Neo Classic Sueño: Works by Chris Wolston Shot by David Sierra


photography by David Sierra
artwork by Chris Wolston
production by Radha León
styling by Santiago Alzate
modeling by Loui, Cristian, & Cristian

Photographer David Sierra captures forms that are tropical, sexy and oneiric. Taking inspiration from the work of Medellin-based artist/designer Chris Wolston and Neoclassical postures, these images center an appreciation for the body in its natural state. Relaxed figures that are visibly comfortable within their own skin interact casually with furniture and spatial elements in a fashion that is unpretentious and uplifting.

Look out for Chris Wolston’s furniture on view now with The Future Perfect @ Design Miami and watch the accompanying film on our instagram.

 
 

Dozie Kanu's World Building Tools: An Interview From The Biodiversity Issue →

 
 

text by Oliver Kupper
portraits by Parker Woods 

Dozie Kanu’s practice is a conceptual exploration of colonial and hegemonic politics, architecture, spatial narratives, and so much more. Born in Houston, Texas in 1993, and now based in Santarém, Portugal, Kanu’s investigation of cultural artifacts belies an America still grappling with not only its troubled past, but also its troubled present. Razor-sharp, anti-climb, raptor spikes, a visual and physical deterrent for vandals and undesirables, find their way onto one of his sculptures modeled as a baby crib, an emblematic nod to the countless divisions that are psychologically embedded at birth. There is something alchemical about Kanu’s reimagined objects of our urban visual landscape, like an ATM blasted with a thick layer of black epoxy sculpting clay, or a poured concrete chair in “crack rock beige” that sits on a spoked tire rim, that gives Kanu’s work a kind of authentic reclamation of power in a grief-stricken zeitgeist. We caught up with Kanu on a rare visit to Los Angeles, before the opening of his exhibition, to prop and ignore, at Manual Arts, to discuss tools for building a more socially equitable world. Read more.

House & Garden Is A World Of Domestic Bliss @ Stroll Garden In Los Angeles

Conceived as a singular installation, House & Garden welcomes viewers into a home of domestic items rendered in clay by Analuisa Corrigan and a garden of working ceramic fountains by Lily Clark, complimented by live plant vignettes created by Alice Lam of A.L. BASA. In recontextualizing the familiar, the artists invite a moment of pause to reengage our senses and reconsider our relationship to often overlooked elements of the everyday, both domestic and elemental. Corrigan creates organic, figurative forms that unite material exploration and personal expression. Corrigan’s pieces are deceptively labor intensive, taking up to a month to make. After sketching and prototyping, each is carefully built up through a coil technique, then dried and sanded to achieve the desired silhouette. The resulting work feels simultaneously robust and delicate.

Whereas Corrigan works intuitively, Clark’s process embraces precision, reflecting her interest in engineering. After drafting a design, she rolls slabs of clay and cuts using a template, then carefully joins the seams. The surface is left unglazed to contrast with the water’s luster. For her large-scale fountains, Clark incorporates stones that she spent six months sourcing from the Whitewater quarry just outside of Palm Springs, fine tuning the design to achieve her desired water flow and sound. Clark’s fountains are arranged within an “indoor garden” by Alice Lam, whose Los Angeles-based creative studio A.L. BASA specializes in sculptural floral installations. Lam’s site-specific design references Buddhist Zen gardens created around works by Isamu Noguchi, as well as plants that are representative of California’s biodiversity. Immersive and temporal, House & Garden contemplates notions of interior and exterior — both somatic and psychological, experienced and subjective.

House & Garden is on view through June 11 @ Stroll Garden 7380 Beverly Boulevard.

 
 

Read A Conversation Between Ferrari Sheppard & Michèle Lamy On The Occasion Of His Solo Exhibition @ UTA Artist Space →

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Ferrari Sheppard is an enigmatic, multi-disciplinary artist whose practice defies classification, and lives firmly at the center of a three-dimensional venn diagram. Likewise, the work of Michèle Lamy is as fluid and instinctive as it is crystallized in her unmistakable and ever-expansive character. She is not just a maven of fashion, design, and art, or an innovator of music and former restaurateur. She is a cultivator of community and expression. Sheppard is not just a painter, writer, photographer and music producer. He is an activist who has worked to provide relief aid in Haiti, shape economic policy and development in South Africa, and shine light on the Israel-Palestine conflict. It makes perfect sense that the two of them would fortuitously meet at Mr. Chow’s while stepping outside for a cigarette. Sheppard’s recent solo exhibition of paintings, Positions of Power, at UTA Artist Space is a testament to the mistreatment of a generation for profit by the criminal justice system. They are love letters to those who carried the weight of the “war on drugs” and risked it all in pursuit of freedom in the United States. Their structural composition is the result of an almost unconscious, improvised dance. A process that the artist refers to as “walking while painting.” The figures are laid heavy with dark brown and black pigments that visibly absorb light, and are gilded with a reflective gold trim, creating a balance that feels harmonious and befitting. At the center of the gallery’s main space lies a brutalist, three-pronged elmwood bench of mythical giant proportions. A place to put everything down and spend some time with the work. A creation that could only come from the collective minds of Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens. And the perfect place for these two chameleonic masters of material, sound, and ceremony to discuss their work. Read more.

Students At The European Institute Of Design In Milan Are Innovating Inclusivity

In their first semester of the 20/21 academic year, students of the European Institute of Design in Milan were asked to design in an inclusive way with gender, disability, ethnicity, and age in mind. Conducted by professors Mia Vilardo and Riccardo Polidoro, partners of Studio Elitre, the inclusive design course asked students to create original products capable of satisfying everyone's needs.

In terms of gender inclusiveness, the REN proposal goes to intercept the needs of those who do not identify with one of the two sexes and of those who feel unique through what they choose to wear: a mix of garments and accessories that reflects the person without distinction between man and woman. On the disability front, there are those who have imagined a fashion brand " for anyone who feels wrong or not fully represented ". JFMP - Joy for mistaken people (proposed by Penelope Bazzani, Michela Polo, Jennifer Rossi, Federica Santangelo) subverts the rules and looks at things in a different light, working specifically on blindness and low vision.

On the path of ethnic inclusion, the To.get.there - Rebirth project instead works conceptually to "unite" what is at the deepest roots of human experience, what unites all cultures (both physically and spiritually). This translates not only into the choice of fabrics made from elements present in nature, but also into the reuse, grinding and processing of industrial and production waste to obtain, with the appropriate binders, new design materials.

Good taste and being able to be inspirational have no age: thus, the working group on the ageless theme (Simone Ricetti, Alice Marchetti, Alessandra Natalino, Martina Sagliaschi) imagined AMAS, a range of accessories perfect for all seasons of the life.

 
 

Group Exhibition: Dark Fantasy @ UTA Artist Space In Beverly Hills

Based on the concept of Archeofuturism, which focuses on excavating forms of the past in order to shape future narratives of design, Dark Fantasy guides the viewer through a whimsical world of the fantastic and the obscure, questioning the constraints of reality and what it means to dream. By highlighting advanced techniques, traditional master craft, and new technology, Dark Fantasy brings to life organic and telluric forms that allude to bygone eras of production. The exhibition explores over a decade of functional art from 24 artists from Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s program, creating a dialogue between space, time and contemporary archeology.

The exhibition features over fifty pieces by Virgil Abloh, Atelier Van Lieshout, Maarten Baas, Aldo Bakker, Sebastian Brajkovic, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Nacho Carbonell, Wendell Castle, Vincenzo De Cotiis, Ingrid Donat, Vincent Dubourg, Najla El Zein, Kendell Geers, Steven Haulenbeek, Anton Hendrik Denys, Kostas Lambridis, Mathieu Lehanneur, Frederik Molenschot, Rick Owens, Random International, Robert Stadler, Studio Drift, Charles Trevelyan, and Verhoeven Twins. Dark Fantasy is on view through November 16 at UTA Artist Space 403 Foothill Rd. Beverly Hills, California

Punch, Curated By Nina Chanel Abney @ Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles

Punch, curated by artist Nina Chanel Abney, features thirty-three artists who examine contemporary culture and society through the lens of figuration. The exhibition focuses on artists primarily from Los Angeles in Abney’s circle who explore connections and disconnections between culture and subculture, figuration and abstraction, and the physical and the digital. The pieces featured in the exhibition contain references to art historical precedents such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, as well as street art, while integrating elements of design, graffiti, cartoons, and satire. Using painting, sculpture, and performance as acts of defiance, these artists explore how they can create figurative and abstract representations with visual punch while portraying a society immersed in new media and pop culture.

Punch, Curated by Nina Chanel Abney is on view through August 17 at Jeffrey Deitch Los Angeles 925 North Orange Drive, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Jeffrey Deitch

Alexander Calder's "Nonspace" @ Hauser & Wirth In Los Angeles

Nonspace marks Hauser & Wirth’s first exhibition in LA for world-renowned artist, Alexander Calder. Following the landmark Somerset exhibition From the Stony River to the Sky, the presentation in LA focuses on a radically different facet of the artist’s work with a two-part exhibition of primarily monochromatic, abstract sculptures that simultaneously fill space and coexist with it. Nonspace is on view through January 6, 2019 @ Hauser & Wirth 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles. photographs courtesy of Calder Foundation New York / Art Resource New York

Fourth Annual MAK Games @ The John Lautner Designed Sheats-Goldstein Residence In Los Angeles

The MAK Games features semi-finals and final tennis tournament matches, followed by a Pro-Am match, followed by a dance party in the incomparable “Club James” hidden below the infinity tennis court. The players come from the worlds of art, design, architecture, and entertainment. photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Underground Museum Hosts Rick Lowe Artist Talk As Part Of USC Roski's Public Lecture Series Social Practice Course

Rick Lowe is one of nearly a dozen artists invited to give lectures as part of USC Roski's *Culture in Action: Conversations in Social Practice Art. In this series students, international visitors and guest speakers consider an evolving practice in a seminar based on questions each participant brings to the classroom. What conditions apply to critical art practice in the public realm and how do these relate to the urban, social and political? What is the relationship between art and democracy? What is the long-term sustainability of community-based socially engaged art? How do informal pedagogic, public address and dialogic strategies apply to students’ own practices in art, design, theater, intermedia, cinema, communications and urban planning, among others? MA and Ph.D. candidates from schools outside of Roski are especially encouraged to apply to support their specific professional development goals. The course includes intimate conversations, public lectures, field trips, group dinners and an opportunity to study alongside Norwegian artists and curators. This intensive experience is a collaboration between Roski School of Art and Design and KORO, Public Art Norway in Oslo. For more information and full schedule of events visit Roski. photographs by Lani Trock

"The Art Of Nexus" At The Japanese Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016

With the additional sense of loss that arose in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011, Japanese society is currently on the verge of a huge turning point. While the notion of a happy family life in the city, created by the modern state, has collapsed, a new community, based on “sharing” (values, lifestyles, etc.) has appeared in its place. How is our architecture changing to fit this new era? And where is our architecture headed? Many of the things that we are now focusing on have the potential to exert huge changes (at least superficially) on beautiful decorative elements such as architecture magazines (a propaganda tool for Modernism), and the architectural framework shaped by the modern state that is concealed in many buildings. This is why it is essential to place a strong emphasis on altering the state of society and various relationships – or in other words, the en (connections, relation, ties, chance, edge, fringe, rim), which serve as the theme of this exhibition. The Art Of Nexus will be open to the public throughout the 15th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia from 28 May to 27 November 2016 - at the Giardini. photographs by Sara Kaufman

Our 10 Favorite Magical Objects From The Enigmatic Mind of Architect and Designer François Dallegret →

Design is important because it reinvigorates our everyday objects with new life. A good designer does not just make a bed; he makes a bed into a crucifix made out of sot polyurethane. A good architect does not just redesign a basement; he turns the basement into a drugstore/nightclub. We are speaking of the multi-talented architect and artist François Dallegret. The French-born, Montreal-based designer studied architecture at the famous Beaux-Arts in Paris before he tired of their strict, conformist imaginations of what spaces and objects might look like. Since the 60s, Dallegret has been experimenting with futuristic and imaginative concepts and materials, creating multifunctional furniture, strange machines, walking cakes, jumping spheres, electrical and inflated garments, and more. On the occasion of the architect's latest exhibition in Los Angeles, here are ten of his most whimsical and fantastic creations. Click here to read more.