Sophie Smallhorn

Earlier this summer, when I took one of my rare strolls down our inner city walking street Strøget, a shop window really made me stop. Now, it was in a shop I usually check out, but this was different!

It turned out to be this really cool creative collaboration between British artist and visual concept maker, Sophie Smallhorn, and the Swedish fashion brand COS. 

In flagship COS stores in Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Seoul, London and Los Angeles, Sophie Smallhorn made site specific window displays with these stacked, geometric color forms - basically taking up a lot of window space and thus upstaging the clothes completely, but with such wow effect, that it had the exact opposite effect.

If you know a bit about COS's particular kind of colorful minimalism, the windows worked like an abstract depiction of the brand DNA. So brilliant and so beautiful.

Above, the shops in Copenhagen, Seoul, London and Honkong (couldn't find the L.A. one).

These displays are based on a series of small and quite delicate wall hung acrylic and aluminium sculptures - a theme she has worked on for a number of years - only in an enlarged version.

Her graphic and sleek style just makes me jump with joy, see much more of her work here, and she proves to me yet again, that playfulness and orderliness are not necessarily adversaries!

Here are a couple of examples of her 'Components' sculptures:

And here's a nice little story to end this post with....

I snapped a picture of the Danish window and posted it on Instagram. I saw a suggested hashtag in the window (check it out: #cosxsophiesmallhorn), and used it, to properly credit this fine work.

I actually didn't notice, or only vaguely so, anyway, that I entered a competition - and only found out, when COS contacted me, and told me I had won two Sophie Smallhorn prints!

Yayeee!! I am picking them up next week, and they look like this. Lucky me, don't you think?
Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets?

Amazing creations by Mariko Kusumoto

Mariko Kusumoto is a Japanese born artist, living in Massachusetts.

She works in several different materials, but I discovered her, through amazing images of her sculptural polyester fibre jewellery, on Pinterest and places like that. Her amazing craftsmanship leaves me breathless, and I have been wanting to share some of her work here for a long time. 

When I did a bit of research, I also discovered her mind boggling and intricate metalwork (links later in this post), but I will focus on her delicate jewels here. 

Apparently she creates these objects by heating thin, filmy polyester fabrics, and then moulds them, in some fantastic way, I am hardly able to imagine. This Is Colossal has an article, where her technique is somewhat explained. 

Nature in all shapes or forms - and colours - seem to be represented here, there are flowers, jellyfish, fungi, corals or micro organisms studied in a Petri dish, all mixed up in the most delightful way. 

As I mentioned, I came across a lot of writing about her metal work, and it is every bit as stunning and full of detail as these creatures.

It is more weird, fairytale like, full of images and symbols. Go check out this article from New England Home, wich also tells a bit about her unusual background (she grew up in a Buddhist temple!).

In this video she demonstrates a metal sculpture, which is almost like a Victorian puppet theatre, or some kind of three dimensional, magical in-a-box-world.

And here she is!
You can follow her on Facebook as well....

Styrofoam artwork by Jenni Rope

On this grey and sludgy Tuesday, my eyes feast on these large mobile sculptures by the Finnish artist Jenni Rope - they look like slow motion explosions. They are big works, more like room installations, and are not the only type of thing she does - she is also a very fine painter and graphic artist (I love those brushstroke works and also her textile pattern design). But mobiles are something I was always quite crazy about, and the way she uses styrofoam slabs to make these, is really cool.

When you paint styrofoam, it looks like all kinds of other things: rocks, minerals, concrete - heavy, somehow. And a bit unreal. 

I always find it an enormous inspiration, when artists work in anywhere available and inexpensive materials, such as these. You don't need brass, bronze or granite to make fine sculptural expressions!

Sometimes she does on-the-floor installations with these odd, painted shapes, I really love this one from 2011, 'The Findings'.

Lydia Kasumi Shirreff: Paper engineer

London based paper artist Lydia Kasumi Shirreff calls herself a 'paper engineer', and the complex geometrics of her work, makes that title quite appropriate. And when art and engineering meet, interesting things often happen! 

She does all kinds of abstract, fun and surreal backdrops or mini set designs for commercial photo shoots or editorial illustrations for a long list of very prestigious magazines and clients. In an interview from last year - read it right here - she tells us, when asked why she works in paper, that she just started out as a young designer/sculptor needing a cheap, available and flexible material. And then I suppose she must have stuck with the paper, and has become an absolute virtuoso.

See the magic she works - more links and info after the images.

These cubist, abstract works are just stunning! 

Some of her work is more explosively colorful - and these are just a few examples, visit her website (which I linked to in the beginning of the text), and explore. What I find fun personally, being so fond of paperwork myself, is trying to figure out some of her processes. Not so easy, and very, very impressive, no matter how she has done it.

She has done a lot of figurative set ups for various fashion and lifestyle clients, sometimes so neatly done, that they fool the eye at first (a bit in the style of the amazing German artist Thomas Demand)  but more often like these, where the feel of the paper makes it all pop-arty and candy like. 

On her website she does this great thing - she has a couple of 'behind the scenes' photos, showing her equally impressive work in the photo studio. When you see the shot I will show here, below, it looks almost like a surreal construction made in some 3D rendering program.....

But then check out the next image - and note how the roll of duct tape indicates the size of the small, hanging paper sculptures.

Nice work, indeed, and I love how she shares some of the meticulous preparations for such a single shot. How she works, can also be seen in this little video I found, where she explains a project she made for the eye wear brand Cubitts.

Click here to see the video on Vimeo

All images: copyright Lydia Kasumi Shireff

The National

I have recently discovered that I really like The National, the band from New York, that is - and after I saw the way they present their new album, 'Sleep Well Beast', which came out a few weeks ago, I have decided to become a fan, and take it from there...

They had none other than Pentagram design a whole corporate branding package, slightly as a bit of a joke, I guess. But it's so super elegant! Read a lot more about it here.

But enjoy a couple of samples here, and - of course - check out the album, it sounds great. 

I really love the use of the two intense shades of blue, with just a touch of red here and there, and the grainy monochrome photos. But some of it HAS to be an absolute corporate-identity-joke, I mean, a stapler...? A tape-dispenser (and even tape)...? That's so funny.

But actually my interest in The National started last year, at Copenhagen Contemporary this really great (but temporary, sadly) art venue here in Cph.

Last year they had the Icelandic video artist Ragnar Kjartansson's project 'A Lot of Sorrow' on the programme, a film about a rather unusual performance: In 2013, at MoMA in  New York, the band played their song 'Sorrow' non stop for six hours in front of an audience. Ragnar Kjartansson - who came up with the idea - also filmed this epic display of patience and endurance.

And at CC they showed an edited version of the performance (and also had a few full length screenings), and I guess we walked into some part in the later half, where the band is in a state of exhausted deep, deep concentration and commitment to the song. It had a mesmerizing, weird effect, that repetition - and though the song is simple, gloomy and not very long, it somehow really grows on you. Grows into you, almost.

It is really worth checking out this fascinating project, if it is shown anywhere near you.

alotofsorrow.com

Here is a little film about it from Louisiana Channel

There is a full length but audio only version on YouTube.

A subterranean must see in Cph: Sambuichi 'the Water'

Very close to where I live, an old system of underground water reservoirs have become an art space, some years back - and every year Cisternerne present a new wild and overwhelming installation, created specifically for this cavern-like dark and wet space, hiding secretly under the park clad hill by the castle, that I have written about before.

This year it is the Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi, who has created the installation. It's called 'the Water'. I went to see it yesterday, and it was so incredibly beautiful. My absolute warmest recommendations, to anyone living in or going to Copenhagen, and it will be there until February 2018, so no need to rush.

Yesterday was a sunny day, and this is a really dark experience, in the literal sense of the word. You crawl down the narrow stairs to an almost physically tangible pitch black nothing at first - all you sense around you is this cool and drippingly wet cavern and an almost overwhelming scent of fresh cedar and cypress wood - and the peculiar, metallic smell of wetness. Blinded by this sudden shift from blazing spring sun to underground cave, I almost crawled into the space. I couldn't see a thing.

But then the most elegant and mysterious world started to materialize before my eyes - like a dark forest or an underwater shrine. The whole space is transversed by elevated, cedarwood walkways in traditional Japanese style, and here and there they lead you to surprising vistas; the lantern lit curve of a bridge, an island of deliciously green fresh moss. Sudden pillars of natural sunlight, led underground by intricate mirrors. And constantly the sound of dripping water.

It was actually a bit hopeless to photograph, except in the parts where you could see, by sunlight - the semi-dark places just couldn't be done any justice by a camera. Go see for yourself, it's great! 

Links and info after the images.

There were a lot of references to traditional Japanese architecture and to their perception of the elements - and of course some philosophical layers in the whole concept of the installation, which will grow and evolve as nature wills it, in the period it's there. Read about the whole thing here on the Cisternerne (as the place is called) website.

In the heart of the space there is a very, very dark area, where a different kind of rope line the walkways, and seem to border off a kind of center of the grid - where apparently nothing is - but I saw that the rope was the very rough, handmade hemp kind, that you see around shinto temples, and that white strips were hanging from them. I actually had to take a blitz photo to establish this.

There was something that felt very magical about this roped off centre, and I am sure that the kami were abundant there. I could almost not bring myself to leave, but in the end I was freezing (bring a sweater!) and had to get back up into the sun. To be blinded all over again.