8oinks

Eric Testroete is a 3d artist that created an extra head for himself. (via)

check out his site, to see how it’s made

Randolph Harmes, Born Omaha, Nebraska, 1944. Served in Vietnam, Army.

My masks mark a change in my interest from the appearance of Indian art to the purposes for which it was used. They show little physical resemblence to Indian masks, but they represent, to a degree, the assimilation of Indian liturgical mask-making traditions. They deal more with feelings than with specific experiences. Dulce Bellum Inexpertis translates as “war is sweet to those who have not experienced it.” the title is taken directly from a sixteenth-century poem by George Gascoigne. It compares the realities of war with the myths of war. I also think of Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decoru, Est“. It is concerned with anger and rage: anger at being used, lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of Litton Industries, Honeywell, and Bankamerica.

The Ritual Suicide Mask deals more woth guilt: guilt over surviving, guilt over having participated, in any manner, in the war. Making the masks was a way for me to put some of this behind me—kind of primal screams whose purpose is to expose, examine, and then expunge or exorcize these old ghosts. A focus these works share with traditional masks is transformation: transformation of the maker/wearer, transformation of the mundane to the mystical and vice versa.

Stephen J Shanabrook is a New York and Moscow-based artist who uses food both as medium and metaphor. Using commonplace materials and forms generally seen as benign indulgences— sweets, chocolate, and cotton candy — he brings about disturbing new meanings, exploring the intersections of desire, violence, permanence, and death.

In the 1990s, Shanabrook, who spent his youth working at a chocolate factory, went to morgues in Russia and the US and made molds from the fatal wounds of anonymous people, cast dark chocolate pieces, placing them into luxury chocolate boxes. The series of works, which Shanabrook described as “very close to the edge, the forbidden place for artists,” are essentially representations of death or what one critic called “bonbons of mortality.” (Read more at eat me daily)

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu are two of China’s most controversial artists, renown for working with extreme materials such as human fat tissue, live animals, and baby cadavers to deal with issues of perception, death, and the human condition. In Old Person’s Home Sun & Peng present a shocking scene of an even more grotesque kind. Hilariously wicked, their satirical models of decrepit OAPS look suspiciously familiar to world leaders, long crippled and impotent, left to battle it out in true geriatric style. Placed in electric wheelchairs, the withered, toothless, senile, and drooling, are set on a collision course for harmless ‘skirmish’ as they roll about the gallery at snail’s pace, crashing into each other at random in a grizzly parody of the U.N.dead. (via)

Jin Young Yu: My works are about the invisible people. I wanted to talk about the stories of the people who said, I definitely don’t know them, but they knew me so well. To me, that person was a transparent existence that neither did or didn’t exist.
My works feign expressionless faces. They are holding their tears back and swallowing them, or they try to put on a cool face despite the traces of tears on their faces. Or simply, they seem to have something hiding behind the hurried pretense of their expressionless faces. Looks on their faces that don’t make people approach them with ease - a subtle look of suspicion and caution keeps others from easily approaching them. (read more)

Walter Martin was born in Norfolk, Virginia and Paloma Munoz was born in Madrid, Spain. They have been collaborating since 1993 to re-imagine the snow globe, taking sentimental keepsakes and making them sinister. As objects, the globes are kitschy as the real things; as narratives, they’re absurd and callous. It’s winter wonderland gone terribly wrong. (via)

Cakeland by Scott Hove is a sculptural installation resembling a collection of perfect delicious cakes– wall mounted, hanging and standing– a walk-through cake environment complete with its own lighting. It is a sweet refuge, an endless kaleidoscopic landscape of cake, a respite from the grinding realities of the outside world. (via sweet station)

Take a virtual tour inside the shrine at Hi-Fructose.

Benedetta Mori Ubaldini: The pieces i do in chicken-wire come from a childlike side of my imagination. What i love is to create installastions as three dimensional pictures. The simplicity of this material contains the magical power of transparency, that is capable of giving each piece the lightness of an apparition, a ghostlike quality, like a trace from a memory.

My balloon pieces are what i fondly call ‘ugly art’. They deal humorously with sexuality, body issues and everyday life.

Patricia Piccinini’s worlds are full of youngsters, including pink and blue truck babies promising to tell where grown-up trucks come from.

Patricia Piccinini’s exhibition at Artium explained by herself

The Gathering

Jamie Mccartney is an artist who is hard to define. “I blame my degree in Experimental Studio Art,” he explains, “I’m still experimenting”. He admits to being a sculptor but shuns any closer definition. “I make things,” he says prosaically. This mock humility belies a strong and, some would say eccentric, character with a definite je ne sais quoi. Jamie is a maverick, a polymath, and a self-confessed enfant terrible. What he makes is causing quite a stir. (via)

Have a look at - Pussycat - The Spice of Life - Shuttle Cocks and Ammonight

Levi van Veluw, born in 1985 Hoevelaken, is a multidisciplinary artist, he lives and works in the Netherlands.

With the 4-piece series ’Landscapes’ Levi van Veluw reinterprets the traditional landscape painting, removing plots of grass, clusters of trees, babbling brooks from their intimate 2 dimensional formats and transposing them onto the 3 dimensional contours of his own face. Thus a fresh twist is given to the obsession inherent in the romantic landscape of recreating the world and simultaneously being part of it. The romantic landscape and self-portrait genres are combined as a means of re-examination. (via)

The Wellcome Collection’s summer exhibition explores the fascinating world of anatomical models, which had a dual historical role to both titillate and educate. Displays of anatomical models were so popular in 19th century London that there were seven dedicated establishments, drawing in huge crowds every week. Curators at the Wellcome are hoping that the curious, grotesque and sometimes exquisite models will hold the same intrigue for a 21st century audience.
a chronological journey: Exquisite Bodies, The Wellcome Collection, London, until October 18 2009 Preview Images

How to make a wax model

i created this piece out of an antique frame from 1910 - removed the insides, added mirrors and sawed in each flower. i used a photograph of an original tribal shrunken head (from a museum in ecuador) and placed it into my sculpture. Now i’m looking for the right title for this creation, suggestions are welcome!

Shirin K. A. Winiger

Robert Gligorov was born in 1959 in Kriva Palanca, Macedonia. He lives and works in Milan, Italy.
Gligorov’s work attempts to shock the viewer. Confronting a society accustomed to sophisticated and extreme forms of visual communication, Gligorov amplifies the shock value of his work in order to compete with the deluge of images that cloud our visual field.

Raúl Lemesoff is the creator of the “Massive Education Weapon“. A sculpture/car that contains thousands of books that are given away to children in Buenos Aires. Bars, shantytowns, rural houses and poor districts are just some of the destinations at which Lemesoff’s peculiar vehicle gives away books. (Read more)

This is a scrabble piece for Michelle Owen’s Don’t Forget To Breathe collection.

Julian LaVerdiere, Continuous Profile

According to the American psychologist Paul Ekman, there are only a few ‘basic’ facial expressions which are worldwide the same, independent on culture.

These expressions are: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise and, although less clear, contempt.

Robert The, born in Carmel California, 1961. Studied philosophy and mathematics (via)

Fernando Gutierrez, aka Huanchaco, develops the story of Superchaco, a decadent Peruvian superhero trying to get to grips with the Chaotic City, Lima. Influenced by comics and pop culture, Huanchaco embodies the worst aspects of the Chaotic City. Devoid of any qualm, he is lazy, obnoxious and vulgar. Superchaco doesn’t have any particular talent nor superpower. Yet, authorities call him, children look up to him and women fall for him. (via sweet station)

also take a look at Superchacos fabulous oil painted stories:

Peripetics is a fantastic experimental CG short. The “piece in six acts” was made by London-based Zeitguised for the opening exhibition at the Zirkel Gallery. (via cartoonbrew, thanks guys!)

Megan Brain from Los Angeles creates amazing paper sculpture art and has a cool blog.

Art Cubes by Elsa Mora: Happy New Year Download

Bluebottle flies, spider, nylon, lead, acrylic

Making a killing 2006

In this interactive sculpture, 22,528 recycled computer keycaps and 192 custom keycaps are embedded into a continuous textile. The keys spell out a line-by-line transcript of the email correspondence between the artist and fabricators regarding the creation of the artwork. As a result, the sculpture documents its own making. The project speaks to the pervasiveness of email in our lives while commenting on the fact that, despite the modern technology of virtual communication, our written language is linked to the tactile sensation of moving our fingers over an outmoded typewriter system. (read more)

Hello! I am a member of www.crashroots.com and wanted to give this film, considered a jewel of  art!

I leave the link on youtube where they can see the whole complete set:

SIMON SCHAMA’S POWER OF ART

Let them advance as part of the videos … Here, Bernini:

Sorry for my English … does not write very well