Hasta La Ideas

Children’s toys transformed into creepy robots

For the last few years artist Cathy McClure has been applying her background in metal design to her obsession with mechanical toys in a variety of shows around the country. McClure’s process, centralized around taking different motorized children’s toys and stripping them of their fur and stuffing, tears them down to their absolute basics. From there, the pieces either remain in their naked plastic state or McClure casts them in a variety of metals from silver to bronze. The resulting pieces, eerie and at times haunting, expose the high level of engineering those goes into what most would write off as simple children’s toys.

Her work from the “Curiosities” series sells online from the Moss shop.

Our video on conceptual artist Rirkrit Tiravanija and his newest video project

Rirkrit Tiravanija has continuously proven himself to be at the forefront of modern conceptual art. Extremely social in nature, Tiravanija’s exhibitions range from feeding gallery-goers to recording footage of a road trip and displaying it, along with the car that made the journey, for everyone to see. In this video, Cool Hunting talks to the artist about his current project as part of Absolut’s 365 Days initiative in Mexico and the culture’s attitudes towards art.

Three designers experiment with polyurethane foam to create new, unexpected forms

by Jack Shaw

While the idea of elevating industrial materials to the level of high design isn’t new, recent creative experiments with polyurethane foam have yielded work that feels undeniably fresh. Widely used in the furniture production process, polyurethane foam rarely constitutes a visible part of the final product. The material’s amorphous nature and near instantaneous conversion from a liquid to a solid not only lend to its commercial application as insulation and interior support, but have also made it a favorite plaything for conceptual designers. These projects have yielded work of unconventionally beautiful and rare intellectual appeal.

Berlin based product designer Jerszy Seymour has developed a career-spanning relationship with the polyurethane foam material. He has created an entire visual language of drips and goo, which he calls Scum. From lamps to a ‘house in a box’ kit Seymour has used the foam for projects of every scale. Seymour’s work has a humble honesty and a quality of being almost undesigned. His New Order Chair for Vitra Edition uses the foam to reconstruct a plastic garden chair into a design that is both experimental and elegant.

Like Seymour, Massimiliano Adami’s work often incorporates found objects. In his Fossili Moderni series polyurethane foam is used to suspend common plastic containers and toys (of both children and adults) before being sliced into a desired form. The resulting magma of 21st century refuse is a surprising reinterpretation of everyday objects. There is a thoughtfulness to this immortalization of the everyday object, considering it could take up to 1000 years for the average PET bottle to degrade in a landfill questioning mass design and its consumption seems entirely appropriate.

The Swell Vase, by Brooklyn designer Chen Chen, achieves its alien appearance by incorporating the contradiction between pressure and constraint into the production process. Made by injecting the expanding polyurethane foam into a net bag the tension between the two materials dictates the vase’s ultimate form. The work is made far more interesting by the idea of removing the designer’s control, and elevating the role of materials in the design process.

Jerszy Seymour has worked with such companies as Magis, Vitra, Kreo, Moulinex, SFR and IDEE. Massimiliano Adami has created designs for Cappellini, Meritalia, and Fendi. Adami and Chen Chen both currently have work on display at Moss in SoHo, New York City.

Images of New Order Chair by Hans-Jörg Walter, all others by Juan Garcia Mosqueda.

East-meets-West in Vietnam’s art celebration focused on growth

As the cultural center of Vietnam, Hanoi recently made the ideal location to kick off Tiger Beer’s latest event in its free art and music series, Tiger Translate. With more than half of the country’s population born after 1975, the theme focused on growth, providing a badly needed forum for local Asian artists to come together and show off their work on a bigger scale and international platform.

Overseas artists included Prefab77, a wheat-paste trio from Newcastle, England, and JabaOne, a street artist from Belgium who resides in Singapore. They were matched with locals Hoang Art, whose Western-influenced style earned him a first-prize award in Hanoi’s Long Bien Festival of Arts; Pham Huy Thong, a studio painter and teacher whose work doubles as social commentary; Linkfish, a name recognized for being one of the first pioneers of the street art movement in the country; and DungJoon, a painter who is also an architect and art director. “For us, the reason we have such shows is to create the exchange,” said Tiger Translate Global senior brand manager Patsy Lim, citing how the invitation of major-name international artists helps shine the spotlight on lesser-known ones.

Tiger Translate Hanoi unfolded on Hoa Lo, the same road where the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison is located. Although it took eight levels of approval by various city departments to close off the street for the event, the choice clearly worked to drive home the growth theme.

Under a cloudy sky, heavy heat, humidity and the never-ending honks of scooters and cars, the artists spent a few days before the event painting the wide walls installed along the block, occasionally switching their focus to six plywood trees. Nearby, workers installed pieces by international artists turned into mesmerizing 3-D by Tiger Translate. The final touches were made in front of more than 3,200 eventgoers on the evening of the show. While most of the Vietnamese artists already spoke a little bit of English, language wasn’t a problem. “Because it was all visual, it’s people who have sketchbooks,” said Marc Ross of Prefab77. “The language barrier doesn’t matter.”

While spray painting his own piece, Hoang Art observed Prefab77’s wheat-pasting technique and invited them to collaborate on an area of his piece. In fact, all of the collaborations worked similarly. Artists began their pieces, and as they checked out each other’s progress, they’d suggest how they could add their own signature.

For such a young street art scene—Linkfish told us it’s only about five years old, originating from hip-hop parties held in underground Hanoi locations—both Prefab77 and JabaOne were surprised with the art prowess of the Vietnamese. “They have a very good level for beginners,” said JabaOne. He was particularly impressed with their lack of access to more sophisticated types of spray paint. “When they move to the modern spray can, their technique will even be better,” he said. Prefab77 echoed the same sentiments about Hoang Art. “His style is incredible. I can’t imagine there’s many of that size of walls in Vietnam that you could paint and not get arrested,” Ross said.

The rapidity with which the Vietnamese artists did their work was also something Prefab77 found remarkable. Pham Huy Thong, who had never painted on outside canvases before, painted his tree with a picture of a baby—as a representation of the changing consumer habits of today’s youth—in under an hour and a half. Using brush and acrylic paint on top of Prefab77’s wheat-pasted posters, his piece ended up being the paradigm of the East-meets-West goal of Tiger Translate.

From the side of the local artists, they were most taken with Prefab77’s wheat-paste method, a style they had never seen. “We have spray cans, pens or brushes,” said Linkfish. “They have stickers and posters.” Whether it was a matter of tradition, the local artists said they never realized street art could be made outside of the use of conventional materials. Prefab77’s response was a little ironic, “They have the best glue we’ve ever used!”

Tiger Translate will run in other cities this year and continue exploring the themes of growth and metropolis.

How one global art community is connecting through sketchbooks

Five years ago, Shane Zucker and Steven Peterman, fed up with the challenge of making a living as artists, founded Art House as a student project. Now, the active online community has over 50,000 users and an art library that is traveling the United States.

Art House’s beginnings go back to Atlanta College of Art (SCAD since bought it), where Shane was studying graphic design and Steven, printmaking. Seeing their friends daunted by the task of getting into galleries as a daunting task, the two rented a space and held their own pay-to-play exhibit, charging artists enough to show so that it covered their overhead.

Shane’s father mentioned sketchbooks—what if people from all over the world paid to submit sketchbooks to be displayed? Between April and November of 2010, 28,000 people signed up to be a part of the Sketchbook Project and 10,000 of the sketchbooks sent out to people in 94 countries were sent back. The collection is now touring nine U.S.cities and you can even get a library card to check them out.

Shane sat down with me and a new member of the Art House team, Eli Dvorkin, recently to explain the power of community.

What is the meaning of paying to be part of an art project?

Eli: We’re not telling anyone that they are going to suddenly become famous through this. Also, we don’t sell any of the work. There’s no financial benefit to anyone here. If you think about the resources that go into this tour and having a permanent space in Brooklyn, it adds up to a lot of money and time. As five people or even 100 of your closest friends, you could never do this, but when 10,000 people come together, you can actually do it.
Shane: For a lot of galleries, art is a means of commerce. They make money. That’s just not us.

How would you describe the typical participant?

S: Serious artists. Scrapbookers. Moms. There’s a huge range of people who do the Sketchbook Project. There are teachers that have their students do it and then there are senior citizens who are just bored.

Is there any sense that you’re reigniting peoples’ involvement in art?

E: People have written exactly that to us. People say, “This is essentially my one outlet a year for my artistic impulses.” Overtime they sit down with the sketchbook and it’s with them for a good chunk of the year. We get little life stories. Like 10,000 lives on shelves. Only a small subsection is any formal study. It’s cathartic.

When you check out a book, you choose a theme. What’s with that?

S: Steve came up with most of the themes. My favorite is “Science Project Gone Wrong.”
E: I think I’d have to go with “Mystery Maps” even though I devised it. The themes are not rules, but it’s interesting to see how a teenager in Singapore and a senior in Canada interpret “Science Project Gone Wrong.”

What’s next?

E: We’re starting to collect a lot more information about the participants. When you check out a sketchbook, the artist has the option to be notified by SMS and eventually you’ll be able to get in touch through our website.
S: We’re going to relaunch the site and will be scanning most of the sketchbooks so that people can start tagging individual pages of books. You”ll be able to search “Photography” and “China” and find results. But what’s really cool is that we don’t have to do that, because the community is dying to get involved.

Any personal projects?

E: Shane, you better not!
S: No, this has been pretty full time. I haven’t even made a sketchbook. Steve started one, but I don’t know if he finished it.
E: We have a lot going on at Art House though. Soon we’ll be launching our own notebook collection. The names will co-ordinate to the sizes, like “Back Pocket,” “Messenger Bag,” etc.
S: And of course there’s the tour and soon we’ll start sending out the 2011 sketchbooks to participants!

The 2010 Sketchbook Project began in April, so stay tuned for this year’s launch. Also, to see the library in person, check out the 17,900-mile tour or the permanent location in Brooklyn.

Photography by Aaron Kohn