2024-12-21 21:00:00
While traditional plein air painters capture their surroundings while outdoors, artist Maria Calandra takes a different approach. By roaming the coastal headlands of Maine, exploring the waters of Florida, and venturing out to the rolling fields of Southern France, Calandra finds inspiration in nature for her dynamic oil landscapes.
The artist’s Brooklyn studio is laden with energy after she returns from such invigorating excursions. “I paint while reflecting on that moment during a hike when you start to feel Earth’s vibrations pulse through your feet and up your spine, letting memory, intuition, and those leftover vibrations take the reins,” she describes.
Calandra’s painting style mimics this intensity as she translates a stream of consciousness through fluid brushstrokes and oscillating organic forms. Instinct guides the artist, who describes the act as “automatic painting.”
This January, the artist will be in a group show at Half Gallery in New York followed by a solo show in June at the gallery’s Los Angeles location. Find more on Calandra’s website and follow along on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Through Gestural Oil Paintings, Maria Calandra Guides Her Stream of Consciousness Onto Canvas appeared first on Colossal.
2024-12-21 03:49:36
If you, like us, haven’t finished your holiday shopping and have the hard-to-shop-for folks left on your list, consider a Colossal Membership: an easy-to-procure yet meaningful gift for the creative folks in your life.
Your beloved recipient will gain access to exciting stories about art and visual culture uninterrupted by ads, the ability to save articles, and discounts from our friends and in the Colossal Shop. Plus, a portion of their membership will support K-12 classrooms in need of art supplies.
Want something special to arrive on their doorstep? Gift at the Patron level, and we’ll send your friend a Colossal tote. If you’d like, we’ll even include a personalized note.
Simply head over to the Colossal Membership page and click the gift option for the tier of your choice. Happy holidays!
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article The Perfect Last-Minute Gift for Art Enthusiasts, Education Advocates, and Your Generally Curious Friends appeared first on Colossal.
2024-12-21 01:45:00
For more than a decade, we’ve been following the intricate dioramas by Hari & Deepti (previously). The Mumbai-based husband and wife are known for their elaborate narratives of cut and layered paper, which they tuck inside frames and backlight with soft LEDs. In recent years, the duo has gravitated toward tiny, delicate patterns while making the overall scenes more minimal.
Their new exhibition, Forgotten Places of Beings and Things, opens today at Heron Arts in San Francisco and presents a collection of enchanting works. Minuscule figures navigate lush woodlands and windswept dunes that, when illuminated, appear like worlds of magic and intrigue.
“What amazes us about the paper-cut light boxes is the dichotomy of these pieces in their lit and unlit states. The contrast is so stark that it has this mystical effect on the viewers,” the artists say.
Forgotten Places of Beings and Things is on view through January 25. Hari & Deepti recently published an illustrated children’s book titled The Seekers, and you can follow the latest in their collaborative practice on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Magic and Mystery Illuminate Hari & Deepti’s Paper-Cut Dioramas appeared first on Colossal.
2024-12-20 23:03:24
From digital glitches to mind-bending distortions, Mexico City-based artist Alexis Mata is interested in how visual information gets lost or skewed as it shifts from one context to another. In his oil paintings, bouquets and vast desert landscapes spread across the canvas as if melting or stretching into unrecognizable forms. “When your eyes look too long at the same thing, your mind makes the change,” he shares.
Mata excavates the relationship between analog and digital realms, and his process incorporates both modes of artmaking. Preliminary sketches fill notebooks that travel everywhere the artist does, while he continually snaps photos and records video as references.
AI experiments help Mata better translate the strange, disorienting outcomes that these rapidly evolving tools can produce. But his research isn’t just visual. “I enjoy experimenting by writing poems or haikus in AI and seeing what emerges. It’s an exploratory process,” he notes.
Rendered in bold color palettes, the trippy paintings draw connections between digital mishaps and the ways our brains warp an image, whether in moments of intense focus, dream states, or with the help of hallucinatory substances. “I like to think that entire worlds are created within dreams, and these worlds ask to be brought into the light,” he says.
Many of the paintings shown here are on view in Fata Morgana through January 25 at The Hole in Tribeca. Explore more of Mata’s work, which spans stained glass and textiles to drawing and sculpture, on his website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Psychedelic Distortions and Glitches Streak Across Alexis Mata’s Bold Paintings appeared first on Colossal.
2024-12-20 02:53:22
For more than a decade, French artists Louis Boidron and Édouard Egea have been collaborating as MonkeyBird (previously). The pair are known for their large-scale stenciled murals rich with symbolism, architectural structures, and elaborate motifs, many of which reach for timeless themes related to human emotion, experience, and the inevitability of change.
“The Arch of Peace” is one of their most recent pieces and transforms the facade of an Aarhus building into a monumental homage to peace and justice. Commissioned for the 17 Walls Project, the mural draws on one of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to create a more inclusive and resilient future.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose origins lie in France, served as our central inspiration,” the artists shared. “We reinterpreted the ornamental framework of the original engraving: angels, arches, and colonnades symbolize the moral pillars essential for stability in a constantly changing world.”
As is typical in a MonkeyBird mural, two anthropomorphized creatures donning robes stand at the center of the composition, guarding a library based on that of Trinity College Dublin. “Their attributes of power and intellect take on true meaning only when guided by reason and ethics,” the artists add.
Similarly mythic and majestic figures appear in a pair of murals in Fontainebleau and Metz, France, the latter of which features an avian creature holding an hourglass high in the air. Titled “Le Présage,” or “The Omen,” the piece directly points to the artist’s interest in the passage of time and collapsing the boundaries between past, present, and future.
In February, the pair will join the Montgomery Art Project in Alabama to create a mural and immersive installation of their papercuts. If you’re local, keep an eye out for opportunities to participate in one of MonkeyBird’s workshops, which will engage the community in cutting their stencils and creating public paste-ups. Until then, pick up a print in their shop, and follow their latest projects on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article MonkeyBird’s Majestic Murals Bend Time Through Elaborately Stenciled Compositions appeared first on Colossal.
2024-12-19 23:56:06
When Joana Schneider moved to The Hague, she began to visit the beach regularly. Having spent her childhood in Munich, the sea was a novel and a fruitful source of inspiration. Soon, the fishermen working in the harbor caught her eye.
“There was something so intriguing about their world, which seemed to straddle this line between rugged labor and delicate artistry,” Schneider tells Colossal. “They were using knotting techniques, traditionally seen as feminine and delicate, but on a much larger scale, with heavy-duty ropes.”
The artist quickly connected what the anglers created with the traditions of textile art and began to source their leftover rope. Now based on
KNSM Island in Amsterdam, Schneider continues to utilize the mariner material in her large-scale sculptures. “I spend days untangling the nets before I can start working with them. Then, I dry the ropes in the sun, which gives them this oceanic scent,” she adds.
Once desiccated, the materials often become the structure for thin, colorful yarn the artist wraps around the strands. The finished works are sometimes abstract and others boldly figurative, portraying exaggerated facial features in coiled, hand-stitched patchwork.
The process is labor-intensive, but the slow, methodical movements are part of what Schneider is drawn to. “Each turn of the yarn around the rope is a quiet, focused act. There is something very grounding about it. The rhythm of wrapping, the gentle tension of the yarn, and the soft texture of the fibers create a peaceful space where the world outside seems to fade away,” she says. The resulting works retain evidence of this meticulous process as coils large and small swell outward in perfectly concentric circles.
Currently, Schneider is working toward a solo exhibition titled Otherworldly that will open in April at the Groniger Museum in The Netherlands. Blurring the line between the real and the fantastic, the project draws on the artist’s fascination with hybridity and includes a performative element, a harbinger of where her practice is headed. She shares:
When I think of the natural world, I often think of the Renaissance tradition of grotesque art. It fascinates me how, in that period, artists mixed human, animal, and plant forms in intricate ways…The result is a hybrid environment that is at once familiar and alien. That is something I try to achieve in my work, a sense of wonder and a bit of disorientation as if stepping into a place where the boundaries of the natural world are deliberately blurred.
Schneider’s sculptures are currently on view at the FITE Textile Biennial in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and will be included in a 2025 group exhibition at König Galerie in Munich. Until then, find more of her work on her website and Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Coiled Fishing Rope Sculptures by Joana Schneider Twist Organic Shapes into Otherworldly Forms appeared first on Colossal.