as part of the group exhibition Black Venus. Find more work on the artist’s website and Instagram.

 

 

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Matt Stevens Digitally Conjures Acclaimed Movies Into Hyperrealistic Vintage Paperbacks

All images © Matt Stevens, shared with permission

It’s said that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but both readers and publishers are savvy enough to know that cover design speaks volumes about what’s inside. From the explosive graphics of pulp fiction to the attention-grabbing dust jackets of clothbound copies, cover design visually links to specific genres or series. For designer Matt Stevens, a love for the aesthetics of shelf-worn pocket paperbacks combined with a passion for movies spurs the ongoing series Good Movies as Old Books.

The idea for the project dovetailed from a proposal Stevens made to a movie production client. “Often, we try and make the pitch look and feel like something else. Maybe an old manual or a set of vintage baseball cards,” he tells Colossal. “(For) one of the pitches, we were selling a pretty modern idea but in a way that needed to look really old and worn. I really enjoyed the process of putting something in a different context and thought I’d take it on as a personal project.”

Stevens grasps the potential of digital tools to create realistic depictions of analog objects and explains that he’s most interested in the digital world when it can be used to recreate a sensation of tangibility. He says:

I was coming up right as computers were becoming reliable design tools,  and in design school, we still used things like French curves, photocopy machines, and drew a lot of type by hand—because we had to. I really love things that feel handmade, screen printed, printed on a press, worn down…you can see the process in the image and the grit and age.

 

Stevens’ illustrations draw on a look and feel we associate with the well-read and well-loved tomes of the 20th century, from pocket-size mystery thrillers to classic Penguin covers to reinforced library bindings that could withstand hundreds of reads. Complete with bookstore price stickers and creases along the spines and corners, Stevens’ designs look real enough to pick up and crack open. “The covers started out exploring much older books: linen covers with frayed edges and colored foil stamps,” he says. “But as it’s progressed, a huge part of the fun is researching the history of covers of the last century and seeing what I respond to and what makes those particular covers work.”

Stevens just launched a Kickstarter campaign to print a second volume of Good Movies as Old Books, which includes 100 new designs, plus a reprint of the sold-out first volume. See plenty more where these came from on his website and Instagram.

 

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Keita Miyazaki Sprouts Delicate Origami from Welded Car Parts in ‘Excess of Desire’

“Blue Turmoil” (2023), car parts and paper, 85 x 65 x 55 centimeters. All images © Keita Miyazaki, courtesy of Gallery Rosenfeld, shared with permission

On March 11, 2011, the strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history struck just over 80 miles off the coast of the island of Honshu. An ensuing tsunami produced monstrous waves up to 40 meters high that pummeled the coastline and caused numerous deaths, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents homeless and crippling the country’s infrastructure. Artist Keita Miyazaki witnessed the devastation firsthand, and as access to everyday necessities and supplies was disrupted, he began to question Western society’s reliance on industry and material goods, as well as how the contemporary world measures its progress.

In his solo exhibition Excess of Desire at Gallery Rosenfeld, Miyazaki’s sculptures appear to grow from the floor or sprout from pedestals. Metal components meet intricate origami, exploring the dualities of robustness and fragility, the decorative and the utilitarian, and heaviness and lightness. The ends of pipes blossom with colorful fans and spindles of folded paper, juxtaposed with car parts in a reference to the 20th-century automotive boom and advancing technology.

Miyazaki articulates ideas around functionality and decay by welding together fragments of mufflers and engines that no longer operate for their intended purposes. He incorporates carefully selected parts, such as specialized mufflers that were produced illegally in the 1980s and 1990s, which rose to popularity because they could increase the car’s noise level and produce a specific sound. Challenging the frivolity of excess in wealthy society, the artist reframes the components as flourishing, botanical-like forms.

The Victoria and Albert Museum recently added one of the Miyazaki’s pieces to its Japanese collection, and one of his large-scale floor works will soon be on display at the Young V&A in Bethnal Green. Excess of Desire remains on view through September 30, and you can follow the artist on Instagram for updates.

 

“White Ore” (2023), car parts and paper, 72 x 60 x 48 centimeters

Left: “Stereo Order” (2022), car parts and paper, 70 x 50 x 38 centimeters. Right: “Tree of knowledge” (2020), car parts and paper, 250 x 90 x 100 centimeters

“Converted Reality” (2021), car parts and paper, 285 x 90 x 60 centimeters

“Core in Space” (2023), brass, car parts, enamel, and resin, 35 x 25 x 25 centimeters

“Plural Blue” (2023), car parts and paper, 220 x 55 x 55 centimeters

“The Bird” (2023), brass, car parts, enamel, and resin, 45 x 25 x 25 centimeters

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Discover a Global Collective of Artisans and Makers at elk & HAMMER

elk & HAMMER founder Ashley Childs forging hammers in Washington State. Photo by Garrett Grove

It all starts with a story. That’s the premise behind elk & HAMMER, an online gallery featuring a global collective of artisans and makers redefining what it is to live and work, finding a symbiosis between the two in a manner both new and very, very old.

After jewelry designer, blacksmith, knife-maker, and gallery founder Ashley Childs produced her final jewelry collection, she followed a passion years in the making and launched elk & HAMMER. The innovative online gallery connects artists with one another and their respective artforms, those artforms with an audience, and that audience with a story. “We are a world of one-click shopping, everything fast and faceless,” says Childs. “But to pick up a knife every morning and butter your bread is an experience, made even more lovely when that butter knife was hand-forged by a blacksmith who spent decades refining their craft, whose story you know, whose face you’ve seen. That is a beautiful thing.”

elk & HAMMER currently features a growing body of work from sculptors, ceramicists, designers, painters, metalsmiths, and more. Each addition to the gallery represents another story in an ever-evolving tome exalting both the maker and the made. One of those makers is Childs’ oldest friend and mentor, Steve Schwarzer, a hall-of-fame bladesmith who has spent the past 50 years learning from those that came before, honing his craft, and redefining the art of mosaic Damascus steel.

U.K. leather worker and designer Otis Ingrams is similarly inspired by the godfathers of his craft and design vernacular. Ingrams established OTZI Studios in 2013 and has since been carefully handcrafting distinctive British, Spanish, and Italian utility goods.

 

Otis Ingrams, two Quarto Leather Baskets in tan and black. Photo by Mitchell D. Cohen

T.A.G. (Tom) Smith taught himself the deep-rooted art of intarsia as a teenager, slowly curating the craft into a unique celebration of the feathers and fowl he has loved just as long. Smith’s hanging wooden sculptures marry the natural artistry of wood grain with his own brand of inspired vision.

Genso and Asemi Co.—two Japanese enterprises connecting Bizen pottery with households worldwide—showcase the finest in traditional Japanese craftsmanship and the range of makers reimagining its centuries-old presence for the contemporary world.

Contemporary design innovation is at the heart of British luxury brand founder and creative director Tom Dixon’s vision. An industry maverick since the 1980s, Dixon’s furniture, lighting, and accessories aim to demonstrate the transformative nature of art in utilitarian contexts.

Whether it’s fine jewelry from Kabana or Kurtulan, knives and tools from Banshu Hamono or Messermeister, Kindrie Grove’s bronze sculptures or Nest Homeware’s cast iron kitchenware, the elk & HAMMER gallery hopes to offer an evocative, globally-informed collection that inspires presence and connection with shared stories of everyday life, through traditions dating back to humanity’s inception.

Visit elkandhammer.com to view the gallery and follow them on Instagram @elkandhammer.

You can also find more stories and videos on elk & HAMMER’s Vimeo and YouTube.

 

Steve Schwarzer, mosaic Damascus gentleman’s folders with gold lip pearl, with canister mosaic Damascus Wharncliffe blades. All photos by Ashley Childs unless otherwise specified

T.A.G. (Tom) Smith of the U.K., “Great Grey Owl Tail Feather” in ash, walnut, sycamore, and Swiss pear wood

Genso, Sangiri and Goma mugs, cups, and Saki cup

Tom Dixon, Brass Bash Bowl & Tray and Large Aluminum Cloud Bowl

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Discover a Global Collective of Artisans and Makers at elk & HAMMER appeared first on Colossal.

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