"It's an amalgamation of the Chicago neighborhood aesthetic with a Bulls fan, quite literally. It's kind of on the nose, but that's how I juxtapose the elements of my work, with the structure of a home and then a figure who is around or in the home."
Monologue A Walker in Time's Soliloquy originates from a speculative narrative imagining that the Earth has undergone a reset. The project begins with a simple question: if an ancient civilization once existed before this reset, and a monastery had been built within that forgotten world, what architectural form might it have taken?
This depicts Guernica after the battle. The figures are no longer fighting. They're in a giant pile. They're exhausted and there's a sunrise on a new day behind them. The title of the work is A Whole New World (for Who?). It's asking what's going to happen after the conflicts that we have. Who's going to be taken into that new world?
I have virtually no idea what the finished piece will look like until I actually begin working with the wood. As a result, the form often emerges as I carve, and I frequently change my plans midway through the process. Naturally, I keep the many failures a secret.
Before he was a filmmaker, David Lynch was a painter and, if you're familiar with his esoteric filmmaking practice - peppered as it is with some of cinema's most indelible imagery - it all makes a lot of sense. A year after the auteur's passing, a newly opened show at Pace Gallery's Berlin space, Die Tankestelle, foregrounds Lynch's career-spanning fine art practice and its inextricable link to his cinematic oeuvre.
Enter the Lumina Sideboard from German furniture brand YOMEI and Leica Camera AG, crafted specifically for the Leica Cine 1. This Bauhaus-inspired solution offers brilliant color and sound, without the permanent fixture of a black screen staring back, a void usually occupying the focal point of the room when not in use. With the Lumina Sideboard, each piece of the puzzle fits together neatly, minimizing pain points of the TV experience, all while gifting this container for culture a sleek aesthetic.
"Love me, please love me." It's not a refrain you anticipate hearing at a Comme des Garçons show, Rei Kawakubo perhaps being one of the most unloveable designers working in fashion right now. Kawakubo is adored, but as a self-declared and much-demonstrated punk, she makes no overtures or compromises to engender universal affection with her clothes. They're difficult, obstinate, unreasonable in their undeniable genius. Kawakubo doesn't need to be loved.
The exhibition gathers several grid installations first developed in 1976, presented here through careful re-creations of historic works. Installed directly into corners, the luminous sculptures become a fixed part of the gallery as walls, ceilings, and floors receive light as an active condition. The atmosphere of each room shifts, all while remaining unified by the straightforward presence of the simple fluorescent fixtures.
Known most for her large-scale artworks created from vast, intricate networks of thread, she developed her unique practice to make tangible the endless speculative configurations of human connections - something to be experienced rather than defined. But by asking her to describe her new exhibition, Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery, I'm dragging her back into a reductive world of language. "If I wanted to express myself in words, if I could explain in words, I'd rather write," she says. "So I want to build visually, and I want to create visually. What I want to describe is beyond words."
Szilveszter Makó 's enigmatic photographs carry layers of mystery and introspection. Standing inside curious block-like backdrops and lain against two-dimensional fields of color and texture, his subjects seamlessly meld into stories in which every detail carries intention. Taking inspiration from art history, the Milan-based artist references Surrealism and grotesque art through his use of chiaroscuro effects via light exploration and contrasting earth tones.
Naoto Nakagawa's current show at KAPOW brings together a significant group of new acrylic paintings and intimate watercolors, situating his recent practice within both the Japanese shunga tradition of erotic art and his own six-decade exploration of perception, material culture, and the natural world. On view at KAPOW in Manhattan's Lower East Side through February 22, works across the exhibition resonate with themes that have defined Nakagawa's career since the 1960s - most notably his persistent pairing of man-made objects with organic life.