WARMENHOVEN & VENDERBOS Blog » sculpture

Tobias Rehberger | Sex and Friends

W&V — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:30:10 +0000

The work of Tobias his recent exhibition at the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Belgium has now moved on and is on show at the Pilar Corrias Gallery in London. The show carries the title: Sex and Friends

Tobias his conceptual art installation set up at Pilar Corrias Gallery explores again the conflict between functionalism and aesthetics and again questions and plays with the notion of art and its various strategies. The main key element of this specific installation is transformation. This key element is not only linked to the change of the space itself but also to the transformation during a specific time frame and especially the transformation of the viewer, his/her behaviour and thoughts.

The series of sculptures in this installation seem abstract and find their “ghost-image” counterpart in the amorphous shadows they project on the walls. The art works transmit words and patterns onto the surfaces around them. The sculptures and their shadows are dynamic in a reversed way. They encourage the viewer to move and look at them from various perspectives. By doing that they shift and transform themselves. During brief moments of the day the shadows come together and form a “hidden” message. The visual message itself becomes less important as the event is basically already known and announced to the viewer who visits the gallery space, however what is important in this conceptual installation is that the upfront announced “hidden” feature/message does right away influence and transform the viewers behaviour and thoughts.

Sex and Friends is running until February 17, 2012 at Pilar Corrias Gallery, London.
You can read more about Tobias Rehberger and his work in this, this and this article on the Warmenhoven & Venderbos blog.

Photos by: Tobias Rehberger | Pilar Corrias Gallery

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Zimoun | Sound Sculptures & Installations

W&V — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:24:42 +0000

Zimoun is a Swiss artist who is residing in Bern. To develop his work he has often collaborated with other artists and experts who work in various other fields like for example architecture, science, research engineering.

The sound sculptures and installations of Zimoun are graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry, their structural simplicity opens like an industrial bloom to reveal a complex and intricate series of relationships, an ongoing interplay between the artificial and the organic. We find these intriguing sculptures fascinating and very inspiring.

Photos and video by Zimoun | Zimoun website

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Naoko Yoshimoto | conceptual clothing sculptures

W&V — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:13:45 +0000

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

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Willy Verginer | sculptures and vibrant colour blocking

W&V — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:54:46 +0000

Sculptor Willy Verginer was born in 1957 in Bressanone and currently works and lives in Ortisei, Italy. He creates interesting sculptures and installations using the traditional craft of woodcarving. At first glance all the figures seem to reflect everyday life. This idea gets strengthened by the fact that most of them also wear contemporary casual clothing. They also have a link with the archaic and classic Greek sculptures. However, a closer and more focused look at the work shows that it goes beyond just that. The compositions of the installations, the positioning, the inclusion of surreal elements and the use of vibrant colour blocking across three dimensional surfaces which cuts the sculptures into fragments, lifts these works above just pure perceptual and figurative art. These elements and details give the viewer an access into the deeper conceptual layers of the fascinating work produced by Willy Verginer.

Photos: Willy Verginer | sculptures and installations

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Christopher Coppers reinterprets (fashion-)magazines

W&V — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:58:44 +0000

Christopher Coppers is a Belgian artist who is based in Brussels. His current work consists, for a large part, of interventions, either with, within or on magazines. Construction and deconstruction are important key elements in his art. He has by now used many different magazines as his medium, for the most fashion related ones. Some examples are: Elle, Vogue, BEople, Playboy,View magazine, Vanity Fair and ID fashion magazine.
He Combines his love for printed matter with an obvious urge for creative distortion or destruction. Christopher extremely careful and diligent revisits these magazines, he dramatically reinterprets the original covers by intricately carving them and so transforming them into sculptures. By doing this he gives them a second purpose, a second life.

Photos: Christopher Coppers | magazines

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Kinetic Sculpture, metaphorical translation of the process of form-finding

W&V — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:09:12 +0000

The Kinetic Sculpture by Art+Com is a fascinating metaphorical translation of the process of form-finding in art and design. The interplay of mechanical and electronic components creates a dynamic art piece reflecting the precise exchange between a great number of individual elements and the single, coherent picture that emerges from them.714 metal spheres, hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually-controlled stepper motors and covering the area of six square meters, animate a seven minute long mechatronic narrative. In the beginning, moving chaotically, then evolving to several competing forms that eventually resolve to the finished object, the Kinetic Sculpture creates an artistic visualisation of the process of form-finding in different variations.

The installation is on display in the BMW museum, Munich, Germany.

Video and Photos: Art+Com | BMW Museum, Munich

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E.V. Day architectural clothing sculptures

W&V — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:47:23 +0000

Bride fight is an already older but still very unique and interesting installation by American artist E.V. Day (1967, New York). She Used heavy-duty fishing line and hardware to reassembled clothing items which where untangled into small pieces.

Taking as her subject an eruption in the traditional social fabric the idea of two “glowing” brides locked in mortal combat E.V. Day touches something dark in the American social unconscious. Her work does link to reality television shows about brides-to-be, like Bridezilla, where tension gets to a boiling-point because of all the planning and frustration. But although E.V. Day’s piece may trigger such fetishistic responses it is a work primarily characterized by the humor and anxiety that accompanies a transformation of tradition. Fierce but nonetheless liberating, Bride Fight feels more like the jouissance of exploded boundaries than the pathology of confined ones.

The bride fight installation developed from a series of installations called Exploding Couture, begun in 1999, in which Day suspended women’s dresses in space. For example, in Bombshell (1999), exhibited at the 2000 Whitney Biennial, Day took a piece of iconic attire (Marilyn Monroe’s white halter dress) and arranged it to feel as if the forces of the implied figure are so powerful that the garment literally blows off, as if outgrowing its stereotype.

The visual result of the works are extremely light sculptures with architectural features.

Photos: E.V. Day | Lever House, New York

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Tobias Rehberger – flat: Posters, Poster Concepts and Wall Paintings

W&V — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:50:39 +0000

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

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Baptiste Debombourg: Turbo

W&V — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:05:42 +0000

The turbo wave of the 80′s left its mark on the industry and on the whole cultural situation in Western Europe. The sound effect gives sensation of real physical power. This music genre, which originated in the Balkans, and its impact are the inspiration for the work of Serbian artist Baptiste Debombourg. The music becomes a conceptual model of behaviour and is translated into wall deformed by the power of a musical wave. This installation is melted with the architecture of the surrounding space and so becomes part of it.

Photos: Baptiste Debombourg | Patricia Dorfmann Gallery Paris | Galerie HO Marseilles | Galerija10m2 Sarajevo

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On Kawara Reading One Million Years

W&V — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:01:55 +0000

On Kawara, a Japanese conceptual artist living in New York City, made since 1966 a long series of “date paintings” (the Today series), which consist entirely of the date on which the painting was executed in white lettering set against a solid background. Other series of works include the “I Went and I Met” series of postcards sent to his friends detailing aspects of his life. A second series of postcards, I Got Up At, rubber-stamped with the time he got up that morning, and a series of telegrams sent to various people bearing the message “I am still alive”.

In 1971 he started with his work called ‘A Million Years’. This ten volume piece was produced concurrently with a series which would later be seen as his defining work. ‘A Million Years’ was, just as its title states, a series of numbers counting back the last million years from 1969. It was later accompanied by ‘One Million Years (future)’ which counts forwards from 1980. In 1993 Kawara transformed One Million Years (Future) from a written to recorded state. The impetus for this metamorphosis was an exhibition for Dia Center for the Arts that ran from January 1, 1993, to December 31 of the same year. The below video made by New York art tours gives an impression of ‘One Million Years”

The exhibition was comprised of three parts, a selection of one thousand Today paintings, the ten volumes of One Million Years (Past) and the recording of One million Years (Future), in which a male and female voice continuously, year after year, count into the future. A segment of this recording was transformed into a CD. With the exhibition the viewer plays a more passive role, entering into the space where the recording plays continuously, whereas with the CD the amount of time is limited, 74 minutes, and contains a set number of years (1994 AD to 2613 AD), thus transforming the infinite time of the exhibition into the finite time of the CD. With the CD the viewer is able to manipulate the duration and chronology of the CD, thus entering into a far more active relation to the work. You can listen to a part of the work in the below Ubuweb podcast.

Photos: On Kawara | David Zwirner Gallery | Sources: Ubuweb, Wikipedia | Video: New York Art Tours Youtube channel

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