5.15 million commuters travel by subway daily in New York alone. Still, 8.7 million riders navigate Tokyo by train, while countless of stray dogs trek across town using Moscow’s mass transit. The underground, with its familiar stairwells, turnstiles, and tiled vaults, has long been integrated within our urban geography. Whereas the subway marquee, like Guimard’s iconic Art Nouveau signage for Paris, and the subway station, such as Harry Weese’s splendidly Brutalist vaults spanning Washington D.C.’s underworld, not to mention a fair share of anonymous graffiti were once the extent of underground expressionism, the subway train itself has now proved a vehicle (yeah…) for artistic and commercial outlet. Click through for our favorite subway trains!
Most recently, Chicago’s Art on Track festival transformed a subway train into a movable art gallery of multiple installations by over 50 artists, from thematic rooms to choreographed performance pieces. The standout project, the Mobile Garden Car by noisivelvet, covered one of the train car with a thick carpet of greenery, including plants and sod donated by local . The moving greenscape looped around Chicago’s downtown for 5 hours, inviting commuters to sit on seats lined with bushy lawngrass and potted plants or stand amid tall grass and hanging ivy.
Subway Gallery?
Via: Architizer
Drug Fruit
"In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices."
Kate MacDowell
MacDowell's well crafted works are thought provoking and are clever takes on worldly issues we face today. Below is a quote from her artist statement
Via: Kate McDowell
SAVAGE BEAUTY
MCQUEEN'S MASTER WORKS
"Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual. When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers."
Via: Thaeger
The 20th Anniversary of the label in 2013 is now planned to bring the exhibition to London ...
Who did not have the wherewithal or the time to the estate of unique designer watch live in New York, and not want to wait another 2 years, can get all 100 designs for home and marvel at the fanciful costumes in peace. Because fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø held firmly the exhibits in the Exhibition Catalogue for posterity.
Inigo Manglano-Ovalle
Interesting and massive sculpture titled "Dirty Bomb." You can take a wild guess what the commentary can be about. The artist is represented by Donald Young Gallery, Chicago, Galeria Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid and Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin.
MOST
STYLISH
NEW YORKER
The stylist’s bold fashion sense has us seeing red; we show you to get her look.
Photograph: Zenith Richards
Valissa Yoe, 27; fashion stylist, makeup artist and DJ (valissayoe.com); East Village
Her personal style: “If I may quote good ol’ Coco Chanel, ‘A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.’ It’s versatile, showstopping and super vixen all with a touch of class. People say I look like Jessica Rabbit, so I play that up a bit too! Overall, I believe personal style is all about the confidence you have and exude.”
Her inspirations: “The originators and innovators who create these pulsating city streets, clubs and galleries. Leigh Bowery, Andy Warhol and Alexander McQueen have been overwhelming influences in my life.”
Favorite stores: “Seven New York is at the top of my list. It showcases the most progressive independent designers from around the world. The store’s designed with an art-gallery feel, so you want to touch, analyze and own every piece. Jeffrey New York is the boutique version of a high-end department store. The designer selection and service is impeccable. Patricia Field was one of the first stores I visited when coming to NYC. It’s a Disneyland of all things glitz and glam you will see on celebrities, club kids and tastemakers alike. Patricia Field has also been a great influence in my career as a fashion stylist.”
Her signature accessories: “My fiery red hair and handcrafted silver ‘V’ necklace my mother gave to me.”
Favorite designers: “Christian Civera is the kind of designer that has a profound understanding of the body and emotion. His silks, patterns and drapes make a woman feel like a woman! Jules Kim, the jewelry designer behind Bijules NYC (bijulesnyc.com), is a visionary sticking to her aesthetic and being respected by every relevant, trendsetting woman you can think of. She makes your wildest dreams a reality, dipped in gold. Kerin Rose’s (a-morir.com) ‘go big’ attitude and glam appeal to no end, making her an eyewear designer to the stars. Eye-catching to say the least, Kerin and I are mistaken for each other on a daily basis!”
How she describes New York style: “It’s about functionality, sensuality, sophistication and individualism. New Yorkers encompass cultures from around the world and we make it our own.”
How her style has evolved through the years: “It’s evolved as I have evolved as a person. I lived in the suburbs of New York with a highly artistic family, moved to NYC, studied at FIT, designed for Kai Milla (kaimilla.com), and now work as a fashion stylist, makeup artist and DJ in the city. Every step in my life journey has created me!”
Via: Time Out New York
NEW YORKER
STYLISH
MOST
Kazuki Guzmán
High Fashion Bananas
These banana as object artworks are incredible. I also think I like the idea that the work itself rots away and it can only exist afte by photograph. There's something really human about that.
As he says on his site “I enjoy taking jokes seriously, until they become ‘art’ in one way or another. My artworks are often the accidental outcome of playful interactions between the materials and myself.”
Artist Bio:
In a way, even my name ‘Kazuki Guzmán’ is an important reflection of my unique heritage. My father is a macho Chilean and my mother is a delicate lady from Japan. Because of them, my work reflects not only the things I love, but also my most essential character traits. My cultural background, my personal experiences, my family, friends, and hobbies are common themes shown in my pieces; the convergence of their disparate origins is an important part of what makes my work dynamic. I take confidence in my art and use it as a way of expressing my feelings, as well as my appreciation and love for the people, places, and things that make me Kazuki Guzmán.
Like my own history, my media is never fixed; my artworks range from large installations that are activated by the space or the viewers, to series of sculptures made from everyday objects. I consider my art practice as part of a playful exploration of ideas and materials. The notion of ‘play’ is at the core of my art practice. I enjoy taking jokes seriously, until they become ‘art’ in one way or another. My artworks are often the accidental outcome of playful interactions between the materials and myself. I equally enjoy allowing my materials to define the context of my artwork, and conversely, the challenge of letting the context of my work dictate the material execution. Most of my inspirations arise from mundane events: a trip to the antique store, revisiting children’s books and toys, or buying groceries. Most importantly, I strive for intricacy and exquisite craftsmanship in my work, while focusing on not loosing my very whimsical sense of humor and play.
Via: Kazuki Guzman
Isabeli Fontana
Isabeli Fontana photographed by Marcin Tyszka for Vogue Mexico September 2011
Via: Zac-Fashion
Bubbles of glass
Using highly innovative materials such as NASA ’s dichroic glass, Bubbling Up examines the fragility of the Earth’s atmosphere and ecosystems that appear like a bubble, on the constant verge of collapse. Sometimes fickle and ever elusive, Bubbling Up highlights the ongoing need to quantify ecological concerns. Every day there are thousands of toxic gases bubbling up in the atmosphere. In the age of heightened ecological awareness Bubbling Up poses the question, is it possible to view a beautiful sunset and not wonder if the sky is set ablaze with such unique colours because of the toxic pollutants in the air reacting with the atmosphere? In the space that surrounds us, what is bubbling up?
Jasmine Targett is bubbling it up.
Source: Jasmine Targett
Photos of the Artists As Young Men
From the very beginning of his mad, ecstatic, always-experimenting career, Robert Rauschenberg was looking at photographs. His hungry eye absorbed them; then they reappeared in his paintings, sculptures, and prints, and especially in his combines—the new form he invented, neither painting nor sculpture but a visual-material manifestation of abstract poetry. Rauschenberg appropriated photos from books, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, other artists, art-history books, anyplace. He cut them up, used them whole, pieced them back together, whatever. Given his fecundity—and a spate of pesky copyright cases brought against him—it’s no surprise to learn he also took pictures himself. Lots of them.
Yet there are surprises to be found in Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs: 1949–1962, an exhibition and book of 167 images from the years in which the artist invented his point-and-shoot style. Rauschenberg turns out to have been a natural, breezily brilliant with the camera, never more so than when shooting his circle of artist friends. We see Cy Twombly in Rome, dwarfed by an enormous Roman sculpture; a handsome Jasper Johns in his studio in 1955 next to his masterpiece Flag; an otherworldly Merce Cunningham crouched tigerlike in a motion until then unseen. These are closely observed windows into the nascent postwar art world. (The self-portraits of Rauschenberg—he was dashingly handsome, a young rake—with his work are no less revelatory.) There are images of grazing horses, landscapes, furniture, you name it.
by: Jerry Saltz
Via: NyMag.com
