Hasta La Ideas

Inflatable animals are great—if you don’t mind inhaling the vaguely carcinogenic whiff of freshly processed plastic as you re-inflate your chosen shape five minutes. These ceramic dinosaur sculptures by Brett Kern and Justin Rothshank might be perfect for young-at-heart decorators. At very least, they’re probably better for your health.

Much like Jeff Koons’ balloon animal art, Kern and Rothshank’s cartoonish dinos are sculptural versions of the novelties we so coveted as kids. Where Koons deals in finish-fetish stainless steel, these tabletop ‘saurs are metaphorical mirrors of our childhood dreams, ephemeral mylar fossilized, in a manner of speaking, as ceramic.

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Mural from Samurai Shodown 3 / All images from the Video Game Art Archive Tumblr

It wasn’t until somewhat recently that video games started popping up in conversations centered around art and design. MoMA kicked the debate off by buying 14 video games for their permanent collection in 2012—including Pac-Man, Tetris and the more recent Portal. Since then, the “controversy” has raged on in regards to whether or not we should reference our favorite digital games in the same proverbial breath as Monet or Van Gogh. (Pixels, brushstrokes—same thing?)

Two pieces of art from Donkey Kong 64

All deliberations and opinions aside, a savvy Tumblr user out there has put their formidable search and destroy distribute skills to use, collect a colorful collection of pixelated pieces for all to enjoy. We’re not talking about the beautiful screenshots of your latest build on Minecraft—these are the very paintings and murals that show up on the walls of your digital world.

Mural from Avoid the Noid

A cityscape piece from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (NES/Dos)

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For those of you seeking a bespoke sweater the size of a thumb drive, look no further than the work of Althea Crome. Althea was a contributing artist for sweet knitwear in the stop-motion flick Coraline, which featured a couple of her glamorous and well-fitting sweaters. One glance through her adorable but incomprehensibly tiny line of work and it’s clear why she was picked to be a high-profile puppet clothier. Her work with miniatures requires the already taxing skillset of a talented knitter and ramps up the difficulty to the point that she sometimes needs knitting needles near the width of a human hair.

And these aren’t your standard squint-and-they-look-believable-I-guess Barbie style doll clothes. Her knitting is on par with more conceptual sweater designs at full scale, to say nothing of the competition at 1:12 scale (because there isn’t any). Despite the glaring oddness of knitting with homemade needles the size of pins, much of her work features ornate patterning, intricate designs, and fine materials like Japanese silk or cashmere thread. Oh, and let’s up the artsy ante by throwing in some fine art reproductions and face cards.

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Johnson Tsang takes the common bowl or cup to the next level. His ceramic housewares constantly bring deeper meaning to dining receptacles, far past simply housing your tea and soup. He’s even managed to make a spitting face look surprisingly appetizing.

Tsang—who lives and creates in Hong Kong—has a whole portfolio full of captivating faces and figures. His website serves as an ongoing chronicle of works-in-progress, a sequence of shots from first coils to finished products like these:

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Self-reference in art takes… delicacy. Turn the gaze around and you can quickly wind up with work that feels like endless MFA show self-portraits of the young artist as a young artist. Rising to the challenge, Canadian photographer Michel Campeau has documented the declining use of darkrooms in our increasingly digital world for over a decade. More than a nostalgic look at methods fading from fashion, Campeau’s work highlights the notion of obsolescence and the role of technology in changing the meaning and function of art.

These photos capture a clear sense of decay and a startling variety in working environments. Their weight comes from the our historical remove as viewers: Despite photography’s ubiquity, the writing has been on the wall long enough that we’ve cleaned it up and moved on. The darkroom as a space for creating is no longer necessary. As fitting evidence, Campeau’s own work is almost entirely done with a digital point and shoot.

To explore the importance of this changing landscape, Campeau draws heavily on Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (it is unofficially mandatory to refer to this essay as “seminal”—negligence on this point may lead to expulsion from the Frankfurt School). And you should too, if you’re interested in the power of pop culture or the foreboding commentary of a social critic who predicted the dangerously successful use of mass media by the Fascists.

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