Artist of the week 41: Jonathan Horowitz

Jonathan Horowitz’s recycled pop culture footage targets contemporary politics – and really packs a punch, discovers Jessica Lack

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 May 2009 17.06 BST

Art of disaster … Horowitz’s carbon-neutral film, Apocalypto Now, is a montage of old movie and media clips that reflects on current cultural and political issues. Photograph: Sadie Coles HQ

The art of Jonathan Horowitz finds unlikely connections between pop culture and politics. Using a cast of celebrities, films and songs, the New York-based artist sends up the most egregious examples of culture being manipulated for political ends, creating works of art that range from the acerbic to the poetically sublime.

(…) Read full article here at guardian.co.uk

I saw this and was interested in the ideas bhind much of Horowitz’ work. It made me think of both the aesthetics and the discourse behind those cinematic/photographic aesthetics that Emily is exploring in her work, as well as ideas of truth and reality that are relevant to Alex’s work. So have a look guys and see what you think!

Storm Thorgerson

Click the photogrpah for more images by the designer,

of some of the wonderful album covers he has created over the last few decades. I think they are great examples showing the commercial photographic industry meeting fine arts discourse of photography head-on. Wonderful examples for students I teach in Design and students I teach in the Bachelor of Fine arts and Bachelor of Visual Arts.
I particularly enjoyed the captions by the designer with each image explaining where the idea developed from in conjunction with the clients, and the original inspiration behind them. Great!

Umphrey McGee – The Bottom Half (2007)
Storm says: ‘This design was first devised for Jane’s Addiction who rejected the rough in favour of something else (they clearly don’t know their onions). The idea was about female sexual allure and sexual contrariness, and came from Alice in Wonderland via Toulouse Lautrec, French can can, red/black striped corsets, Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge or Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’ 2007

Photograph: Storm Thorgerson/Taken By Storm

I just have to post this story about a new billboard campaign in New Zealand to encourage drivers to ‘drive to the conditions’. It’s a visual treat (and one not without its critics…of course.)

How they work:
Billboards with rain sensors “bleed” red liquid at the first sign of rain.
The liquid transforms the faces on the billboard from innocent to blood-stained to illustrate the dangers of ignoring wet road conditions. Full story on stuff.co.nz

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The boards, three of which have been installed beside Papakura and Franklin District Council roads, are designed to ooze a red biodegradable food dye as soon as it starts raining.
The red dye is then collected in a tray to be pumped back through the system. Full story at nzherald.co.nz

I’m Planning on going to a talk at the University of Otago this evening about Digital Fiction.

April 30
Dr Alice Bell, Sheffield Hallam University, and David Ciccoricco, “Digital Fiction: It’s About More than Just Sticking a Fork in It,” Commerce 221, 4 pm

It made me think of this video:

Carousel, directed by Adam Berg (Stink Digital)

Created entirely by Stink Digital, this new interactive campaign promotes Philips latest entrant into the television market, the CINEMA 21:9.

“This epic film is the centrepiece of the project. On its own, it clocks in at a (totally coincidental) two minutes and 19 seconds, but Berg conceived it to work as an endless loop. Visitors to the microsite therefore have the option to spin through the films single take shot repeatedly, to stop on a specific frame, or to watch it at the preordained speed. The film also contains embedded hotspots, which, when triggered, transport the viewer seamlessly from the heavily posted film to a behind-the-scenes version of the same shot. This constant moving between two layers of reality proved one of the projects biggest and most ambitious production challenges.”

‘It’s a living sculpture – you can see people watching television’

‘In Germany, where I’m from, we have completely different cities. In London, you don’t have many high-rise blocks, so yours are very visible. But what is also interesting to me as an artist is that they provide visibility – you can look out over the city from them. So this is both a photograph of a high-rise, and a photograph from one.’

Full article here

Beautiful!

Timescapes is a motion picture company dedicated to pushing the artistic boundries of timelapse and outdoor cinematography, with a particular emphasis on night timelapse.

Timescapes Timelapse: Learning to Fly from Tom @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

“Now here’s a real poser for you

Well, you probably haven’t made it past a major in photography class to have heard, studied, viewed and/or been exposed to work by Cindy Sherman. Here we have an article that isn’t all too keen on her latest work currently being exhibited in Berlin and the UK.

Cindy Sherman raids the dressing-up box again, this time in pursuit of the wrinkled and wealthy. But there’s little beneath the surface.” FULL ARTICLE HERE

And again, some more images if you click the image below. Thanks guardian.co.uk!

“This is a collection of Cindy Sherman’s latest photographs, some of which are on show at Sprüth Magers London until 27 May 2009. The artist, now 55, has acted as her own model throughout her career. Here, she is thinking about wrinkles, and in these images she has painted latex on her skin to create lines more dramatic than her own. She has covered them with orange pancake and rouge to create a meditation on ageing – and what happens when past-it skin and cash collide.”

In my usual foray into the British press I see that the latest stir around Madonna and her adoption of a foreign child has turned to the technique of faux sepia-toning digital images in order to create a specific melancholy, or romance. We (who study art and photography) are aware of the power of changing the same image from colour, to black & white, to sepia etc. but here is a rather lovely article written by UK documentary and art photographer, Martin Parr about its use in this particular case:

Madonna has released an image of herself holding Mercy, the Malawian baby she hopes to adopt. It’s in sepia. Why?

Choosing sepia is all to do with trying to make the image look romantic and idealistic. It’s sort of a soft version of propaganda. MORE

What is even more lovely is that the Guardian have then been inspired to collate several sepia images from the week’s news to showcase the effect it has… Click the image below to see more.

I went up to Auckland a few week’s ago to visit friends and the Auckland art festival (09) that was currently on, thinking that an abundance of art in one city had to be a good thing…right? …well not so much – I was pretty underwhlemed to be honest (but thank you sooo much to anna and millie for hanging out with me while i trudged them from gallery to gallery!).

The highlight for me was stumbling up to the Anna Miles Gallery to discover there was work by Darren Glass on display.

from Left: NGAURUHOE AM 1 (2008) C-Type print from ‘Telephoto Slit’ Cam; TONGARIRO CROSSING (LOOKING WEST) (2008) Selenium toned contact print on fibre-based paper.

The first thing that struck me was the silence of the work. And then the tactillity of the prints (real, light-sensitive images, ceated with chemicals!). The work of course, hinges on you knowing how they were created, and in fact knowing that Darren Glass explores the world of the pin-hole camera further than anyone else I’ve ever known. Below are two images of cameras that he has used, and displayed before (I saw a couple of these and the beautiful photographs of them in situ in Wellington at the Prospect 2006 show), which allude to the silence and the stillness of the creation of the image.

From Left: LOG, 11 aperture pinhole camera (2003) Cardboard tube, aluminium, brass, cardboard, bark; LEMNISCATE, 24 aperture pinhole camera for 300MM X 5.3M ROLL FILM (2006) Laminated cardboard and wood veneer; COASTLINE, 34 aperture pinhole camera for 70 x 1500m m roll film (2004) Design based on a remembered stretch of Northland coastline

I love that last image!

See further work here at the Anna Miles Gallery Website