Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Research 4 - Alessandro Bavari
Alessandro Bavari's style is another strong tonal and contrast based artist, yet his works also show energy. Energy is a great influence of mine, as I'm looking into basing a themed gallery around the concept, so Alessando's style really sung out to me.
Cure of enchantment on Minor Key
When I was nine my father gave me a guitar, a small child-size guitar, not a toy instrument but a real one on a smaller scale.
When I was nine my father gave me a guitar, a small child-size guitar, not a toy instrument but a real one on a smaller scale.
I was naturally inclined to be seduced by this instrument straight away.
For the next five years my love of the guitar led me to study classical music, which I continue to play even now for personal pleasure.
For the next five years my love of the guitar led me to study classical music, which I continue to play even now for personal pleasure.
When Mr Galvez, the founder of the I+Gen agency, proposed a work created around this instrument, I grasped the opportunity without hesitating, as the guitar is so close to my heart.
Cura dell'Incanto in Chiave Minore is a work in three parts. Its metaphor expresses the value of music as a generative act, as an instrument for the sharing of a common feeling. Its spell can drive weak and hostile minds to abandon and reconciliation.
So, this is music as a universal value, whose instrument, in this case the guitar, becomes an extension of the mind and body: its virtue, translated in vibrations and tunes, can elicit emotion and lead to indulgence.
Cura dell'Incanto in Chiave Minore is a work in three parts. Its metaphor expresses the value of music as a generative act, as an instrument for the sharing of a common feeling. Its spell can drive weak and hostile minds to abandon and reconciliation.
So, this is music as a universal value, whose instrument, in this case the guitar, becomes an extension of the mind and body: its virtue, translated in vibrations and tunes, can elicit emotion and lead to indulgence.
Here, aligned with the fundamental elements of nature, the musician becomes the demiurge, with thaumaturgical powers. The pathos that is inspired in those who listen is not only sweet and melancholic but also an expression of force, overwhelming energies and profound agitation.
Alessandro Bavari, 2006
TRYPTICHON
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Alessandro Bavari is one of the coming modern artists who have performed classical studies in art but then went over to combine this education with the new world of the computer. This allows him to generate paintings in the old roman tradition of Giotto, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca but also in the style of the flemish schools like van Eyck and to incorporate them in digital photographies. This allows him a transition from real world images into the virtual artistic world of visions and interpretation of emotions. Photography until recently has not always been regarded as a true art. Since Wolfgang Tillmanns was decorated early this year with the Turner Price for the first time a now became officially so to say a member of other yet classical arts. Alessandro Bavari is certainly one of the modern multitalented artists who contribute to this new quality of art with his work. His last work Sodom and Gomorrah opens a whole new vision with impressive images of this old myth.
Alessandro Bavari has created with the TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man a new allegory of fragility of men on one hand, a men who can hold a mountain on one finger but also its permanent will to power, survive and violence. The symbolic statements relie entirely on body images with the concept that men`s body may mirror even more than the face an essential part of human biography.
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Alessandro Bavari is one of the coming modern artists who have performed classical studies in art but then went over to combine this education with the new world of the computer. This allows him to generate paintings in the old roman tradition of Giotto, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca but also in the style of the flemish schools like van Eyck and to incorporate them in digital photographies. This allows him a transition from real world images into the virtual artistic world of visions and interpretation of emotions. Photography until recently has not always been regarded as a true art. Since Wolfgang Tillmanns was decorated early this year with the Turner Price for the first time a now became officially so to say a member of other yet classical arts. Alessandro Bavari is certainly one of the modern multitalented artists who contribute to this new quality of art with his work. His last work Sodom and Gomorrah opens a whole new vision with impressive images of this old myth.
Alessandro Bavari has created with the TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man a new allegory of fragility of men on one hand, a men who can hold a mountain on one finger but also its permanent will to power, survive and violence. The symbolic statements relie entirely on body images with the concept that men`s body may mirror even more than the face an essential part of human biography.
Mr. Dieter, Hesch, M.D.
Professor of Medicine and Biology, scientist and writer
Rolf.Dieter.Hesch@uni-konstanz.de
Professor of Medicine and Biology, scientist and writer
Rolf.Dieter.Hesch@uni-konstanz.de
TRYPTICHON
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
In several images realized in these last years, the head of my subjects is often replaced with that of an animal, with an object, or occulted by a mask. This my choice proceeds from the wish to make the figures represented in my works an integral part of the composition, bodies treated in the same way as if they were simple objects, without a definite personality or characteristic.
Revealing pronounced features and eyes too much intense and pregnant could make the models the protagonists of the image, averting the attention of the observer from the choralism of the whole composition, changing significance and allusions.
When I realized TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man, I painted once more a human body without face, being its absence (subrogated by the fragments of the head of a statue) not a synonymous of anonymity but the magnification of an anti-individualistic ideal, aimed to representing the man in his whole universality. In TRYPTICHON the absolute protagonist is a vital body, impetuous and vibrant, that just like a sculpture is dismembered and reassembled, becoming the allegory of the history of mankind. This body will get to temper its own exuberance trasforming into a sublime and trascendental object, but at the same time fragile and unstable, in which the balance of body and soul is kept by a thin rope tied to a twig, and the balance of mind and knowledge is counter balanced by a head held in the palm of a hand, with the awareness that this will be an equilibrium forever unstable and swinging, on the edge of the infinite abyss of the eternity.
Revealing pronounced features and eyes too much intense and pregnant could make the models the protagonists of the image, averting the attention of the observer from the choralism of the whole composition, changing significance and allusions.
When I realized TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man, I painted once more a human body without face, being its absence (subrogated by the fragments of the head of a statue) not a synonymous of anonymity but the magnification of an anti-individualistic ideal, aimed to representing the man in his whole universality. In TRYPTICHON the absolute protagonist is a vital body, impetuous and vibrant, that just like a sculpture is dismembered and reassembled, becoming the allegory of the history of mankind. This body will get to temper its own exuberance trasforming into a sublime and trascendental object, but at the same time fragile and unstable, in which the balance of body and soul is kept by a thin rope tied to a twig, and the balance of mind and knowledge is counter balanced by a head held in the palm of a hand, with the awareness that this will be an equilibrium forever unstable and swinging, on the edge of the infinite abyss of the eternity.
Alessandro Bavari, 2001
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Research 3 - Maggie Taylor
Maggie Taylors work are graphically appealing, great compositional values and just all around jaw dropping. From a brief glance her style is very surreal.
It suprised me that I like her work as this form of surreal art is very alined to Alice in Wonderland infact it was a series of hers. Usually I dislike Alice in Wonderland artworks as there are so many variations yet all in the same style, it appears to be creative but than they are all duplicates of each other and it is so easily done to merely play with proportions, tones and colours, yet Maggie Taylors work stands out to me. As personally I love to see a rich image with depth, strong tones, contrast, gutsy colours, nice composition and an overall though out concept, Maggie Taylor's pieces check all of these while adding a grungy feel in which I respect.
All images found at Maggie Taylor's site
It suprised me that I like her work as this form of surreal art is very alined to Alice in Wonderland infact it was a series of hers. Usually I dislike Alice in Wonderland artworks as there are so many variations yet all in the same style, it appears to be creative but than they are all duplicates of each other and it is so easily done to merely play with proportions, tones and colours, yet Maggie Taylors work stands out to me. As personally I love to see a rich image with depth, strong tones, contrast, gutsy colours, nice composition and an overall though out concept, Maggie Taylor's pieces check all of these while adding a grungy feel in which I respect.
Research 2 - Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee is a digital artist who uses Photoshop software to combine human portraits with animal features, a key tool he would use would be the Liquify filter. They are quite life like and create a dramatic impact on the viewer.
This series is his Self Portrait series which is quite close to our Avatar close up Assignment image.
-- Daniel Lee, 1997
I quite like the realism involved, it is not very apparent this is manipulated and creates a strong impact, particularly the look into the future seen in the 4th image, the Image almost appears to be classified as a "wise being."
Many of his other works are the same.
The concept of "Jungle" derives from my previous work Xintiandi that was commissioned for Shanghai Biennale 2006.
In "Jungle", I create acontemporary portrayal of the intrinsic animal interactions between people in today's urban environment.
The main work of "Jungle" is a 200x600 cm mural (above) which was printed with Vutex Inkjet on vinyl canvas. There are also eight additional individual portraits (below).
All models were photographed individually in studio, with strobe lighting in front of gray seamless background using a Cano digital camera.
His favourite series of mine is his "Judgement" series.
Daniel Lee’s half man, half animal images are just too disturbing for some. He never intended them to be frightening, he says, just realistic.
by Sue Weekes, Editor/Creative Technology (England)
Daniel Lee’s bizarre half-man, half-animal characters, or ‘Manimals’, have been known to turn a few heads. We had people literally turning over the cover proofs in the office this month because they found the images too disturbing to look at. When told of this response to his work, the Chinese-born photographer shifts the emphasis back onto the person viewing the image. ‘Maybe they are running away from something,’ he says, ‘Nobody has seen anything like these creatures before and the fact that they look so real makes them very disturbing. The images go beyond people’s experience.’
Well, you can’t argue with that (unless you move in some very funny circles). The manimals are from Lee’s personal portfolio of work and occupy that hinterland between photography and art. `They aren’t drawings, they aren’t paintings and they aren’t photographs, they are something entirely different created on the computer,’ says Lee. The images have undoubtedly triggered more than one debate about the validity of computer art as a whole new genre. Significant;y, and much to Lee’s delight, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has just taken the image shown on our front cover this month,depicting a Chinese person with the facial characteristics of a leopard.
Whatever your stance on the, ‘but is it art?’ front, the images also have more than a passing interest and relevance to the commercial creative world. For even if you find them hideous grotesque, repulsive or too bizarre for words, you have to admit that they represent a lovely piece of electronic retouching, executed not on a high end system, but at the desktop by Lee himself, using Adobe Photoshop software running on his Macintosh Quadra 950.
Like many, we jumped to the conclusion that Lee scans in shots of the human and the animal, and then uses Photoshop to refine the photocomposition. Such an assumption does him a great injustice however. Lee actually draws and paints in the features of the animal onto the human face using Photoshop’s brushes and tools. ‘You couldn’t do it just by scanning in an image of an animal’s face,’ says Lee. ‘For instance, take the face of a snake, it is so much flatter than a human’s. It just wouldn’t work to superimpose one on the other. I have to rescale and distort each of the features to ensure it looks realistic.’
Many Chinese people believe that men and women exhibit characteristics of the animals to the year they were born. ‘I often observe people who have particular animal traits. But when I do the images, it is important that they appear more human that animal.’ Part of the reason for this is because the images are more a comment on human behavior than the animal’s.
The images shown in this article are from a more recent work called Judgment, which takes inspiration from the Chinese Circle of Reincarnation. Including Man, there are 108 different creatures in the circle, and Buddhists say that each one will be judged in a mythological court under the earth after their death. In Lee’s court, judge and jury are based on Chinese mythological figures, heroes and spirits.
All the portraits were photographed with a 4X5 camera and then scanned into Photoshop. Lee has his animal reference beside him while he is creating the figures. He shies away from letting you dissect the images too clinically, preferring that they retain their mystique. However, you can probably identify which animal features in most: on the opening spread (pages 10-11) the man takes the features of a pig, and the woman, those of a snake...
This series is his Self Portrait series which is quite close to our Avatar close up Assignment image.
- "Because technology changes the way we live and the way we create, it also changes the way we look. My image, therfore, is an evolutionary self-portrait -- a look at the distant past and into the far-off future. My eyes shrink as electricity eradicates the need to see in the dark. My brain and forehead enlarge as information expands my mind. And my features blend as communication brings cultures closer and closer together -- Asian, Caucasian and so on. Only the ears remain the same size, because we'll never stop needing to listen."
-- Daniel Lee, 1997
I quite like the realism involved, it is not very apparent this is manipulated and creates a strong impact, particularly the look into the future seen in the 4th image, the Image almost appears to be classified as a "wise being."
Many of his other works are the same.
The concept of "Jungle" derives from my previous work Xintiandi that was commissioned for Shanghai Biennale 2006.
In "Jungle", I create acontemporary portrayal of the intrinsic animal interactions between people in today's urban environment.
The main work of "Jungle" is a 200x600 cm mural (above) which was printed with Vutex Inkjet on vinyl canvas. There are also eight additional individual portraits (below).
All models were photographed individually in studio, with strobe lighting in front of gray seamless background using a Cano digital camera.
His favourite series of mine is his "Judgement" series.
All images found at Daniel Lee's website
Daniel Lee’s half man, half animal images are just too disturbing for some. He never intended them to be frightening, he says, just realistic.
by Sue Weekes, Editor/Creative Technology (England)
Daniel Lee’s bizarre half-man, half-animal characters, or ‘Manimals’, have been known to turn a few heads. We had people literally turning over the cover proofs in the office this month because they found the images too disturbing to look at. When told of this response to his work, the Chinese-born photographer shifts the emphasis back onto the person viewing the image. ‘Maybe they are running away from something,’ he says, ‘Nobody has seen anything like these creatures before and the fact that they look so real makes them very disturbing. The images go beyond people’s experience.’
Well, you can’t argue with that (unless you move in some very funny circles). The manimals are from Lee’s personal portfolio of work and occupy that hinterland between photography and art. `They aren’t drawings, they aren’t paintings and they aren’t photographs, they are something entirely different created on the computer,’ says Lee. The images have undoubtedly triggered more than one debate about the validity of computer art as a whole new genre. Significant;y, and much to Lee’s delight, the Brooklyn Museum of Art has just taken the image shown on our front cover this month,depicting a Chinese person with the facial characteristics of a leopard.
Whatever your stance on the, ‘but is it art?’ front, the images also have more than a passing interest and relevance to the commercial creative world. For even if you find them hideous grotesque, repulsive or too bizarre for words, you have to admit that they represent a lovely piece of electronic retouching, executed not on a high end system, but at the desktop by Lee himself, using Adobe Photoshop software running on his Macintosh Quadra 950.
Like many, we jumped to the conclusion that Lee scans in shots of the human and the animal, and then uses Photoshop to refine the photocomposition. Such an assumption does him a great injustice however. Lee actually draws and paints in the features of the animal onto the human face using Photoshop’s brushes and tools. ‘You couldn’t do it just by scanning in an image of an animal’s face,’ says Lee. ‘For instance, take the face of a snake, it is so much flatter than a human’s. It just wouldn’t work to superimpose one on the other. I have to rescale and distort each of the features to ensure it looks realistic.’
Many Chinese people believe that men and women exhibit characteristics of the animals to the year they were born. ‘I often observe people who have particular animal traits. But when I do the images, it is important that they appear more human that animal.’ Part of the reason for this is because the images are more a comment on human behavior than the animal’s.
The images shown in this article are from a more recent work called Judgment, which takes inspiration from the Chinese Circle of Reincarnation. Including Man, there are 108 different creatures in the circle, and Buddhists say that each one will be judged in a mythological court under the earth after their death. In Lee’s court, judge and jury are based on Chinese mythological figures, heroes and spirits.
All the portraits were photographed with a 4X5 camera and then scanned into Photoshop. Lee has his animal reference beside him while he is creating the figures. He shies away from letting you dissect the images too clinically, preferring that they retain their mystique. However, you can probably identify which animal features in most: on the opening spread (pages 10-11) the man takes the features of a pig, and the woman, those of a snake...
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