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Art

Ironic Self-Help Titles Painted by Johan Deckmann Cure Existential Woes

A trained psychotherapist, Johan Deckmann (previously) has stacks of books to remedy our most painful emotional struggles and existential dread. His collection includes the massive “Your chances of changing the world,” the much slimmer “Your chances of changing yourself,” and the dismally timely “How to take a deep breath and go on even though everything feels so wrong.”

Often painted on soft, cloth covers evocative of vintage self-help manifestos, Deckmann’s ironic titles are steeped in our culture of incessant improvement and tend to be brutally honest about human limitation. His straightforward messages are not unlike those found in a therapist’s office and harness the power of simple language to confront contemporary dilemmas. “The idea of writing on books comes partly from my work as a psychotherapist, a music composer, and lyricist. I like the idea of distilling words to compress information, feelings, or fantasies into an essence, a truth,” said the Copenhagen-based artist.

Deckmann is participating in a group exhibition up through May 15 at Sala Amós Salvador in La Rioja, Spain, and will be at the Venice Biennale next month with the Gervasuti Foundation. He also has a solo show later this year at San Francisco’s Modernism, and you can find an expansive collection of his poignant messages on Instagram.

 

Art Illustration

Solitary Worlds Explored in New Psychological Drawings by Stefan Zsaitsits

Solitary protagonists investigate, embrace, or hide from emotions in evocative new drawings by Stefan Zsaitsits. The Austrian artist (previously) depicts individuals in situations that balance relatable everyday moments with surreal twists. Sitting at a dining table, one subject snorkels into the tablecloth, while another inexplicably emerges on a ladder from the seat of a chair. Zsaitsits works in pencil on paper, using crosshatching for shading and white-penciled details for subtle emphasis.

The artist shares with Colossal that, following his participation in Drawing Now in Paris, his work in currently on view in a group exhibition in Munich, Germany at Størpunkt gallery. An upcoming solo show at Vienna’s Gallery Gans opens in May. Explore more of Zsaitsits’s drawings on Behance and take them home with his latest book, House Drawings.

Animation Illustration

Paper Illustrations and GIFs Explore the Body and Mind in New Work by Eiko Ojala

New Zealand and Estonia-based illustrator Eiko Ojala (previously) creates cut paper illustrations that present shadow and depth through creative layering of colorful pieces of paper. Recently, his editorial illustrations have been focused on the mind and body, like a cut paper GIF he created for a story on heart attacks in the New York Times. Others, like two Washington Post illustrations, attempt to uncover the thoughts and feelings sequestered in children’s minds by layering images inside the shape of a boy’s profile. You can see more of Ojala’s designs on his Instagram and Behance.

 

Animation Illustration

1,440 Portraits Emerge from a Single Ink Drawing in a New Animation by Jake Fried

In an impressive feat of dedication and patience, artist Jake Fried (previously) spent seven months creating Brain Wave, a hand-drawn animation using only ink and white-out. Fried reworked the same black-and-white drawing 1,440 times, scanning each new iteration into Photoshop and sequencing the drawings to play at 24 frames per second. He then added an original music track that frantically connects the hundreds of drawings into one 60-second video.

Centered both literally and narratively around a single, ever-changing face, the short animation takes the viewer through a wide range of emotions, settings, and themes. Because every frame is a new work of art, the piece as a whole feels like snapshots from a dream that have been remembered, recreated, and reassembled.

Working without an outline or storyboard, Fried explained to Vimeo that each successive drawing dictated what would come next. “There is an inherent logic or rhythm that emerges as I make the work, I have developed an instinct or gut-feeling for when the next frame is ready to be scanned. I can get quite obsessive about the smallest shifts within a fraction of a second.”  The filmmakers’s work will be featured later this month at the Flat Earth Film Festival in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland from February 10-14, 2019 and in a group exhibition at Mills Gallery in Boston from February 23 through April 28, 2019. To see more of Fried’s work online, follow him on Instagram. (via Vimeo Staff Picks)

 

Art

New Fictional Self-Help Titles Present Existential Messages on Faded Book Covers

Johan Deckmann (previously) presents existential notions of life, love, and self-doubt as self-help titles on hand-painted books. The fictionalized novels contain no words on their pages, however their size often directly correlates to the messages on the front covers, such as his series of blue books, which read “Good ideas” on the smallest, “Mediocre ideas” on the mid-sized work, and “Bad ideas,” on the largest.

The Copenhagen-based artist is also a practicing psychotherapist who recognizes how language can be a powerful tool in both art and therapy. “The right words can be like good medicine,” he explained in a statement for the Faurschou Foundation in Copenhagen. His chosen phrases are both humorous and wise, often cutting to a deep truth with just a handful of words like his title “How to search forever for what is already inside.”

In addition to books, Deckmann also paints poignant messages on record sleeves, wooden boxes, and briefcases. He recently had an exhibition at the Arp Museum in Remagen, Germany titled “It Takes Time, It’s Risky and It Might Last Forever” which closed in mid-July. You can see more of his works on his website and Instagram.

Art History

A Seamstress’s Autobiographical Text Embroidered Onto Her 19th-Century Straitjacket

German seamstress Agnes Richter (1844–1918) was a patient at the Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic during the 1890s. While held at the asylum she would densely embroider her standard issue straitjacket, stitching the object with words, phrases, and diaristic entries in deutsche schrift, an old German script. The layers of language make it difficult to distinguish a beginning or end to the writing, and only fragmented phrases have been deciphered from the jacket such as “I am not big,” “I wish to read,” and “I plunge headlong into disaster.”

The object is a part of the Prinzhorn Collection at the University of Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic, named after collector and psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn. The collection contains over 5,000 paintings, wooden sculptures, sketches, and other art-based ephemera from patients at the hospital, collected by the psychiatrist during the early 20th-century. This vast collection of work made by psychiatric patients has had a major influence on a modern understanding of “outsider art,” or the artwork created by self-taught artists who have had little to no contact with the mainstream art world.

Over a century later, the jacket remains a powerful item, a lasting object that showcases how one woman transformed a sterile and impersonal garment into a rich record of her life’s journey. (via #WOMENSART)

Update: Sources vary as to whether this article of clothing was Richter’s straitjacket, a regular jacket, or part of a non-restrictive institutional uniform.