Hasta La Ideas

Color, materials and concepts in a three-artist show

While on first blush the three artists currently showing at San Francisco’s Altman Siegel gallery all appear to have different techniques and themes, the exhibit compares their “meticulous use of materials” and often witty conceptual works. The show includes paintings and mixed-media pieces by Chris Johanson, Matt Keegan and Charley Harper—a trio that collectively spans generations but possess a similar outlook on life’s curious moments and the human condition.

Harper, the most well-established of the three, laid the foundation for many modern graphic designers with his ability to deconstruct a complex image into simple geometric forms—a style he called “minimal realism.” While visually disparate, Keegan’s pared-down approach feels similar to Harper’s, with a no-frills use of text or boldly-emphasized shapes leading his style.

Like Keegan, Johanson’s subjects also tackle societal issues through text, but the Portland, OR-based artist uses a color palette that more closely resembles Harper’s vivid combinations. Alluring hues draw viewers in and, like both other artists in the show, his deliberate choice of materials is evident.

The group show runs through 5 February 2011 at Altman Siegel. See more images in the gallery below.

As we stand blinking in the cold, hard, light of the fourth day of a fresh year, we’re ready to examine our vices. First up: the growing army of limited-edition toys (some of which remain at rest in their original, value-preserving packaging) that threatens to colonize ever greater swaths of our bookshelves. Perhaps you, too, are conflicted about your desire in recent years to hoard “highly collectible” figurines, whether Dunnys, Munnys, Labbits, Be@rbricks—oh, those adorable Be@rbricks!—that family of zipper pulls-cum-grinning foodstuffs, or the Star Wars-riffing meta-wackiness made tangible by Morgan Phillips, better known as the Sucklord. Who can resist a Louis Vuitton lightsaber? Betcha can’t buy just one.

“The barrage of limited-edition art toys that roll off the conveyor belt like so many Sucklord-blog logorrhea bitch-fests never fails to intrigue and disappoint in a one-two punch as mighty as those doled out my Bruce Lee if he had chosen limited-edition toy making as his field of violence,” notes Johan Kugelberg, co-curator of an exhibition of the Suckadelic art toy universe opening next Tuesday at Boo-Hooray Gallery in New York. “Intentionally confusing, misleading, disappointing, and really funny, these limited-edition parodies of action figures reverberate with a vicious wit and are oddly eyeball-pleasing in the manner of all kinds of toothsome 20th/21st century collage and montage art,” according to Kugelberg and co-curator Simeon Lipman, who compare the impulse to acquire a hot-pink Storm-trooper to the urge to splurge on, say, a magenta balloon bunny crafted of chromium steel. (“This is something that I think you should ask your mother or Banksy or Duchamp or Malcolm Maclaren or your boy Charles Saatchi about,” writes Kugelberg in his curator’s statement.)
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From a Maserati bike to a neighborhood revival project and Yves Klein’s retrospective, the year in color

Color, perhaps the most powerful, immediate and accessible element in a designer or artist’s repertoire, blessed 2010 in abundance from all quarters. With products, fashion, art and social projects all proving that color is a key to unlocking human emotion on a multitude of levels, here are five offerings which had us more than tickled pink this year.

Let’s Colour

One of the most fantastic things about color is its ability to change the feeling of a place or even a viewer—often without anything more than a bucket and paint brush. Dulux’s Let’s Colour project typifies the simple power of a splash of color. Throughout the year volunteers have taken the Let’s Colour project to all corners of the world, helping to brighten up neighborhoods and locations which needed a little lick of paint. Working in collaboration with the locals, Dulux has been able to not only breathe some life into the downtrodden locations but also empower the inhabitants in the process for a truly inspirational venture.

Zweed

Arming the consumer with a little creative power, Zweed produces bespoke furniture which the buyer can spec out themselves, choosing color, shape, material and form. As we enter 2011, Zweed is truly showing how times of economic strife can lead the increased customer satisfaction, product longevity and beautiful pieces of handmade design which carry with them narrative and meaning in their coloring.

Evolving Image

Color can produce a dizzying array of effects and illusions in an architectural space, shown this year in the renovation of the compact CH HQ bathroom. Designed by Evolving Image, two tones of gray, a geometric pattern and a complimentary aqua accent draw the viewer’s attention to the paint job while elongating the small space. The blue-green hue is also a color which will remain fresh and contemporary for a long time, while gray always acts better as a base tone than a purer white if you want to pop an accent.

Montante Maserati 8CTF

This year the cycling world has enthralled and inspired in terms of color use, but it’s hard to find a pursuit which has a better grip on color combinations and selection than the Montante Maserati 8CTF. If you think about the physical constraints of a bicycle, in terms of the actual surface area one has to color, it makes the achievement of creating a mind-blowing color combination—one which is staggering to even the most skilled colorist. Examples of quality coloring on bikes this year are endless but this piece—produced in honor of the Maserati 8CTF winner of the Indy 500—demonstrates a great subtlety of tone played out with gold accents. Deep, luxurious, completely desirable and proof that you don’t have to go chromatic to make a statement.

With the Void, Full Power

No top five of color would be complete without finding some way of mentioning the retrospective of Yves Klein, whose famed International Klein Blue pigment remains the most acute colors seen with the human eye. With the Void, Full Power is still showing and is an absolute must-see. In fact, we recommend everyone at some stage in life gaze in awe at even the smallest pile of the powdery IKB. The glow of this color brings out such a gloriously base emotion that the very thought of it makes me want to weep joyfully in a corner.

London designer Simon Heijdens has applied a special film to windows at the Art Institute Chicago that creates constantly-changing shadows in response to weather conditions outside.

Each triangle in the grid is linked to sensors that monitor wind currents past the outside of the glass, causing the panels to change their level of opacity.

The projections are therefore constantly changing, depending on the wind conditions and path of the sun over the course of a day.

The installation is part of the Hyperlinks exhibition on show until 20 July 2011.

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The following information is from Heijdens:

Shade, a new installation by Simon Heijdens commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago launched as part of the Hyperlinks exhibition.

A responsive skin to the windows of a building that filters daylight into a moving projection of shadows that translates the ever-changing natural timeline of the outdoor to the static and perpetual indoor space.

Shade is the launch of a new, self-developed material that applies as a film to glass surfaces, which through blocking and passing daylight forms a spacial projection of shadows and sunlight. The film holds a grid of triangles that each individually fade between transparent and opaque, and hence block or pass light. The graphic shadows projected on the floor, walls and ceiling of the space reveal the geometrical wind patterns that pass the building on the other side of the glass, as choreographed by the measurements of an outdoor sensor.

As the angle of light and patterns of wind are continuously changing throughout the day and year, the perpetual character of the artificial space is reconnected with an evolving, unplanned natural timeline.

Shade is commissioned by the Art Institute Chicago, and applied to the recently opened Modern Wing of the museum as part of the Hyperlinks exhibition that runs up to July 20, 2011.

DezeenTV: Shade by Simon Heijdens

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Movie: Tokujin Yoshioka – Spectrum	WhiteOut by SpaceOperaForm	The Snow by Tokujin Yoshioka

Dutch designer Hella Jongerius presents 300 porcelain vases coloured with layers of mineral and chemical glazes at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

Produced in collaboration with porcelain brand Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the series uses historical recipes for glazes using materials like copper, cobalt, cadmium and iron, layered up with modern chemical glazes.

Update: forty of the vases were damaged when a visitor to the museum became ill and fell over.

The remaining vases in the series are shown as part of a retrospective exhibition of Jongerius’ work, entitled Hella Jongerius – Misfit, which continues until 13 February 2011.

See all our stories about Hella Jongerius »

Product photographs are by Gerrit Schreurs Fotografie.
Exhibition photographs are by Lotte Stekelenburg.

Here are some more details from Jongerius:

300 Coloured Vases by Hella Jongerius
On display in the exhibition ‘Hella Jongerius – Misfit’ (13 November 2010 – 13 February 2011)

This autumn Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is presenting the first Dutch retrospective exhibition of the designer Hella Jongerius. The exhibition is a unique survey of her work and provides an insight into her working method, experiments and innovative products. One of the most recent is a group of three hundred Coloured Vases (series 3), which will be exhibited for the first time in Rotterdam.

The three series of Coloured Vases are experiments in colour, in which an existing vase is used as a ‘canvas’. The first two series consisted of forty and forty-two different porcelain vases, partially coated with paint from the industrial colour ranges RAL (2003) and NCS (2007). The third series is currently being produced in close collaboration with the glaze experts at Royal Tichelaar Makkum.

Minerals

Whereas the first two series employed industrial paints, this series uses a combination of a hundred historical mineral recipes and a hundred modern chemical glaze recipes. Jongerius refers to the latter as the ‘fast-food’ colours of the modern ceramics industry. The mineral recipes contain ingredients such as cadmium (red), iron (brown), selenium (yellow), copper (green), cobalt (blue) and manganese (purple). The historical and modern colours are applied in layers in a variety of patterns resulting in optical blending: a kind of Pointillism on porcelain. The combinations of colours and patterns and experiments with the firing temperature result in new colours. These are not flat like industrial colours but are irregular, layered and lively like the colours we know from paintings.

Jongerius believes that industry has focused too much on quantity and standardisation over the past few decades. Industry has created thousands of colours that are designed to look the same in all circumstances. These colours lack the irregularities that can provide a more beautiful visual experience such as those found in this series of Coloured Vases (series 3).Imperfection

Hella Jongerius (1963) is one of the most important designers of her generation. In the 1990s she introduced imperfections and individuality into the industrial manufacturing process. Jongerius believes that the quality of craftsmanship is not legible in perfect products but only in the ‘misfits’ that betray the process and the hand of the maker. Many of her works, such as the Nymphenburg plates and the Frog Table, indicate the potential to contemporary design of historical motifs and repeat decorations.

Misfit

The exhibition Misfit at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen includes industrial products, unique experiments and numerous sketch models. All the objects are arranged by colour because this plays such an important role in Jongerius’s work. The combinations of objects, including well- known designs such as B-set, Long Neck & Groove Bottles, Repeat fabrics, the Polder Sofa and IKEA vases, explore the themes inherent in Hella Jongerius’s work.

The exhibition has been made possible by a contribution from the Ahrend Fonds, administered by the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. ‘Hella Jongerius – Misfit’ is part of the official programme of Holland Art Cities 2009-2010.

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Rotterdam Chair by Hella Jongerius	Office Pets by Hella Jongerius	Artificial flowers by Hella Jongerius