If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
Over the years, we have created mood boards, conceptual packages and idea books for clients in architecture, interior design, fashion and the entertainment business.
We eventually realized that the most interesting and gratifying aspect of our work was the world we were creating outside of all of the research. It was the things that would inspire us along the way that had made a lasting impact in our lives.
Our Blog is collection of images that have made us pause, reflect and appreciate art that reinforces our belief that each and every day there is a endless flow of beauty being manifested in the universe by people who are capable of providing a glimpse into a world of infinite possibilities, beauty and excellence. Enjoy!
Tacita Charlotte Dean OBE (born Canterbury, Kent, 1965) is an English visual artist who works primarily in film. She is one of the Young British Artists, and was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998. She lives and works in Berlin.
In 1995, she was included in General Release: Young British Artists held at the XLVI Venice Biennale. She is one of the “key names”, along with Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume, Sam Taylor-Wood, Fiona Banner and Douglas Gordon, of the Young British Artists (YBAs). Her work actually had little in common with the prominent YBAs, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.
In 1997, Dean moved to London. That same year she began to exhibit splices of magnetic tape cut the length required to document the duration of the sound indicated, such as a raven’s cry. In 2001 she was given a solo show at Tate Britain
Dean is best known for her work in 16mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. Her anamorphic films are shot by cinematographers John Adderley and Jamie Cairney. Her sound recordist is Steve Felton. She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as ‘asides,’ which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks.
The two postmodernist artists Christo Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude Denat formed one of the closest and most creative collaborations in 20th Century contemporary art. Based in New York, the couple specialized in a unique form of avant-garde art known as ‘empaquetage’ – meaning packaging or wrapping of objects. Beginning in 1958 with small items, they extended the idea to the wrapping of buildings, coastlines, even offshore islands. In the process, they created a sort of hybrid artform – a combination of conceptual art, outdoor installation, and large scale land art. Their works include the wrapping of the Berlin Reichstag building, the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, a stretch of Australian coastline and eleven islands in Biscayne Bay, Florida. One of the least known contemporary art movements, empaquetage is essentially a transitory artform done for reasons of aesthetics, rather than environmental concerns. The partnership was ended in November 2009 by Jeanne-Claude’s death following a brain aneurysm. By any yardstick, Christo and Jeanne-Claude must be considered two of the most original artists of of the 20th century. Their public art has touched the lives of people in four continents. These huge undertakings, such as surrounding eleven islands in Biscayne Bay in Miami, Florida, erecting a 24-mile-long/18-foot-high fence in two Northern California counties or hanging a giant curtain between two mountains in Rifle Gap, Colorado, become stories of hope and triumph in the face of adversity. The act of filming becomes the project itself, as the filmmakers are present every step of the way from planning, approval, execution and display of these temporary artworks.
These artists to me, are absolutely incredible – heart stopping – take some time to watch the documentary ” 5 Films About Christo & Jeanne-Claude” This fascinating anthology shows the passion, vision and complexity of the environmental art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose projects include a 24-mile, 18-foot-high fence in California and a giant curtain hung between two mountains in Colorado. The films — spanning 30 years — document not only the process but also the transformational effect the completed works have on those who come in contact with them. Also ” The Gates “
Stefano Arienti (born 1961) is an Italian artist whose art is inspired by the Arte Povera and Conceptual movements. He lives and works in Milan, Italy.
His work is made of found materials such as magazines, postcards, newspapers and books. Source materials are transformed through minimal actions such as folding or puncturing done repeatedly and systematically. He has exhibited extensively and in 2005, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l’Arte held a retrospective of his work. In 2008, Francesco Bonami curated the monumental exhibition “Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, 1968-2008″ at the Palazzo Grassi that included Arienti’s Cassetto con strisce, 1987-1989. In 2009, the exhibition travelled to MCA Chicago.In 2007, Arienti was commissioned by Art Pace for their International Artist-In-Residence program. There he exhibited Library, a landscape of 400 bushels of wheat and 99 books that were buried within. In the Fall of 2010, Arienti showed his third solo exhibition, natura, natura, natura at greengrassi in London, UK.
Berlin-based Norwegian artist Øystein Aassan uses a combination of materials including paper, plywood, ink, adhesive letters, photography, and pop cultural imagery to create sculptural installations and wall pieces that explore issues around memory and duplication. Influenced by the presentation of works in Peggy Guggenheim’s early-20th-century gallery, Art of This Century, Aasan arranges images and reproduced texts on architectural grids, or what the artist calls “display units”, drawing attention to the construction of the pieces.
Ai Weiwei (born 18 May 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism.Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.
Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention.
As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government’s stance on democracy and human rights. He has investigated government corruption and cover-ups, in particular the Sichuan schools corruption scandal following the collapse of so-called “tofu-skin schools” in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
In 2011, following his arrest at Beijing airport on 3 April, he was held for over two months without any official charges being filed; officials alluded to their allegations of “economic crimes” (tax evasion).
In October 2011 ArtReview magazine named Ai number one in their annual Power 100 list. The decision was criticised by the Chinese authorities. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin responded, “China has many artists who have sufficient ability. We feel that a selection that is based purely on a political bias and perspective has violated the objectives of the magazine”.
AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY is the inside story of a dissident for the digital age who inspires global audiences and blurs the boundaries of art and politics. First-time director Alison Klayman gained unprecedented access to Ai while working as a journalist in China. Her detailed portrait provides a nuanced exploration of contemporary China and one of its most compelling public figures. This is one to watch and it’s on netflix!
Günther Uecker, also known as Guenther Uecker, (born 13 March 1930) is a German sculptor, op artist and installation artist.
Uecker was born in Wendorf, Mecklenburg.Uecker began his artistic education in 1949 when he took up studies at Wismar. He then went to the art school in Berlin-Weißensee and in 1955 to Düsseldorf, where he studied under Otto Pankok at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 1956 he began using nails in his art.
Uecker met the group ZERO with Heinz Mack and Otto Piene in 1960, artists who propagated a new beginning of art in opposition to the German Informel. He occupied himself with the medium of light, studied optical phenomena, series of structures and the realms of oscillation that actively integrate the viewer and enable him to influence the visual process by kinetic or manual interference.
Uecker, Mack and Piene began working together in joint studios at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1962 and installed a ‘Salon de Lumière’ at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Other ‘light salons’ followed in Krefeld and in Frankfurt. Since 1966, after the group ZERO dissolved and a last joint exhibition, Uecker increasingly used nails as an artistic means of expression—a material that, until today, stands in the centre of his oeuvre. At the beginning of the 1960s he began hammering nails into pieces of furniture, musical instruments and household objects, and then he began combining nails with the theme of light, creating his series of light nails and kinetic nails and other works. Light and electricity continued to be one of the main subjects and natural materials such as sand and water were included in his installations, resulting in an interaction of the different elements to create a sensation of light, space, movement and time.
Uecker’s oeuvre includes painting, object art, installations as well as stage designs and films. His origins explain his interest in the eastern European avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, but he is likewise interested in Asian cultures and their ideas. His works can be seen in collections and large fairs in the West as well as the East. Uecker’s artistic creativity reaches a climax in 2000 in the prayer room he designs for the rebuilt Reichstag building in Berlin.
The ZERO foundation and Museum Kunst Palast (Düsseldorf), The Calderara Foundation Collection (Milan, Italy), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Schleswig-Holstein Museums (Germany), Studio Esseci (Padua, Italy), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Netherlands), Von der Heydt-Museum (Wuppertal, Germany) and the Walker Art Center (Minnesota) are among the public collections holding works by Günther Uecker.
Uecker taught from 1974 until 1995 at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and was promoted to professor in 1976. Halina Jaworski was his first master student (Meisterschülerin).
With Otto Piene, Heinz Mack and Mattijs Visser he founded in 2008 the international ZERO foundation. The foundation has the complete ZERO archives from three Düsseldorfer artists as well as documents and photos from other related artist.
Born in Cholet in 1926 François Morellet worked in his father’s business between 1948 and 1975. He taught himself to paint but also took lessons from a painter. His early landscapes, portraits and still lifes were executed in pastose brushwork in a subdued palette but they soon gave way to painting distinguished by stylized pictorial elements. By 1950 François Morellet was styling himself an “abstract painter”. That year Morellet had his first one-man show at the Galerie Creuze in Paris.
In the mid-1950s François Morellet was preoccupied with configuring the picture field as an infinite structure reaching beyond the confines of the picture itself. In so doing, François Morellet eliminated the all-over technique of a Jackson Pollock from his range since Morellet based each work on principles and systems established in advance. François Morellet was in fact more interested in method than in the finished painting.
Morellet joined “GRAV” (‘Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel’: 1960-1968), a group of Kinetic artists who explored the possibilities of the visual arts in a scientific and experimental way. Determined to find a new medium of expression, François Morellet used neon from 1963 as his material of choice. What interested Morellet in neon tubing was its specific material properties: its luminosity, the way it could be made to shut on and off automatically and the fact that it was manufactured.
From 1968 François Morellet became interested in architecture and space. He was given commissions for working in public spaces, including the Centre culturel in Compiègne, the La Défense section of Paris and the Kröller-Müller Museum Park in Otterlo.
In 1992 François Morellet summed up his work himself in “Relâche n° 1″ by combining in it all the materials he had ever used: painted canvas, neon tubing, adhesive tape and strips of metal. Following aleatoric principles, François Morellet allowed chance to transform his materials into an aesthetic disorder. His provocative stance and humor place Morellet closer to Dada than to Geometric Abstraction and Minimal art.
François Morellet lives in Cholet and Paris.
After a personal tragedy, Harry Taylor discovered a passion for the 150-year-old craft of tintype photography. Harry Taylor is an artist based in Wilmington, North Carolina and has a rich and diverse knowledge base of shooting all types of photography.
Matt Morris is an award-winning filmmaker specializing in documentaries and branded content. In 2008, he produced and directed PICKIN’ & TRIMMIN’, an Emmy® nominated documentary short that was an official selection of over 2 dozen international film festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand and Aspen Shortsfest. The film has won 7 awards, including Best Documentary Short at the Woodstock and Florida film festivals.
His next short, WATERMELON MAN premiered Florida Film Festival 2010 and has screened at the Nashville Film Festival and Palm Springs Shortsfest. His current film MR. HAPPY MAN has screened at DOC NYC, Aspen Shortsfest, IFFBoston, Nashville Film Festival, and more. It won the audience award for Best Short Film at AFI Silverdocs and Grand Jury award for Best Documentary Short at the Sidewalk Film Festival. Previously, Matt co-edited and contributed to the book SUPERHEROES AND PHILOSOPHY for Open Court Press. He attended Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
