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Aleksandra Domanović

14 March 2012
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Art Main No Comments

Aleksandra Domanović, Portrait, 2011, 3d model, 50 x 70 cm, inkjet-print in frame

 

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From the Archive

Exhibition: Juergen Teller

17 March 2012
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Exhibitions Main Photography No Comments

jurgen teller

Juergen Teller, Lehmann Maupin, New York
10 February -17 March 2012 201 Chrystie Street

This exhibition highlighted three recent series, demonstrating Teller’s dynamic and diverse oeuvre. Featuring the controversial photographs of Kristen McMenamy, shot in the home of Carlo Mollino and seductive portraits of Vivienne Westwood, juxtaposed with intimate portraits of his family and close friends, this exhibition displays an amalgam of subjects and personalities. Drawing inspiration from the eccentric architect, Teller recalls Mollino’s fascination with the erotic, capturing McMenamy in provocative poses. Although the series garnered controversy for its alleged “pornographic” nature, it demonstrates Teller’s skilled storytelling and fearless approach to his medium. Composed of recent photographs taken in and around his home in Suffolk, photographs from the series, “Keys to the House,” includes deserted landscape shots and intimate portraits of Teller’s family and closest friends. The third series, “Men and Women,” includes portraits of Vivienne Westwood and photographer William Eggleston, as well as Teller’s son, Ed. As a whole, the series has been read as a representation of masculinity at two stages, coming of age and loss of virility, contrasted with a strong feminine power.

Born in Erlangen, Germany in 1964, Juergen Teller studied at the Bayerische Staatslehranstalt für Photographie in Munich, Germany before moving to London in 1986. His work in influential international publications such as W Magazine, I-D and Purple nurtured his own photographic sensibility, which is marked by his refusal to separate the commercial fashion pictures and his most autobiographical un-commissioned work.

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Helen Bullock, Central Saint Martins MA, 2011

29 December 2011
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Fashion Main No Comments

Helen Bullock, Central Saint Martins MA,  2011

Helen Bullock is using strong bold silhouettes as a canvas for bold and intuitive prints.

Trained at Central Saint Martins ( MA/BA), her past experiences include Ossie Clark, John Galliano and a collaborative project with Anthropologie. She has also worked as a freelance textiles designer for Louis Vuitton, and teaches at various creative institutions.

A regular illustrator at LFW, her work can be seen online in various publications, including SHOWstudio and Pop magazine.

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Photography: Mårten Lange

24 June 2012
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Main Photography No Comments

Mårten Lange

Mårten Langemårten lange photography

Mårten Lange, From the Book, Another Language, 2012

“A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is opened to our view. It marks the limit, but does not pass it.”
Alexander von Humboldt (1845)

The aesthetics of science, nature and the materiality of things are recurring themes in Mårten Lange’s work and in Another Language, his first major publication, Lange delves even deeper with this fascination for the natural world.

Combining images of flora, fauna and natural phenomena in an intimate and beautifully crafted book, Lange teases out a subtle narrative – a meteor crashes, a landmass is visible and a distant planet occupies the final page – but the book is more akin to the workings of a scientist collecting specimens. Together the photographs create a cryptic and heterogeneous index of nature, with recurring shapes, patterns and texture, where the clarity and simplicity of the individual photographs contrasts with the enigmatic whole.

Shot in his signature black and white style, his subjects are isolated from their environments, taking on sculptural qualities. Ranging from the sublime (lightning, mountains, a star) to the commonplace (ducks, rocks, a fish), these phenomena all attain equal importance through the democracy of Lange’s photographic treatment.

Mårten Lange was born in 1984 in Mölndal, Sweden. He studied photography at University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, United Kingdom. He has previously self-published four books, including Machina (2007) and Anomalies (2009).

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Arab Contemporary Art: Artist Collective GCC

22 December 2015
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Art Artists Culture Main No Comments

arab-contemporary-art
gcc2Kraupa_Tuskany_Zeidler_Royal_Mirage_III

GCC, Exhibition View, Royal Mirage, 2014, Chartered Cruise,  Rolls Royce Silver Phantom, sound, ephemeral/performance, 2013, and Royal Mirage III, 2014

The artist collective GCC has been making arab contemporary art that is both inspired by and addresses the contemporary culture of the Arab Gulf region. Consisting of a “delegation” of nine artists, the GCC makes reference to the English abbreviation of the Gulf Cooperation Council, an economic and political consortium of Arabian Gulf nations. Founded in the VIP lounge of Art Dubai in 2013, the GCC makes use of ministerial language and celebratory rituals associated with the Gulf. The collective consists of Nanu Al-Hamad, Khalid al Gharaballi, Abdullah Al-Mutairi, Fatima Al Qadiri, Monira Al Qadiri, Aziz Al Qatami, Barrak Alzaid, Amal Khalaf.

For their inaugural series of exhibitions, the collective focused on the notion of achievement, focusing on the rituals that mark accomplishment as well as the physical objects that embody them. They have created a series of Congratulants based on trophies exchanged in the Gulf as well as videos examining ribbon-cutting ceremonies and installations that reference the spectacular cities that have been recently constructed in the region. The GCC’s visual language is not one of irony or hyperbole, but rather a way of framing culture that reveals the ambiguity and nuance of how people live today.By utilizing new mediums like HD and 4K video, in addition to appropriating traditional forms like news radio and miniature model building, the GCC span a range of artistic practices. They are rooted in the legacy of identity politics while engaging with new ways of relating images and objects. With members trained in architecture, design, music, and of course art, the collective embraces an interdisciplinary way of working that produces arab contemporary art that are both coherent and concise in their concept and execution. They make use of visuals that are largely known to the late-capitalist consumer—advertising and brand management that is employed by global business and nations alike.

Upon entering Achievements in Swiss Summit, London’s first GCC exhibition at Project Native Informant, it becomes immediately apparent that the luxurious setting is apt – the Rolls Royce hovering by the entrance on the opening night is not a mode of transportation for an ostentatious Frieze-goer but a prop that plays an integral part of the show’s concept. Achievements in Swiss Summit acts as a formal celebration of the artistic union of the GCC collective, an auspicious event that reinforces its first meeting in Morschach, Switzerland and announces through speakers in controlled, mellow tones its intentions as a High Level Strategic Dialogue.

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Jil Sander, Fall 2015, Ready-to-Wear

5 April 2015
Magazine Contemporary Culture
Fashion No Comments

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Jil Sander, Fall 2015, Ready-to-Wear, Milan, 2015

Frédéric Sanchez’s soundtrack—a blurry, impressionistic, almost atonal mesh of Nico’s and Chet Baker’s versions of “My Funny Valentine”—suggested chaos. But the set was a precisely ordered group of colored pillars, like a geometric Stonehenge. Rodolfo Paglialunga imagined his new collection for Jil Sander forming somewhere between the chaos and the precision. The designer would pluck order from disorder.

It’s all any artist tries to do, but Paglialunga’s challenge was a little more pointy, given the patchiness of his efforts to date. Still, he made huge strides with this collection. It won’t set Planet Fashion alight, but it registered as wearable, real-world, and properly proportioned. Credit the designer’s precision for that coup. Long coats and matching pants made a new kind of elegantly elongated suit. A bone-toned leather coat was a standout. The lines that traced a navy blue coat suggested something military, the most precise association of all. And even when Paglialunga started to mess with precision, he didn’t lose that line; it simply went diagonal. Shaved black mink was diagonally pieced for a coat. Dark green pony got the same treatment in a skirt.

Coatdresses were shadow-striped or crisscrossed with tape, always maximizing the line. You could follow the footwear for a subtext. One look featured correspondents paired with a pencil skirt and a full-sleeved knit top. Joan Crawford? That, at least, underscored Paglialunga’s disdain when he dismissed the ongoing debate about the dialogue between feminine and masculine in Jil Sander’s women’s collection as “banal.” If he could silence that debate, he’d definitely be able to put his own thumbprint on the label. So he showed a lovely, simple slipdress, and he closed the show with Hedvig Palm in a blush-toned coat that was forceful in line but indubitably womanly. Paglialunga is finding his feet.

http://www.style.com/fashion-shows/fall-2015-ready-to-wear/jil-sander

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