Disturbingly realistic

El artista norteamericano Mark Jenkins tiene esta propuesta de escultura urbana hyper-realista a base de figura humana, que me recuerda bastante a lo que hacía George Segal en los 60’s con yeso. Bueno, y una rayita mas surrealista (los personajes de Segal eran terribles por su realidad, estos son terribles por lo realista de su delirio).
Ha de ser un verdadero espectáculo ver el desconcierto de la gente en los primeros días en que estas piezas son dejadas en su lugar…

The artwork of Mark Jenkins inhabits an uncomfortable space, a sort of uncanny valley.  His sculptures are almost too realistic.  The bodies and clothing of his human-like sculptures are generally inconspicuous.  However, the situations the sculptures find themselves in are unsettling.  Often installed in public, the people represented by Jenkins’ sculptures seem to care little for their physical safety or social norms – the sculptures interact with public surroundings in ways that are generally unacceptable.  Their otherwise normal appearance somehow heightens the tension in his installations.  Though Jenkins might create his sculptures in a studio art tradition, they definitely operate with much of the subversiveness of street art…

http://bit.ly/JEsbAC

Houston Spaceport

Houston is working to keep its place at the forefront of all things space-related.

“I firmly believe that’s what the future of aerospace engineering looks like, and I am firmly convinced that’s how we want to position Houston as a major player in this industry,” said Mario C. Diaz, the city’s aviation director.

Typical vertical launches are one-time only — the type that most people picture when thinking of a rocket blast. But at the Spaceport, reusable launch vehicles would take take off and land repeatedly, like airplanes.

As reported by the Associated Press and featured in the Houston Chronicle, Diaz “envisioned the facility having a terminal similar to one found at most airports where people would board aircraft that would take off like an airplane.” But when the aircraft travels over Gulf of Mexico, he said, it would take a more vertical trajectory and ascend to the outer reaches of space before returning back to the spaceport for landing.

The site of the proposed Houston Spaceport, Ellington Airport, is one of three airports in the city. It has not yet been determined whether Ellington will continue to operate as a regular airport or how its potential closing would affect travel to the area.

City Council members will meet this week with the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, which is funding the project. Mayor Annise Parker, who supports the creation of the Spaceport, toldthe Associated Press: “We believe a licensed spaceport in Houston would not only serve as an economic generator for the city but it would also enhance Houston’s well-deserved reputation as a leader and key player in the aerospace industry”…

http://on.mash.to/19q7BZH

Houston Spaceport

Luz nas Vielas: Beleza

Luz nas Vielas – por el colectivo Boa Mistura, proyecto de arte urbano participativo en Vila Brâsilandia, una de las favelas de la periferia de São Paulo. La Intervención se centra en los vecos y las vielas: callejuelas sinuosas que son las verdaderas articuladoras de la vida interna de la comunidad. Compartiendo con los moradores el proceso de transformación de su entorno…

The work of Boa Mistura is all about the love of graffiti, colour and life. This group of 5 Spanish artists is, as the name says, a good mixture. Arkoh, Derko, Pahg, Purone and Rdick have developed their work in different fields, applying both a diversity of styles and the different views of each member. Boa Mistura represents a mixture of perspectives which complement, influence and mix themselves together in order to create something better. From graffiti and mural painting, to graphic design and illustration, Boa Mistrua want to give the world its colour back. 5 heads, 10 hands, just one heart…

http://www.boamistura.com/

Cloud Gate

Cloud Gate, or affectionately The Bean, by Anish Kapoor is probably my favorite public art installation in Chicago. No matter how many times you visit the experience is always different depending on the time of day, the weather, who you’re with, and what’s happening in the general vicinity of the giant mirrored surface. The Bean is in a perpetual state of visual flux…

For the next 10 days Chicago creative ensemble LuftWerk, the creative vision of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, have capitalized on the sculpture’s reflective properties by turning it into a canvas for a choreographed light show titled Luminous Field. The duo are using an array of ten projectors to create the experience, setting everything to music composed by Owen Clayton Condon of Third Coast Percussion. This is the first site-specific work involving Cloud Gate since its construction in 2004. Luminous Field opens tonight at 6pm and runs through February 20th.

A special thank you to Ken Ilio and Pete Tsai for providing their photography for this post, check out their Flickr pages for more great photos.

http://bit.ly/xp6BKh

Cloud Gate

Faile

Si les gusta el arte urbano chéquense la propuesta de Faile. Este grupo norteamericano fusiona el comic, graffitti, y el collage con un estilo “post-pop” de muralismo de vanguardia bastante original y efectivo…

Faile is a Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil (CA) and Patrick Miller (MN). Since its inception in 1999, FAILE is known for their pioneering use of wheatpasting and stenciling in the increasingly established arena of street art, and for their explorations of duality through a fragmented style of appropriation and collage. During this time, FAILE adapted its signature mass culture-driven iconography to a wide array of media, from wooden boxes and window pallets to more traditional canvas, prints, sculptures, stencils, multimedia installation, and prayer wheels.While FAILE’s work is constructed from found visual imagery, and blurs the line between “high” and “low” culture, recent exhibitions demonstrate an emphasis on audience participation, a critique of consumerism, and the incorporation of religious media and architecture into their work.

In the words of Falie, the latest artists to hit the mural space on the corner of Houston & Bowery, Nothing Lasts Forever. Not even JR’s black & white portrait of Lakota, Dakota Nation, which has now gone the way of the murals that had previously claimed the same corner by Kenny Scharf, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, and TWIST (aka Barry McGee).  The mural was not quite done when I stopped by to check on its progress yesterday, so make sure to check in with The Street Spot tomorrow when we post the finished goods!

http://www.faile.net

“RubikCubist” period

“I’m Invader (that’s my alias). I always appear masked in public, so no one knows my face.  Some people call me a polluter, others say I’m an artist. I prefer to think of myself as an invader…

…The idea is to "invade” cities all over the world with characters inspired by first-generation arcade games, and especially the now classic Space Invaders.  I make them out of tiles, meaning I can cement them to walls and keep the ultra-pixelated appearance…

…I see them as a symbol of our era and the birth of modern technology, with video games, computers, the Internet, mobile phones, hackers and viruses.
And “space invader” is a pretty good definition of what I’m doing: invading spaces…

…what you can see in the street is only part of what I do.  I like to switch from one to the other, it’s a way of doing different things. Right now I’m working on a project that uses Rubik’s Cube, the Eighties cult puzzle, as the basis for pictures and sculptures. I call this my “RubikCubist” period…“

– Space Invader

http://www.space-invaders.com