SCOPHY

Work by artist Riitta Ikonen on our dependence on cars.

Link to artist’s site

The latest project by street artist JR.  Eyes and portraits of women ( to raise awareness of their status ) covering a favela (slum) in Brazil.

Link to artist’s site

In a series entitled Nature’s Revenge, Paris-based street artist Ludo imagines a dystopia where flowers have evolved into machines to protect themselves from environmental harm from humans.

Link to artist’s site

Artist D. Billy graphically represents the onomatopoeia of street objects in New York City.

Link to artist’s site

Using 4638 flip-dots that can turn from ‘silver’ to black, Troika  presents a digital take on clouds.

Link to artist project site 

Using no chisels or hammers, artist Duncan Elliott spent 3 years assembling rocks which fit perfectly with one another to create a human sculpture.

Link to article 

Mark Khaisman uses ‘a light easel, applying translucent brown packing tape on clear Plexiglas panels, the layers built up to create degrees of opacity’ with stunning results.

Link to artist site

Open Studio Space has invited a few prominent and upcoming street artists to create and sell their works live.

Link to website

Link to photo gallery

Alexandre Farto takes an original spin on the now common sprayed street art stencil.

Link to artist site

Michel de Broin, a Canadian artist, stripped down a 1986 Buick Regal and installed four interconnected pedals for each of the passengers. Noticing the peculiar speed at which the bike car was moving, a gung ho Toronto Police squad car yelled ‘pull over’. A car on toxic petrol is legal but a car on human power isn’t…hmm. In fairness, the police had never come across something like this before. But, I wish a manufacturer would come up with hybrid bike/electric car that would pass the road-worthiness test. During rush hour, you could just pedal, ha!

Link to gallery in Toronto

Guido Daniele draws animal on hands with an impressive level of realistic detail.

Link to artist site

Aptly named “The Flying Carpet”, this installation by Seyed Alavi takes satellite images of  San Francisco and places them on a nylon carpet at the local airport.

Link to artist website 

Created by sculptor Thomas Broome, the Pixel Low Res Man is designed to be experienced just like a digital photograph. From a distance, the contours and details seem clear. As you get closer, you begin to see the pixels. It was created from thousands of precisely arranged 1cm see-through acrylic cubes which were subsequently painted.

Link to artist web site

Instead of just existing on your computer, for their graduate show, some enterprising students at the Royal College of Art in London placed a Google Maps marker on a different kind of desktop.

Artist Chris Gilmour produces cardboard sculptures of objects with an impressive level of realistic detail.

Link to Chris Gilmour’s site (contains more photos)

Damien Hirst created a diamond-encrusted skull a while back called “For the Love of God”.  After much hype, “For the Love of God” was valued at a stratospheric £50 million (US/CAN $100 million) - reaching a record price for a piece of contemporary artwork.  Artist Laura Keeble created a skull with swarovski crystals and left it by the trash of the White Cube Gallery.  For Halloween, this follows up on the theme and was created by Adrian.

Link to Adrian’s blog post 

Notoriously known for having topless male models greet customers at the entrance (and giggly tourist moms and daughters taking pictures with them), the Abercrombie & Fitch store in New York on Fifth Avenue was the target of a flash mob organized by Improv Anywhere.  With over 100 participants, Improv Anywhere flooded A&F with topless men of all shapes and sizes - dumbfounding other customers and angering managers.  You can watch other male models topless in the store but you can’t shop topless yourself?  : D

Link to Improv Anywhere site with report on mission

Artist Seung-Jin Lee uses a series of tubes embedded with LEDs and floats them on the water’s surface. A computer controls the LEDs by radio and allows the creation of neat light patterns. First, we had Usman Haque doing a similar installation in the air with Burble. Now, the LED installation is on water. What next?

London-based artist Laura Keeble created a culture-jamming installation in a graveyard.  Instead of a cross, she used logos from companies such as Nike, McDonald’s, and Channel.   The headstones were made from polystyrene, plaster and spraypaint.

“The project was based on the theory of magical thinking, looking at belief systems and idol worship, and creating an intervention that like other work I have installed, plays with the viewers perception and with any luck(;-)) creates a pause for thought!”

Link to Laura’s site

Artist/Sculptor Louise Bourgeois is exposing her giant 9-meters (30 ft) tall spider installation at the Tate Modern in London as part of a retrospective of her work.

Link to article

London-based artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster use lighting on carefully placed rubbish to produce unexpected shadows.

Link to article

Looks like a nice tattoo? Well, it’s not you’re regular kind of tattoo

The tattoo above was not made from red ink but is the result of a scar. The artwork layout is sketched on the body. Subsequently, the flesh is scraped off the body. Talk about suffering for the sake of art!

More gruesome photos regarding the process below….you’ve been warned!

Link to wikipedia entry on scarification

Link to scarification blog

Link to gallery of scarification photos on body-modification site

Using over 400 kgs of nails, Albanian artist Saimir Strati built a mosaic of Leonardo Da Vinci. Apparently the world’s largest nail mosaic, Saimir’s piece covers 8 square meters. Using a technique he describes as similar to computer pixels, Saimir says each nail represents a pixel.

Link to article

Link to Saimir’s site

Remember turning a newspaper into a small boat as a kid? Well, German artist Frank Boelter has taken it to a whole different level! Using only tetrapacks (the same material used for milk cartons), Frank built a giant boat for only £120 ( US $240) that can apparently float for 40 days.

Link to full article