Ghost of a Tree, Letha Wilson, 2011-12

Billboards series, Matthew Stone, 2012

Kindskopf (Head of a Child), Gottfried Helnwein, oil and acrylic on canvas, documentation production and installation processes.

“Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot, which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie,” Jean Cocteau.

visuallycurious:

Phil Irish

Veiled Invitation, 2012

Oil and acrylic on Terraskin, with pins, nails, wood, and wire.

340 cm x 420 cm x 65 cm.

Mikala Dwyer’s Panto Collapsar stages a curious explosion of ancient relics and theatrical gratuity, and in doing so throws forth a seemingly playful investigation into the nature of our own imposed symbols of value, projecting weight and movement into the apparent hollowness of the static object.

The crowded installation transforms into a flux of paradigms of referential worth with a flurry of contradictory ideals that emerge between the tangible dimensions of the assorted objects, textures and materials, and the manipulation of implied visual iconography. It’s brash, it’s loud and it’s tinny, obscuring as much as it infers, and relying on our own perceptions of spirituality to reassemble the deeper pertinence that is threaded throughout. Stepping into the installation is like entering into some sort of hyper anthropological theatre. Dwyer’s Panto Collapsar works on a level that cleverly teases and pulls meaning, and yet conversely, refuses to anchor our assumed sentimentality. The result is a lucid kaleidoscopic accumulation that constantly calls into question our own evolving sanctification of the material.

Xscape, Kurt Hentschläger, Audio visual installation, 2007

“Well, I just always craved intense experiences, both in a cerebral as well as physical sense. Music is a good example, as it can be both abstract and emotionally charged at the same time, overwhelming yet conceptually complex. ”

Continue reading an interview with the artist following a showcase of his latest piece, CORE, over at Dazed Digital.

Wall Piece with 200 Letters, Mikko Kuorinki, 2010-2011.

From March 2010 until February 2011 the artist formed one new text on the wall of Kiasma museum, Helsinki, every week.

See more from the series here

Scramble for Africa/How to Blow Up Two Heads at Once, Yinka Shonibare

“I desired the Secretary to present my humble duty to the Emperor, and to let him know, that I thought it would not become me, who was a foreigner, to interfere with parties; but I was ready, with the hazard of my life, to defend his person and state against all invaders.”

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

The World is Flat/Mithra (The Ark), Mark Bradford, Billboard Paper, mixed media/Found objects, plywood and posters

Read an interview with the artist, and learn more about his interesting and monumental works, over at Frontrow

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted In Your Entire Life/The Impracticality of Preparedness, Ben Skinner, Paper and acrylic/Watercolour on paper

See more of the artist’s portfolio here

Prada Marfa, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Permanent installation, Texas

A permanent installation, or a self proclaimed ‘pop architectural land art project,’ Prada Marfa was built in 2005 and situated in the relative abandon of the Texan desert, a few kilometres north of the town Valentine. 

Read more about the project over at the New York Times, and see more images here

Mike Kelley, the highly influential installation artist, died yesterday following an, as yet unconfirmed, suicide attempt.

“A stand-alone visionary in his own right. He is the originator of his own form of sculptural mayhem: cacophonous disorienting agglomerations and sprawling installations of stuff heaped upon other stuff, some made, some found, all organized in ways audiences could access but that also felt infinitely other-ish, deeply carnivalesque, always operatic, and utterly unrelenting.”

Continue reading over at NY Magazine

“L.A. would not have become a great international capital of contemporary art without Mike Kelley,” Schimmel said. “Of all the artists in the 1980s, he was the one who really broke out and established a new and complex identity for his generation.”

Paul Schimmel, the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, for the Los Angeles Times

“I became more interested in visual arts as it seemed to be more open, you could use a lot of different materials and mix language in with it. I think it changed my writing practice completely and allowed me to become a writer, to break the cliché modalities that I was trying to write in.”

Mike Kelley on becoming an artist in an interview with Dazed and Confused.

It Turned Out This Way, Cos You Dreamed It Like This.

Billboard installations by London artist and associate Dazed and Confused publisher Robert Montgomery.

Read an interview with the artist ahead of his upcoming exhibition here.