Painted Alive

Note: This post contains pictures that some might find offensive and/or may not be safe for work.

I got this email of a tiger picture which I found very interesting. After doing some research, I found that this painting was created by American artist Craig Tracy to raise awareness for Save China's Tigers campaign. The American is a body painter whose works provide amazing eye deceiving displays. When I first saw the tiger picture for example, I thought it was a normal painting on a canvas. But as the process of the painting is revealed, the image of this extraordinary wild animal slowly reveals itself as three women.

Check out this video to see the three models get transformed into a Chinese Tiger.

Another interesting piece I found in Tracy's gallery is called Immaculate. A painting involving a married couple with the theme that "some unions are set in stone." The main display, the married couple, disappear within the background which is also the foreground.



Save China's Tigers Campaign Painting


Painting process



Immaculate

Nationalism

As I returned to Bahrain for a quick holiday, I noticed that there was a re-branding wave across the country which caught up with BTV and Batelco logos, perhaps commemorating the 10 years passed since our King came to the throne.

Amidst all the advertising boards on the highways, I was captivated by Batelco’s add near Seef Mall, which had the above picture; two hands, one red and the other white, coming together forming the flag of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The way in which the hands interlock with each other is very forceful, whenever I try it, I do have to force the knuckles through until there are no gaps. Yet the resulting bind is equally unbreakable. I almost sense that I need more force to take my hands away from each other than bring them together. Is there a political statement behind this gesture? Well Arabs generally like to bring politics in everything, so I might be reading way too far into it if I said so.

Nevertheless, the image is strikingly beautiful, whenever I pass the billboard on the highway it stays in my head throughout the journey. The brightness of the colors and the texture of the human hand’s skin made it a beautiful abstract piece of art. This is the first time that I actually saw the beauty of our national flag.

Billboard Living

Billboard Living is a project by Dolf Robertus displayed at the Graduation Show of the Design Academy in Eindhoven. The concept of the project is to turn advertised corporate logos into housing, animating the adverts by inhabitants. So a Mac's logo would be animated by people using Mac laptops or ipods. Dove logos will be animated by people taking showers. And my favorite, a "Playboy" logo will be animated by nudity.

What attracted me about this is the drawings, or presentation sketches. I am a huge fan of caricatures, specially architecturally related caricatures. And the technique used here is very elegant. The sketches are simple, with the appropriate detailing required, without loosing the fantasy or the humor aspect of the project.

For more info about it, look here.

Papers

Peter Callesen is a Danish artist who started his education in an architecture school before venturing into an arts school. His most interesting works, which have been dominating his art lately, is with white paper in different objects, paper cuts, installations and performances. As the artist's puts it:

"A large part of my work is made from A4 sheets of paper. It is probably the most common and consumed media used for carrying information today. This is why we rarely notice the actual materiality of the A4 paper. By taking away all the information and starting from scratch using the blank white A4 paper sheet for my creations, I feel I have found a material that we are all able to relate to, and at the same time the A4 paper sheet is neutral and open to fill with different meaning...

The paper cut sculptures explore the probable and magical transformation of the flat sheet of paper into figures that expand into the space surrounding them. The negative and absent 2 dimensional space left by the cut, points out the contrast to the 3 dimensional reality it creates, even though the figures still stick to their origin without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in many of the cuts."

I really enjoy the beauty in the different scales that these works take on. As well as the variations in the complexities of the cuts; where some works consist of a simple shape cut, others are far more complicated than that. I leave you with pictures of some of his works.





White Hand, 2007 (A4)



Traces in Snow, 2005 (A4)



The Impossible Meeting, 2005 (A4)




Nature's Maze, 2005


My God, My God, 2009 ( Framed A4)


The Core of Everything, 2006


The Roots of Heaven, 2009

Henna Guitar

Henna has decorated young women’s bodies in social and holiday celebrations since "the late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean". Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Zoroastrians, among others, all celebrated marriages by adorning the bride, and often the groom, with henna.

I stumbled across this Henna decorated guitar on Flickr which took my breath away. Perhaps seeing it in photos and not live in front of my eyes helped a lot in avoiding the nasty smell of Henna which I can't understand how women can stand it. However, the beautiful floral pattern very delicately cover up the edges of this wonderful musical instrument in a graceful manner that would block the smell waves from entering your brain and focus on the visual and maybe the audio aspects of the instrument. Check out the artist's website and Flickr account for more pictures.

Tracing Shadows

Here is a very interesting art display by American photographer Michael Neff called "The Chalk Series". The following is the artist's discription of his work...

These images capture the quiet, empty world of night, when parking lots lay fallow, when meters are allowed to rest and sidewalks can breathe. In tracing the fugitive contours of shadows cast by the patient lights of the night, I draw the attention of the nighttime passerby and reveal what the night holds. In this way I am sharing the night city with its daytime inhabitants and making visible something that is normally hidden. I photograph these drawings because, rendered in chalk, they themselves are fugitive and may only last until they are hosed down in the morning. I want to draw attention to what is likely overlooked, or perhaps so familiar that it is essentially invisible.

One Thousand and One Dreams

Note: This post contains nudity and may not be safe for work, if you are easily offended and/or under 18 please avoid looking at the following pictures.


Married couple Moroccan artist Yasmina Alaoui and Chilean photographer Marco Guerra have created this captivating series called "one thousand and one dreams". Inspired by the legendary tales of A Thousand and One Nights, the photographic series combines nude photography with delicate ink drawings, otherwise known in other cultures as henna.

Here the human body form is treated as a medium for complex geometrical and floral decorations. In some artworks these decorations would gradually disappear to the background. In other works, the decorated bodies stand out in contrast with the plain black background, a method which effectively emphasizes the shadows created by the sensual curves of the human body.

From what I read about the series I am not sure if the bodies were actually painted and then photographed or if they were photographed first and then digitally painted. Either way, the end result is mesmerising and can only evoke a strong feeling of admiration.

The pink and blue project

According to a recent study by scientists at Newcastle University, the difference in colour preferences between men and women has biological and not cultural roots. It goes back to ancient times when women were primarily involved in gathering fruit and vegetables, while men were involved in hunting. Fruits and vegetables are edible when they are ripe, and this often means when they are bright hued, generally red or green. Blue, on the other hand, is a direct reference to blue sky, the sign of good weather and therefore auspicious for gathering food and water. The information collected by researchers shows that males prefer colours in the blue-yellow range, while females instinctively go to the red-green hues, and especially pink.

“The Pink and Blue Project” is achieved by JeongMee Yoon on a different context yet could very well be a visual guide to the research. Children are photographed in their rooms, surrounded by their clothes, toys and accessories with their faces lost in a maniacally orderly multiplicity of objects.

Text and pics from Zoom magazine.

Edge of Arabia

Edge of Arabia is an exhibition organized by Offscreen Education Programme and located at SOAS Brunei Gallery, University of London. Its supposed to "shed new light on the largely unknown contemporary art culture of Saudi Arabia". The main theme of the exhibition is "the complex and diverse identities of 21st century life in the Middle East". An interesting exhibition that is definetly worth visiting. As an architect, there is one particular piece that really stood out for me, and that is a tiny brochure that contained the art works of Mohammed Farea, who happens to be an architect too.





Perhaps what appealed to me is the colorful architectural presence in his work. The stylized buildings may be inspired by the traditional buildings of Najd region in Saudi Arabia, yet ever since I saw these works I couldn’t stop thinking about this book that I casually browsed once about the region of Asir. The vernacular architecture of Asir is mesmerizing in its wonderful and colorful frescoes that decorate the mud brick houses, which are also echoed in the bright colors of men's clothing, giving them the nickname of "flowered men". So I decided to go back to the library and scan few photos to add them to my collection. The book, "Impressions of Arabia" by Thierry Mauger, is a photographic demonstration of the region's architecture, frescoes and lifestyles of the people which are influenced by each other.

What makes the vernacular architecture of Asir so special is that while in other regions of the peninsula decorations are carried out mainly inside the house; here the decorations are spread throughout the entire house, inside and out, appearing on the facade too. The beauty in all this to me lies in "the division of labor which is determined by competence and gender". Men would be responsible for the hard labor of building the houses, and women are responsible for the more delicate task of decorating the house. Thus, the frescoes are not seen as works of art only but as a reflection of the skills and personalities of the women of the house. In these fresco decorations, women found a way to express their "domain" in a masculine culture that requires women to withdraw from the public eye. So it comes as no surprise to know that this is a skill that requires apprenticeship and is passed from mother to daughter, just as masonry is passed from father to son.


Bare mud and multicolored fresco, a typical facade of Bilad Qahtan, Sinhan.


The colorful frescoes carry on from the facade to the interior stairs.


The majlis is the most special room in the house and thus most decorated one as well.


Fresco creation requires team work as shown by this mother and her 2 daughters.

Art for Palestine

This is another picture that I discovered among my unsorted downloaded images. I tried to retrace my steps to remember where I saved this picture from with no positive result. Anyway I thought I might as well post it here as it is a great symbolic piece that pretty much sums up the situation that our Palestinian brothers are in.

Ground Zero: Little People in the City

A new form of street art by "Slinkachu", consisting of tiny hand-painted miniature installed in all sorts of public spaces, mirroring our own lives. Although they might look to some as the musings of 5 to 10 year old kids, these street art installations are photographed in different scales, uncovering the city landscape in unexpected ways, depicting the general feeling of being alone in a large city. Scale here is the key factor in which both installation and photography of the artwork manipulates our perception to reveal this hidden micro-world and to evoke our feelings and senses.

A new book entitled "Little People in the City" has been published documenting these experiments, which is now on my to-buy list. Here are some photos of an installation for the Nuart event at the Rogaland Kunstmuseum in Stavanger, Norway, which again shows a great way of playing and experimenting with scale.

Police in Sheikh Zayed Road

An exciting proposal for a performance in Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road by Christian Sievers. The performance will have police cars racing in a circle with lights flashing and sirens blaring. I wonder whether people would appreciate this artwork during the rush hours??

Check this out for another cool installation by Sievers.

Old Crafts Revival

A "mashrabiya", "mauchrabeya", "moucharabieh" or however you want to spell it is not only a special characteristic of Arabic architecture, but a testament to the skill and brilliance of the Arab craftsmen in woodworking. On the other hand, weaving is a textile art that is considered an essential part of many cultures extending from Turkey to China, which is evident in the numerous forms and styles of oriental rugs. So it doesn't surprise me when those two magnificent crafts combine together to produce amazing artistic displays.

Arzu Firuz is a freelance designer born in Istanbul and working in France. Influenced by oriental artisanship, she brings us a blend of historical and traditional references with modern elements and materials. Examples of her products are the above Canvas Moucharabieh and Wooden Rugs, a modern interplay with materials and functions of different traditional elements.