Artist Susan Stockwell weaves British history throughout her collection of extravagant paper-made gowns. Her life-size dresses, like her other installations, comment on global commerce and geography through makeshift fabric constructed out of a variety of currencies and antiquated maps that span the globe — showcasing the British Isles and the Scottish Highlands in particular. The silhouettes the English sculpturist recreates nod towards the Victorian era, with expertly worked ruffles, enormous puff sleeves, and the illusion of overflowing petticoats that were influenced by ensembles female British explorers donned during the 1870s. Marvel at a few of Scotwell’s creations below, and check out more of her work at her website.
What could you make with torn paper scraps and a bit of water color? If you’re like us, the answer is not much. But fortunately, Annawili Highfield is not like us, which is why she can take the most simple materials and create her own stunning animal animals. While she certainly has a soft spot for birds and horses, to the point where they dominate her body of work, she’s not limited to avian and equestrian creations. Here are some of our favorite pieces from her collection.
We might have moved on to Angry Birds and Mafia Wars in recent years, but everyone who owned a PC with Windows back in the ’90s is sure to remember the cheap thrill of winning at computer Solitaire, when the cards would practically bounce out of the screen to congratulate you. Now, Norwegian duo Skrekkøgle has recreated that win screen in the form of a 4.9 x 2.3 x 1.3-foot sculpture, using over 1000 foam-and-paper playing cards. We find it every bit as satisfying as we did 15 years ago. Click through to see a full view of the sculpture, then visit Designboom for more photos.
When we think of porcelain sculptures, a few related aesthetics come to mind: the genteel, romantic 18th-century Rococo stuff; German Hummel figurines of the ’30s; and the kind of kitsch crap you see in souvenir stores and on the Home Shopping Network — think Precious Moments. There is a certain saccharine, overripe wholesomeness to all of these styles. That is what makes the porcelain sculpture of Toronto artist Shary Boyle so strikingly unexpected and irreverent. Although her works embrace the classic, brightly colored, red-cheeked style and feature familiar subjects (scenes from mythology, fancily dressed women), they also delve into the grotesque: To Colonize the Moon shows an unnervingly young, serene Perseus holding a bloody dagger and staring at the severed head of Medusa. Another sculpture, Little Brown Bat, depicts five legs sticking out from a full, disembodied, pink skirt. See those and more of our favorite Shary Boyle sculptures after the jump.
When we spotted Korean sculptor Cha Jong-Rye‘s work over at Colossal, we were immediately entranced. To create these large-scale wall sculptures, she meticulously sculpts and sands hundreds of unique pieces of wood, fitting them together to build tableaus that look like fantasy-world mountain ranges, crumpled canvases, or aerial landscapes. The pieces are gorgeous, mind-bending and almost threatening all at once, wooden worlds to lose yourself in. Click through to see some of Cha Jong-Rye’s work, and be sure to check out more from her most recent exhibition at the Sunkok Art Museum.
When we first spotted French artist Daniel Firman’s work over at Lost at E Minor, we weren’t sure what we were looking at. Was it some kind of extremely uncomfortable performance art? Just one-off photographs of models posing with rubber? Wait – wouldn’t they suffocate? As it turns out, Firman’s strange and darkly funny pieces are 100% sculpture, which is impressive, considering how realistic his human forms look under all that rubble. His work investigates humanity’s interaction with its own environment – including its own trash – and seems to predict our loss in the battle against the junk. Click through to see more of Firman’s figurative sculpture, and see even more of his work here.
Thomas Houseago readily admits to the echoes of early Cubist-style Africanism in his sculptural work for floor, wall, and lawn. Looking at African art through Western-tinted glasses, he shares the Cubist’s appreciation for the psychological symbolism of masks and imposing nudes. The visceral impact of bulbous plaster, choppy wood, and hefty metal readily serves his sophisticated update of a Primitivist aesthetic. But he’s a modern LA artist, after all, who is very aware of all this embedded historical content, and his work is full of winks and nods to its pop culture filter. His new show at L&M Arts in Los Angeles, All Together Now, includes a juggernaut of roughly hewn, totemic figures and abstract landscapes for the contemporary tribalist.
Celebrated French artist Annette Messager transforms everyday objects into sculptural installations that bustle with creativity, memory, melancholy, mystery, and obsession.
Messager enshrines the images of deceased friends and family, and knits little sweaters for dead birds. Her frequently interactive works are elaborately hand-crafted, with the sacrosanct OCD quality of private archives. Describing herself as “collector, every-task-doer, artist, woman in love, tale-teller,” she fashions her shadowy monuments from an endless accumulation of textiles, stuffed animals, photographs, newspapers, and other detritus that speaks to her from beyond.
Artist Lori Nix photographs evocative urban and pastoral scenes from a post-human world of disaster and decay — but first she has to build them.
The most astonishing thing about Nix’s magical, melancholy masterpieces is how they are made. Each museum, mountain vista, library, and laundromat is a painstakingly detailed diorama, taking the artist months to imagine and hand-craft — in fully examined ruin. The artist’s obsession with the apocalyptic informs every one, down to the most stunningly executed bits of minutiae.
A standout at design fairs for nearly a decade, Dutch design team Studio Job mixes artistic forms and stylized craft to exquisite ends.
Led by Nynke Tynagel and Job Smeets, the company produces limited-edition objects and installations that utilize pre-Industrial Revolution techniques alongside digital processes. From enlarged, bronze farm objects that pay tribute to the peasant life to gold furniture that ironically celebrates a corrupt scoundrel, Studio Job’s functional and unusable pieces alike beautifully blur the boundaries between art and design.
