Photo Friday with Alma Haser’s Cosmic Surgery


By superimposing copies of her models’ faces made into origami on their original portraits, Alma Haser creates interesting, although unsettling, images. The London artist creates these cubist-like images by printing multiple copies of her subject’s face, making them into origami, and then shooting the original photograph with the origami placed on top. This method allows Haser to bring her photography into another dimension. She is not only capturing or representing her models, but completely recreating them.

Although in the artist’s statement Haser never explicitly describes the play on words and relationship between “cosmic surgery” and “cosmetic surgery,” the viewer can imagine a future dystopia where manipulation and ideals of beauty, now unrecognizable to us, could exist. She writes, ” There is something quite alien about the manipulated faces, as if they belong to some futuristic next generation.”

For the entire series please go here.

-Rudayna Bahubeshi

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In a photo lab far, far away… Ottawa-based artist Dante Penman takes the traditional process of the photogram, and completely turns it around. With a bit of chemical manipulation, his photograms become chemigrams, a process invented in 1956 by Pierre Cordier. What this entails, is that the developing chemicals are not placed evenly on the photopaper. It is the Abstract Expressionism of photography (a connection which Penman made in his artists’ statement). Instead of just painting with developer, Penman adds three-dimensional botanical aspects, such as fern leaves, to mimic the effects of light from pictures in space. Chemistry, botany and astronomy all play pivotal roles in his work. Some of his works are even inspired by Science Fiction, the images alluding to lost worlds and alien wildlife. Not only does the viewer become lost in the multi-layers of leaves, debris and chemicals, but they can also become lost in the image, wondering how the artist put it together. The chemistry in it is like magic, and the images will surely put you under their spell. If you would like to see these chemigrams for yourself, Dante Penman’s work is currently on display at Bubblicity, 730 Somerset St. W., as part of Chinatown Remixed, until the 18th of June.-Anna Paluch

In a photo lab far, far away…

Ottawa-based artist Dante Penman takes the traditional process of the photogram, and completely turns it around. With a bit of chemical manipulation, his photograms become chemigrams, a process invented in 1956 by Pierre Cordier. What this entails, is that the developing chemicals are not placed evenly on the photopaper. It is the Abstract Expressionism of photography (a connection which Penman made in his artists’ statement). Instead of just painting with developer, Penman adds three-dimensional botanical aspects, such as fern leaves, to mimic the effects of light from pictures in space.

Chemistry, botany and astronomy all play pivotal roles in his work.

Some of his works are even inspired by Science Fiction, the images alluding to lost worlds and alien wildlife. Not only does the viewer become lost in the multi-layers of leaves, debris and chemicals, but they can also become lost in the image, wondering how the artist put it together. The chemistry in it is like magic, and the images will surely put you under their spell.

If you would like to see these chemigrams for yourself, Dante Penman’s work is currently on display at Bubblicity, 730 Somerset St. W., as part of Chinatown Remixed, until the 18th of June.

-Anna Paluch

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Aniwaniwa at the National Gallery of Canada

Aniwaniwa is a collaborative multimedia artwork between artists Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena. Currently on display at the National Gallery of Canada for the exhibition of indigenous art, Sakahàn, the piece evokes a diverse range of powerful emotions within its viewers. In order to view the piece, which consists of five domed video projections that hang from the ceiling, the viewer has to lie down on one of the many beds provided. In this sense, Aniwaniwa has already challenged the typical relationship between artwork and viewer by altering the position and perspective of the body, but the issues and ideas that the work deals with are also palpable and fascinating.

As soon as you lie down to watch the screens, you feel as though you enter a dream-like state, which is helped along by the fact that you are on a bed. But the imagery that is displayed on the five screens is dream-like in the surreal quality of the scenarios that unfold. Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena have created a narrative of the lives of villagers that live in an underwater town. The use of water in Aniwaniwa represents both the importance of water in the culture and identity of the Maori people, but it also represents a historical event: the flooding of Horahora village to create a hydroelectric dam in 1947. Horahora was also the place where Graham’s father was born, which speaks to his tie to both the submersion of his culture, history and identity literally beneath the water. Having the villagers enact their daily lives underwater becomes a metaphor for cultural loss, as well as a reassertion of the importance that nature holds for Maori culture. Even the title of the piece, Aniwaniwa, refers to the rapids on the Waikato River that was closest to Horahora when the village still existed.

Not only does the content of the work deal with cultural loss and the retelling of history, but also the objects that suspend the work itself. The domed screens are each encased in a sculptural vessel that mimics wakahuia, a wooden box or object that are keepers of memories. It brings to mind that the actions of the villagers are being preserved despite having been submerged, for they have been remembered and retold over the course of history. The carved marks on the sides of the vessels also relate back to the origins of carving within the Maori culture; according to Tangaroan legend, ‘whakairo’ (to carve, to be like a maggot) is an art that has been retrieved from under the water. 

To view the work or for more information about the exhibition, visit the National Gallery of Canada’s website for their hours and admission fees here.

- Lea Hamilton

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Donna Conlon, Coexistence (Italy), 2008. Courtesy the artist and Diablo Rosso (Panamá)

Contingent Continents: The World Over

Hundreds of ants industriously eat away at a map of the world in Rivane Neuenschwander’s video work, Contingent (2008) (below). Made of honey, the map slowly disintegrates into nothingness as the formidable continents shrink into smaller islands- mere specks of their former grandeur. This insect frenzy is a metaphor for the poignant and fraught relationship between consumption and the environment; it queries the consumptive habits of humankind and the detrimental consequences such consumption wreaks upon the natural world. While nourishment for ants is a necessity, the reasons for our environmental extortion might not always be deemed essential.

Part of The World Over, a group exhibition curated by Scott McLeod currently on view at Prefix Institute of Contemporary art in Toronto, Neuenscheander’s video thematically links the first work seen upon entering the exhibit, Cuban artist Glenda León’s photograph Between Air and Dreams (2003), with Donna Conlon’s video and photographs of ants, installed in the main space of the gallery. León’s work comprises an image of clouds, assembled into a map of the world while Conlon’s series Coexistence (2003/2008) depicts leaf-cutter ants carrying near-microscopic pieces of various national flags. León’s cloud continents, those fickle and ever changing bits of the atmosphere, speak to Earth’s future as contingent rather than immutable while the harsh borders of nationality are imagined as collapsed, again by the industry of ants, in Conlon’s film and photographs. In all cases, nature reigns supreme while the constructed borders humankind ironically fall prey to the whims of the natural.

These and other works on view in The World Over at Prefix Institute of Contemporary art in Toronto from May 2 through June 22, 2013.

- Natasha Chaykowski

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World’s Smallest Animation Showcases IBM’s Research in Data Storage

Meet Adam. He is young, playful, and made completely out of carbon monoxide molecules. 

Adam and his little pet atom are the stars of the world’s smallest animation titled, A Boy and His Atom. 

Produced by researchers at IBM, this miniscule short film was made by moving carbon monoxide molecules frame by frame at a magnification level of 100,000,000 times.

The device responsible for moving each individual molecule is the scanning tunnelling microscope (STM). It is kept in a room at around -260 degrees Celsius in order to slow down the molecules. To position the slowed molecules, the needle-like STM drags individual molecules across a copper plate. At the molecular level, the atom at the tip of the small needle chemically reacts with the molecule of interest to move it to the desired position.

The ability to translocate atoms over surfaces is being investigated for its uses in data storage and computing. Currently, one bit of information can be stored on a magnet made of 1,000,000 atoms. However, in 2012, IBM’s researchers were able to store the same amount of information with merely 12 atoms. In an interview, principal investigator Andreas Heinrich stated that with this discovery, you could store all the movies that have ever existed on your iPod (IBM).

Although A Boy and His Atom is not directly related to IBM’s research in data storage, it showcases a scientific breakthrough in a fun, entertaining manner. It represents great technological advances in the digital age and introduces the ability to store colossal amounts of information beyond belief.

- Janine Truong


(Source: IBM / The Telegraph )

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Amy Brener


These latest sculptures by New York-based artist Amy Brener are something magical. Made of a combination of materials like resin, pigment, and glass (Brener describes these as “totemic structures…of an imagined future,”) these objects combine natural and artificial aesthetics to create something familiar yet strangely distant from a what we know. As the artist describes:

“Some sculptures may be markers for an unknown border, while others hint at vehicular function. Some surfaces are ordered into compositions that allude to touch-screen platforms, energy cells and the digital logic of a different reality. Other surfaces are left to chance: to crystallize, crack under pressure and weather with time. Common sculpture materials such as resin and concrete shed their associations and morph into geological forms. I enforce approximations of natural processes onto my sculptures. Notions of sedimentation, erosion and fossilization come into play.”

See more of Brener’s work at her website here. And read more at her MoMA Studio Visit Page here.

- Erin Saunders

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Illusions of Life Painting has always been used to mimic our surroundings. Whether it was used be Ancient civilizations on wall frescoes, or whether it hung in the grand palaces of Renaissance nobles, natural motifs such as plants and wildlife were studied in order to paint the most lifelike rendition. Now, art is freer, with many movements happening at once. Realism seems to have been pushed back, with artists now focusing on the expression of their work, and how it stirs emotions. This is why artists, who focus on realism in their art, are finding new ways of making it relevant to today’s tastes. Artists Riusuke Fukahori and Keng Lye use layers of resin to bring their aquatic creatures to life, in a visually stunning display of three-dimensional optical illusions. Instead of using a flat canvas, painting on water, and then the creatures, these artists pour resin into jars, bowls or boxes, and paint their fish and turtles, one layer at a time, with more resin poured in between each coat of paint. The process is like that of a 3-D printer, a new technology that many artists are using in their contemporary works. Through the mimicking of this new art process, their realist style of art is able to join the ranks of contemporary artists.-Anna Paluch

Illusions of Life

Painting has always been used to mimic our surroundings. Whether it was used be Ancient civilizations on wall frescoes, or whether it hung in the grand palaces of Renaissance nobles, natural motifs such as plants and wildlife were studied in order to paint the most lifelike rendition.

Now, art is freer, with many movements happening at once. Realism seems to have been pushed back, with artists now focusing on the expression of their work, and how it stirs emotions. This is why artists, who focus on realism in their art, are finding new ways of making it relevant to today’s tastes. Artists Riusuke Fukahori and Keng Lye use layers of resin to bring their aquatic creatures to life, in a visually stunning display of three-dimensional optical illusions. Instead of using a flat canvas, painting on water, and then the creatures, these artists pour resin into jars, bowls or boxes, and paint their fish and turtles, one layer at a time, with more resin poured in between each coat of paint. The process is like that of a 3-D printer, a new technology that many artists are using in their contemporary works.

Through the mimicking of this new art process, their realist style of art is able to join the ranks of contemporary artists.

-Anna Paluch

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Candice Couse’s Personal Geographies

It is easy to get caught up in the whimsical nature of the video above due to the excellent stop-motion animation, the soft quality of the knitted body and the background music. But the video, Sick (2011) by Candace Couse, speaks to some very profound notions of the relationship between art and the body, as well as the relationship between art and biology. Couse has stated that her work “eagerly engages with the idea of personal geographies as intimate approaches to orientation and identity.” She fixates on the idea of body as the first territory we acquire as individuals. As Couse portrays it, the main conceptual focus of Sick would revolve around the invasion of personal systems and territory of the body by “subversive agents”; in this case, disease. She has also chosen a childish, playful way of representing the body through textiles; by knitting it together, the work mimicks the softer qualities of the human anatomy without being explicit. Even the representation of sickness as a black, spider-like figure takes the seriousness of anatomy and biology, and makes it fully accessible to any viewer.

image

Candace Couse is also an accomplished painter, exploring her idea of personal geographies by creating portraits that use the anatomy of the body as the basis for maps. Veins become roadways or rivers beneath the skin of the subjects, literally turning the body into a territory that has already been conquered and explored.

To view more of the artist’s works or read more about her, visit her website here.

- Lea Hamilton

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Elena Radice’s Abstract Season Changes

In her series Abstract Season Changes, Elena Radice captures glitches in Google maps. Her interest in glitches stems from the idea that glitches are visible evidence of the imperfection of machines. Google maps gives us the ability to see the world from above, but Radice questions the “truth” of the images. Even when looking at Google maps we must recognize that we are always looking at a representation of something rather than the real thing. The “reality” captured in the image might not be the reality of the present moment, as is evident by the glitches. 

Another aspect of this project that stood out is how Radice is using tumblr as a platform for her project. She’s using tumblr as a “white room” for her work. As she describes this idea, tumblr’s “social implication is strictly devoted to this idea of archive as clay that users use and re-use, adding new shapes. I think that the point is to continue the research around the artwork statement that is floating with us into the time flow, and shouldn’t ever be just a definition.”

To view the rest of the project on tumblr, click here. 

- Lee Jones

(via leraneacide-portfolio)

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Mineral Microscopy

Stephanie Bateman-Graham does mineral microscopy, or as she prefers to call it “using a low-powered digital toy microscope to take pictures of beautiful minerals”. In these works Bateman-Graham discovers the parts of nature that are weirdly similar to recognizable art styles — from Van Gogh impressionism to the fractured lines of Picasso. I’ve included her descriptions of the three works above:

Ecosystem (Moss Agate):  Do you see a mixed population of microbes living together in a complete ecosystem? Actually it’s a microscope view of the mineral Stringy Moss Agate from Lake Bonneville. The material is translucent which gives a watery feel to the image, but it is entirely solid crystal.

Heart of Stony Glass (Opalite): Microscope view of the Australian mineral Rosella Opalite. The light bounces around this veined and fractured crystalline material to reveal a heart and vascular system inside the stone. The amazing brushstrokes and textures in this image are all natural.

Fire Mountain (Lace Agate): A mountain burns in this microscope view of the mineral Laguna Lace Agate from Mexico. Also known as Crazy Lace Agate.

To see more of Bateman-Graham’s works, click here. 

- Lee Jones

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