Milos Rajkovic

Serbian artist, Milos Rajkovic creates eerily poignant and dystopian socio-political gifs that visually elaborates on the social injustices in our contemporary society. Anti-capitalist themes revolve around technology, materialism and class-struggle are embodied by gifs. depicting (amongst other bizarre and witty creations) a dead businessman by a computer screen, penetrated by a tree growing from the ground and a Ronald McDonald figure with a bag on it’s head, oblivious to the pile of waste created by the fast food industry.

In many ways, we can see resemblance in style and process between Rajovic and street art legend, Banksy who touched minds and souls when he too harnessed a very accessible and public medium (like gifs.) using street walls.

The form hovers between a video and static picture. Its repetitive nature makes it a perfect medium for contemporary artists to make memorable political statements that speak to the more visually receptive generation.

Dina Kelberman

Can blogging be artistic? Can a blog be art?

For Dina Kelberman, it certainly can be.

Dina Kelberman is a Baltimore based artist who works in a wide variety of media. One of these mediums is the web, or more specifically, Tumblr. Kelberman periodically uploads batches of images or videos, which are displayed in a orderly manner on her blog. Together, they form a rather strange collection of images, ranging from photographs of egg yolks to those of knitted fruits. At first glance, Kelberman’s process or blog space is not unlike other Tumblrs. She seems to be doing exactly what other Tumblr users do. Upload pictures they have some sort of connection with onto their blogs, but both her process and blog deviate from the other Tumblr tendencies in significant ways.

While most Tumblr blogs are archives of some sort, Kelberman’s is a collection of very specific images. They are united through visual similarities. Images and videos posted on her blog share similarities in form, colour or composition with at least one other post on her blog. Furthermore, these images are found on the same platform - Google Image Search. ‘I’m Google’ was born out of the artists tendency to spend long hours exploring google image searches and collecting the photos she found beautiful. The presents this experience in a visual form. Kelberman’s Tumblr clearly highlights the manner in which the internet allows for us to drift from one topic or object to another, just based on a simple (possibly visual) connection.

Interestingly, ‘I’m Google’ is coded differently from other Tumblr blogs as well. Upon clicking a post, visitors would be taken to a page hosted by Google. Kelberman guides her audiences to the the very search facility that helped her find the images in the first place, encouraging her audiences to partake in the process themselves. The linked page also clarifies the possible original source and context for the visitor, allowing them to understand the images on their own terms as well.

Kelberman’s carefully constructed space and self-conscious reflection on the act of exploring and collecting images on the internet is key in separating this blog from others on Tumblr. Art or not, it is certainly an interesting online space and we can’t wait to see what the artist uploads onto it next.

Ying Gao

The garments designed by Ying Gao are situated in the technological rather than textile realm. She creates fashion that is interactive and conceptual, challenging hierarchical boundaries within the art world and developing hybrid discourses of culture.

‘[No]where [Now]here’ is a project featuring two interactive dresses using photoluminescent thread and imbedded eye tracking technology, is activated by spectators' gaze, inspired by the essay entitled "Esthétique de la disparition" (The aesthetic of disappearance), by Paul Virilio (1979):

"Absence often occurs at breakfast time – the tea cup dropped, then spilled on the table being one of its most common consequences. Absence lasts but a few seconds, its beginning and end are sudden. However closed to outside impressions, the senses are awake. The return is as immediate as the departure, the suspended word or movement is picked up where it was left off as conscious time automatically reconstructs itself, thus becoming continuous and free of any apparent interruption."

A photograph is said to be “spoiled” by blinking eyes – here however, the concept of presence and of disappearance are questioned, as the experience of chiaroscuro (clarity/obscurity) is achieved through an unfixed gaze.

These are dresses and art objects existing in the real world, transforming the wearer’s waking and walking life into an artistic statement.

Carol Milne

These intricate sculptures by Seattle based artist, Carol Milne are pure textural illusions fabricated in glass but made to look like knitted wool.  Strands of glass are intertwined to form the beginnings of a garment and looped around a knitting needle, sometimes the sculptor even includes some uncanny human hands, which knits itself into existence. The creations knitted in glass seem beyond the bounds of possibility.

Influenced by the tedious lost wax method (which was the go-to-way of producing bronze sculptures in the Renaissance era) Milne first produces her sculpture in wax that is then encased in a hard material which is powerfully heat-resistant so that the wax can melt out using hot steam. This results in an empty cavity or mold for the pieces of room temperature glass to melt in at 1,400 to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the type of glass. It can then take up to several weeks for the glass to cool.

Finally, the artist must carefully chip and dust away to reveal her marvellous sculpture. A process definitely not recommended for the impatient!

Mag + Art

Tumblr project magplusart by Eisen Bernardo appropriates paintings from the past by perfectly inserting fashion and celebrity magazine covers from the now into the aged compositions. 

Each magazine photo and painting are chosen with delicate precision so that colours, angles and patterns match the illusion.  Often images reinsert celebrity faces into the paintings of an artist's muse indicating a long evolving history of celebrity culture. Sometimes the images forge bridges between icons throughout the ages including a clever linkage between the iconic portrait of power, Hyacinthe Riguard's 'Louis XIV' painted in 1701 and a contemporary Vogue cover of an androgynous female model wearing designs from legendary fashion house, Coco Chanel who both paved the way for female fashion designers and helped bring trousers into the world of womenswear: "I gave women a sense of freedom," she once said. "I gave them back their bodies: bodies that were drenched in sweat, due to fashion's finery, lace, corsets, underclothes, padding.".

These reinterpretations remind us of the unbreakable bonds between popular culture, fine art and history. Here our fascinations and obsessions throughout time are literally translated into an overlap of generations, eras and movements.

'New Portraits' by Richard Prince

Currently on show at the Gagosian Gallery, New York is a series of controversial Instagram portraits by social media troll/artist, Richard Prince. The six feet by four feet inkjet canvases are of someone else’s Instagram page featuring salacious material including young girls posing semi-naked, taking provocative selfies.

His true authorship lies in the comment thread below each image, adding layers to the already unsettling photos and revealing the relationships between the artist and his subjects in a way that viewers are historically so rarely exposed to.  Under the titillating images, his Terry-Richardson-cross-Reddit-troll comments are crude and disconcerting. Is this his real voice? Or is this a made-up character to demonstrate the disturbing mingling of illicit behaviours, online personalities and social media?

Prince taps into the narcissistic and carefully curated self-documentation of our vulnerable personal lives and identities but also raises questions of privacy, copyright, appropriation and exploitation in our digital age.

Maria Aparicio Puentes

Using black and white photography as a backdrop for geometrical shapes with colourful threads, Maria Aparicio Puentes makes embroidery edgy and cool. Taking inspiration from the architecture that she studied and was surrounded by, she brings to her compositions a true awareness and sensitivity of space, hence the theme running throughout her work: people and their relationships to their environments.  Threads superimposed onto photographs are like our own memories we superimpose onto reality itself. The strangest thing to inspire a piece of work for Puentes: “The strangest thing... ruining a big job, after weeks of work, by knocking a bottle of water on it. It was a strange feeling, of loss and of infinite sadness.”

Magical Contamination

Microbiologist Antoine Bridier-Nahmias brings us a hidden beauty found in his collection of experiments on his Tumblr account. A working collaboration with nature, these biological hap-hazards create stunning patterns and shapes that would envy any graphic designer. A textural palette of dusky pinks, blues and greens clouds over the clinical canvas of a plastic petri dish on a lab table. He describes his works as magical contaminations noting that there is no secret ingredient, just random reactions of mould, bacteria and yeasts and their varied characteristics. Under Antoine’s watchful eye, the process takes at least fifteen days to mature and develop. They are in fact, life forms documented at a precise moment in their existence through photography. This fusion of art and science celebrates human curiosity and wonder but also reveals a human desire to contain, refine and control the natural world and its processes.

Zack Seckler

Zack Seckler’s aerial images of Botswana wildlife exceed our expectation of the normal reportage in essence of ‘National Geographic’ terms. Salvadore Dali once said that his paintings are more of self-coloured photographs, here we see the opposite as the artist describes his experience: ‘Being above the ground at such low elevations, and having the ability to precisely manoeuvre, was like gliding over an enormous painting and being able to create brushstrokes at will.’

To tend towards a monochromatic palette, gives each piece a focus, but doesn’t limit our eye to drop and fix to a singular point. Each time we review it, our perspective changes, sometimes more on the animals, vegetations, or to gaze longingly on the ripples against these salt ponds. It questions you, as if it is a state of mind.

Nadia Wicker

When someone has a clear vision and is in control of the whole production of the image, everything just seems more complete, with an apparent style. Nadia Wicker is a French artist who combines her photography abilities and makeup talent, to create great stories through the extension of a portrait. Those who willingly participate in her creative practice, become the lucky few that have the chance to experience the meticulous process of producing something higher. Her works are no longer viewed as fashion, as each piece speaks more than merely a product.

Images are from Wicker's 'Ursides' series.