Float

Studio Drift
Shen Shaomin
Julien Berthier
Nils Guadagnin
Marie Lorenz
Marc Quinn
Žilvinas Kempinas
Tomas Kleiner and Marco Biermann
Robert Breer
Ebru
Mungo Thompson
Andrea Zittel
Thom Kubli
A.A.Murakami
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Trevor Plagen
Misha Kahn
Martin Creed
Ahmet Ögüt
Robert Smithson
Desmond Leung
KATSU
Vincent Leroy
Object Design League
Ichiro Endo

 

_____________

‘Studio Drift‘s Drifter is an installation consisting of one floating concrete block. The sculpture floats and moves at slow speed on a controlled three-dimensional path. With great accuracy, it creates a performance in its space.’

 

_____________

‘Shen Shaomin‘s Withdrawn from the fish market presents an abundant fish stall selling numerous carp. Produced in large numbers by teams in his studio, each fish is hyper-realistically painted, fitted with glassy eyes, and animated by a small internal mechanism that mimics breathing. Shaomin has shown this body of work numerous times. Just like their living counterparts, Shen wants his carp to migrate, multiply, and infiltrate new environments, appearing in galleries, museums, and art fairs across countries and contexts.’

Watch it here

 

_____________

‘Artist and designer Julien Berthier has been sailing around the globe in “Love Love”, a weird ship that looks like it’s about to sink. He actually cut a sailboat in half, sealed it with fiberglass and fitted it with two motors, which make it fully functional, despite its capsizing look. The 35-year-old says his ever-sinking sailing craft is perfectly safe and easy to maneuver, especially in calm waters. He admits he has put the coast guard and harbor masters on full alert a few times, after people alerted them about a sinkings ship. Berthier, who says he “wanted to freeze the moment just a few seconds before the boat disappears, creating an endless vision of the dramatic moment”, has sailed his sinking boat on many trips through famous harbors like London’s Canary Wharf, and France’s Normandy.’ — Propaganda

 

_____________

‘French artist Nils Guadagnin’s “The Hoverboard” is a project born in 2008 for an exhibition named “Back To the future”. This work is a copy of the hoverboard from the movie Back to the Future II. Integrated into the board and the plinth is an electromagnetic system which levitates the board. A laser system stabilises the object in the air. “In the making of this work, I was thinking about different ways of presenting sculpture. In fact it’s a reflexion on the multiple possibilities of how to give a sculpture full spatial autonomy,” explains Guadagnin.’ — newslite.tv

 

____________

‘The first thing that comes to mind when you walk into Marie Lorenz’s exhibit Flow Pool at Recess in SoHo is a very neglected backyard pool. The pool is covered with a black tarp and the water is teeming with debris — things Lorenz found at the Jamaica Bay. According to the press release by Recess, “Flow Pool is a two-month long project that proposes the titular structure as a site of investigating questions ranging from the practical to the poetic.”’ — Not Your Chelsea Art

 

____________

‘marc quinn’s immense artwork “planet” 2008) is a seven month old sleeping child fabricated from painted bronze and steel, designed to give the impression of being weightless and suspended in mid-air – despite the fact it weighs seven tons and 10 metres in length, rendering it an engineering feat.’ — designboom

See it installed here

 

_________________

‘Somehow, the air currents created by two industrial-strength fans turn the two loops of videotape in Žilvinas Kempinas’s Double O into a living, dancing sculpture, performing tirelessly for hours. Double O is very much a drawing in space, a mass of lines activating the real world rather than a two-dimensional surface.’ — MoMA

 

____________

‘Unterwasserlebensentwurf (2018) is a 7 day lasting live performance of Tomas Kleiner and Marco Biermann, living in a water filled container.’

 

______________

‘”The Floats”—or motorized mollusks—that artist Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. They glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter. The Floats produce what should be named ”mechanical uncertainty”.’ — Musee d’art contemporain de Bordeaux

 

_____________

The PLAY Current of Contemporary Art (1969)

 

_____________

‘Ebru (water marbling) is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily water and then transforming this pattern to paper. The special tools of the trade are brushes of horsehair bound to straight rose twigs, a deep tray made of unknotted pinewood, natural earth pigments, cattle gall and tragacanth. It is believed to be invented in the thirteenth century Turkistan. This decorative art then spread to China, India and Persia and Anatolia. Seljuk and Ottoman calligraphers and artists used marbling to decorate books, imperial decrees, official correspondence and documents. New forms and techniques were perfected in the process and Turkey remained the center of marbling for many centuries. Up until the 1920’s, marblers had workshops in the Beyazit district of Istanbul, creating for both the local and European market, where it is known as Turkish marble paper.’ — turkishculture.org

 

_____________

Mungo Thompson Levitating Mass, 2012
4th of July Parade Float

 

_____________

‘In Yona Friedman’s project Imagine, Having Improvised Volumes ‘Floating’ In Space, Like Balloons, Friedman was looking for design methods that would enable the inhabitants to participate in a trial and error planning process and the adaptation of housing structures to their needs. “I am against any preplanning,” he stated in an interview with Archdaily; “It is the trial and error process that pushes forward in any technology … A plan conceived on paper may be a good idea, but that’s all it is. Everything needs to be tested and improved all the time.”

 

_____________

“Dancing on the Ceiling: Art & Zero Gravity” is a unique group exhibition where contemporary artists explore and recreate the condition of weightlessness on earth. During this year’s event, Berlin-based sound artist Thom Kubli exhibited his new work called “FLOAT! Thinktank 21,″ which allows the users to experience zero gravity by soaking in salt water and listening to a new audio piece by Kubli for 5 minutes. This process is followed by 40 minutes of soothing silence. The installation piece features an egg-shaped flotation with a custom underwater sound system that plays audio recordings. According to Kubli, “Zero gravity can be read as a condition where prevailing reference models are suspended. “The condition of zero gravity might be evoked by willingly refusing a social and political model.”‘ — bornrich.com

 

____________

‘Known for their sensory-rich installations, A.A. Murakami‘s Floating World explores the connection between humanity and nature, often working with ephemeral and unpredictable elements such as light, fog, scents, and plasma, as well as generative codes. Their work draws inspiration from ancient cultures, where they sought to emulate and honor the natural world, evoking a deeper awareness of the transience of human existence.’

 

_______________

‘In Rafael Lozano’s “Tape Recorders”, rows of motorised measuring tapes record the amount of time that visitors stay in the installation. As a computerised tracking system detects the presence of a person, the closest measuring tape starts to project upwards. When the tape reaches around 3m high it crashes and recoils back.’ — bitforms gallery

 

____________

‘Trevor Paglen’s $1.5 million satellite has been lost in space—and Donald Trump’s 35-day government shutdown in January 2020 could be to blame. The pioneering artist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient successfully launched his ambitious installation, Orbital Reflector, into space at the end of last year, but prolonged radio silence from the government during the unforeseen shutdown meant that engineers missed the window to complete the deployment of the work, a 100-foot-long diamond-shaped mylar balloon that could be tracked from earth.

‘Officials at the Nevada Museum of Art, which helped produce the work, confirmed in a statement that the work cannot presently be tracked.

‘The ambitious installation was in development for 10 years. It was launched into space in early December 3 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, along with 64 other satellites that had various utilities. The plan was for it to be delivered 350 miles into the thermosphere—one of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere—before inflating the balloon.

‘It was intended to inflate Orbital Reflector once it drifted away from the cluster of satellites it was released with in order to avoid collision. After that, it was meant to orbit Earth for a few months, where it would be visible from Earth, before being burned up by the atmosphere. A statement from museum officials explains that two unexpected events occurred early on in its journey. The first was that the US Air Force was unable to distinguish between the satellites because there were so many of them, so it was unclear when the package containing Orbital Reflector would be cleared to inflate.

‘The second was that the Federal Communications Commission “was unavailable to move forward quickly due to the US government shutdown.” Before the shutdown, the museum had been working with the FCC to release the balloon at the exact right time for a safe trajectory. Museum officials were waiting for a green light from the federal agency but all communications halted during the shutdown and, by the time communications resumed, the museum’s engineers had lost touch with the satellite.’ — artnet

 

____________

‘The Bellyflop Collection features Misha Kahn’s interpretations on poolside and outdoor entertaining accessories. With the Bellyflop Pool Float, playful meets, well… functional. If you’re into 10/10 bellyflops, that is (hint: we are). The PVC pool float with dichroic film was designed in New York, and made to create a splash everywhere.’ — ProspectNY

 

____________

‘Ahmet Ögüt takes the socialist history of Ghent as the starting point for his contribution to TRACK, which is entitled ‘The Castle of Vooruit’. He concentrates on the Vooruit, the cooperative where the working-class people of Ghent assembled from the end of the nineteenth century until the early 1970s and which ran both a centre for festive occasions and a newspaper. Making reference to ‘Le Chateau des Pyrénées’ (1961) by the Belgian surrealist painter Rene Magritte, Ögüt is sending up a gigantic helium balloon in the shape of Magritte’s floating rock, launched near the Vooruit Arts Centre. He is replacing the mysterious castle on top with a replica of the Vooruit building. Ögüt captures the traces of a set of utopian social ideas in a single surreal image.’ — AOW

 

____________

‘In Half The Air In A Given Space, Martin Creed shows balloons, each with a diameter of 40cm, which as an installation fill half of the gallery space. The gallery can only be entered by uncovering a path, which results in a certain disorientation. Even gallery staff familiar with the architecture can only move intuitively within the exhibition. The spatial perception, especially due to the very limited view of walls, ceiling or floors, leads on the one hand to a location awareness of the viewer within the floating balloons and on the other hand to a claustrophobic restriction.’

 

____________

‘The island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island, shaped by a public art group, a landscape architect, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and various other dedicated conceptual art workers using a 30-by-90-foot flat-decked barge, 10 trees, 3 huge rocks, a bunch of shrubs, rolls of sod, a whole lot of dirt and even more ingenuity.

‘The result, which will began a brief period of daily travels in 2005 along Manhattan’s shores, was much more than just a week’s work. It was the culmination of more than 30 years of sporadic efforts to build the ambitious floating artwork that Mr. Smithson sketched out in a rough drawing three years before he died in a plane crash in 1973, an image that showed a tiny, forested, man-made island being towed by tugboat with the city’s skyline in the distance.

‘Mr. Smithson tried to find backers to build the project, which he called “Floating Island,” during his lifetime but had no luck. In the years after his death, other admirers and artists also tried unsuccessfully to get the project going.

‘The Whitney Museum, which sponsored, “Floating Island” described it as a kind of “anti-‘Gates,’ ” referring to the saffron-colored extravaganza by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that had wound through Central Park during the previous winter.

‘In part this is simply because of the modest scale and cost of the island project – about $200,000, compared with the $21 million said to have been paid to create “The Gates.” It is also because, as public artworks, “The Gates” and “Floating Island” are like a split personality: “The Gates” invited public interaction and was, in effect, completed by it; the island, reflecting Smithson’s intellectual and generally chilly aesthetic, floats off at a distance, inaccessible, inhabited by no one.’ — NYTimes

 

_____________

‘Visitors to Art Central can see Desmond Leung’s VR ink painting titled The DAWN of INNER REALITY at the Parkview Gallery stand. The work uses VR technology in a painterly fashion to expand the concept of a technological singularity – a vast artificial intelligence that will change humanity beyond recognition.’ — Sedition

Watch a simulation here

 

____________

‘Developed by New York graffiti artist, KATSU, who rose to fame in the 1990s by peppering the streets with his iconic skull tag, a spray-paint wielding drone is the latest step in his pursuit to paint bigger than anyone else in the city.

‘“Drones allow me to do what I had always yearned to do,” he told Bard College’s Centre for the Study of the Drone. “I’ve always looked at a building or looked at a canvas and stretched my arms out with my eyes. My eyes have always been able to reach it but my limbs have never been able to touch and reach these spaces.”

‘Lacking go-go-gadget arms, in the past he has used fire extinguishers to blast vast quantities of paint across huge areas, obliterating rivals’ puny tags with building-sized letters. Now he hopes his pet paint-spraying drone will let him get to places others can only dream of reaching.

‘“I have this little video game-inspired fantasy of lying in my bed, sending my drones out my bedroom window,” he said, “having them render my tags all over the city and then flying back home to me, like, in my bed.”’ — The Guardian

 

_____________

‘The ‘Pebble’ installation, created by Vincent Leroy, is a sensory experience. With the mirror effect, Vincent Leroy slows down time. The ground and the horizon slowly disappear. The inflatable structure’s mechanism, uses slow-rotating steel cables.’ — wordless Tech

 

_____________

‘The Balloon Factory functions as a workspace and spectacle at once. Through it, the Object Design League explores methods of producing objects for consumption in a direct way, collapsing fabrication, distribution and purchasing into one space. The designers are replicating a hidden manufacturing process, but more importantly, taking ownership of it. Specially shaped formers dipped into liquid latex, hand-painted, and dried to create unique balloons—a portion of these inflated with helium was given to the public. By making a product by hand that is only known to be made industrially, they locate their practice on the fringes of mass production.’ — domus

 

_____________

Ichiro Endo To the future (2009)

—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks. Julian Cope vs. Nico, I’ll check that out. Cope seems like he’s been quiet for quite a while? Great about the workshop. Tuesdays, nice. So good that your artistry is taking its rightful place in your life again. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I saw Nico live once in a small club in LA around the time of her album ‘The End’. It was mesmerising and gloomy as hell. So you’re free. Max out your freedom while it’s yours to keep. B’day lunch was nice. No mozzarella sticks. I had a bagel w/ cream cheese instead. Not quite the same thing. Yeah, I felt like ‘TEoOS’ had all the ingredients to be a lot of fun, but it just seemed kind of inert. Very strange. Oh well. ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ looks to be awfully fun, dinosaur-wise. Love wondering if you’re excited that there’s a new My Chemical Romance album in the works, G. ** Carsten, I’ll always prefer the ‘Fight Club’ in my head where I was not forced to accept that the protagonists looked and acted like Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Again, whatever you think is best re: the post. The film: Our producer is approaching the first possible investor, who apparently really liked ‘Room Temperature’, which is a hopeful sign, and she and we will talk with her next week. The Pope will shut down my neighborhood no matter what, so the only question is how interesting that will be. ** Steve, Nice about the upgraded Currents section. Dennis Lim is cool. No, no sign of ‘Naza’ opening here yet. No, festivals, at least in North America, increasingly use filmfreeway to filter their submissions, and ff sends you a notice when you’ve been accepted or rejected. Festivals are pretty pro for the most part. It’s the screening and distribution people who more than occasionally think blowing you off is a legitimate answer. ** laura w., Freud loyalists seem like they’re in a cult, and not an interesting cult. The French being the French, I’m guessing the Catholic contingent is pretty reserved. But French futbol guys can certainly go wild, so maybe. I’m so sorry about the orthopaedic stuff. What’s the situation, if you want to say? ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi, buddy. Give that cocoon a hard kick as you walk away. Gosh, you sound great. Marty, okay. Nickname for Martin. Or do people name their kids Marty? Why not, I guess. That person’s effect has a beautiful glow, even all the way over here. I wish winter was still winter over here, but it’s just a little colder now. But the sky is ever more full of surprises. Love you too, excellent weekend or least day. ** HaRpEr //, I have a number of friends who were friends with Greer, and they say I met her, but I can’t remember that. ‘The Marble Index’ is probably her peak, right? Although I do really like ‘The End’. Her singing ‘Das Lied der Deutschen’ is an eternal nerve rattler. Ugh, terrible about that performance. I can feel that. ** Okay. Floating is your thematic for today. See you tomorrow.