Explodes

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Sarah Pickering Explosions (2007)
‘The simulation pyrotechnic industry has rapidly expanded over the last few years: atrocious acts have happened in conflict throughout history, yet training in recent times has had to become more and more realistic to psychologically prepare our forces for the worst. Police and soldiers who have grown up playing computer games and seeing ever more spectacular special effects in films are simultaneously disconnected from and situated closer to the “real.” These photographs, which depict pyrotechnic explosions used by British police and military instructors to intensify the sense of drama and tension in training exercises, are part of a series taken at test sites in the English countryside where the bursts of light, flames, sparks, and smoke sit incongruously in the rural environment.

‘Whether real or artificial, we enjoy looking at explosions and, as an artist I’m of course fascinated by their visual seductiveness. I’m also interested in the forms of violence they represent, in our relationship to them, and in identifying the imaginative references they instantiate.

‘With names like “Artillery,” “Groundburst,” and “Napalm,” the pyrotechnics evoke not only violent and destructive events from wars and conflicts, but also the dramatic re-enactments of such events familiar from feature films or war documentaries. Witnesses to extreme situations often describe what they saw as being “like a film,” and modern filmmakers use CGI and special effects to conjure the most realistic possible disasters to entertain viewers. Indeed, one of the pyrotechnic manufacturers was also responsible for making explosive effects for James Bond and war films.’ — SP

 

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Simon Faithfull Reenactment for a Future Scenario #1: EZY1899 (2012)
‘Reenactment for a Future Scenario #1′ presents an action that is stranded in time and space – a state where the adrenalin of emergency has dissipated into the tedium of the everyday.’

 

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GREGvisual quicksilver exploding floor VFX  Cinema 4d +after effects (2017)
‘Its doable… It’s just just 70 hrs of recording and editing it takes a lot of time…’

 

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Vija Celmins Explosion at Sea (1966)
‘Explosion at Sea belongs to a group of paintings by Vija Celmins on the themes of war, technology, and devastation. In the mid-1960s, the artist began to use photographs from books, magazines, and newspapers found at secondhand stores and yard sales as the point of departure for her work. After locating a wealth of material on World War II—a conflict that was the backdrop of her childhood in Latvia—Celmins employed subtle layers of precise brushstrokes to construct a detailed image of an attack on an aircraft carrier. The resulting painting, like most of her works of this moment, creates a disturbing contrast between the intimacy of the format and brushwork and the haunting seriousness of the theme.’

 

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Gabriel Rico Untitled (2020)
‘Rico, who is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, “creates pieces that fragment the composition of the contemporary human and evidence the geometric imperfection in nature. … Rico’s sculptural works reflect on the nature of the materials used to produce them and their arrangement in the final composition,” according to a preview of the exhibit from his gallery.

‘An art critic named Avelina Lésper was at the fair, and she was decidedly unimpressed with the piece. As a critical commentary, she says, she set an empty can of Coca-Cola on the floor next to the work to convey that the meaning of the art would remain the same if the can were incorporated.

‘Lésper told the newspaper Milenio that as she moved the can near the artwork, it exploded suddenly, “as if the pieces had heard my commentary.” It could have happened to anyone, she says, including a collector or museum.’

 

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Noboru Tsubaki Before Flower (2010)
‘Artist and professor in the space design department of Kyoto University of Art and Design, Noboru Tsubaki’s forty-foot high gymnospermous “Before Flower” involves rear projections on the eye controlled by TouchDesigner, changing colors and patterns based on the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by visitors as sensed by detectors on the sculpture’s eye.’

 

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Saburo Murakami Passage (1956)
‘During the seminal Gutai outdoor exhibition ‘Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun’ in 1956, an exhibition which went on for twenty-four hours a day for thirteen days, Murakami hurled himself repeatedly through numerous vertically erected paper screens.’

 

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Kit Wise Explosion (Geranium) (2010)
‘Explosion (Geranium) combines found footage of a military test explosion in the Arizona desert with a moving image of a flower blossoming. “It’s like a macro and a micro explosion,” Wise says.’

 

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Horacy Muszyński ASS.DEATH.DICKS (read: aesthetics) (2019)
‘ASS.DEATH.DICKS (read: aesthetics), tells the story of six young artists invited to work on an exhibition. It is supposed to be their first major project, and the launch of their artistic careers. However, due to creative-block frustration, envy, or ruthless ambition, the young artists start killing each other, turning the gallery white-cube into a bloodbath.’

 

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Damián Ortega Cosmic Thing (2002)
‘In “Cosmic Thing”, Ortega disassembled a Volkswagen Beetle and re-composed it piece by piece, suspended from wire in mid-air. The piece looked like an exploded diagram in a mechanic’s instruction manual.’

 

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Charles Gaines Explosions (2008)
‘The idea for the Explosion Drawings series came to me after I made the machine-sculpture “Airplanecrashclock” in 1997. That work was a continuous repetition of an airline crash occurring as part of a construction of a downtown city scene. I got the idea of doing the drawings after constructing the crash scene. I noticed that that process of constructing the scene was a lot like painting and drawing. About 5 years later, I did two large drawings, Airplanecrash 1 and 2, where I first developed the technique for realizing the image of an explosion using graphite. These drawings were scenes of plane crashes at the point of impact, and the resultant explosions. I continued with this in another series in 2005 called Airplanecrash Drawings which included stylized graphite renderings of the explosions separated from the scene of an accident. The present series, “Explosion Drawings” was realized by focusing on the explosion itself without reference to a specific event or accident. My interest in the social context of the accident remained.’ — CG

 

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Martin Klimas Sound Explosions (2013)
‘For Sound Explosions, Klimas asked several musicians to work on short sound sequences, so called patches, using analogue synthesizers made between 1930 and 1990. Klimas shows those synthesizers with all their wires and cables, to give people an idea of the complexity of the sounds he is working with. He then replays the patches on his set, using pigments in place of liquid colors this time. He puts up the volume and lets the colors explode.’

 

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Pablo Garcia Lopez Silk explosion II (2013)
Natural silk, shrink fast plastic, CFL lightbulbs 9x8x8 feet

 

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Monika Grzymala Various (2012 – 2017)
‘Grzymala works predominantly with tape, which she spins into vortexes, whirlpools, and scribbles that project out from walls and spill onto floors. The artist once used 27,000 feet of tape for a single exhibition. She records tape measurements in terms of distance, rather than weight or amount, to reflect the performance-like element of physical work that goes into every piece.’

 

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Apichatpong Weerasethakul Fireworks (Archives) (2015)
‘Shot at the Sala Keoku sculpture park in Nong Khai, Thailand, it uses sudden pyrotechnic flashes and digital camera lights in the dark to illuminate giant mythical animal statues, acting as a hallucinatory memory machine reflecting Thailand’s political oppression and spirit of revolt.’

Watch it here

 

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Fabian Oefner Various (2019)
‘Mirage is Oefner`s latest exploration of our perception of reality. The series is a collection of short clips, that show the destruction of four well-known paintings of the western world.’

 

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Mike Parr Integration 3 (Leg spiral) (1975)
4 gelatin silver photographs

 

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Ori Gersht Pomegranate (2006)
‘This image references a 1602 Baroque still life by Juan Sánchez Cotán titled Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber. It’s a very cerebral painting, because he was trying to create a sense of perfect static balance. It must have taken an awfully long time. My photograph was an act of destruction, taken at an unthinkable speed. I decided to use a pomegranate, instead of a quince, because a pomegranate would explode like a grenade.’ — OG

 

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Walid Raad My Neck is Thinner than a Hair: Engines (1999)
‘My Neck is Thinner than a Hair: Engines looks at the aftermath of car bombs in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war (1975–91). It consists of one hundred framed inkjet prints, each featuring a black and white photo on the left and an equal-sized piece of paper with handwritten notes and date stamps on the right, placed one next to the other. These are scanned and printed renditions of the front and back of journalistic photos of car engines found scattered around the city of Beirut following bomb explosions during the war. The artist found the photos in the Lebanese press, such as the daily newspapers Annahar and As-Safir. The date of the explosion, the name of the photographer when known, and an English translation of the notes found at the back of the pictures are included at the bottom of each print. On the right hand edge of each of the prints, running vertically, is the name of the artist, the Atlas Group file that the work belongs to, the title of the file, and the date of production of the work. These framed prints, which the artist terms ‘dossiers’, are shown arranged in a rectangular grid on the wall.’

 

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Zhan Wang My Personal Universe (2012)
“My Personal Universe” was created by blowing up a boulder, filming the explosion, collecting all 7,000 fragments of stone and making a stainless steel replica of each — consisted of six massive screens, including one on the floor and one on the ceiling. Thousands of stainless steel “rocks” were hung from invisible wires, shimmering and swaying in the light of a two-minute film of the explosion that played continuously in the gallery.’

 

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Gustav Metzger Liquid Crystal Environment (1965)
‘The colourful projections in this psychedelic installation are created by sending light through glass slides, which are filled with heat-sensitive liquid. As the slides move, so does the liquid, which changes temperature and then colour. Metzger aims to undermine the commodity status of art objects by making works that have auto-destruction or auto-creation as the creative principle.’

 

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Tom Friedman Untitled (1995)
‘Friedman’s dazzling 1995 toothpick sculpture, in which thousands of toothpicks are jammed together in the shape of a starburst, is anything but delicate, but here the toothpicks seem to have reached a center of gravity in which their sheer density is causing them to explode outward, so that that sculpture seems at the point of violent dispersion. Complexity, for Friedman, always involves the limits of inundation and compression which point toward entropy.’

 

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Harold Edgerton [Atomic Bomb Explosion] (1946 – 1952)
‘In the late 1930s Harold Edgerton, a professor of engineering at MIT, pioneered techniques of ultra-high-speed stroboscopic photography to reveal aspects of the moving world previously invisible to the naked eye-a speeding bullet eviscerating an apple, the graceful spiral of a golf stroke, the coronet formed by a falling drop of milk. During World War II, Edgerton worked with the Atomic Energy Commission to develop a camera, the Rapatronic, capable of capturing the fleeting incandescent flash of a nuclear explosion. Edgerton and his assistants set up their equipment on a tower seven miles from a nuclear test site and, using exposures as short as one-billionth of a second, recorded this ominous glowing shape hovering like an alien life-form or a colossal balloon. Made when the dream of technology threatened to turn into a nightmare, Edgerton’s haunting images of nuclear explosions help us visualize the inconceivable.’

 

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Arthur Jafa LeRage (2018)
chromogenic print on Dibond with aluminum plate stand

 

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Jim Campbell Exploded View (Birds) (2010)
‘LEDs hang at the end of thin wires in a 3-dimensional grid. As the LEDs flicker, they create the image of birds. This work is part of Jim Campbell’s ongoing exploration to give a sculptural presence to light and the moving image. In this instance, Campbell has expanded his characteristic use of low-resolution LED panels into the third dimension. As you move around the hanging LEDs, absorbing but “meaningless” patterns are seen. From the vantage point of the front, the abstract patterns are seen as birds. The line between abstract digital information and recognizable movement depends on the viewers position in space. The birds are perceived where no lights shine; the negative spaces within the lighted grid give us clues to their idiosyncratic forms.’

 

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Los Carpinteros Exploding Room Frozen in Mid-Air (2011)
‘What does an exploding room actually look like? Havana-based artists Dagoberto Rodriguez and Marco Castillo, collaboratively known as Los Carpinteros, have constructed an installation depicting a room amidst an explosion. The imaginary blast rips through walls and furniture, leaving broken sculptures and debris suspended in the air. It’s as if time has stood still. Spectators of the exhibit are given the unique opportunity to view the effects and damage of an exploding room from all angles.’

 

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DHBy Acura (2016)

 

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Survival Research Laboratories Failure to Discriminate (1986)
‘Failure to Discriminate: Determining the Degree to Which Attractive Delusions Can Operate As A Substitute For Confirmation by Evidence. Performed at the Seattle Transit Authority Lot, Seattle WA. Presented by COCA. May 26 1986.’

 

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Ueli Alder Detonations (2012)
‘Created by Swiss artist Ueli Alder, the series is luckily made up of images found on the Internet. However, the Photoshopped collages of explosions still manage to be badass and terrifying. Adler’s inspiration for the series were war-themed video games, as he attempts to romanticize the cataclysmic detonations that go off during game play. The falsified images from the Ueli Alder Detonations series creates an important critique on the over-sensationalized and commonality of these graphic images found throughout popular culture. Our reactions to these images tend to demonstrate the hyperreality that has been created by explosive media, which can contribute to causing a problematic way of how humans filter through future events.’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** jay, There was an extravagant playground near me when I was growing up. I’m sure it led me to my amusement park obsession and wound up heavily configuring me internally as a human. That book sounds increasingly fascinating. Eyes peeled over here. I hope all’s great w/ you. Oh, darbzzz responded to you if you didn’t see it. Mild skies! ** Adem Berbic, Our sky is being easygoing at the moment. I’m trying to eat it. No map of the Balkans at all, I don’t think, pathetically. It sounds very useable. I’ve heard that about Lacan. Me, people will characterise some writer as pessimistic, and then I’ll read them and see hopefulness. Weird. That sounds a little too neat and self-congratulatory to me, yes. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’ll go see if I can find images of the Mike Nelson. That linked page isn’t very forthcoming. Thanks for the tip, B. ** cmr, Hi. Nice, I’ve seen pix of playgrounds that are organised into a ship. They always look very secretive. Weirdly or not, that child couple image was my favorite too. Huh. Thanks, and big day on your end, what do you say? ** Joe, Hi. Cool, I’ll go find and open it. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi. Your writing is just inherently compelling. You’re a writer, dude. No two ways about it. Being a writer has kept me solid and outwardly gazing and fairly coherent. I suppose there were other factors too, but it’s the big, big one. I was a dj on my college radio station, so I’ve only been that kind of dj other than, you know, making mixtapes for friends back when passing cassettes around were like handshakes. You don’t need a degree to be a writer. In fact I think that’s more dangerous way to become a writer than not. Studying music makes much more sense. Writing teachers tend to have normalising young writers as their goal. Music teachers can’t really normalise young musicians who don’t want to be usual even if they try. You really do sound excited, and it’s for very obviously good sounding reasons. The future! I understand that the edm/rave scene in France is pretty good. Zac is somewhat into it. D.I.Y. scene for sure, mostly in the electronic music realm. Probably some guitar/punk stuff too. I need to educate myself. Happiest day! ** Deepstatespirits, Damn straight! ** Diesel Clementine, Hi. Yes, coffee. Unless I’m already in Norway, but I’m pretty sure I’ll still be here. Very cool. ** HaRpEr //, I know of Crystal Palace, but I thought the Palace itself didn’t exist anymore? I’m probably mistaking something for something else. I’ll hunt those dinosaurs, etc. No, those writers were operating in that white straight guy brain is the God brain thing. They thought their imaginations were blankets. Probably one of the major reasons why, except for Pynchon, the young don’t gravitate to them anymore. Anyway, I think I agree with you. ** laura w, Hi. Interesting that fiction of a certain past age becomes mostly useful as history. Yeah, it’s true. And paintings too, obviously. Paintings as personalised cameras before their time. Quin’s amazing, I think. And Compton-Burnett for totally sure. I recommend starting with ‘The Past and the Present’ which has been put back into print by, I think, NYRB. It’s one of my favorite novels. Brooke-Rose is highly worthy too. She’s always fantastic. ‘Textermination’ or ‘Life, End Of’ might be good starts. I’ve heard of ‘The Man Who Sleeps’. It must be findable somewhere. Congrats on the flooded out co-worker. Things are looking up? ** Bill, Where are you heading this time? For a gig possibly? ** Thom, Thanks, pal. Fuck, sorry you’re drafted into caretaker mode, but good for you, and for whoever, obviously. I need a perverse, interesting idea for a story. Can you osmosis one to me? You’re not off base, haha, no. The Burroughs comparison is just the height of lazy thinking. I’m resigned to the fact that people think writing itself is or should be a clear window into content, or, at times, a fancy window, but I’ll never like or fully accept it. But there’s nothing to be done about it. People should do more drugs and less alcohol? Or more psychedelic drugs and less coke and meth? Anyway, I mostly just shrug at that lack of interpretation at this point. Wishing your week has a big finale. ** Okay. Today’s post is surely a self-explanatory one. See you tomorrow.