Saturday 21 February 2009


Damian Ortega



Damian Ortega, born in 1967 in Mexico City.

Along with Abraham Cruz-Villegas and Gabriel Kuri, he is one of the most prominent artists of the new Mexican generation. He first came to wider attention with his Cosmic Thing at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, consisting of a Volkswagen beetle dismantled and suspended from the ceiling, an ironic deconstruction of a cult object of Mexico's consumer society.
Damian Ortega began his career as a creator of political comic strips and his art has never departed from this keen sense of playfulness.

With a slightly irreverent approach, the artist parodies the purity of minimalist sculpture. His sculptures, photographs and actions often draw on "poor" materials and evoke potential evolution and continual change. A certain scepticism regarding the utopian forms of modern architecture and a pronounced taste for language games are likewise central to his creative approach.

http://www.cnac-gp.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/AllExpositions/3618AAB2B724C437C125745600432C9E?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.2.1&L=2

Wednesday 11 February 2009

ATOM Performance

Supernice.

ATOM is a performance by Monolake and Christopher Bauder for a matrix of 64 gas balloons, lights, and sound. You can see it tomorrow evening at Berghain in Berlin.

A room is filled with deep, evolving noises from a four-channel sound system. An eight-by-eight array of white, self-illuminated spheres floats in space like the atoms of a complex molecule.

Through variable positioning and illumination of each atom, a dynamic display sculpture comes into being, composed of physical objects, patterns of light, and synchronous rhythmic and textural sonic events. Change, sound, and movement converge into a larger form.

The height of the helium balloons is adjusted with a computer-controlled cable, whilst the internal illumination is accomplished using dimmable super-bright LEDs, creating a pixel in a warped 8×8 spatial matrix.

The sonic events, the patterns of light, and the movement of the balloons are manipulated in real time as a 45-60 minute-long performance.

Nice

Flying In Circles






via Today and Tomorrow.