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Thursday, November 30, 2023

In Rupy C. Tut’s Dreamlike Paintings, Figures Fold Into Landscapes in a Struggle to Belong

A painting of a woman who is merged with a rocky outcrop over a stream. She looks down to her right. The background is bright yellow.

“Searching for Ancestors” (2023), handmade pigments on linen, 60 x 40 inches. Photos by Philip Maisel. All images © Rupy C. Tut, courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco

In a couple of Rupy C. Tut’s ethereal and symbolic scenes, a cloaked woman merges with a rocky outcrop above a stream, while another reclines above a vast mountain range, holding a single feather. Comprising her solo exhibition Out of Place at Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, the Oakland-based artist’s paintings feature figures who coalesce with their surroundings and the passing of time.

Tut draws on her Punjab heritage and family history to compose dreamlike scenes in which ancestral figures struggle with taking up space, searching for a sense of belonging and home. The daughter of refugees and a first-generation immigrant, she counts her family’s history of movement, loss, and resilience as essential elements in her creative practice. Using handmade pigments on linen, the artist examines the desire to fit in and connect to one another.

“These paintings express how our bodies feel in or out of place within ever-shifting environments,” Tut says in a statement. “As a mother, immigrant, and artist, I also intend to show glimpses of everyday life where doom and optimism hang in delicate balance. I created this work to highlight the human capacity to exist with hope, even on shaky ground.”

Out of Place is on view through January 7, 2024. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

A painting of a woman reclining in a desert with her foot hovering over a prickly pear cactus. She wears a hat over her face and holds a bottle of something in her hand.

“A Drop in the Desert” (2023), handmade pigments on hemp paper, 37 x 50 inches

A detail of a painting showing a foot hovering over a prickly pear cactus.

Detail of “A Drop in the Desert” (2023)

A painting on hemp paper of a pregnant woman standing, facing the left, wearing bright orange. She is surrounded by a blue halo and around the halo, there is dense foliage.

“Portrait of a Woman” (2023), handmade pigments on hemp paper, 57 x 37 inches

A painting of abstracted treets and landscapes in vertical rows.

“All in a Day” (2023), handmade pigments on linen, 48 x 36 inches

A painting of a woman wearing green, reclining on a seat over a bed of yellow flowers. In the distance, a big vista of pink mountains stretches toward a yellow sky.

“Placing Self” (2023), handmade pigments on hemp paper, 37 x 50 inches

A detail of a painting, showing a woman wearing green, zoomed in on her hands that hold a single white feather.

Detail of “Placing Self” (2023)

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 In Rupy C. Tut’s Dreamlike Paintings, Figures Fold Into Landscapes in a Struggle to Belong appeared first on Colossal.

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Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Surreal Scenes Unfold in Sandy Skoglund’s Vibrant and Otherworldly Photographs

A photograph by Sandy Skoglund of two young boys in a blue bedroom surrounded by bright orange goldfish.

“Revenge of the Goldfish” (1981). All images © Sandy Skoglund, courtesy of Paci Contemporary, shared with permission

For more than five decades, Sandy Skoglund has explored a fusion of photography, installation, and conceptual art. The artist’s elaborately detailed scenes, built from a wide variety of materials, from furniture to papier-mâché to food, take months—sometimes years—to complete. One iconic image portrays two children in a blue bedroom, surrounded by bright orange goldfish, while in “Radioactive Cats,” we find ourselves peering at a couple in a gray kitchen as they go about normal activities among a clowder of glowing, green felines.

A new exhibition, The Imaginary Worlds of Photography, at Palazzo del Duca in Senigallia, Italy, celebrates Skoglund’s career through a survey of her remarkable photographs, emphasizing her attunement to the relationships between hues and contrasts, her subjects, and elements of each set. Often combining sculptural methods with a photographic aesthetic related to commercial advertising, she welcomes us into surreal and uncanny tableaux where instead of a clear narrative, we find realms of baffling wonder.

The Imaginary Worlds of Photography continues through June 2, 2024. Find more of Skoglund’s work on her website and Instagram.

A photograph by Sandy Skoglund of a cocktail party in a set where everyone and everything is covered in Cheetos.

“The Cocktail Party” (1992)

A fine art photograph of a gray kitchen interior with two elderly figures. A man is seated a table and a woman peers away from the viewer into a fridge. Numerous bright green cats run around.

“Radioactive Cats” (1980)

A fine art photograph featuring two people in a tableau of a living room with a table, ceiling fan, and chairs. A young child sits on the ground. Everyone and everything is covered in fuzzy black dots.

“Atomic Love” (1992)

A fine art photograph of a surreal blue interior. Two figures stand on the ceiling and appear to be floating or falling, and other figures made from mosaic glass appear to be hanging from the ceiling, too.

“Breathing Glass” (2008)

A surreal fine art photograph of a family out walking their dog in a forest where the trees have the bodies of humans.

“Fresh Hybrid” (2008)

A fine art photograph of a surreal scene in which two people appear to be dancing, both wearing red velvet outfits. In the center is a large red velvet wedding cake.

“The Wedding” (1994)

A fine art photograph of two women stepping over a bathroom floor covered in eggs. The floor also has numerous snakes and rabbits.

“Walking on Eggshells” (1997)

A surreal fine art photograph of a family in the corner of a room, coated in blue paper with snowflakes everywhere. In the foreground are figures of a young girl and some owls, also with snowflakes on them.

“Winter” (2018)

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 Surreal Scenes Unfold in Sandy Skoglund’s Vibrant and Otherworldly Photographs appeared first on Colossal.

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Build Your Own Bismuth Crystals With Nervous System’s Miniature Geometric Puzzles

All images © Nervous System

Among the Earth’s metallic elements, bismuth is one of the most beguiling. Rarely encountered in nature, it can be synthesized for a wide variety of uses in medicine, cosmetics, and casting for things like printing type. When the material forms into hopper crystals—a stair-stepped pattern with a loosely conical shape—the oxide film on its surface interacts with light to produce astonishing iridescent colors. These patterns provide the basis of the latest miniature geometric puzzles by Nervous System (previously).

Each plywood jigsaw is about nine square inches and contains 157 pieces, which are cut in a matrix to mirror bismuth’s crystalline network. And like most of the studio’s designs, each puzzle contains a playful whimsy piece. Get yours from Nervous System.

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 Build Your Own Bismuth Crystals With Nervous System’s Miniature Geometric Puzzles appeared first on Colossal.

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A Heartfelt Stop-Motion Animation for Apple Reminds Us to Be Kind This Holiday Season

Karma comes quickly for the Scrooge-esque character in Anna Mantzaris’ “Fuzzy Feelings,” a touching stop-motion animation about loneliness and compassion. A holiday ad for Apple that’s set to George Harrison’s “Isn’t It a Pity,” the short film features the Swedish animator’s signature felted cast (previously), particularly a gruff, selfish man who steals change from a charity and experiences fast retribution. As we soon learn, though, that character mirrors the curmudgeonly boss of a young woman, who’s created the fictional scenes to take imagined revenge on her superior. The story turns heartwarming when the woman realizes that her boss is alone for the holidays and uses her animated characters to remedy the problem.

Peek into Mantzaris’ process in the behind-the-scenes video below, and check out our conversation with the animator about her love for humor. (via Creative Boom)

an animated image of a snow plow dumping snow on a man with no pants in the street

a character walks along a snow street in front of a santa

an animated gif of a felt snowball hitting a man with glasses in the face

a still showing a computer screen with video editing software and an image of a felted character lying on his back in a body of water

an animated gif of a felted character plugging in a string of lights and getting eletrocuted

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 A Heartfelt Stop-Motion Animation for Apple Reminds Us to Be Kind This Holiday Season appeared first on Colossal.

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Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Fleshy Gills and Spotted Caps Sprout from Ann Wood’s Lifelike Paper Mushrooms

a hand holds a pink platter with a selection of paper mushrooms

All images © Ann Wood, shared with permission

You don’t need to head out to the forest to find plump morels or chanterelles. After years of cultivating a robust collection of paper flowers and produce, artist Ann Wood (previously) has turned her focus to fungi, sprouting myriad specimens within her Minneapolis studio. White-spotted red caps of the fly agaric mushroom, plum-colored mushrooms with thick, fleshy gills, and bright yellow spores spring from patches of moss and dried leaves or rest on a platter as if ready to eat.

Wood has a background in painting and wood sculpting, although she began working with paper exclusively eight years ago. She’s since crafted more than 300 lifelike renditions of flora and fauna. Each piece is the result of study and observation, and she grows many plants from seeds in her backyard, which then serve as models for her recreations. “Throughout the years, I’ve basically tried to cover as much of the natural world—butterflies, bees, various other insects, all kinds of flowers, branches, leaves, birds, bulbs with roots, and various types of root balls that are attached to garden plants,” she says.

The mushrooms shown here are life-size or larger, and Wood is particularly adept at capturing the fleshy gills that often hide underneath the cap, along with the fringed, peeling layers of the woody stems. “It’s my goal to create that magical feeling that you get by finding mushrooms out in nature. They are fragile and startling when you come across them. I hope my paper versions inspire that same emotion,” she says.

Explore more of the artist’s paper cultivars on her site and Instagram.

two red capped mushrooms with white spots and dense white gills sprout from a mossy base

a collection of paper mushrooms rest on a blue table

four images of paper flowers, a paper swan with white fringed feathers, and a yellow and black bird perched on a branch

five pink, yellow, and white mushrooms grow from a wood base

two heavily gilled purple mushrooms grow from dried brown leaves

an assortment of paper vegetables and fruits arranged as a flat lay with cut watermelon and citrus on a wood platter at the center

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 Fleshy Gills and Spotted Caps Sprout from Ann Wood’s Lifelike Paper Mushrooms appeared first on Colossal.

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Faith XLVII Engages Humanity’s Shadows Through the Delicate Interplay of Light and Dark

a black and white drawing of kids watching two kids box

Artist Faith XLVII (previously) describes a recent body of work as “a kind of scratching into the chiaroscuro of our souls.” Titled Clair-Obscur, the collection comprises wax-crayon drawings, stitched-map tapestries, installations, videos, and Polaroids that reflect on the fundamental duality between light and dark. Invoking the Jungian notion of shadow selves—the idea that people repress what they don’t like to acknowledge—Faith XLVII conjures both nature’s cycles and social and political issues, including environmental degradation, tyrannical rule, and human rights violations.

Works include a triptych of the moon’s phases that progress from light to dark, along with renderings of the 2020 MV Wakashio oil spill off the coast of Mauritius and two teens boxing in front of a younger audience waiting their turn. This latter piece depicts “the ‘Colonia Dignidad’ compound in Chile in the 1970s which became a notorious cult center under the rule of Pinochet,” the artist says. Often simply titled “A Study of Light and Shadow,” the works investigate various interpretations of darkness from the physical to the metaphorical. Together, the pieces suggest that recognizing the realities, atrocities, and hardships some would rather conceal is an essential step in our collective healing.

After debuting earlier this year at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Nancy, France, Clair-Obscur will open on December 2 at Danysz Gallery in Paris. Faith XLVII is widely known for her murals and public works around the world, which you can find on Instagram.

three black and white drawings of the moon. each gets progressively lighter

“A Study of Light and Shadow X”

a black and white drawing of soldiers kneeling near a horse

“A Study of Light and Shadow II”

two black and white drawings roots and branches

Left: “A Study of Light and Shadow II.” Right: “A Study of Light and Shadow VI”

a black and white drawing of ship at sea

“A Study of Light and Shadow XI”

three stitched works that fade from blue to beige. the left has a circle at the bottom, the middle has two circles at the top and bottom, the left has a circle at the top

“Chaos Theory XXI”

a detail shot showing map fragments sewn together

Detail of “Chaos Theory XXI”

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 Faith XLVII Engages Humanity’s Shadows Through the Delicate Interplay of Light and Dark appeared first on Colossal.

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Studio Ibbini Juxtaposes Negative Space and Botanical Filigree in New Laser-Cut Paper Works

two hands hold a rectangular floral work that appears to grow vines

Artist Julia Ibbini and computer scientist Stéphane Noyer of the Abu Dhabi-based Studio Ibbini (previously) continue to collaborate on intricately constructed works that fall at the intersection of art and mathematics. The duo creates vessels and flat pieces by layering laser-cut papers into complex structures replete with floral filigree and ornate patterning.

While many of their three-dimensional sculptures appear to twist upward in tight, perfectly aligned rows, the pair incorporates more negative space into their recent pieces, many of which seem to morph from architectural or ornamental motifs into wild, botanical growths. Ibbini tells Colossal that this requires finding a delicate balance between the frail material and the resulting form to maintain the work’s structural integrity. She explains the process:

In the pieces that seem to be fading away, hand-made drawings are turned into computational tree structures and density maps on which graph theory and probabilistic algorithms are applied. Through this, we are able to manipulate the geometry of the work so that it looks almost as though the details are slowly eroding into empty space in the final piece.

Studio Ibbini will show works with Long-Sharp Gallery at Art Basel Miami starting next week and in a group exhibition at Sharjah Art Museum from December 13 to January 21. Keep up with the duo’s latest sculptures on Instagram.

a hand touches a swooshing vessel with tessellating patterns

a hand holds an elaborately designed vessel

a detail of ornate patterns layered on top of each other to create an intricately motif on a vessel

a hand touches a vessel with negative space

a detail of a vase with floral filigree

a rectangular work on a blue backdrop. the piece appears to fade in parts

two architectural works in white that appear to fade

a detail of delicately layered floral filigree

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 Studio Ibbini Juxtaposes Negative Space and Botanical Filigree in New Laser-Cut Paper Works appeared first on Colossal.

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