[ABOVE] Nieves’ logo, which looks a little bit like McDonald’s Grimace — only much more well-read…

Swiss publishing house, Nieves, really knows how to make you drool over a hard-copy art book. Their latest offering is entitled Iskandariyah Skan, and features the work of Zurich-based mixed media and installation artist, Ingo Giezendanner (whose website, it should be noted, is www.grrrr.net).

Iskandariyah, is Alexandria in Arabic, and the book documents Geizendanner’s ferry trip across the Mediterranean Sea into Alexandra, Egypt. The line art images simplistically capture Geizendanner’s surroundings, illustrating organized chaos in everything from ocean waves to trees and stacks of books to car wrecks. Geizendanner uses his eye like a camera, and later distorts the images through scanning processes (see artist statement below for details).

Below, a few pages of samples from the 192-page, soft cover, offset-printed book!! YUM!

More images on Nieves’ website.

Of the product, Geizendanner says:

“My previous picture book was about a train trip to Baku, this book documents my ferry trip accross the Mediterranean Sea to Alexandria (or Iskandariyah as it is called in Arabic). I was invited to exhbit my work and conduct a workshop organized by the artist-run Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF). This paperback is a selection of the many drawings that transpired on this amazing journey.

Not all my drawings are of a scene that catches my eye. Often it starts with coming across a really comfortable spot where I can sit undisturbed for some time amongst the hustle and rumble of a busy city. This, for me, can be quite meditative. Later, I scan the drawings to upload onto my website and other applications.

This time round, I also experimented with the drawings and hope to present this book as my personal development or work in progress. I wish to share the overwhelming experience of drawing the ocean and have tried to capture the simultaneous static second and fluid element of the water by flushing the drawings through a scanner and allowing them to distort as they wish to flow, much like the city, much like life itself.”

If you are for some reason in Zurich this weekend, there is a book launch and signing taking place at Nieves (Ankerstrasse 20, 8004, Zurich) on Saturday, July 2nd, from 14:00 to 17:00.

This is an oldie but goodie from our back catalog.
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THESE IMAGES IN PRINT.

Collages are a dime a dozen these days, with both digital collages and paper collages being artforms with teeny tiny learning curves. It seems that almost anyone can create a collage that looks half-decent; the tricky part lies in creating collages which harbor a distinctive style that helps them stand out from the rest.

L.A.-based artist Sonny Kay is perhaps best-known for his affiliation with world-class rockstars, The Mars Volta. Kay designs their graphics entirely and also serves as the Creative Director for Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Productions, the record label run by the vocalist of The Mars Volta. But album covers and music-related materials aside, Kay has a rich collection of semi-real digital collages few have seen. His collages are a hodge-podge of found images, sliced and diced together to create, in many cases, realities which could very well be plausible in another time and another place.

In a note to us, UK artist Matt Burden said that he’s often gets “labelled with things like dark, weird, violent, perverse”. But only elderly folk, babies, and some people who can only be described as chumps would probably be scared off by Burden’s art. While super gritty at times, they’re always excellently composed, and frankly, they’re dark in a way that’s not so much scary as it is just downright surrealist cool. Okay, yeah, it’s true, there’s a lot of nude bodies and private parts, too, but you’re a big kid. You’ll manage, right?

This post is actually going to feature two different series of works by Luis Dourado, Famous Are Dreaming and Into Space. But in my book, they belong together, dammit. The famous belong to the spacey dreams, so I’m going to sort them accordingly (and see if you can identify the famous faces — or non-faces).

Constructed Documentation of Altarpiece (Meant to Adorn Sacrificial Altar during Martyrdom of Google Images)

Brian J. Hettler is a digital media artist who attempts to approach his digital works with a fine art mentality. These glitched out images certainly look like digital works, but the similarities lie in the number of layers and how each additional layer affects the previous ones.

Check out his own statement about his works:

Having found myself previously embedded in theories based in traditionalism and the history of painting, I became lost in the idea of the transcendent image. This “goal” is, in my research, a commonality between many painters throughout history, all searching for a moment of aesthetic perfection that transports them beyond the everyday, the mundane, and the human. Whether this venture be to liberate myself spiritually or only to fulfill some internal craving for masturbation through aesthetic execution, it has consumed my practice. The digital world allows so many opportunities for me to go beyond my physical limitations, depicting visual illusions that are otherwise impossible for myself to create physically, creating colors that cannot and will never be depicted organically, and adapting flat space to become layered and spatial. Working in vivid, digitally enhanced colors, I fuse layered and mediated cultural data, creating “new space”, simultaneously decomposing and self-constructing. I constantly accept and question my power in the creation of these images and videos, attempting to maintain some semblance of classical structure, enhancing their mythic and physically nonexistent qualities, while simultaneously pushing to make an entirely new image.

Constructed Documentation of The Martyrdom of Google Image #11

Constructed Documentation of Prolonged Stare #2

Constructed Documentation of the Martyrdom of Google Image #3, #1, and #4

Constructed Documentation of Thoughts on the History of Painting the Metaphysical (The Reversal of the Isciopagus of Lakshmi Tatma aka the Reversal of the Reincarnation of Vishnu)

whilehighblog:

Laura Gómez – “Untitled”