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Photography

Stars and Comets Shimmer in Juha Tanhua’s Galactic Photos of Parking Lot Oil Spills

In this collection of cosmic photographs, comets, nebulas, and galaxies stretch before the human eye, showering the sky in glittering scenes that ought to be from a telescope. But instead of looking upward into the night, Finnish photographer Juha Tanhua points his camera to the ground. He documents his “oil paintings” in broad daylight, shooting gasoline and oil spills usually found in car parks. “I don’t look up, but down,” he tells Colossal. “It’s not space above us; it’s space under our feet. You can find subjects to photograph even in dull places like parking lots. Expect nothing, get everything.”

The photographer first got his idea for the gasoline puddles when noticing an oil spill next to his car. “It looked a little bit like the northern lights,” he says. He forgot about the image, which he named “Urban Aurora Borealis,” until finding it months later when organizing an archive. After that, when walking around parking lots after heavy rain, he began to notice more leaks and started to document them. He now has hundreds in his collection. “I named them oil paintings,” he says. “Because it looked like artworks under cars.”

Tanhua likens rain to a brush, which “paints the artwork” and is an essential component in ensuring the stains don’t fade in the dry summer. Once captured, he plays with the exposure, editing the highlights, shadows, and contrasts of each image to gain the appearance of galactic matter from a combination of the oil patterns and the ground’s rough texture.“When I shoot against black asphalt and underexpose the image, the rocks on the asphalt turn into stars,” he explains.

Currently living in the small village of Vuolenkoski, near Lahti in Southern Finland, Tanhua obtained his first camera at age 15, when his father gifted him an Olympus 35 DC compact model that he purchased while working in Japan. In 1979, Tanhua began an apprenticeship at a local studio, which launched subsequent careers in journalism and later freelance photography. His works are now included in collections within the Finnish National Gallery and Lahti Art Museum. You can find more of his photos on his website. (via Peta Pixel)

 

Art

Future Returns: A Plasma-Cut Forest Reclaims an Oil Tanker in a New Sculpture by Dan Rawlings

In perhaps the not-so-distant future, sculptor Dan Rawlings (previously) imagines a world where machinery from the unsustainable energy industry is now a relic of the past, slowly overtaken by nature in a state of decomposition. In his latest sculpture titled “Future Returns,” the artist uses his trademark plasma-cutting style to etch a sizeable canopy of foliage that emerges from the steel shell of a reclaimed oil tanker. The work is currently housed inside a 19th-Century church in Scunthorpe in Lincolnshire, England. From a statement about the project:

“Future Returns” invites us to examine our own part in commercialization and the resulting changes to our natural environment. Rawlings believes it is easy to demonize industry but we must acknowledge that it has allowed life as we know it to bloom. It is our ability to design, create and produce that has put towns like Scunthorpe on the global map. He also believes oil companies have much to answer for, from the state of our environment to mistrust of science.

“Future Returns” will be on view at 20-21 Visual Arts Centre through September 25, 2021, and you can book free viewing times on the center’s site. (via Creative Boom)

 

Photography

Uncanny Photographs of Iridescent Oil Spills by Fabian Oefner

As part of an ongoing effort to explore the visual effects of iridescence, artist Fabian Oefner (previously) created a new photographic series titled Oil Spill. To create the images he used a syringe to drip small drops of oil into a black reservoir containing water. As the oil expanded into plumes he captured the images you see here reminiscent of giant fires, irises, or exploding stars. You can see more from the series on Behance.

Art

Paint, Oil, Milk, and Honey Mix in this Surreal Macro Video of Swirling Liquids by Thomas Blanchard

It turns out that watching paint mix is a heck of a lot more interesting than watching paint dry. French director Thomas Blanchard shot this lovely short of colored paints, oil, milk, and honey as they mix and bead under a macro lens. He says the video is intended as “an analogy of feelings such as anger, love, sadness and joy [as they] they mix and eventually ease.” If you liked this also check out similar liquid experiments by Ruslan Khasanov.

Art

Odyssey: Otherworldly Macro Footage of Ink, Oil and Soap Shot by Ruslan Khasanov

Several years ago, Russian graphic designer Ruslan Khasanov was cooking with oil and soy sauce when he stopped to appreciate the strange relationship between the two fluids as the pooled and mixed in unexpected ways. The observation lead to his creation of Pacific Light, a sort of experimental music video meets science project that captures the up-close interactions of ink, oil, and soap. Khasanov just released a follow-up video—now with glitter!—called Odyssey. Music by Ilya Beshevli.

Photography

High Speed Photographs of Ink Mixing with Oil by Alberto Seveso

One of the masters of high speed liquid photography, Alberto Seveso (previously), is back with a new series of photos titled Dropping. The Italian photographer achieved these particular shots by dropping mixtures of colored ink into a container of oil and then flipping the final images upside down. See several more from the series here. (via Twisted Sifter)