sábado, 27 de octubre de 2007

Ion Birch



Generally modest in scale, Birch's carefully rendered graphite drawings have an effeminate old-world softness. Enraptured men and women housed in both Victorian and contemporary settings are depicted in perpetual stages of anticipation, expulsion and debauchery. The protagonist/antagonist in each piece is a thinly disguised version of the artist, appearing as the focus of the narrative, or featured in the periphery. Through this indirect form of self-portraiture, Birch offers us works that are journeys of self-discovery, taking particular interest in the awkwardly inaccurate ways one sees oneself.

Birch’s works delve into the Fin de Siècle notions of utopian optimism. By allowing genitalia and unbridled acts of hedonism to populate his pictures, the artist strives to demystify that which is typically puritan and suppressed. The Freudian subconscious inevitably peppers his scenes; his ethereal human tableaus manifest in fleeting moments within the mind and once put on paper act as a device to negotiate the artist’s innermost thoughts. By this method Birch deconstructs our preconceptions of sexuality framed as they are in high artistic form.

jueves, 25 de octubre de 2007

Loretta Lux



Loretta Lux (born 1969) was born in Dresden, East Germany and is a German fine art photographer known for her surreal portraits of young children. She currently lives and works in Monaco.
Lux graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich in the 1990s, and debuted at the Yossi Milo gallery, New York in 2004. The show put both Yossi Milo and Loretta Lux on the map, selling out and setting prices never before seen from a new gallery.
In 2005, Lux received the Infinity Award for Art from the International Center of Photography. Her work has since been exhibited extensively abroad, including solo exhibitions in 2006 at the Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Netherlands, and the Sixth Moscow Photobiennale. Her work is included in numerous collections in Europe and the United States, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Fotomuseum, den Haag; Reina Sofia, Madrid and Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland. She has had portfolios featured in numerous fine art magazines.
The artist executes her compositions using a combination of photography, painting and digital manipulation. Lux's work - at once alluring and disturbing - usually features young children and is influenced by a variety of sources. She originally trained as a painter at Munich Academy of Art, and is influenced by painters such as Diego Velázquez, Agnolo di Cosimo and Phillip Otto Runge. Lux also owes a debt to the famous Victorian photographic portraitists of childhood such as Julia Margaret Cameron and Lewis Carroll.

Blonde Redhead, track: top ranking, director: MIKE MILLS


Me encantó la expresividad y simplicidad de este video dirigido por Mike Mills...

Mike Mills (born 1966 in Berkeley, CA.) is a film director/music video director and graphic designer. He graduated from Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan, New York City.
He has created videos for such musical acts as Moby, Yoko Ono and Air. He has also worked as a graphic designer on promotional material and album covers for such acts as Beastie Boys, Beck, Sonic Youth, and Ol' Dirty Bastard. In addition he has created graphics for X-Girl, Marc Jacobs, and currently produces his own line of posters and fabrics called Humans by Mike Mills.
Air named the fifth song on their album Talkie Walkie after Mills.
Mills played guitar and performed background vocals with the short-lived indie side-project band Butter 08 along with Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, Russell Simins of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Rick Lee of Skeleton Key. The band released one self-titled album in 1996 on the now defunct Grand Royal record label.
Thumbsucker is his feature-film directorial debut.
He has also released some of his art/documentary photography works with the two books, 'Gas Book 11'(2003) and 'Humans'(2006).

sábado, 6 de octubre de 2007

Lina Scheynius



Preciosas imágenes la de esta fotógrafa autodidacta sueca. Actualmente vive y trabaja en London.