photo architype.org

You might not care why the formally known Miami Art Museum renamed itself after a Spanish surname meaning “son of Pero”, but here’s the long story short just in case you do: apparently the museum is named after Jorge Pérez , a 64-year-old Cuban-American billionaire, who back in 2011 gave the museum a 40 million dollars gift – half in cash, half in artworks, and in return, the museum agreed to rename itself after him. Just as the renaming motion passed the board of trustees, four of them quit in protest with the argument that an art museum with a specific donor’s name attached would erode the chances of future gifts from other – perhaps deeper-pocketed–donors. And then some predictable racial drama as Mr. Pérez himself suspected that there may be another issue at play, since Pérez Art Museum Miami, is the first gallery in the US, to bear a Hispanic name. At this time it seems that the dissent has mostly died down, most likely because the museum has managed to raise a lot more million dollars to date…

This is the Swiss firm of Herzog & de Meuron’s third museum in America, after the de Young in San Francisco and the Parrish in Southampton. The design of the museum was intended to deepen the connection between indoor and outdoor space – “The building’s environmental circumstances, the hot climate, the heavy storms, have informed the architectural concept in the very first place,” says Christine Binswanger, partner at Herzog & de Meuron. Taking over from the former Miami Art Museum, PAMM includes 32,000 square feet of galleries as well as education facilities, a shop, waterfront café, and exterior plazas and gardens. The project team also worked closely with landscape architects Arquitectonica Geo to select a range of plant life that could withstand exposure to sun and wind as well as the city’s storm season.

photo arcspace.com

photo artsouthflorida.files.wordpress.com

photo designboom.com

Different modes of display are deployed in a non-linear sequence, allowing visitors to map their own experiences of the Museum’s collection and physical space. The permanent collection galleries are located on the first and second levels but art is displayed throughout the entire building, including the garden and the parking garage. PAMM opened with with a pan-American perspective and the first major international exhibition of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, alongside shows dedicated to artists born in Morocco, Cuba, Poland, Israel, the U.S., and Scotland.

Ai Weiwei installation
photo nellyrodilab.com

photo designboom.com

It seems to me the big buzz was mostly created around the (as some say) spectacular architecture, and not much was left for the actual art collection, but then again PAMM is young and deserves a fair chance… so let’s be on the look out for some spectacular exhibitions as well.

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post PEREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI : INSIDE OUT appeared first on INHALE MAG.

It so happened that on the 5th of September, the infamous New York Club Kids, with their insane style and incomparable lifestyle was celebrated in a one-night-only special exhibition in London, entitled Fabulousity: A Night You’ll Never Forget… or Remember! This exciting project accompanied by a limited edition catalogue (500 copies), published by Wild Life Press, features rare and unseen photos taken by Alexis Dibiasio during the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.

photo anothermag.com

First, a little history: The Club Kids were a group of young New York City club goers who more or less defined New York nightlife in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Amongst these, Leigh Bowery, Michael Alig and James St. James led the subculture, which redefined disco through their wild pranks and outlandish costumes. Dressed in bodysuits and unitards, they emerged at clubs such as Savage and The Tunnel, before moving onto The Roxy, Love Machine and eventually The Limelight.

If you happen to be searching for some info about The Club Kids on the internet, you’ll probably notice that the name Michael Alig comes up a lot. That’s mostly because he’s the one who pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1997 for the March 1996 murder of former Limelight employee and reputed drug dealer Andre “Angel” Melendez.

photo disneyrollergirl.net

The murder of Melendez is certainly a story that tells the tale of the recklessness and insanity going on in the New York party scene of the period, and as some say, it marks the official death of nightlife in the city, which has really never been resurrected. Funny enough, Alig is supposed to be getting out of jail any day now and word on the street is that he’s finishing his memoir, Aligula, and plans to have an art show of his paintings (http://www.michaelaligclubkids.com). As always, someone’s misfortune is another’s good luck charm, as James St. James, Michael Alig’s former party friend, published his memoir in ’99: Disco Bloodbath: A Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland, which seems to deal more with the rise and fall of Michael, and which was turned into a movie in 2003 (Party Monster), that starred Macaulay Culkin as the “King of the Club Kids” / Michael Alig.

Anyway, enough history. The catalogue/book is a collaboration between Alexis Dibiasio, former club kid Ernie Glam (who also wrote the forward of the catalogue) and a guy called Steve Terry, about which I can’t seem to find anything relevant except the fact that Ernie and Steve met on ebay, whilst they were trying to auction off some of their excess Club Kid card collection. Inside the main catalogue is a complimentary publication celebrating the flyers, posters and ephemera disseminated at the time for New York’s most happening nights at clubs like the The World, Red Zone, Limelight, Tunnel & Save the Robots. Plus a fun flexi disc, featuring an unreleased track by Ernie Glam.

So, here’s some Instant Glamour from Ernie himself, and if you’re wondering: yes, I’m accepting early birthday presents this year, and Fabulousity: A Night You’ll Never Forget… or Remember! is like totally on my list dude! Later!

photo fashioninstallation.com

photo fashioninstallation.com

photo disneyrollergirl.net

photo anothermag.com

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post FABULOUSITY: A NIGHT YOU’LL NEVER FORGET… OR REMEMBER appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Now, the internet is overflowing with Abramović news, and I have to be honest, I needed time to pass over all the media frenzy to actually be able to sit down and put things together as to what exactly happened over the last few months (and believe me, there’s way more info out there than you will ever need). That being said, please, bear with me, it’s all a little confusing.

photo fastcocreate.com

So first, let’s go back to 2010, when Marina had a performance retrospective at the MOMA (The Artist Is Present), which included: “in an endeavor to transmit the presence of the artist and make her historical performances accessible to a larger audience, the first live re-performances of Abramović’s works by other people ever to be undertaken in a museum setting” and a new, original work performed by Abramović in which she shared a period of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. Well, what do all mortals have in common? They just adore a good love story! So when Marina experienced a strong emotional reaction while seeing her former partner in life and art, Ulay, sitting in front of her, the internet angels started singing. Performance art or not, almost everyone saw the two meet again. Gifs, PowerPoint presentations, YouTube music videos, Facebook shares… I’m almost certain my 78 year old grandmother even shed a tear while secretly watching the video on her smart phone. And just like that, most of the internet population heard about Marina Abramović.

photo artobserved.com

Now, back to more recent times. A few months back, Jay-Z proposed to director Mark Romanek to make a video for his track “Picasso Baby”, an upcoming single from his latest album Magna Carta Holy Grail. Mark Romanek, who is the director of some of the most memorable music videos of the past two decades had a striking idea: performance art. And about a month ago, it happened at Chelsea’s Pace Gallery. It was mainly a reenactment of Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present MoMA performance, a process that involved him singing the song for six hours straight in front of various people and Abramović herself. Of course, reactions ranged from excitement (HuffPost “Jay-Z is an artist — one of the defining artists of our time”) to bemusement (Gothamist called it “artful mockery of the art world”) to hand-wringing despair (Hyperallergic declared the event to be the day performance art died) and I really can’t say which one I’m feeling the most.

Then, after the “Picasso Baby” stunt, Marina started the Kickstarter campaign to raise founds for the Marina Abramović Institute, an idea she got back in 2010 while doing The Artist Is Present performance. Long story short: MAI is dedicated to the presentation and preservation of long durational work, including that of performance art, dance, theater, film, music, opera, and other forms that may develop in the future. Until the found raising campaign begun, Marina had paid $1.5 million out of pocket towards the early stages of MAI.

photo yatzer.com

Now the other bombshell: as part of the Kickstarter campaign, Lady Gaga decided to take it all off – mentally and physically – during a grueling three-day retreat at Abramović’s home in upstate New York – no computer, cell phone, watch, or makeup allowed. Marina instructed Lady Gaga in the Abramović Method-a series of exercises designed to heighten participants’ awareness of their physical and mental experience in the present moment, a method which will be the center focus of the MAI. Oh yes they did!

And again, reactions ranged, from very good to very bad to down right hilarious. Even more hilarious was the news put out by the global edition (www.theglobaledition.com), which stated: “Marina Abramović admits to Lady Gaga she was just fucking with her this entire time”. And again, everyone went mad: half were happy as could be and the other half simply outraged and probably in the first few days only a few really figured it out: the global news is a satirical news website, as they state in the about section: “We do our best not to provide you with factual and accurate information”. Most likely some of you just found out also, but don’t feel bad about it, I had no idea either untill a few days ago. In the meantime, Marina was busy raising money for her institute, pulling all the stops, like answering fan questions on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jctbp/i_am_performance_artist_marina_abramovic_ask_me/) and Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/422090958/marina-abramovic-institute-the-founders/comments).

photo kalliopeamorphous.wordpress.com

The story has to have a happy ending: apparently the campaign reached it’s goal and beyond, but we’ll have to wait a while until everyone will be learning the Abramović method, since the MAI is said to open in 2015.

After all the drama, after all the critics yakking about how performance art died and what not, Marina Abramović is a very busy woman. From her Jay-z/Lady Gaga stunts, to telling light bulb jokes, to single handedly editing a movie about James Franco’s life, she seems to be taking over the internet and I have to tell you that the internet is loving it!

Surprised? I know I am, but then again… I’d rather see the Abramović method over and over again, than catch another glimpse of Miley Cyrus’s soggy ass…

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post MARINA ABRAMOVIC BABY! appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Gwon Osang is often called a rising star of the Asian art world. He has shown his work around the globe, done projects for Fendi and Nike, and collaborated on a record cover for the band Keane.

Gwon Osang’s work consists largely of Deodorant Type, The Flat, and The Sculpture series. Started in beginning of 1998, Deodorant Type is the oldest, most acclaimed of Gwon’s work. Deodorant in the title Deodorant Type is a product we all know and use, that alleviates human odor. Usually, instead of essentially eliminating the source of the odor, a deodorant lightly covers the unpleasant smell so that people cannot smell it. This in many ways has similarities with the attributes of  Gwon’s photo-sculpture. While he captures the subject with the medium of photography, the captured image becomes mixed, creating something slightly different from the original subject.

Deodorant Type

Khumbu & Kuma, 2012
photo osang.net

Untitled, 2012
photo osang.net

Fennder, 2012
photo osang.com

 The Flat

So how does a sculptor begin working with photo cut outs? Osang says that bronze, metal or wood are materials which for him are too large and heavy, so he kicked in his petite person imagination and eventually came up with the photo sculptures made out of paper, which are lighter and more mobile. In time, he began to use Styrofoam as a base for the imagery, I guess mostly because of those people that can’t keep their hands away in an art exhibition: “Whenever people touched the work it went in, and it was hard to pull back out. I glue the photos in place and use epoxy resin to varnish and seal the final work.” The models he most frequently uses for the photo-sculptures are friends or people from the art world, who have the time to pose for long periods of time, as he takes up to thousands of pictures per sculpture, the total time for the creation of these three-dimensional images being around 2 months.

For his ‘The Flat’ series Gwon cut out advertisement images such as watches, makeup and jewelry, attached supporting objects on the backs of those images so as to set them up as if they were still-life sculptures and photographed them. The Flat 16, 17, 18, which is made of three panels, is composed of the images of jewels taken from the 6-year copies of a Korean magazine entitled ‘Noblesse’. With this series he makes a full life circle for the objects: from 3-dimensional (product) to flat (image on the magazine), to 3-dimensional (sculpture) and again to flat (photograph).

October (Vase), 2011-2012
photo osang.net

December
photo osang.net

October (3D)
photo osang.net

The Sculpture series was the highlight of his solo exhibition in Seoul in 2010. Gwon focused on the contemporary industrial design such as high-end automobiles and motorbikes that exemplify the height of commercial society as pure artistic materials. All five works in the exhibition are portrayed in the shape of a torso with handles and wheels eliminated. Before Rodin introduced the concept of torso in the 19^th century, it was seen as an unstable body, and the common convention was that it is difficult for the torso by itself to have any kind of aesthetic value. However, Rodin produced torsos in his conviction that the unstable form can activate the imagination much more than the completed form can.

The Sculpture

Torso (The Sculpture 12)
2008-2010
photo osang.net

Torso (The Sculpture 13)
2008-2010
photo osang.net

Torso, Gallery 2, Seoul
2010
photo osang.net

Gwon’s models are often depicted in unusual poses, which he says are mostly taken from ads and magazines. He is interested in exploring how the human figure can express different meanings in different contexts, through their gestures and expressions. His work is heavily influenced by contemporary advertisements, and a fascination with the way they reflect modern-day life.

Gwon Osang is based in Korea and represented by Arario Gallery, Korea. He has exhibited work in China, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan and The Netherlands.

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post THE PHOTOGRAPHIC SCULPTURES OF OSANG GWON appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo anetabartos.com

photo anetabartos.com

The beginning of Aneta’s career sounds like the never-ending art graduate story: after graduation, having tons of school loans and absolutely no money, she was encouraged to shoot model portfolios as a way to make ends meet, which eventually led Aneta into the fashion photography world, where she ended up spending about 6 years. Eventually, Aneta Bartos went back to her roots, where her artistic expression suffers no restrictions. Her fashion works have been displayed through the pages of countless publications such as Big, Condé Nast Portfolios, Elle, British GQ, New York and Zoo Magazine, and since then, her work has been featured in W Magazine, Interview Magazine, GUP Magazine, Dossier Journal, Artinfo, Modern Painters Daily, Paddle 8, Gallerist NY, Time Magazine Online and New York Magazine among many others.

photo anetabartos.com

photo anetabartos.com

By taking only one glance at her website (http://anetabartos.com/), it is more than obvious that sexuality plays a major role in her eerie and painterly photographs. Aneta’ s approach is intimate, sexually charged, voyeuristic and exhibitionist, but there’s vulnerability too.

photo anetabartos.com

One of her most provocative projects is 4 Sale, exhibited in 2010 at New York’s 8 Bond Studio, which was the culmination of a year long creative union between Aneta Bartos, Elle Muliarchyk, Yana Toyber and Martynka Wawrzyniak. Even though she is no stranger to using herself in her images, Aneta took on a bigger bite with this project, challenging herself to pose and make herself available and vulnerable to the other 3 female artists she posed with. The result turned out to be a set of highly erotic images, but somehow aggressive in their brutal voyeuristic gratification.

photo anetabartos.com

photo anetabartos.com

Boys is a series in which Bartos records private sexual moments of her subjects: men who have agreed to let her photograph them masturbating in the small, dimly lit rooms of the Carlton Arms Hotel in New York City. It is a nice twist to the usual depiction of female vulnerability and serves as a reaction to the male gaze present in much of art history; specifically how female “muses” have been depicted through a heterosexual male lens. These are erotic images of men made by a woman! The photographs, made with a medium format camera, often use expired Polaroid film and only the available light from the hotel rooms, resulting in dark, grainy, soft focus images. The culmination of the series was the exhibition, from 31 January to 21 February 2013, in two rooms of the same hotel in which they were shot, inviting the viewer into the relationships between Aneta and the models, which are all close friends of hers.

photo anetabartos.com

Aneta’s newest project is called Spider Monkeys which, as she states, the Mayans saw as sexual deviants, half human half animal creatures. “It’s a narcissistic reflection, an alter ego, where 2 parts of a whole make up separate personalities. ‘Spider Monkeys’ is where opposites meet and merge. A place of danger and transcendence, where one can get lost but another found, yet another reborn.”

On that note…I’m off to get lost in the dreamlike, erotic and powerful work of Aneta Bartos. I suggest you do the same…

photo anetabartos.com

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post ANETA BARTOS – NOT SAFE FOR WORK appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Ilona Szwarc is a polish artist, who in 2008 moved permanently to New York City. She took an early interest in film and photography and like most eastern European kids in the 90’s, the first camera she ever played with was a family owned Zenit. Before graduating with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York, Ilona worked in the film industry with pretty big names, such as Jonathan Glazer, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda.

Recently, Szwarc has been receiving a great deal of attention with her project “American Girls”, having been highlighted in The New York Times Lens Blog, MSNBC Today.com and The Huffington Post, among others.

photo flavorwire.files.wordpress.com

If you’re not a 16 year old American girl, then you probably have no clue what American Girl dolls are. Apparently American Girl dolls are extremely popular toys for girls in the States. Their design embodies contemporary cultural values. They were conceived as “anti-Barbie” toys modeled after the body of a nine year old. The collection, launched as a catalog line in 1986 with just three characters, has sold an estimated 23 million dolls in 27 years, according to the company’s figures. There’s also American Girl magazine, 17 American Girl retail stores that welcome 54 million visitors a year, and 143 million American Girl books sold.

photo www.slate.com

When Ilona moved to New York, she wanted to become a street photographer, so she began going out every day and photographing in places like 5th Avenue, where she started to notice girls carrying lookalike dolls with matching outfits. After a lot of research on the American Girl phenomenon, she started posting announcements on forums and fan pages that she was looking for girls who own this kind of dolls to be photographed, and got tons of responses: she went on traveling across the country and photographing roughly 100 girls in a period of over 2 years.

photo beautifuldecay.com

The American Girls project focuses on American youth culture and gender identity – what it means to be a girl in America today. The first thing that struck Ilona was the name: considering it is actually called American, it gives a sort of exclusive feel to foreign girls, and maybe a chance to fit in. It did so for the artist herself, as the doll project became a vehicle for her to get access and to meet girls and their families, to see how they live, spend time with them and to discover what it means to be growing up in the US and what it means to be an American girl.

photo www.ignant.de

American Girl dolls offer “an illusion of choice therefore an illusion of individuality”, although the basic premise of those dolls is that you can create your mini-me version, girls are in fact offered a limited number of choices. All of the dolls have mostly the same features – the only choices that are given to girls are different skin colors, eye colors and many hairstyles, yet the basic face mold and figure of all dolls stays the same – slim, petite and androgynous shape. Above all, domesticity and traditional gender roles are still being perpetuated only with a different idea of body image (don’t tell anyone but my guess it’s only for marketing purposes *wink*).

photo www.therawbook.com

In order to not be confused with an American Girl doll advertisement, Szwarc photographed each girl without the specific girly smile, witch ads an uncomfortable feel to the project, like there’s something just not right there. In any case, however creepy it may be for some of you, it is a project worth seeing, and if you happen to be in New York these days, you can catch it at FOLEY gallery, until the 3^rd of July.

P.S. – Write us if afterwards you buy an American doll, we’d love to see a picture.

photo tumblr.com

photo www.revistaexclama.com

photo 1stdibs.com

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post ILONA SZWARC – A POLISH ARTIST’S VIEW ON THE AMERICAN GIRL DOLLS PHENOMENA appeared first on INHALE MAG.

photo www.paranaiv.no

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962. In 1985 he received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase and an MFA in photography from Yale in 1988, where he is currently Director of Graduate Studies in Photography. In his teens, he played in the band The Speedies, whose first single, “Let Me Take Your Foto”, anticipated his future career. Above all, Crewdson can be described as a photographer in the literal sense of someone who makes pictures with light, which clearly plays the leading role in his visual world. His photographs have the look of high-definition stills from Hollywood movies, being at the same time separated from any context or presumed chain of events.

photo paulfoxphotography.blogspot.com

photo photofunatndmoa.blogspot.com

Crewdson’s large-scale photographs explore the surreal dark side of small-town American life. But why does an artist like Crewdson, who did not grow up in stereotypical suburbs but in New York, have the desire to “create” this world? Crewdson argues that his lack of experience with Middle America “provides [his work] with a sense of alien perspective,” and it is precisely this sensation of alienation that makes his photographs interesting.

photo zindoygafuri.blogspot.com

He has developed an early obsession with secrets, ever since as a small boy he would try to eavesdrop on his father’s conversations with his patients: a psychoanalyst who saw patients in the family basement. Possibly, now, his son, through art, is able to imagine what those secrets might have been.

The photographs he constructs are always shoot at twilight, when, with the help of lighting set ups the mundane is transformed into the mysterious, turning the whole setting into an individual character. “I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its transformative quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and otherworldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is that sense of in-between-ness that interests me.” (Gregory Crewdson)

photo theamericanreader.com

Crewdson is not interested in documenting; rather he strives to create a world that merely feels real and only exists in a photograph. Many of his photos evoke Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus, and film directors like David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock (he admits to being profoundly influenced by David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”).

Gregory Crewdson has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, he has published several books of his photographs, has received numerous awards and a large number of works by the artist have been sold at auctions. The end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 didn’t look bad either for Mr. Crewdson. 2012 ended with the launch of his Brief Encounters movie in October, a documentary filmed over a 10 year span, with unprecedented access to the moment of creation of his images.

photo cincyworldcinema.org

It also reveals the life-story behind the work, childhood fears and ideals, adult anxieties and desires, the influences of pop-culture all combine to motivate his work. In a Lonely Place, an exhibition which was on show from 16 March to 25 May 2013 at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and which featured three series, Fireflies, Beneath the Roses, and Sanctuary. And finally, American Darkness, an exhibition that lasted until a couple of days ago at the Danziger Gallery in New York, and which was a two person show: O. Winston Link and Gregory Crewdson. O. Winston Link (1915 – 2001) was a commercial photographer who in the mid 1950s devoted five years of his life to recording the last days of steam on the Norfolk and Western railway line.  He used to photograph at night (when the steam appeared white against the black sky) and enlisting both train personnel and locals as supporting cast, in a very carefully staged scenario.

photo filmsnotdead.com

There’s a lot more to say about Gregory Crewdson, and no one can tell the story better then the artist himself:

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post THE AMERICAN CITY AT TWILIGHT: GREGORY CREWDSON PHOTOGRAPHY appeared first on INHALE MAG.

The 23-year old photographer graduated from the College of Communication in 2012, and has since then been on an upward spiral to success, exhibiting her work at the Simon Oldfield Gallery in London, being nominated for numerous prizes and also being introduced as a possible new (and maybe improved) Cindy Sherman. She works mainly with large-format photography and video installation, usually putting the two side by side.

Reception
photo trendhunter.com

Joyce was conceived in 2011, mostly by mistake as Juno was taking self shots to test out some ideas for a photo shoot she had coming up. It seems the images she came up with made everybody laugh, and at her tutor’s suggestion she dropped the model and carried on using herself.

Through Joyce, Calypso plays with the idea of femininity as it is presented to us through mass media, thus remaining ambiguous: there’s no age, family history or place where she grew up – she just represents a common feeling amongst women in their relationship with constructed femininity.

photo selfpublishbehappy.com

Agency
photo trendhunter.com

Her pastel-hued rooms filled with tacky decorations and edible props are carefully constructed to create the bizarre world of Joyce. Her glossy finish to the photographs is in direct contrast with the Botox-like, emotionless expressions and mundane surroundings to which the average woman can easily relate.

Disenchanted Simulation
photo junocalypso.com

Artificial Sweetener
photo trendhunter.com

You’re almost caught in between feeling like laughing at the character or pitying what seems to be her totally monotonous life. Inside the carefully built rooms Calypso creates, the significance of food is obvious and if you pay enough attention directly at the imagery, the meticulous and attentive detail to all of her imagery is incredible.

Reconstituted Meat Slices
photo covetandcontravene.tumblr.com

Popcorn Venus
photo itsnicethat.com

Juno’s work wouldn’t be out of place in a glossy editorial, it is a clever juxtaposition of glamorous editorial style photography that tells the very real, yet fake story behind the current western ideals of “femininity”.

“Joyce is a character through which I perform critical studies into modern rituals of seduction and beauty – her glazed appearance acting as a mirror to the exhaustion felt by whilst bearing the dead weight of constructed femininity.” Juno Calypso

Those being said, sit back and gaze into Joyce’s empty eyes and make sure to be on the look out for Juno, I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from her in the near future.

Massage
photo itsnicethat.com

photo www.kitafotografija.lt

More about the artist : junocalypso.com

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

The post MEET JUNO CALYPSO – CATLIN PRIZE NOMINEE appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Teller has done so much that it is almost impossible to wrap everything up in a couple of lines: from his early work, photographing the music scene in the 80’s and 90’s, including names like Kurt Cobain, Sinéad O’Connor and Elton John, to his later and current collaborations with mostly every notable fashion house, designer, A-list celebrity and cutting edge style publication.

Kurt Cobain, Berlin, 1991
photo itsnicethat.com

Juergen Teller was born in 1964 in Germany, where he studied photography for two years. In his effort to avoid military national service, he learned English and moved to London in 1986, where he started working for record companies, making photographs for record covers, one of which was the cover of Sinéad O’Connor’s single Nothing Compares 2 You that pushed him into the London art scene, got him noticed and catapulted his photography career.

Mother with Crocodile, Bubenreuth, Germany 2002
photo vogue.co.uk

From then on Teller was unstoppable, managing to blur the line between art, advertising and portraiture and transforming himself into one of the world’s most admired and in-demand photographers of the moment.

“Juergen Teller: Woo” is one of his most recent exhibitions, which was on display at the ICA in London from 23 January to 17 March 2013. His first solo London show in 9 years has been a resounding hit, packing the two floors of the gallery while also generating a stir within the UK press, especially around the centerpiece of the exhibition: the three enormous nude portraits of his long time friend and collaborator Vivienne Westwood. The 68 year old British fashion designer dropped all her clothes, aside from a delicate necklace, just for Teller, and as he also states, she would have most likely said no to any other photographer.

Vivienne Westwood
itsnicethat.com

The level of trust he builds with his subjects before photographing them is always evident. The subjects shown in this exhibition are fully exposed, a kind of Teller trademark: Lily Cole naked in a rat infested garbage heap in India, the famously reclusive Bjork floating in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon and giving a loving look to her son, and charming pictures of the artist’s baby boy, Ed.

Bjork and son, Iceland, 1993
photo vogue.co.uk

Smiling Ed
photo lehmannmaupin.com

But Juergen Teller never forgets his sense of humor: you can find Kate Moss having a rest in a wheelbarrow, the already iconic shot of Victoria Beckham with her legs popping out of a Marc Jacobs bag, his mother with the jaws of a crocodile and even a smoking cat.

Kate Moss, Gloucestershire, 2010
photo lehmannmaupin.com

His shots are joyfully genre-less, not taken for the sake of fashion or art, but to catch life and pinpoint love. That sense of reality comes from his distinctive use of the camera’s flash, which gives his pictures a bleached-out brightness, and creates the impression as though there is nowhere to hide. By using a flash, Teller suggests that there is nothing stagey and therefore phony about his images, but at the same time his pictures tend to be carefully staged, though not posed.

Victoria Beckham
photo nytimes.com

There is also a selection of books and tear sheets from Teller’s advertising work and even a section dedicated to angry complaint letters that were addressed to Teller when he wrote a weekly column in the German magazine, Die Zeit. The space is plastered from floor-to-ceiling with extracted full-length magazine pages that depict his pictorial spreads alongside early advertising campaigns for the likes of Miu Miu, Yves Saint Laurent and Helmut Lang.

Installation view
photo lehmannmaupin.com

Through Teller’s non-commercial photography themes like family, history and nationhood pop up. The ICA show features a wall of pictures of his mother – who married the photographer’s uncle after his father’s suicide – in the woods near Teller’s childhood home. He also photographs plants growing in the cracks in the wall of Deutsches Stadion, the arena built by Albert Speer to hold Nazi rallies, and which was a place of simultaneous fear and attraction when Teller was a child.

Juergen Teller in the gallery
photo nymag.com

Juergen Teller’s photography is instantly recognizable through the subtle uses of humor, self mockery and emotional honesty and if you’re disgusted or offended by it then you haven’t understood him properly. In that note, I’ll leave you with a short video of Woo at the ICA and with a seemingly controversial statement by the artist, given a couple of years back: “Most fashion photography is done by gay people finding women sexy, which is sort of not sexy at all, at least to a heterosexual man. She’s so retouched, so airbrushed, without any human response at all, and, well, you don’t really want to fuck a doll.” Teller, Juergen and NY Mag (Interviewer). “Straight Shooter.” in: New York Magazine. Fall 2008. (English).

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

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Born in Hilversum, the Netherlands, in 1959, Olaf graduated from the Utrecht School for Journalism, with a degree in newspaper journalism and photojournalism. He emerged on the international art scene in 1988 when he was awarded the first prize in the Young European Photographer competition with his series Chessmen, and since then he hasn’t stopped, receiving numerous awards, both for his commercial and personal works.

Chessmen series
laneandreverie.blogspot.ro

Chessmen series
nobignames.com

There is probably no better way to describe Olaf’s work then as it is on his personal website: “Erwin Olaf’s art implicitly visualizes the unspoken, the overlooked, that which typically resists easy documentation. Olaf’s trademark is to address social issues, taboos and bourgeois conventions within the framework of a highly stylized and cunning mode of imagery. With the aid of his razor-sharp aesthetic intuition, Olaf purposely conceals his themes so that the viewer unconsciously and initially accepts the concealment found in his photo series.” – http://www.erwinolaf.com

Paradise Portraits series
www.eroglamour.com

Paradise Portraits series
zeusitup.com

Launched on the 1^st of February 2012, La Sucrière is a huge new venue dedicated to art and events, which will host a large amount of international exhibitions and also the Lyon Biennial Art festival every two years and the Nuits Sonores (Indie and Electronic French Festival).

“Emotions – Installations till 2012 by Erwin Olaf” is the first major solo exhibition held in France, by the Dutch artist Erwin Olaf, hosted by La Sucrière from March 21^st to June 30^th, 2013, consisting of photographic and video works produced by the artist between 2001 and 2012.

Olaf’s rather unique style comes across immediately. His mix of carefully staged photographs with photojournalism, the choice of light, that somehow is similar to the common light conditions in Netherlands, the 60’s esthetic feel, the decors and mostly every other element in his work creates his well known style.

The 2001 series Paradise The Club and Paradise Portrait mixes the festive, colorful and obscure world of the circus (which can easily launch a coulrophobia attack), beauty, taboos and social conventions, in a glossy yet sinister way.

Paradise the Club series
VIP Lounge
supertacular.com

In 2003, after losing his father, Olaf produces the Separation series, a set of 9 photos and a video, depicting what seems to be a mother and her child, dressed in black latex, going through their daily routine in a cold emotionless environment, which might leave you with an eerie feeling of isolation and restriction.

Separation Series
05
xunya.tumblr.com

Separation Series
07
introspectio.wordpress.com

Set in Paris 2019, the short film Le Dernier Cri depicts a picture perfect suburban house, with a retro 1950’s look to it, at the very moment that a woman is preparing for a social gathering. Nothing seems to be out of place or strange at first glance, only the creepy feeling you have with most of Erwin Olaf’s work that something must be wrong. As the woman answers the doorbell you finally see the women’s extensive facial modifications and bizarre implants, that make one think of some kind of futuristic body piercing and plastic surgery trends.

In one of his most recent installations presented at La Sucrière, Olaf has the viewer sit down and looking through a keyhole. The Keyhole series deals with topics like shame, voyeurism and secrecy in a dramatic and striking installation where the subject is always turned away from the camera in postures of humility and remorse.

So, if you happen to be in Lyon this summer, make sure to visit La Sucrière; Olaf’s unconventional and dramatic style will surely meet even the highest of your art loving expectations.

Keyhole Project
Keyhole 1
lejournaldelaphotographie.com

Keyhole Project
Keyhole 3
www.pondly.com

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

image source: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/photography/

The post EMOTIONS – INSTALLATIONS TILL 2012- ERWIN OLAF appeared first on INHALE MAG.

The exhibition put together the work of close to 40 international artists, forming what William Ewing named in the catalogue as the “dis-United Nations of the World of Photography”. This being said, the title is some what of an inside joke, suggesting from the start the huge variety of uses to which the medium of photography is being put and how technology and the vast presence of photography online has blurred the lines between different photography genres and between the professional and the amateur.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/photography/

In contrast to the 2001 photography dedicated exhibition, Saatchi has now chosen to put together established names such as Ryan McGinley, John Stezaker and Mitch Epstein alongside relative newcomers, including Noemie Goudal, Michele Ables and Yumiko Utsu. Their work covers a wide range of concerns and genres, disgarding the boundaries between categories such as documentary, fashion, advertising and art. As I read on, with each review it became more clear: Out of Focus: Photography is not seen as an overview of contemporary photography, rather, it demonstrates Saatchi’s eclectic taste and has been mostly interpreted as a mirror of the fractured and confusing world of contemporary practice.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/photography/

From the ground floor to the top, the exhibition presented a wide range of approaches, from landscape, portraiture, the human body, collage, digital manipulation, photo-installation and many more. Apparently, although the exhibition showcased over 30 artists only a hand full was really mentioned in the aftermath. It is the case of the already popular John Stezaker and his photographic collages from publicity shots of classic film stars that create a surrealist kind of mutated hybrids.

Shot in the California sun, against white walls, Katy Grannan’s street people refers to the work of Diane Arbus in the original documentary tradition of street photography. Grannan’s portraits seem to contain the positive and the negative, the good times and the bad, the joy and the despair, all in the same portrait.

Tokyo-born Yumiko Utsu produces the so called “Dalí-esque” Octopus Portrait (2009), an old painted portrait of a woman who’s head has been replaced by the pearl-colored sea-creature.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/photography/

Out of Focus: Photography most likely did not pass the highly acclaimed 2001 exhibition, but as a conclusion this incredibly varied selection of work seems to at least offer an inside view of the chaotic world of photography today, that many might agree is spreading in all possible directions and areas of contemporary society. As William Ewing also states in the catalogue, “photography is a very strange place to be right now, either inside looking out (the producer) or outside looking in (the public).”

Out of Focus featured works by Michele Abeles, Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Olaf Breuning, Jonny Briggs, Elina Brotherus, Anders Clausen, Mat Collishaw, JH Engström, Mitch Epstein, Andreas Gefeller, Daniel Gordon, Noemie Goudal, Katy Grannan, Luis Guispert, Matthew Day Jackson, Chris Levine, Matt Lipps, Ryan McGinley, Mohau Modisakeng, Laurel Nakadate, Sohei Nishino, David Noonan, Marlo Pascual, Mariah Robertson, Hannah Sawtell, David Benjamin Sherry, Meredyth Sparks, Hannah Starkey, John Stezaker, A L Steiner, Mikhael Subotzky, Yumiko Utsu, Sara VanDerBeek, Nicole Wermers, Jennifer West and Pinar Yolaçan.

A catalogue to accompany the exhibition was published by Booth-Clibborn Editions with an essay by William E Ewing, former director of the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne.

By Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu

image source: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/photography/

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