Hasta La Ideas

Alex Roulette est un artiste américain basé à New York qui nous propose des tableaux magnifiques qu’il réalise entièrement à la peinture à l’huile. Ces œuvres montrent avec une teinte de surréalisme la banlieue américaine et la classe moyenne. Une sélection de ses travaux est à découvrir dans la suite.

Focus sur Jieun Park : une artiste coréenne qui possède une superbe coup de pinceau. Avec des oeuvres d’une grande qualité, elle nous démontre l’étendue de son talent en imaginant ces toiles représentant différents environnements urbains. Un traité très réussi et complet à découvrir dans la suite.

L’artiste Alejandro Maestre a demandé à un de ses amis Julian d’utiliser son corps pour créer des œuvres photographiques d’une beauté envoutante. Autour de ces portraits, l’artiste s’intéresse à la compréhension du corps. Une série incroyable à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Cutting board oil and other handcrafted kitchen essentials

Working exclusively with naturally sourced materials, Blackcreek Mercantile and Trading Company seeks to create products that connect the user and the maker to the material. Blackcreek is based in the thick forest of Kingston, NY, and specializes in all things wooden from kitchen spoons turned out of maple wood to cutting boards made from a single cut of wood.

Founder Josh Vogel claims to have found a lifetime’s worth of exploration in wood, which is easy to see when one compares Blackcreek’s products to BDDW‘s, the New York-based furniture company he also help found. “Wood is inherently unique,” says Vogel. “With plastic and moldable materials, you can pump out thousands of the same thing, but with wood, because of the processes you need to use and the nature of the material itself, there is the potential to create something one of a kind.”

Abiding by the same handcrafted design philosophy behind their impeccably formed bowls and vases, Blackcreek introduced a line of cutting board oils that are inspired and derived from natural materials. “Typically, people use nut-based oils or olive oil in order to protect their cutting boards, and, while those oils are hydrating, they eventually rot,” explains Vogel. “The solution is to use a mineral-based oil like ours.”

However, what makes Blackcreek’s cutting board oil truly unique is the addition of propolis, a vegetable varnish produced by bees. Vogel and his partner, Kelly Zaneto, came up with idea of adding propolis to their cutting board oil after taking a beekeeping class. “Propolis is a naturally occurring sealant, used by bees to seal their hives and protect against intruders,” explains Vogel. “It is a lot like shellac, another bug-produced sealant, but propolis is 100% edible, making it great for coating things like cutting boards.”

Blackcreek Mercantile and Trading Company’s cutting board oil comes in both rosemary and lemon scent and is available on their website or at William Sonoma for $35.

A macabre demonstration in the electromagnetic manipulation of oil-based ferrofluids

Raised in a family of doctors and formally educated as a painter, Alessandro Brighetti finds himself and his work helplessly drawn towards the fields of arts and science. Initially channeling this keen interest through works reminiscent of petri dish experiments and cellular dissections, Brighetti’s work has since evolved to include a range of chemically enhanced sculptures.

On a recent visit to Switzerland’s Scope Basel 2012 we had the pleasure of seeing two of his latest projects, “Schizophrenia” and the debut of its brain-shaped equivalent, at La Galleria OltreDimore. Using electromagnetic stimulation Brighetti commands an oil bath to move freely, spiking and laying to rest again—a mind-boggling phenomenon that instills in its viewer an unsettling feeling of curiosity and intrigue.

Brighetti creates the entirety of his projects without digital assistance, preferring physical material manipulation over a “false perfection” achieved by the likes of Photoshop. For his two new dynamic sculptures, Brighetti worked closely with a chemist to create the perfect solution of liquid alchemy. This ferrofluid, as it’s called, is a stable mixture of magnetic iron nanoparticles surrounded by an ionic surfactant dissolved in oil. The result is a magnetically charged oil that responds to powerful electromagnets while still retaining its liquid properties.

The ferrofluid is stimulated through the static skull or brain form, invisible to the viewer, to achieve an alien sense of self-propulsion. While the complex chemistry behind Brighetti’s work isn’t entirely new, we do appreciate the effort to bring applied sciences to a new audience by way of art. For more information on Brighetti visit the OltreDimore Gallery artist’s page.

Images by Josh Rubin