News & Features

Joshua Saunders finds irony in the most unlikely of things. I don’t know what else this particular show now taking place at Domy Books in Austin entails, but this image alone is just really, really, really funny to me. Showing in the back room, Michelle Devereux is similarly doing a love-it or hate-it job with her well-rendered images of dudes skateboarding on pizza. I don’t know, man.

Zander Olsen‘s Tree, Line series really plays tricks on the eye. Olsen wraps trees in white material and then photographs them from very specific angles to create the illusion of stark and unnatural shapes within an extremely natural setting. These are from an ongoing body of work, installed and photographed throughout the UK in Hampshire, Surrey, and Wales.

If you live in NYC or are visiting it soon, get to New Museum by the end of the month if you know what’s good for ya! Closing January 2nd is this amazing, amazing enveloping psychedelic sculptural Experience, presented by Germany’s Carsten Höller (now living and working in Sweden). Where else will you see giant life-size multi-colored hippos? Nowhere. Where else will you be presented with giant tri-shroom composites? Nowhere. This is, according to the New Museum website, “the most comprehensive US exhibition to date of the artist’s engaging work.” They continue by saying: “The current show gathers together a number of the artist’s signature works in an arrangement that transforms the viewer’s experience of time and space. Originally trained [...]

Fredrik – Flora Record Label Kora Records The Artists Design & Photography Ola Lindefelt Mediums & Materials Photography (FED-2 Ukrainian rangefinder camera, Industar 50 radioactive lanthanum lens, expired Fujichrome Velvia 50 film), Scanner Photography and digital manipulations merge in style as Fredrik create their own album artwork and full-length video for Flora. QUOTES FROM: OLA LINDEFELT, FREDRIK CREATIVE PROCESS “In my experience, inspiration comes in many forms from all places. There is not necessary an obvious link between my inspirations and my work. Being inspired from something from a total different genre or different art form is a good  way for me to take my own processes in new directions. I could or would never do anything like the Kvelertak [...]

Gallery Hijinks‘ upcoming show will feature the work of Long Beach’s Treasure Frey and Portland’s Kyle Benjamin Jorgensen. Like many shows these days, both artists will be united by their explorations of shape and form. They are decidedly different, however; Frey’s pieces are fascinating in the way they contrast with themselves. Jorgensen’s geometric musings on Pacific Northwest landscapes and scenery are hard-to-place, like sci-fi illustrations that have lost themselves in the wilderness. Opens tomorrow night, from 6:00pm to 10:00pm!!! (P.S. Dude, I LOVE Gallery Hijinks.) Treasure Frey Kyle Benjamin Jorgensen

I just found this post on the Pattern People blog, about a book entitled The Writing Of Stones. The images are striking, true, but it’s more than just a book about nature. I love how blogger Lauren Demith Chung wove in literary quotes from the book, which tie geology with pattern-making and philosophy. The author, Roger Caillois, is what Wikipedia describes as “a French intellectual whose idiosyncratic work brought together literary criticism, sociology, and philosophy by focusing on subjects as diverse as games, play and the sacred.” Profound guy — a synthesizer of information, no doubt, and right up REDEFINE’s alley. Chung shares one of the quotes from The Writing Of Stones, writing: “Philosophers have not hesitated to identify the [...]

Shai Kremer’s Fallen Empires series shows unbiased images of Israel’s decay and destruction, encouraging dialogue via archeological remnants and landscapes.

Our third-annual album cover art feature uses interviews with artists and musicians to highlight the philosophical, thematic, and conceptual significance of great album cover artwork. THE BREAKDOWN    12 Collage + 14 Digital Illustration, Drawing, Design + 19 Illustration, Painting, Drawing + 8 Black And White Photography + 22 Color Photography + 6 Deluxe Packaging + 10 Fashion, Sculpture, Installation _____________________________    91 Album Covers For 2011 Apteka – Gargoyle Days Despite never having met one another, Portland designer Dylan McConnell and Chicago’s Apteka have grown a well-fitting artistic relationship through the years. McConnell’s album cover for Gargoyle Days may be their most gripping collaboration yet. Gargoyle Days by APTEKA QUOTES FROM: DYLAN MCCONNELL, DESIGNER ADAM LUCAS, APTEKA’S GUITARIST AND [...]

This in-depth feature highlights how well-executed album artwork can go beyond genre lines to expand into territories of philosophical, thematic, and conceptual significance. Perhaps now more than ever, album cover artwork plays a vital role in music.

Xhurch, a repurposed church in North Portland, has decided to take last year’s live reenactment of the Nativity one step out of the terrestrial and into a more cosmic direction, with this year’s Alien Nativity. See full slideshow of last year’s Nativity. Last year’s Nativity had the usual characters — Mary, Joseph, Jesus, three wise men, a sheperd, animals — but this year, the three wise men have been replaced by four aliens holding elementary particles of the universe, baby Jesus by… yourself? “You wind up seeing a reflection of yourself, and that’s the symbolic message of nativity. Recognizing divinity and potential in yourself. And at the same time perhaps recognizing the terrestrial nature of Christ,” says Matt Henderson in [...]

At just slightly over a minute long, this short film is visually what you might expect from a mixture of lava lamp luminescence and The Blob’s flesh-eating ways. And I guess it is intended to be scary, though less in a movie monster type way and more in a “horrors of humanity’s callousness” kind of way. Filmmaker David Parker created to bring awareness to energy waste. The Sunday Paper’s website writes: Bleeding, crying lights were meant to metaphorically parallel the way in which we invisibly squander our natural resources without much thought. While the original sentiment remains, the film also grew into a poetic statement about a world run amok and the human tendency to exploit that which we hold [...]

The beauty of heavy metal is despite it being the most serious form of music, half the time it is impossible to take it entirely seriously. That is why this Periodic Table of Heavy Metal is so genius – it is quite comprehensive, containing everything from Anvil to Zyklon all arranged in the universal symbol for headbanging everywhere – the horned hand. However, for something this far reaching, there are of course a few issues to be had: 1) The image is so large, it is tough to read between the color table and the bands. Granted, I was able to guess that Elvinking is folk-metal, but apparently so is Subway to Sally. Take this bad boy to Kinko’s for [...]