Hasta La Ideas

Johannsen Gallery in Berlin present an exhibition of wallpapers by Milanese collective Carnovsky that change under different lighting conditions.

The wallpapers, called RGB, feature superimposed imagery printed in red, green, yellow and blue.

The separate layers are revealed when illuminated by different coloured lights.

The range was created for Italian brand Jannelli & Volpi earlier this year and the exhibition continues until 10 February 2011.

Photos are by Alvise Vivenza.

The information below is from the designers:

Carnovsky’s RGB – Color est e pluribus unus

RGB is a work about the exploration of the “surface’s deepness”. RGB designs create surfaces that mutate and interact with different chromatic stimulus.

RGB’s technique consists in the overlapping of three different images, each one in a primary color. The resulting images from this three level’s superimposition are unexpected and disorienting. The colors mix up, the lines and shapes entwine becoming oneiric and not completely clear. Through a colored filter (a light or a transparent material) it is possible to see clearly the layers in which the image is composed. The filter’s colors are red, green and blue, each one of them serves to reveal one of the three levels.

Carnovsky’s exhibition at Direktorenhaus, Berlin, is structured in three different scales, from the large to the small, from an architectonic scale, to an object one, passing through the prints. In the architectonic level one of the gallery’s rooms has been set up with a large installation made of wallpapers and colored lights: It is a sort of “fresco” made with contemporary technologies, “frescos”, but instead of being static, they are in mutable and fluctuating, capable of creating an ambient in continuous movement.

The represented subject is the antique theme of the metamorphosis intended as an unceasing transformation of shapes from a “primigenial chaos”. For this purpose we have created a sort of catalogue of natural motifs starting with the engravings from natural history’s great European texts, between the 500 and the 700, from Aldrovandi to Ruysch, from Linneus to Bonnaterre.

A catalogue that does not have a taxonomic or scientific aim in the modern sense, but that wants to classify both the real and the fantastic, the true and the verisimilar in the way medieval bestiaries did. In each image three layers live together, three worlds that could belong to a specific natural kingdom, but that at the same time connect to a different psychological or emotional status that passes from the clear to the hidden, from the light to the darkness, from the awakeness to the dream.

Besides the installation, there were presented some new limited edition RGB pieces, developed on the traditional playing card’s theme: a RGB playing cards deck and a series of lithographic prints of the “Horseman” subject. In each card there are printed three different playing cards: The overlapping of colors mixes up the forms in a way that it is difficult to recognize which figure is represented, an enigma that can be solved just through the use of one of the colored filters.

Johanssen Gallery, Direktorenhaus, Berlin
5th November 2010 – 10th February 2011

See also:

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Wallpaper by Katrin Olina	Wallpaper by Marcel Wanders	Wallpaper by Linda Florence

Artist Jon Rafman’s cleverly-edited Google Streetview images get a New Museum group show

Montreal-based artist Jon Rafman pores over thousands of Google Maps Streetview images, amassing the most intriguing assortment of real life literally captured on the road. Publishing a book in 2009, Rafman continues to explore how—like an admissible Peeping Tom—the Internet changes the public’s perception of personal space with his Tumblr blog Nine Eyes.

A selection of photos from Nine Eyes is currently on view in the “Free” exhibition at NYC’s New Museum. A group show, “Free” explores the expanded shared space and how artists are interpreting this. “Although the Google search engine may be seen as benevolent, Google Street Views present a universe observed by the detached gaze of an indifferent Being,” writes Rafman in an essay explaining his project. “Its cameras witness but do not act in history. For all Google cares, the world could be absent of moral dimension.”

The quality of the images captured by the roving fleet of Google’s vehicles vary in quality as do the reaction of the subjects captured. Some court the attention, others hide their faces. Google intentionally blurs the faces, but it’s a moot point—for our outdoor lives are on parade.

“Free” is on view at the New Museum through 23 January 2011. See more images from Nine Eyes after the jump.

Tokyo 2010: designer Emmanuelle Moureaux presented eda, a prototype lightweight, modular product that combines to  create cloud-like forms, at DesignTide Tokyo 2010 earlier this month.

The installation of eda, which means ‘branch’ in Japanese, consisted of 2,000 interlocking carbon twigs.

Moureaux suspended coloured twigs from the ceiling and used white ones to create a free-standing structure on the floor.

Read all our stories about Emmanuelle Moureaux here.

See all our stories on Tokyo 2010 in our special category.

Photographs are by Nacasa & Partners.

Here’s little bit of text from the designer:

eda by emmanuelle moureaux

Beauty shown by plants in the natural world. Spreads of trees, colors of flowers, flows of leaf veins, linkages of cells. Everything is in a systematic harmony. In eda, forms are determined according to the natural system.

eda is assemblages of fine lines. Each line exists straight, And large complexities contain small simplicities. Biological forms overlap rhythmically, Link air with another and create new space orders. (“eda” meaning “ branch” in Japanese, is a product which creates spaces)

Design: emmanuelle moureaux
Prototype fabrication: ACM Inc.
Material: carbon
Weight: 2.5g / eda
Size: 250mm
Colors: 16 colors + white

DESIGNTIDE TOKYO 2010　(2010/10/30-11/3)
For the first exhibition of “eda”, Emmanuelle designed an installation using 2000 pieces (eda). 900 colorful “eda” (suspended type) and 1100 white “eda” (standing alone type) composed and structured the space.

See also:

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Sticks by Emmanuelle Moureaux for Issey Miyake	Stick Chair by Emmanuelle Moureaux	Snowflake by Tokujin Yoshioka for Kartell

French photographer Julien Lanoo has sent us these images of an installation by Belgian architects Joris De Schepper and Thomas De Ridder at S.M.A.K – Museum of Modern Art in Ghent, designed to give visitors an idea of the museum’s work behind-the-scenes.

A part of a series called Inside Installations, it focuses on what happens behind the scenes of an exhibition and the archiving process.

Located in a large open space in the museum, a plywood box has been built in the corner and is surrounded by shelving units used to display some of the equipment that’s required to prepare an exhibition.

The walls, ceiling and floor inside the wooden structure are covered with documents, photos, sketches and manuals relating to other installations being shown at the museum.

Photographs are copyright Julien Lanoo.

Here’s some more information about the project:

task
In an the 2010-2011 exhibition ʻinside installationsʼ the public should have a view on what happens behind the scenes of SMAK, more specific on the complexity of installation art.

questions
whatʼs specific about installation art? how to show information during the visit of an art exhibition? information as a negative of an art object which effort can we ask of a visitor, can we demand any effort at all? if thereʼs one thing weʼd want a visitor to understand and remember, even without actively visiting the information space, what would that be?

intention
we wanted to work with different accessibility levels to reach people who are interested and willing to do an effort, people who are not willing to do an effort but also people who are not interested. Using architectural themes (space, light, structure, texture and context) we tried to attract visitors and make things clear in an obvious way. we didnʼt want a didactic space. on the other hand we wanted to allow researchers and interested visitors to find detailed information. the visitors decide how much information they see.

solution
all information is being used as wallpaper for the documentation room: texts, photos, video screens, artist sketches, manuals, restoration objects. the information can be organized into 4 themes: research, conservation and restoration, exhibition production, package and transport.

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All documentation is related to installations that are shown on the exhibition. entering the room visitors will quickly recognize the objects, thus linking it to what they saw minutes before. Essential is that all walls, including flour and ceiling are treated in a same way, as if the common museum space has been inverted, turned inside out.

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The amount of documentation and the seemingly random organization represent the complexity of installation art. But when you look further youʼll start to find out that the shown information is organized, youʼll see repeating layoutʼs and document structures, discover video-interview with artists and glass-boxes with art-specific restoration material.

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situation
located at the big central void of the museum, with views on the entrance hall halfway the visit of the exhibition, maybe a moment to rest and look around. not a flexible white box due to a lot of circulation space, but very interesting as a social meeting place during the exhibition. Two benches allow people to rest, talk and look into original documentation folders.

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construction
The room is constructed with industrial shelves and plywood. The paper (laserprints) at the inside is finished with glue and varnish. The outside doesnʼt have any finishing: the shelves, tv-sets, dvd- players, boxes containing restoration material and cables are all left visible. At some point the shelves are removed to make space for a bench (including red cushions). With some leftover shelves and plywood another, bigger bench was made next to the void.

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architects
We are Joris De Schepper and Thomas De Ridder, both architect. We studied at Sint-Lucas Architectuur in Ghent and work as architect since 2008.

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See also:

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More about Julien Lanoo	More exhibition/installation stories	More photography stories

A Minneapolis production company by day and art gallery by night

Runner Runner Gallery, a new art space within a production studio, will open its second show, featuring the recent work of Minneapolis-based artists Brian Lesteberg and James Holmberg. In the heart of the warehouse district, the interdisciplinary venue is a welcomed gesture in the Minneapolis art scene. Next Thursday’s opening for the show, inviting likeminded students and professionals from the film, advertising, and music industries to come together, embodies the ethos of the project. “It’s sort of a party for art,” describes jMatt Keil, Runner Runner’s vice president of business development. “We’re really excited to show our support and to put on a night of great entertainment.”

The show itself positions Holmberg’s large-scale dreamy photographs against selections from Lesteberg’s most recent project, Raised To Hunt, a document of the journey of hunters through northern Minnesota. Many of the photographs show vast expanses of frozen landscape but after a closer look, an impression of either the killer or the killed— whether drops of blood or a silhouetted parka—emerges. Jarring, intentional violence brings with it a deep sense of natural validation for Lesteberg’s hunters. The extreme photographic detail brings to life even the most banal parts of the killing process, a startling honesty that has something in common with fellow Minnesotan Alec Soth’s 8 x 10 field format.

Like Lesterberg’s photographs, Holmberg’s massive canvases take up the entire field of vision, but that’s where the similarity ends. Holmberg’s paintings confront the viewer with a vast wash of minimal color textured with abstract blobs of pigment. Immediately recalling the softly-focus drive-by shots of “Taxi Driver,” Holmberg’s cinematic style makes the production company/gallery venue all the more appropriate. Runner Runner Gallery’s high ceilings and cement floors, don’t hurt either artists’ works either.

Runner Runner shares the space with affiliate companies Fischer Edit/FX and Modern Music. All three post-production companies thrive together within this collaborative workspace. “In some ways,” explains curator Luke Erickson, “Runner Runner seems like a healthier gallery space, not to mention a model for the business of exhibition, than many I’ve visited.”

“It’s not surprising that it would start here,” says Ian Bearce, executive producer at Runner Runner. “When we’re not in the office, we’re deejaying, playing in touring bands, painting, making films. We’re thrilled to find another way to participate in the local scene.”

The show opens this Thursday, November 18 from 6-9pm and runs through the next few months.