‘Open Circuits’ Slices Everyday Electronics to Reveal Their Surprisingly Stunning Insides

A cross-section of a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack. All images © Open Circuits

Whether the invisible circuitry that powers our phones or the bundled cables that transport sound and data, it’s easy to appreciate common technologies for their functional purposes and simplification of daily life. A recently released book from No Starch Press, though, treasures these components for the artistry of their engineering and highlights the intricacy and elegance inherent within each design.

Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components features photographs of 130 technologies cross-cut or altered to reveal their otherwise hidden elements. Written by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer, the book features a vast array of objects like headphone jacks, HDMI cables, and even retro neon lamps as it offers nearly impossible glimpses for those of us interested in keeping our devices intact. Each page is both a dive into technological history and an ode to the evolution and aesthetics of electronics themselves.

Although Open Circuits is currently back-ordered on Bookshop, the publisher says that more copies should be available within the coming weeks. Until then, check out the book’s site and watch the making-of video below. (via Kottke)

 

A 5 x 7 LED matrix display with rows and columns

An alphanumeric display on a hybrid ceramic circuit

The ten-layer circuit board from a smartphone

The flexible power cable from a Macbook Pro

An HDMI cable

A cross-section of a quarter-inch phono plug from a guitar cable

Vintage integrated circuits in TO-99 metal can packages

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In ‘Uprooted’ by Doris Salcedo, a House Made from Hundreds of Trees Morphs into an Impenetrable Thicket

“Uprooted” (2020-22), 804 dead trees and steel, 300 x 65 x 50 meters. Installation view at Sharjah Biennial 15, Kalba Ice Factory, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2023. All images © Doris Salcedo, shared with permission. Photos by Juan Castro

We use the phrase “to put down roots” to express a desire to make a place our own, whether purchasing a house or deciding to live in one location for many years. A sense of community, family, being surrounded by one’s belongings, and feeling safe and secure all help to form the idea of home, which evokes myriad emotions and associations—especially if any of those fundamentals are missing. In Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s monumental installation titled “Uprooted” at the Sharjah Biennial 15, the concept remains nebulous.

Salcedo is known for sculptures and installations that incorporate quotidian, domestic objects like tables or garments. Her practice often takes historical events as a starting point, focusing on the effects of major political actions on people’s everyday mental and emotional experiences. “Conveying burdens and conflicts with precise and economical means,” she once cataclysmically cracked the floor of Turbine Hall in London’s Tate Modern and lowered more than 1,500 chairs between two buildings in Istanbul to address displacement caused by war. In “Uprooted,” the theme of migration continues in the form of hundreds of dead trees that have been shaped into the recognizable silhouette of a house, its meticulously constructed walls and pitched roof gradually morphing into a thicket.

 

Salcedo contemplates transformation and loss that can be interpreted in many ways, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine and the devastating earthquakes in Syria and Turkey that have displaced millions of people. By utilizing trees that are colorless and lifeless, she also references a rupture between humans and nature, examining how our connection to the environment is dissolving.

Visitors can walk around the installation, but the impenetrable tangles of the wood prevent them from going inside. Gnarled roots protrude from all sides, densely clustered trees obscure the entrance, and in place of an inviting front door is a forebodingly dark and impassable juncture between the domestic structure and the wilderness.

“Uprooted” is on view in Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present at the recently converted Kalba Ice Factory in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, through June 11.

 

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Meander the Halls of Europe’s Grandest Homes in Gretchen Scherer’s Paradisiacal Paintings

“Doria Pamphilj” (2021), oil on panel, 24 x 30 inches. All images © Gretchen Scherer, shared with permission, courtesy of Monya Rowe Gallery, New York

In the maximalist paintings of Gretchen Scherer, you can wander the elaborate halls of the Galleria Borghese outside Rome, or step into a dressing room at Burghley House in Stamford, England—one of the grandest surviving Elizabethan “prodigy” houses—and you’ll have the place all to yourself. The Brooklyn-based artist meticulously renders historic interiors in oil and acrylic, emphasizing frescoed ceilings, baroque niches, and salon-style art collections. Focusing on real places primarily around Europe, Scherer is fascinated by the architectural details and the stories objects reveal about who lived there. “I still invent a lot, and they don’t look exactly like the places they come from. It’s more like the way you might remember a space in your mind or imagine it before you go there,” she says.

Scherer began incorporating architecture into her work around ten years ago when a friend gifted her a book about the genre’s history. She was increasingly drawn to more ornamental styles that preceded the clean lines of 20th-century modernism. “I like the references to nature and all the adornments,” she says. “Those [older] places feel so alien to the spaces we inhabit now—it’s truly like another world.” The spaces are always empty of human visitors, but their presence is felt as if they could walk back into the room at any moment.

“Every piece of artwork, furniture, or even a tiny drawing on a desk that I reference in a painting is from the collection of the place I am painting,” she says. Hanging paintings “salon” style or floor-to-ceiling was a decorating trend that can be traced to the École des Beaux-Arts Salon exhibitions in Paris during the 17th and 18th centuries that packed gallery spaces with as many works as could fit. The decoration of Europe’s grand houses soon followed suit. “The salon-style artwork installations are inspired by the way we are overwhelmed with imagery today through social media, but I find it so interesting that in the past, artwork was displayed that way, so we’ve kind of gone back to viewing things that way again,” the artist says.

If you’re in London, Scherer’s solo exhibition Of a Place opens at Taymour Grahne’s Notting Hill space on February 25 and runs through April 5. Find more of her work on her website, and follow updates on Instagram.

 

“Burghley House, Blue Silk Dressing Room” (2022-23), acrylic and oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“Osborne House, Dining Room” (2022-23), acrylic and oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“Burghley House” (2020), oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“Galleria Borghese” (2021), oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“The Round Hall” (2020), oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“Kingston Lacy, Saloon” (2021-22), oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

“Sir John Soane’s Museum, Library and Dining Room” (2021-22), oil on panel , 48 x 48 inches

“The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 1769-1915” (2021-22), oil on panel, 24 x 30 inches

“Wilton House, Cloisters” (2022-23), acrylic and oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches

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Dense Autumn Trees Blanket a Mountainous Bavarian Forest in Bernhard Lang’s Aerial Photos

All images © Bernhard Lang, shared with permission

The motto for the Bavarian Forest National Park in southeastern Germany translates to “let nature be nature.” This sentiment grounds conservation efforts within the preserve, which boasts near-primeval areas, or regions that have had very little human intervention. It also means that dead or dying trees aren’t removed and are instead left for the earth to subsume as they decay.

As part of his ongoing Aerial Views collection that highlights how people have profoundly impacted environments, Bernhard Lang (previously) photographed the mountainous forest from above. Many of the images juxtapose evergreens’ verdant needles with the autumnal hues of deciduous trees, while others glimpse dozens of fallen specimens as they rot. “In the last years, the forest has recovered by itself from the bar beetles and wind-caused damages. Mushrooms, other plants, and young trees are growing again, having the dead wood as a basic fertile soil,” Lang shares.

Prints from the Bavarian Forest series are available on the photographer’s site, and he’s donating 20 percent of the proceeds to conservation efforts. Follow his latest aerial adventures on Instagram. 

 

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Azuma Makoto’s Temporary Sculptures Freeze Hundreds of Flowers on a Snow-Coated Lake

All images © Azuma Makoto, shared with permission. Photos by Shiinoki Shunsuke / AMKK

On a frozen lake in the Notsuke Peninsula, a tendril of land that juts out from Hokkaido’s east coast, acclaimed floral artist Azuma Makoto (previously) has constructed the third botanical sculpture in an ongoing series called Frozen Flowers. The first edition was composed in this same location in 2019 and again in 2021, and every year, the conditions have been a little bit different. The artist is interested in how variables like temperature, wind, or snowfall can alter the surrounding environment and make every version unique.

An important facet of Makoto’s practice is working alongside and adapting to nature and striking a collaborative balance so that he’s neither trying to control it nor controlled by it. Arranged on a scaffold and surrounded by a field of snow, bunches of flowers and foliage in a range of colors and textures are doused with water before they solidify into thousands of icicles. The artist and a team of assistants worked through the night, waiting until temperatures were at their lowest so that the ice would form quickly. The following morning, the sun revealed the finished composition, and by design, ultimately melted it.

Through the seasons, Makoto sees how the area transforms and over time has witnessed the effects of climate change on the peninsula. He aims to continue installing new versions of the icy blooms for years to come in order to document the ever-evolving environment. Find more of his work on his website and on Instagram.

 

 

 

 

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Xomatok’s Vibrant Interventions Paint the Cracked Sidewalks of Mexico City with Bold Colors

All images © Xomatok, shared with permission

Wander the streets of the Roma Norte area of Mexico City, and you might stumble upon the latest interventions by Xomatok (previously). The artist painted bold color spectrums on cracked and split sidewalks, which have erupted around the defiant roots of trees. Vibrant pinks, yellows, and blues blanket the sides of the concrete, juxtaposing the natural and human-made and highlighting the brute force of the wooden giants in the urban environment. There are currently five works in the Manifestos series, and you can follow additions to the project and Xomatok’s latest works on Instagram.

 

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Architectural Silhouettes Play With Perspective in Patrick Akpojotor’s Fragmented Portraits

“The Gaze” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. All images © Patrick Akpojotor, shared with permission

Combining a love for African masks and the people and buildings of his hometown of Lagos, Nigeria, Patrick Akpojotor (previously) merges the figurative details of faces, shoulders, and arms with the geometric forms of hallways, doors, and staircases. “My surface becomes a playground where forms, colours, perspective, and space comes to play and interact,” he says in a statement. “The use of geometry and architectural elements highlight the influence of the built environment in shaping our memories, experiences, and identities in the world.”

Akpojotor draws on the art historical legacies of Cubist painters who devised a way of breaking up the picture plane into “cubes” or fragments to show multiple sides of an object or figure at the same time. His compositions utilize skewed perspectives, contrast, and color to explore the dynamic relationship between internal and external human experiences, paralleling the interiors and exteriors of architectural spaces and the transformative ways we move between them. He has recently experimented with sculpture, producing steel forms of abstracted arches and steps.

Akpojotor is currently preparing work for a solo exhibition at Allouche Gallery in September. Find more of his work on his website and Instagram.

 

“Oga boss” (2020), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Left: “Gaze to The Beautiful Sunlight (i)” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 195.5 x 152.5 centimeters. Right: “Terracotta wall” (2022), Autobase coated steel, 51 x2 3.5 x 19 centimeters

“Within Time and Space in History (ii)” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 195.5 x 152.5 centimeters

“GIRL WITH RED RIBBON V (Reproduced)” (2022)

Left: “Meeting Point” (2022), Autobase coated steel, 40 x 46 x 25 centimeters. Right: “Step to The Infinite (iii)” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91 centimeters

“Man of Influence III” (2022), acrylic on canvas, 77 x 60 inches

“Witness to the Times II” (2021), acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91.5 centimeters 

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