Tag Archives: conceptual

Surreal Self-Portraits by 22-Year-Old Artist Noell S. Oszvald who Began Photographing and Editing a Year Ago

Surreal Self Portraits by 22 Year Old Artist Noell S. Oszvald who Began Photographing and Editing a Year Ago surreal portraits conceptual black and white

I was astounded to learn that 22-year-old Hungarian photographer Noell S. Oszvald who lives and works in Budapest picked up a camera only a year ago. The gifted artist has shared only two dozen or so images with the world via Flickr but they already show an accomplished grasp of composition, editing and digital manipulation. Oszvald tells Alice over at My Modern Met that she chooses only to work in black and white because she finds color distracting from her conceptual ideas. She also mentions that she wishes for viewers of her work to find their own meaning and interpretation of each image. “I don’t want to tell people what to see in my images,” explains Oszland to My Modern Met, “this is the reason why I never really write any descriptions other than titles. It shows what I wish to express but everyone is free to figure out what the picture says to them. It’s very interesting to read so many different thoughts about the same piece of work.” See many more of her photographs here. (via my modern met)

Before I die I want to

Before I die I want to writing words street art painting conceptual

A few months ago I wrote about Candy Chang‘s Before I Die project in New Orleans that engaged passersby to complete the prompt “Before I die I want to…” on the side of abandoned buildings using provided chalk. As an extension of the project she’s created a limited edition set of painted chalkboards with a similar prompt. Via her web site:

Each Before I Die painting is 48″x12″ on birchwood ply and individually handmade with care. The wood is sanded, primed, and coated with a layer of black chalkboard paint, and the back is stained with a natural finish and handstamped and signed by yours truly. Also includes three brass plated D-Ring hangers attached to the back, a 4″ hardwood chalk holder, and a colorful stick of chalk.

The boards are $150 each. Check ‘em out at the Civic Center. Side note: also cool in the Civic Store. (via plenty of color)

By Christopher on July 13, 2011 • conceptual painting street art words writing

First Look: Hans-Peter Feldmann Hangs $100,000 in Dollar Bills on the Walls of the Guggenheim Museum

(click images for detail)

Last November German conceptual artist Hans-Peter Feldmann was named the winner of the eighth Biennal Hugo Boss Prize, a bi-annual award bestowed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for significant achievement in contemporary art, with an attached honorarium of $100,000. In a unique gesture to the museum Feldmann proposed the idea of creating an installation that would involve tacking 100,000 $1 bills to the walls of a large gallery off the Frank Lloyd Wright ramp. Via the NY Times:

“I’m 70 years old, and I began making art in the ’50s,” Mr. Feldmann said in a telephone interview from his studio in Düsseldorf. “At that time there was no money in the art world. Money and art didn’t exist. So for me $100,000 is very special. It’s incredible really. And I would like to show the quantity of it.”

It took museum art handlers roughly 13 days to pin the out-of-circulation bills to the wall and to condense the surface area required by so much currency the dollars were slightly overlapped. The exhibition will be up May 20–November 2, 2011. The photographs above by David Heald were provided courtesy the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

By Christopher on May 26, 2011 • conceptual currency installation money multiples

Photocopied Walls

Photocopied Walls process paper multiples installation conceptual

An installation by Andrea Mastrovito using 3,307 individual black and white photocopies that were pieced together to create the view outside the gallery walls. Incredible. (thnx, chelsea!)

By Christopher on February 5, 2011 • conceptual installation multiples paper process

Five Orange Spheres

Five Orange Spheres sculpture minimalism installation conceptual art history

Five Orange Spheres was an installation by artist Stuart Williams that consisted of five inflatable spheres each 6-feet in diameter that traveled the world for two and a half years in the 1980s. The above photos were taken in Cannon Beach, Oregon; in the moat around Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau, France; Los Angeles; in Central Park NYC; Telegraph Hill in San Francisco; and an Alpine Village in Filisur, Switzerland. Previously.

By Christopher on January 27, 2011 • art history conceptual installation minimalism sculpture

Chris Larson

Phenomenal work from Minnesota artist Chris Larson (click Chris Larson on that page) whose body of work is spread so thinly online it took almost 45 minutes to piece together what I have here. Above we have Shotgun House, sub-zero stills from a short film entitled Deep North, and a wooden replica of the Dukes of Hazzard ’69 Charger crash landing on a replica of unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Montana refuge (not to mention the space ship he constructed also crashing into said refuge). Rochester Art Center has some nice words:

Chris Larson’s work examines the relationship between humans and machines – sometimes expressed through a moment of impact, sometimes through great toil and effort. His previous sculptures are large wooden constructions of collided objects: in one example, a spaceship nearly flattens a wooden barn; in another, the car from The Dukes of Hazzard TV show, recreated in wood, is smashed into the roof of a replica of Ted Kaczynski’s cabin. These works are filled with metaphors of heroic and anti-heroic acts and of the collision of good and evil in human nature.