Silent voice | 300×240×45cm | used white clothes

Japanese artist Naoko Yoshimoto began her career studying psychology at the University of Kyoto but moved gradually after it more into art. Her main medium are clothing and textiles. She creates very interesting and strong conceptual sculptures and installations made from garments like for example dresses, tops and trousers.

In the early days as she began collecting these clothes she saw them a bit as symbols of the people living in the places where she met the clothes. She imagined the histories behind them. Touching these used garments, gave her the idea she gained a feeling for the memories of these people and their everyday lives which the garments used to touch, a feeling that could not be communicated by words. But after while this gave her an uneasy feeling as she realized that she could imagine the people and the everyday life of the place she visited, but that she could not directly touch them. There was a feeling of distance and uncertainties. These thoughts had great influence of her current work and made sure she shifted even more towards a conceptual approach in her work.

In some of her current works like for example ” silent voice”, “shadow portrait” or “history behind clothes” she removes the colour of garments by bleaching or uses white coloured garments and compresses and condenses these “white shaded” clothes and transforms them into building blocks for her conceptual sculptures. These works depict conventional as well as more abstract objects and give an interesting social commentary which is created by the medium and its carrier.

 White coffin | 205×85×65cm | used white shirts

 White coffin detail | 205×85×65cm | used white shirts

 Shadow portrait | 40×640×12cm | used white clothes

 White coffin | 205×85×65cm | used white shirts

Shadow portrait | 40×640×12cm | used white clothes

 White coffin | 150×130×180cm | used white shirts

 River of oblivion detail | bleached clothes

 River of oblivion | bleached clothes

Photos Naoko Yoshimoto | conceptual clothing sculptures

The conceptual artist Tobias Rehberger is generally known for his 3D installations, this exhibition of 2D work marks a departure for the German artist; it is the first time he shows his wall-based posters and paintings at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst In Frankfurt, The city where he is also professor of sculpture at the Städelschule.

The selection of works in the exhibition will range from posters the artist designed of his own accord for products of personal significance to him – whether sportswear manufacturer “Adidas” or the farmer “Bauer Mann” in the Frankfurt Kleinmarkthalle – to his wild postings as integral elements of exhibitions.

Rehberger has replicated the logos exactly rather than subverting them by altering the iconography of the brands or products. He takes the view that these images stand as his own works of art simply because he has chosen to create them and believes that it is his aesthetic choice, and the subsequent materialisation and destination of the work, that prevents the posters from being viewed as marketing or advertising. This idea is one that Rehberger has explored repeatedly, notably with his installation of a working cafeteria as his contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale, which won the Golden Lion Award.

As with these posters, he was posing the question “what can be considered art and why?”

The exhibition in the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt will run until the 2nd of May, 2010

Photo top: Tobias Rehberger, “Was Du liebst, bringt dich auch zum Weinen”, Detail Mixed Media, Venice Biennale 2009 Courtesy: Galerie Neugerriemschneider Berlin; shot by: Wolfgang Günzel, Offenbach | Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt

“A la belle étoile” is a huge and impressive audio/visual projection installation by Swiss conceptual artist Pipilotti Rist. In contrast to many other conceptual artists, her colourful and musical works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity.

“A la belle étoile” was screened in 2007 on the slight slope of the Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Currently it is part of the exhibition titled: elles@centrepompidou, in which the selection of the “the Centre Pompidou’s collections is focused on female artists from the 20Th century to the present day.” The exhibition will run until February 2011.

The below video gives an impression of Pipilotti Rist’s “A la belle etoile”.

Pipilotti Rist | Photos: Georges Meguerditchian | Video: reel aesthete Vimeo channel | Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris

In his conceptual installations and sculptures Michael Johansson puts the qualities from daily life objects in opposition to their field of application. By repetition, displacement of scale, and new function, he questions the receivers interpretations of the unique. The objects are frozen in their new shape - while the function is displayed, the functionality is taken away.

Michael Johansson about his work: “I am fascinated by flea markets. Walking around to find doubles of seemingly unique, though often useless, objects I have already purchased at another flea market, is not only an inquisitive activity for me but part of my working process. Despite the fact that I did not have any use for most of these objects in the first place, the unlikeliness of discovering them twice in two different places makes the desire for their possession irresistible. The unique and the unknown origin of the object increases my wish to own its double. The rules compelling me in selecting things at flea markets are also central to my art practice. Engaging directly with these objects, manipulating them, juxtaposing them against each other or representing them in a new context is my method of work. Through out my different explorations of the potentials of my collection of found and acquired things, one has been to free objects from their function. By forcing these objects into contexts in which their functional qualities are put into opposition with their field of application, the objects are stripped of their meaning for existence. In a series of work I have assembled objects connected to a certain place, for example a kitchen or a living room, into a cubic geometrical unit. The collected items, originally gathered from hundreds of different homes, are precisely stacked into the empty spaces of other larger items, a process that repeats itself until all the objects are carefully packed into one single tight sculptural form. This transformation addresses questions about history, life and space. The sculptures hold stories of compressed worlds from a time gone by, and the function has been forced to give in for the notions of color and shape.”

Photos Michael Johansson | Conceptual art and installations

“Weil ich es sage” (Because I say so) is an installation by the German artist Erika Hock. The title of the work reminds one of the conceptual writing piece by Robert Rauschenberg ( This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so). But ,looking at the other works and their titles in the series (how to love a bomb, gebeugt, es musste sein), Hock links more to the fact that she is challenging the resistance of a “strong, seemingly unmovable obstacle or barrier”,physical as well as mental. She increases the pressure with a belt on a “virtual” solid wall or block to a point where it  bends and breaks, she drops a large solid cube so it damages by the impact but also under its own weight. The rigidness object reveals its weakness, its smooth skin cracks, it’s authority flows away and it becomes fragile. The clean and sharp geometry gets affected, distorted and damaged. Forged by pressure, a concept which also can be seen in and linked to the Imploded Sculptures by Ewerdt Hilgemann. In these sculptures Hilgemann used also external pressure, in his case created by a vacuum inside the object, to reshape large stainless steel geometric bodies.  But where Hilgemann uses these real rigid materials for his objects, Hock basically creates the illusion of a rigid objects by using wood, gypsum cardboard, latex foam and adhesive polishing plaster. This fact adds yet another layer to the conceptual content and meaning of her works.

Hock has made a strong statement with this series of interesting conceptual pieces.

Photos: Erika Hock | Conceptual Installations