Snows

 

 

Kohei Nawa Untitled
‘Japanese artist Kohei Nawa filled a dark room with billowing clouds of foam for this art exhibition in Aichi, Japan. Nawa used a mixture of detergent, glycerin and water to create the bubbly forms. Described by the artist as being “like the landscape of a primordial frozen planet”, the large cloud-like forms were pumped up from the floor in eight different locations, creating a scene that was constantly in motion inside an otherwise black room. The artist experimented with different quantities of the three ingredients to create a foam stiff enough to hold a shape without being affected by gravity. “Small cells bubble up ceaselessly with the slight oscillations of a liquid,” said Nawa, explaining the process. “The cells gather together, totally covering the liquid as they spontaneously form a foam, an organically structured conglomeration of cells.”‘ — dezeen

 

 

Gary Simmons Thin Ice
‘Simmons’ art skates deftly between abstraction and representation via his signature technique of erasure. This formal conceit upends the viewer’s sense of certainty; by degrading familiar icons, he exposes latent meanings and ugly truths lurking just behind the surface of popular imagery. For example, Simmons has consistently used Bosko and Honey, a pair of racist cartoon characters first created in 1928, as avatars of institutionalized racism.’ — H&W

 

 

Carson Fox Ice Storm
‘The gallery was transformed into a winter wonderland where Carson Fox created cast resin sculptures of snowflakes, icicles and snowdrifts. This body of work served as a meditation upon themes of an alternate nature, one that is created in the mind as a reassurance against the inevitability of death. In this controllable world, Fox can prevent icicles from melting, create larger than life snowflakes in preposterous configurations, and freeze flowers as they bloom. In the fantasy of artificiality, the fleeting moment is held in stasis and death is denied. Each snowflake was cast individually and then assembled into complex formations to create both freestanding snowdrifts and creeping formations. The compositions suggest an exaggerated fantasy of nature where the viewer can behold the individual beauty of each flake in sharp focus and keep it there without fear of it melting and slipping away.’ — Redux Studios

 

 

Guido van der Werve Nummer acht
‘A lot of people think I used some sort of telephoto effect. What we did actually is that we put the camera on top of a snow scooter on a steady device. The snow shooter moved at the same pace as me and the icebreaker. Because we used a steady cam, we couldn’t use a telephoto lens (shakes too much) so we used a lens which is equal to the eye. I was walking as close as the Captain [of the Sampo] would allow me to walk in front of the icebreaker (which was about 10 meters). If I got too close I got a signal that I should walk a bit faster.’ — GvdW

 

 

Erick Swenson Untitled (2004 – 2005)
Styrofoam snow, polyurethane ice, brick, taxidermied deer
‘This is a static object. I’m asking you to look at this for more than three seconds. That’s hard to do sometimes. People just blow through stuff, you know. So it’s leaving things sort of enigmatic and open-ended. My sculptures are actually more like a special effects scene from a film. Something’s just happened. Or is about to happen. There’s a story here, somewhere.’ — ES

 

 

 

 

Arata Isozaki and Yoko Ono Penal Colony
‘Their pavillion used harvested ice from a frozen lake in the Sestriere. The blocks came from a lower layer of the lake, where the ice is blueish or turquoise depending on the minerals contained in the water. Once cut with a chainsaw, each block, measuring 1 metre in length by 0.6 metres in height by 0.6 metres in width was lifted by a logging crane and transported to the site. The blocks were then positioned in order to fit together. Once each block was put into place, water was poured to fuse the ice together. Finally the material was finished using setaline torch and smoothing the surfaces, giving a translucent tone to the construction.’ — Interior Architecture: Sources

 

 

Taryn Simon A Cold Hole
‘In A Cold Hole, the gallery floor is replaced by an expanse of solid ice with a single square hole cut from its center. Visitors are intermittently invited to jump into the icy water below. Visitors can view A Cold Hole through a cinemascopic aperture from a darkened adjacent gallery.’ — MassMoCA

 

 

Tavares Stracham The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want
‘Tavares Stracham is the typical conceptual jokey jokey wannabe. This is art for being featured in the news. For example, he took a chunk of Alaskan ice and created a solar powered freezer that took it to Bahamas and then to the Brooklyn Museum. It is called ‘The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (Arctic Ice Project)’ and it aims at ‘cutting the air conditioning bill and carbon footprint’.’ — loveartnotpeople

 

Snow & Ice Music Festival (Geilo, Norway)
‘All music instruments and stage decorations are created from a real ice and snow by using a chainsaw and other tools. Sculptor and author Bill Covitz describes the festival as a fascinating process of transformation of water into ice, subsequent instrument manufacturing, and at the end creating of sounds. The quality of the sound depends on the quality of ice and the quality of ice depends on the weather temperature. So every concert is a unique experience.’ — vhf

 

 

Andy Mattern Driven Snow
‘When the winter reaches that point when it’s continuously below freezing and the roads are covered in dirt, sand, rock salt, and slush, the wet road spray that comes up from the back of your car tires freezes in place instead of melting away. The result is a bulbous array of stalactite-like encrustations that build up in wheel wells, lumpy blobs of astonishingly hard, dirty ice that can only be dislodged with a swift kick of your boot. Andy Mattern has documented these ugly bergs with an almost geological fascination. Photographed against bright white backgrounds (like Irving Penn’s skulls), each one shows off its pits and crystals, its layers of sediment and gunk, with crisp, typological detail. His approach has turned these objects into unlikely sculptures, echoing otherworldly moon rocks or weird natural formations, edging into abstraction as their elemental forms take over in the floating whiteness.’ — collector daily.com

 

 

64gravely How far can the Snow Cannon go?
‘I had a comment on my last video of the Snow Cannon from a youtuber who goes by Harely Ironhead saying “That baby can blow some snow, sweet!” Well in that video there was very little snow and I had the MA210 set to blow the snow down to the ground quickly to avoid destroying anything. So I thought I would make of video of the real capabilities of the MA210 Snow Cannon. The snow was piled high and dry this morning, and no wind to boot, perfect conditions for the MA210. In this video the Snow Cannon is backed up by a 1970 Gravely Commercial 12 2 wheel tractor powered by a Kholer k301 12 horse.’ — 64gravely

 

 

Sean Landers Plank Boy Hurt
‘Plankboy first appeared in Landers’ works in the early 2000s after the artist gained a strong interest in Rene Magritte’s La Vache Periode between 1947–1948. Considered a complete departure from his distinct style, the Vache Period was Magritte’s form of retaliation against the Parisian art scene that had ignored him for decades. Vache, meaning cow in French, carries vulgar connotations that were subsequently echoed by Magritte’s paintings. He responded to the Parisians by creating a series of crude paintings inspired by cartoons and employing chaotic brushstrokes as well as wild subject matter. Reinforced by the fact that none of the paintings sold after being exhibited, Magritte’s Vache Period was a complete artistic rebellion against Surrealist tendencies at the time.’ — Phillips

 

 

 

 

Studio Granda Crate
‘Heat melts the snow. Grass grows in the glow. A crate is waiting. It is comprised of a 15m, 3m high chainlink fence with 50 fenceposts at 1m centres. Attached to the posts are large radiant heaters that are operated by movement sensors. There is a 1m gap in the fence on the north side. Within the fence are 50 trunks of differing shapes, ages and form. If the trunks are touched or sat on a speaker is activated with a voice. The voice may say, “Have you been here long?” or “It’s getting warmer” or something else. We intend to prepare the ‘voices’ from Lingaphone LP’s in various languages.’ — Studio Granda

 

 

Tokujin Yoshioka The Snow
‘The Snow is a 15-meter-wide dynamic installation. Seeing the hundreds kilograms of light feather blown all over and falling down slowly, the memory of the snowscape would lie within people’s heart would be bubbled up. The snowscape created with the feather would be more like the memory of snow lying with people rather than the actual snow. I do not really know about the value of nature in Japan, but what I would like to do is not to reproduce the nature but to know how human senses function when experiencing nature.’ — Tokujin Yoshioka

 

 

Paula McCartney from A Field Guide to Snow and Ice
‘A Field Guide to Snow and Ice is my interpretation of the idea of winter. After moving from San Francisco to Minneapolis I decided to brave the elements and explore the snowy landscape, however, at times without being out in the cold. I’m inspired by the studies of Karl Blossfeldt, James Nasmyth’s constructed lunar landscapes and August Strindberg’s misinterpreted Celestographs-works by artists who collected and interpreted nature in their own peculiar ways.’ — PM

 

 

Coble/Riley Projects Watermarks
‘Since 2009, Mary Coble (USA/DK) and Blithe Riley (USA) have collaborated on performance-based videos that explore tensions between site-specificity, gesture, narrative, and endurance. In February 2012, Coble/Riley Projects was invited to participate in a month-long Iaspis Residency in Umeå, Sweden. Working on a frozen stretch of sea, Coble and Riley fused video, performance and land art to create “Watermarks.” Dense snow conceals the frozen seascape underneath, acting as a canvas on which the artists make marks and draw. Opaqueness and transparency arise from the simple actions of an unknown figure, who repeatedly uncovers layers of snow, ice, and water to reveal surfaces with varied properties of reflection.’ — CONNERSMITH

 

 

Cai Guo-Qiang & Zaha Hadid Caress Zaha with Vodka
‘Vodka mixture is poured over Zaha Hadid’s elegant, fluid ice and snow structures, built in Lapland, Finland. The liquid is set alight in a cool blue flame that wraps the structures in warmth. This blue flame with licks of pink roams along the curves and valleys of the landscape, spreads, drips, meanders and cascades into waterfalls and streams. The fire sets the ice and snow environment in a heightened pure transparent light. The warmth softens the angles, corners and rigidity of the icy forms. The fire highlights its beautiful contour, the melted ice-water mixed with alcohol flow freely on and around the structure, render it in a state of constant movement and change.’ — fungcollaboratives.org

 

 

Werner Bronkhorst Avid Snowboarders & Skiers
‘The artistic philosophy of Werner Bronkhorst, a 21-year-old South African who has settled his inspiration on the Australian coast, is encapsulated in this concept-manifesto. Werner is a self-taught artist with extensive craftsmanship, and his canvases speak of the relationship with material, but also of the intertwining between size and colour, surfing and skiing. His (often sporty) microuniverses arise from the use of heavy materials that become hyperactive sets and natural scenery populated by tiny protagonists.’ — athletemag

 

 

Nir Hod I Will Always Wait for You Even if You Never Come Back
resin, wax, stone, plaster, polyester

 

 

 

 

Liang Shaoji Snow Cover
‘In the Snow Cover series (2014), silkworms are placed either in the everyday objects such as wine bottles, coffee boxes, plastic cups, poster papers, high-heeled shoes and electronic components, or in relics of ancient architecture, stone carving, broken porcelain and withered twigs. The silkworms spin continuously so that the silk wraps around the objects, making them look snowcapped.’ — Art Review Asia

 

 

Roman Signer Snow Works
‘Swiss artist Roman Signer might at first be thought of as ‘artist as trickster.’ For years he has probed simple phenomena, properties of the physical world, and the artist’s relationship to often surreal realities of corporeal existence. 

”Signer adds a further dimension to the concept of sculpture as we know it, a medium which, in the course of the ongoing subversion of traditional boundaries launched upon in the 1960s, had already been expanded to include unconventional materials and actions. Put simply, he examines the basic elements of fire, water and air in terms of their sculptural qualities, albeit not in the manner of Land Art, which tends to effect an overt rearrangement of natural materials within or upon the landscape.’ — CAFKATV

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pierre Ardouvin Retour dans la neige
Pierre Ardouvin has created an installation, borrowing its title from a Robert Walser short story, Retour dans la neige (Return to the Snow). Follow the walking route through a completely snowed- in, fictional decor covering the entire venue. If you’re not going to the mountains yourself this winter, come and enjoy this frosty yet welcoming ambiance!

 

 

Leonid Tishkov Snow Angel
‘Grainy black and white video footage pans over a nondescript snow-covered rural landscape, the figure of a man, his back turned to the audience, dressed like an ordinary village drunk in a tattered coat, valenki felt boots and an ushanka (hat with ear flaps) bar one exception. He has two big white angel wings attached to his back. This “Snow Angel”, which gives the title of Leonid Tishkov’s (b. 1953) 1998 video work, clumsily shuffles through the snow, flaps his wings a little, jumps off a small hillock, conveying a sense of helplessness, cold and awkward loneliness, in all his movements. He eventually walks off into a field of snow that engulfs him, leaving the screen completely blank.’ — artfocusnow

 

 

Tony Tasset Untitled (Snowman)
‘Tony Tasset’s snowmen are made from glass, resin, brass, enamel paint, poly-styrene, stainless steel and bronze, and the snow replicas are surprisingly convincing. Catching a viewer off guard in a gallery setting, the snowmen freeze (pun intended) in time a phenomenon that is never the same—unlike in real life, Tasset’s snow personalities might last forever.’ — Beautiful Decay

 

 

Cameron Jamie & The Melvins Kranky Klaus
‘Kranky Klaus is in its form an ‘objective’ registration, although it often comes about in the middle of the action, of the so-called Krampus ritual in Austria. Men in hairy suits with large teeth and imposing antlers go from door to door around Christmas to chase and attack people as Krampus demons. They are in the company of a Saint-Nicolas-like figure who then calms the people down. The ritual dates back to heathen pre-Christian customs that preceded today’s less aggressive but totally commercialised Christmas activities. Krampus forms a kind of strange combination of Christmas and Halloween. To his observations of this striking annual phenomenon, Jamie adds a soundtrack by The Melvins, the controversial rock band from the Seattle area. Their long and loud chords put the typically Austrian event in a very electronic frame that has nothing to do with Christmas, but refers to an American street culture that also has its own rules.’ — iffr

 

 

Berlinde De Bruyckere Crossing a bridge on fire
‘Crossing a bridge on fire comes from a short story by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. It instills a powerful image of the risk or difficulty of passing from one side to another, which could be applied to the modern day processes of migration, change in society and transformation in general.’ — continua

 

 

Zheng Guogu Waterfall
calligraphy and wax

 

 

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p.s. Hey. I have filed a report with my hosting site about the Cloudflare verification problem, and I’m supposed to hear back in the next couple of days. Here’s hoping we’re close to having that problem solved at last. ** Dominik, Yes, exactly, and of course you know the dangers and horribleness thanks to Orban. Jesus. Thanks, yes, a tricky but potentially very positive thing is in motion right now. Gulp. I bet if flies could talk they would have interesting voices. Love hoping that today being Veterans Day, or whatever they call it in France, doesn’t mean that supermarkets are closed for the holiday because my fridge is empty apart from a very expired bottle of pasta sauce, G. ** Misanthrope, Oh, okay, decent enough hotel spot. I’m no fan of the military obviously, and I semi-can’t believe that I’m saying this, but, yes, going into the military might be the way to turn David around if not save his life, so, yeah, hoping he doesn’t chicken out. So sorry, pal. It’s Veterans Day here too, weirdly, or maybe not weirdly, and they take it very seriously here, so I’m supposing Paris will mostly be a series of pretty, dark facades today. ** Steeqhen, My weekend was alight, and yours too, I hope. Sure, if you come to Paris, let me know, I’d be happy to meet up. Have the best week possible. ** kier, I’m so glad you liked his work. It’s pretty singular. I was talking with Zac about this: wondering whether it’s just because we’re making films or at least so interested in film, that I keep wanting photos to be stills from something in motion because most of them just seem like not enough on their own. Maybe, maybe on the January/show visit. Hm. Would be so cool. Happy you’re into your locale’s preponderance of snow given the post today. Haha, no, I’m no skier or snowboarder whatsoever. I tried putting on skies a million years ago, and my legs just kept dividing and threatening to make me do the splits as soon as I put them. Same thing with iceskating. I just like observing snow’s fall and build up and maybe tromping around in it a little bit. Cookies, what kind? Sounds fun. My weekend … chipping away at my giant pile of unanswered emails, went to a very cool artbook fair, Offprint, but didn’t buy anything, did my biweekly Zoom book/film club with US pals and mostly just talked about the election the whole time, made plans for this week (art, films, etc.) … like that. It was ok. I absorbed your sincere bisous, and it felt good! I give you a French double cheek kiss greeting, or, wait, make it a quadruple! ** Uday, You made it. Take that, Cloudflare! It is wonderful, yes, and I’m going to find some seeming asshole today and magically reimagine that person as lovely. You’ve inspired me. What’s a ‘ boiler room style party’? I feel like I should know that. Yeah, when my mom died, there was a lot of stuff she had that held emotional resonance due to its overfamiliarity while growing up, and it was super weird to have to see it as random trash or thrift store fodder, but I suppose I don’t miss that stuff now, so, yeah, any melancholy you’re feeling will probably pass. My roommate takes care of the dusting and vacuuming and stuff. I don’t know why he ended up being the cleaner, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and I would probably just let the apartment get dirty. I hope you didn’t pull any muscles or anything whilst toting those books back to the library, and enjoy the new spaciousness. ** Lucas, Hi, L. Weekend was pretty ok. Surprises? Hm. A guy who was one of the stars of Zac’s my first film ‘Like Cattle Towards Glow’ — the guy whose dead body the other guy has sex with — wrote to us to ask if he could reedit the film for some project he’s doing, which was surprising, and we said ‘Sure’, which was also surprising. Oh, someone, maybe you (?), was recommending ‘Red Rooms’ to me here just the other day. Okay, I’m on it. I’ll find it. Thanks! And I’ll try to find that Foucault book in English too. Must be doable. You’re waking up my absorbing side, thanks, pal. It needed that. Exams, eek, but you’ll ace that shit, and also enjoy the remaining lull. I didn’t even notice any grammar errors at all, but I am still mid-coffeeing myself to full cogency right now, so … Happy day! ** Okay. Snow, real and fake and adjacent, and what it can do when artists get their minds on it — that’s your ‘assignment’ for today. See you tomorrow.