Hasta La Ideas

Portraits of women in the wild offer a striking exploration of femininity and nature

In her new book Rewilding, Cass Bird exuberantly dances around the defining lines of femininity, sexuality and the human connection to nature. Shedding gender definitions, and, at times, their clothes in the hilly countryside of Tennessee, Bird’s models are perfectly atypical. Without commentary, the photos themselves vigorously pose questions of androgyny, leaving the answers up to the viewer.

With the typical charm of Bird’s photos—energetic, young, enigmatic—this collection presents an exceptional set of characters and locations. Cast from friends, colleagues and the streets of New York City, Bird’s subjects are both the definition and antithesis of femininity. The women take their rightful place among the flora of the South, running wild in the outdoors and creating scenarios historically romanticized for men with complete and total ease. This line between the feminine and masculine, the borders set by society defining the place and role of genders, is elegantly smudged by Bird’s portraits, in which those ideas melt away completely.

Though distinctly ambiguous and casual, the photos still maintain the rampant sexual energy present in the subjects’ youth, and each one reveals a little more about the universally attractive cast. Stylistically, the book falls in line with her other work, but the narrative seems unique for Bird and we are truly excited to see what she has up next.

Signed copies of the book and limited edition prints are available from the artist’s website.

Contemporary trends delineated in a comical, design-forward compendium

If you’ve ever wondered about how machines become emotional, if you’re curious about the rise of monocultures or if you were unaware that mounting transparency beckons the end of secrecy, Mind the Future is your guide to the 60 most important long-term societal trends. Essentially a collection of color-coded notecards, the information takes you through scenarios from environmental plights to political conundrums with a bit of wit and a healthy dose of research.

Born from the Web for Interdisciplinary Research and Expertise (WIRE), this think tank-produced collection focuses on movements in economics, politics, technology, society and ecology. Accompanying the predictions are comical graphics that illustrate the problem at hand. A card on 21st-century epidemics shows an obese likeness of Michelangelo’s David, An “I ♥ Botox” T-shirt demonstrates how health has become a status symbol and the redefinition of patents is joined by none other than a tape deck turned Jolly Roger.

In addition to the trends, a set of black cards discusses the world’s most pressing dilemmas, weighing the pros and cons for openness versus isolation, materiality versus virtuality, nature versus artifice and more. Perfect for coffee tables and waiting areas, Mind the Future tempers the oft-depressing outlook for the coming years.

Also worth a look is Mind the Future’s hilarious “trailer“, which demonstrates the box’s wireless capabilities, cutting edge features and indestructibility.

Ground up bones and porcelain dust in a series of biological sculptures

In advance of his first solo exhibition “I stand and look at them long and long” at RH Gallery, we stopped by John O’Reilly‘s Brooklyn studio to see what the young artist had on tap. The warehouse space is shared between four sculptural artists working with communal equipment and unparalleled resourcefulness. O’Reilly, for his part, mixes porcelain with bone powder and polyrethane resin to cast realistic biological altarpieces from silicone molds.

The artist let us in on the process behind his creations, which all start off as clay models. Silicone is applied by brush to the clay forms until the film reaches a 1/4-inch thickness. The mold is cut along a set of seams and reattached in a plaster mastermold for rigidity. The bone powder comes from his dog’s leftovers, pulverized in the studio and added to the resin and porcelain mixture to create a translucent, off-white coloration.

To create the forms, O’Reilly pulls from his experience with silverpoint drawing. “I’ve only been doing sculpture for the last two or three years,” he explains. “I look at these things as drawings in space—just a line that connects to another line. And you keep configurating a matrix of lines to create the form.” Standing in front of a wire approximation of his subject, the artist uses dabs of clay on a stick to apply and modify the shapes. When he finds a line he likes, he builds the entire piece around it.

The artist chose porcelain for its likeness to skin. “It’s got that ghost-like, transcendental quality,” says O’Reilly. For the works in black, he added graphite to the resin mixture and finished the surface with another graphite application. The centerpiece work “Welle” is a graphite sculpture of a dead pup. When asked about the high-contrast, emaciated quality of his subjects, the artists explains, “It feels like the more I can dig in, the more I can release energy from the piece. And that’s basically what you’re trying to do—to create a circulatory system of lines, a matrix of feelings and emotions.”

While he enjoys sculpture, O’Reilly sees the laborious process as an ultimate hindrance to creativity. “Origins” is a wall piece that shows the cavity of a pig and is inspired by Andy Warhol’s series of Rorschach paintings. While he was working on the piece—which can take months—the artist developed a method of molding paint inside a folded, translucent sheet. O’Reilly sees potential in the series of inkblot-style X-rays, though the work won’t be featured in the upcoming exhibition.

Many of the pieces bear the mark of the artist’s Christian upbringing. The off-white color is reminiscent of the Italian marbles from renaissance masters, and the artist freely refers to his works as altarpieces. The anguished expressiveness of the occasionally mutilated forms is balanced by the calm placidity of others, both attributes recalling biblical moments and emotions.

“I stand and look at them long and long” opens 6 March, 2012 at the RH Gallery in New York. See more images of O’Reilly’s studio in our slideshow.

RH Gallery

137 Duane Street

New York, NY 10013

Yoram Wolberger debuts his first public installation in a San Francsico high-rise

Decorating the foyer of San Francisco’s new ultra-luxe high rise Millennium Tower, Yoram Wolberger‘s “CA Mission” depicts California’s iconic Spanish missions in an 18′ x 14′ model. The nod to the state’s former architects plays off of notions of mass production and cookie-cutter repetition with a body made from translucent fiberglass, laid out with artifacts and imperfections to resemble a ready-to-assemble child’s toy.

CA Mission continues his interest in toys and domestic objects, although the scale of this piece is notably more ambitious. His past work has included trophy figures and “Cowboys and Indians”, a series of life-size figurines representing Wild West characters. Wolberger shows an interest in addressing the uncomfortable racial and ethnic past of California, especially as it relates to childhood education. The reproduction is accurate even in its imperfections, which collectively break the mythical romance that colors the state’s history.

The Millennium Tower’s location on Mission Street obviously informs Wolberger’s choice for the installation, which marks his first public commission. The city’s largest residential development will build the rest of their collection with work from other artists with ties to Bay Area art schools and institutions.

The Millenium Tower

301 Mission Street

San Francisco, CA 94105

The process behind the artist’s large-scale portraits pairing cultural icons

Already a household name in Asia, Korean painter Kim Dong Yoo‘s inaugural U.S. exhibit at NYC’s Hasted Kraeutler gallery aims to introduce the artist to a new, American audience. The self-titled show features a series of large-scale paintings that, from afar, depict a single grand portrait of notables from John F. Kennedy to Michael Jackson. Upon closer inspection, however, one realizes that the work is actually comprised of hundreds of smaller portraits of other, connected figures from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna.

The relationships between his culturally iconic pairings are intriguing. In addition to Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana, and Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck; Kim Dong Yoo has coupled Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses of all time, with Marilyn Monroe, one of the greatest beauties of all time. He’s also played upon the religious and pop culture interpretations of the Madonna, and the tension inherent in the legendary relationships between Jacqueline Kennedy and JFK, and JFK and Monroe, to name a few.

Perhaps even more surprising than the dueling portraits, however, is the process behind each piece. While the look is decidedly digital, the work itself is absolutely man-made. Kim Dong Yoo begins each labor-intensive piece by drawing a grid, hanging a tiny photo for reference by his canvas. He then hand paints every tiny portrait—no stencils, stamps or computers involved. It takes him about two days to complete a single half row, wherein each portrait varies just so from the rest, allowing for the larger, composite portrait’s depiction. Kim Dong Yoo began the series in the late nineties, and completes three to five paintings each year. As gallery partner Sarah Hasted notes, “He makes it look easy, but the process is incredibly involved.”

Elements of Kim Dong Yoo’s series call to mind the work of both Andy Warhol and Chuck Close. Also interesting, according to the gallery, is the fact that another artist by the name of Alex Goufeng Cao has recently begun displaying work using the same visual concept, though his pieces are rendered digitally. Hasted Kraeutler notes the similarities bring up questions of derivation and new creation—ongoing issues in the modern art world—but rather than taking legal action, Joseph Kraeutler says, “We just want people to understand the concept began as Kim Dong Yoo’s.”

When Kim Dong Yoo himself is asked what he hopes people will take away from the show, the artist responds: “I find joy in the fact that my work balances both grid-like elements, which call to mind the digital world, and an analogical technique—drawing every pixel by hand. And while these components coexist in my work, I want viewers to also see both the visual and emotional harmony and the competition between the two figures—Marilyn and JFK, for example—in every piece. But, at the same time, the thoughts the viewers have when they see the works will be colored by their own distinctive feelings regarding the format and the personalities involved.”

Kim Dong Yoo is on display at New York’s Hasted Kraeutler through 24 March 2012.