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Art

A Pulsating Light Room of Multi-Layered Glass by Claudia Bueno to Premiere at Meow Wolf Las Vegas

Step into Claudia Bueno’s aquarium-style installation at Meow Wolf’s new space in Las Vegas and experience the slow, oscillating movements of natural life. “Pulse” is comprised of countless white line drawings that are meticulously intertwined and superimposed on 60 glass panels. When illuminated, they mimic scores of nautilus spirals, coral, vines, and botanics that sway and throb in glowing masses.

“This is what ‘Pulse’ is, a way of creating animated volumes using layers of drawings that build up. I have been refining this technique for the last six years, understanding how these forms can also have a moving quality when the light system is applied,” the Venezuela-born artist says, noting that the idea for the project grew out of a visit to Yellowstone National Park.

 

During the course of eight months, a team of women painstakingly painted the glass panels at Bueno’s Idaho studio. “The repetitive/meditative quality of the work lent itself to provide a very special healing space for us as we drew fine lines for hours and openly shared and supported each other,” she says. No matter the scale of the project, Bueno begins with a single dot that she duplicates, expands into lines, and eventually into intricately developed patterns, which she explains:

It seems like it doesn’t matter what size, materials, and tools I am working with, the same kinds of patterns manage to manifest themselves over and over, building on each other, gaining both complexity and simplicity at the same time… It has been an interesting brain challenge to visualize a stack of 2D drawings that then become 3D and move. It’s my own version of a non-digital, hand-drawn time-lapse or animation.

Although much of the installation’s work is complete, Bueno shares that she’s creating smaller sculptures, jewelry, and other works to coincide with the larger project. “Pulse” is set to premiere at Meow Wolf’s satirical sendup of consumerism, Omega Mart, which the Santa Fe-based arts group (previously) will soon open within Area 15 in Las Vegas. Until then, watch the video above by Adolfo Bueno and find more of Bueno’s light-based works on her site and Instagram. Video by Adolfo Bueno.

 

Illustration

Dreamy Illustrations by Daniela Gallego Merge Human Experiences with Fantastical Images

Colombian illustrator Daniela Gallego takes us on a delightful journey through a world tinged with magic and brimming with plants. Her subdued color palette enhances the effect, firmly planting each of her drawings somewhere between fantasy and reality. The Barcelona-based artist creates works for children’s picture books, editorial, and corporate clients, and produces some of her own prints or calendars that you can request on Facebook. Explore more of her work on Behance. (via Booooooom & Hi-Fructose)

 

Art

Innumerable Porcelain Pieces Form Flowers and Coral in Zemer Peled's Textured Sculptures

From her Baltimore studio, Israeli artist Zemer Peled (previously) sculpts countless spikes and oblongs into densely textured artworks. Amorphous forms bristle with porcelain pieces of varying shape and hue, mimicking organic elements like coral reefs and intertwined vines. Other sculptures depict oversized blooms with the firm, pointed edges of each shard directly contrasting the soft and fleshy petals found in nature.

Explore Peled’s available pieces in her shop and on Artsy, in addition to her line of cobalt tableware created in collaboration with the French porcelain manufacturer Bernardaud. You can follow her work and find glimpses into her process on Instagram, and head to her site to see her recent coronavirus-themed pieces.

 

Art

Contemplative Artworks of Cicada Wings, Hair, and Thorned Branches Evoke Rebirth and Change

Woven throughout Selva Aparicio’s cicada veils and fringed floor coverings are the complexities of rebirth, transition, and beauty’s ability to endure. Organic ephemera—human hair, thorned branches, scavenged wings—become poignant installations and smaller artworks that ruminate on a myriad of global issues, including the climate crisis and the infinite failures of the medical establishment.

Aparicio shares that her explorations of life and death began during childhood when she watched the natural world cycle through growth and decay in the woods outside of Barcelona. This lasting fascination has crystallized in the artist’s body of work, particularly in pieces like “Velo de luto (Mourning veil),” which sews together 1,365 seventeen-year cicada wings with strands of hair taken from two generations of women. The shrouds typically are worn to honor a spouse who’s died, and Aparicio notes the material and form exemplify that “as the fragility of the veil of wings decay so does the patriarchal veil of history that it represents.”

 

Overall, the artist says that her “practice has evolved beyond the individual to encompass environmental, social, and political activism and evoke the change and rebirth I witnesses in nature.” “Childhood rug,” for example, merges personal memory and a domestic object with larger themes of covering and exposing trauma.

Similarly, Aparicio cites her own experiences in “Hysteria,” an installation that surrounds an antique gynecological table with a curtain of thorned branches. Commenting broadly on the unjust power dynamics inherent within traditional healthcare, the artwork draws a direct correlation between the invasive and painful processes of medicine for women and their ability to bring new life into the world.

Although she spends half her time in Barcelona, Aparicio is currently in Chicago and has work on view at two locations: her piece “Hopscotch” is part of MCA’s group exhibition The Long Dream, while her solo show Hysteria is at the International Museum of Surgical Science, where the artist is in residence. Both are slated to close on January 17, 2021. Head to Instagram for glimpses into Aparicio’s process, as well.

 

Art

Precisely Arranged Stones Coil and Surge Across the Land in Jon Foreman's Mesmeric Works

A scroll through Jon Foreman’s Instagram proves just how prolific the Wales-based artist has been this year—he’s collaborated with artist James Brunt (previously) on a few projects, too. From coils arranged in gradients to whirling patterns embedded in the sand, Foreman’s land art sprawls across beaches and grassy patches in an impressive number of locations. Each work is precise in composition, perfectly matching size, hue, and shape into hypnotic works that contrast the man-made construction with their organic backdrops.

Because the outdoor projects are ephemeral in nature, Foreman (previously) offers prints of most pieces in his shop.

 

 

Art

Symmetrical Typewriter Sculptures by Artist Jeremy Mayer Merge the Organic and Manufactured

“There’s nothing unnatural about mechanical components,” Jeremy Mayer says. For decades, the artist has harbored a fascination with the repetitive, complex patterns of single-cell organisms and the delicately rendered illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, an attraction that manifests in his latest sculptures.

Spanning up to 65 inches, Mayer’s metal artworks are comprised of old typewriter parts mounted around a laser-cut aluminum frame with only the original screws, nuts, pins, and springs holding the mirrorlike pieces together. Formed around a central, circular element, the multi-unit assemblages splay outward. Each of the six points—which evoke starfish, despite having one extra arm—often resemble trilobites, pincers, and other creatures and organic elements, merging the manufactured and natural.

“The form and function are based upon our knowledge of the living world around us. I’m interested in making the machine look like a living thing, drawing inspiration from the relationships that the early designers of the typewriter had with nature,” he says.

 

Mayer purchases between 10 and 15 typewriters each year, which he sources from repair shops, thrift stores, and yard sales around the San Francisco Bay Area. “The more broken the better,” he writes. In the past, he’s gravitated toward the smaller components of the metal machines to assemble birds, skulls, and other figurative sculptures. After transporting the bulky leftovers from studio to studio for years, he gathered enough duplicate parts to construct the symmetrical sculptures.

The ongoing series was born out of a residency at Mumbai-based manufacturer Godrej & Boyce, during which Mayer was asked to create works from leftover typewriters. During his six months, he built mandala-like sculptures and a 13-foot-tall kinetic lotus that explored the connections between industry and biological forms.

Mayer finished the first sculpture of this most recent series at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns and almost has completed five since. He has plans for ten in total, and you can follow their progress on Instagram.