The republic of the moon, Bargehouse, OXO Tower

Leonid Tishkov, Private Moon

I don't have many words for this exhibition other than: one of the most interesting and inspiring exhibitions I have seen in the last year. All installations are intelligent, well explained and exposed. Nothing fancy (finally), but art. Loved most of the projects, loved the descriptions and the graphics and people are really nice (which is harder and harder to find). Please, if you are around London, have a walk on the Southbank and sneak in this nice exhibition, which last but not least, is admission free. 

www.republicmoon.org

Replica by Maison Martin Margiela at SHOWstudio

Replica's perfumes by Maison Martin Margiela are created by precise moments of the designer's life. The first releases, Beach Walk, Flower Market and Funfair Evening, were then followed by Jazz Club, Lazy Sunday Morning and Promenade in the Garderns. The French fashion brand presents in collaboration with SHOWstudio, 19 Motcomb St. London, their perfumes with a little exhibit focused on memories. 21 artists have been asked to represent one perfumes and the results are really fascinating. 

showstudio.com

Inspiring Parrots by Sølve Sundsbø

Images source: www.fubiz.net

Such great in-studio pictures of a parrot by Sølve Sundsbø.

Zaria Forman

Greenland, Soft pastel on paper, 2012

I think no other words are needed: soft pastel on paper.

Incredible art pieces by Zaria Forman. 

www.zariaforman.com

The Great Refusal at Hayward Gallery

The Great Refusal, ''an exhibition of photographs, posters and ephemera relating to protest and counter-culture from the late 1940s to the early 1980s.'' (www.southbankcentre.co.uk)

Mark Bradford at White Cube Bermondsey

Mark Bradford, Nodding Gunpowder, Mixed media on canvas, 2013

whitecube.com

Walter Sickert - Queen's Road Station, Bayswater

Walter Sickert, Queen's Road Station, Bayswater, Oil on canvas, Around 1916

Walter Sickert (1860-1942) was the main exponent of the Camden Town Artist, a post-impressionist movement which mostly showed everyday urban scenes. The Queen's Road Station (now Bayswater) was one of the first tube stops and it the painting it is possible to see the first sample, diamond shaped, Underground logo. Still, super modern. 

Cool discover!

www.somersethouse.org.uk

Richard Serra: Drawings for the courtauld

Richard Serra, born in 1938, is probably most known for big steel sculptures. At the Somerset House, London, he presents ten drawings which are the result of a research with Mylar sheets. Throughout different layers of this transparent sheet, he is able to give a different deepness or ''transparency'', as called by the artist. The result is a series of whirls and thick layers of black matter which lies on a thin layer of transparent material. 

www.somersethouse.org.uk

Friedrich Kunath at White Cube, London

Images source: www.galleriesnow.net

Today I had the chance to see the exhibition ''I'm running out of world'', Friedrich Kunath, presented by the White Cube, Mason's Yard, London. I was really impressed by ''The Real Realities'' series (picture below). Notebook's lines and surreal illustrations onto wonderful west coast sunsets.

''This sense of destabilisation, as well as the suggestion of a maritime underworld, continues in Kunath’s ‘Real Realities’ paintings on the ground floor which depict richly coloured sunsets, overlaid with the markings of a standard A4 notepad, as if the romance of this highly sentimental image has been held in check by the organising principles of office stationary. The sunsets are sometimes caught behind the familiar postcard staple of a palm tree lined vista while at others, they are reflected in a perfectly calm sea. In another, a circular image of a Christmas card-like snowy landscape – a binary but equally idealised landscape – has been inserted on top. While the works point to Kunath’s interest in the mechanisms of popular visual culture, in particular album covers, where collage is the stylistic trigger for a willing suspension of belief, they also call to mind the notion of a notepad scribbles – where something immediate, spontaneous and unmediated travels from the imagination to the pen in one continuous flow.'' 

Press Release - White Cube

whitecube.com

Cool T-Shirts at SMK, Copenhagen

It is always fascinating to find contemporary details in the past. Well, I was really surprised by the T-Shirts of these two men at SMK, Copenhagen. Love them!

www.smk.dk

Sand Project & Animal 2.0 prints

From left: 

Vivienne Westwood bag 

Christoph Lemaire shirt + Cutler and Gross sunglasses (B Magazine) 

Shirt (pop-fashion.com)

Kenzo printed shirt (farfetch.com)

Just before my vacations I fell in love with this kinds of patterns that I have named ''Animal 2.0''. There is something new and refreshing about these prints and I see an extremely stylish and chic potential in this trend. 

When I was on vacation I came across these beautiful patterns on the sand which reminded me of the ''animalic 2.0'' mood. When the tide goes down, sand and water reveal different patterns all along the beach and it is amazing to see how perfect this is. Sand Project is a collection of pictures which are in between graphism and photography and reveal the beauty of a natural process in continuous changing. The subjects are millions fragments and this confuses and makes us wonder what we are looking at. 

Pictures by Andrea Strata

Talking about drawing: look what I found!

So, I'm back home and while writing my resume and putting together my portfolio I clean up the house. By cleaning up, I mean a big clean up. I'm cleaning every single drawer, tiding up and throwing away old unused stuff and ... look what I found! On a shelf in my bedroom I have my sketchbooks and I don't go through them really often and let me say it, cleaning up is ok, but it is nice to remember where some stuff come from. I came across Ms Wong's class sketchbook and I found some of my drawings. Most of them are blurred because there's no fix spray on the pencil's drawings...too bad. There are just a couple which are ok and I am still impressed by this one. Ok, it was drawn by a picture, which makes things really easier, but still! I don't think I still have this hand. 

Do you keep some great drawings of yours? I bet you still have some! 

How cool was your drawing which was hanging on the living room wall in your house downtown Van? I know you don't have it anymore, but, do you have a picture? I should go back to that picture's folder. I sure have a picture of my taco bed! ahaha

Getting back into it: Life Drawing

I'm rekindling my drawing skills.  I somewhere in the last year lost my excitement for being crafty and artsy and so I slapped myself in the face a couple times and said get back to it!  And so I got myself a sketchbook, rounded up some pencils and found a figure drawing class off brick lane.  Wow... I am rusty! haha Sometimes it takes a little more times to get back into it but it felt great to start sketching again.  Reminded me about really looking at the subject not the page.  Seeing the angles and shapes first and then bringing it all together.  I'm so thrilled that I found a class on tuesday nights at this cafe (andrea we have to go here if and when you come to London! Its adorable!).  I rushed into this class at the last minute just making it after getting off work a bit later then predicted and managed to grab a seat with... somewhat of a bad angle (hello bum) but its all great and so much fun to be drawing again! 

Nacho Carbonell - Unknown shell

How cool is Nacho Carbonell's work? Yes, I do love his work and it was really exciting to see his installation ''Unknown shell''. And what's most fascinating is to be able to see part of the maquettes and sketches of the artist, which are also really nice and beautifully done. 

nachocarbonell.com

Let me introduce the Chocolate Maker!

How cool is this Mo bro? and he is a Chocolate maker too! I just walks in front of this painting and couldn't resist to take a picture: great style, great Mo and cool painting too: this is just a detail, but there where some nice details such as vanilla sticks, wrapped chocolate with pink ribbons. Just focus of him for now.

www.costumemodaimmagine.mi.it

Christian Boltanski

Christian Boltanski is French artist born in 1944. His works are always about the memory, the unconscious, the youth and the death. He uses different materials for his installations: old pictures, found objects, cardboard, lights, candles and his style is quite recognizable with the use of children faces, rusty metal boxes, warm lights and used clothes. His ability is to suggest untold stories, moments of the past of an unknown person, and get to our more intimate and deep thoughts. In 2010 he was chosen for the annual exposition Monumenta inside the Grand Palais in Paris. I had the chance to see some of his works, but unfortunately I just have pictures of a couple of them (below). I really like his dialectic in expressing his topics. It is always an emotion to find an installation by Boltanski at an exposition.

Venice, Biennale, French pavillion, 

“Chance”, Christian Boltanski, 2011

Paris, Centre Pompidou

Les archives de C.B. 1965-1988, 1989

646 biscuits boxes containing about 1200 photographies and 800 documents

On top, 34 lamps and electric cables

270 x 693 x 35,5 cm

Plight by Joseph Beuys, 1985

Plight is an installation by Joseph Beuys created in 1985, a year before his death, for the Anthony d'Offay gallery in London. I took these pictures in Centre Pompidou in Paris where this installation was representing exactly the original one. Plight refers a precise moment: to dampen the sounds of building work next door, Beuys has promised the gallerist a work that opposed silence to sound. The installation consists of two spaces lined with thick rolls of felt. Once inside, the visitor experiences a sense of warmth and an ambivalent sense of isolation or insulation, of being both protected and cut off from the world. In absorbing sound, the felt renders even more incongruous the presence of a silent grand piano, on which lie a blackboard and a thermometer. The ambivalence and complexity of the work are reflected in its title, which evokes ideas of danger and constraint, and also obligation, and with it, promise.

www.centrepompidou.fr

Le musée de Cluny: medieval windows

The Cluny Museum in Paris is know for the six fabulous tapestries narrating the story of ''The Lady and the Unicorn''. This Medieval Museum had been recently restored and it absolutely amazing. The interiors and graphics are modern, still not in contrast with the ancient objects. In the picture the are some fragments of windows which have been enlightened from the back. It was possible to enjoy every single detail of the decoration. This was one of my favorites rooms of the Museum.

www.musee-moyenage.fr

Peter Lindbergh: ''Known and the Unknown''

Peter Lindbergh's women at Carla Sozzani's Gallery with the exhibition ''Known and the Unknown'' are on overview of the german photographer. His fashion works (the ''Known'') begun in the 1976 for Vogue, Interview, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, but each of those pictures is timeless and can stand alone as good piece of art. Lindbergh is able to show the intimacy of his women even when in front of the camera are standing celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Milla Jovovich, Kristen McMenamy, Kate Moss, Catherine Deneuve. ''The Unknown'' is a collection of works without chronology or particular order, with suggestions from movie sets: intense images which evoke our fears and questions.

Corso Como 10

Galleria Carla Sozzani

http://www.galleriacarlasozzani.org/

Perfume obsession: Bon Marché described by Emile Zola in The Ladie's Paradise

Illustration of the interiors of the Bon Marché mall, Paris, by Frederic Theodore, circa 1875

''Even in the buffet the ladies began to smell the perfume department; the penetrating scent of sachets pervaded the gallery. There was quite a struggle over a particular soap, the Paradise soap, a speciality of the shop. Inside the display counters and on the small crystal shelves of the showcases pots of pomades and creams were lined up, boxes of powder and rouge, phials of oils and toilet waters; while the fine brushes, combs, scissors, and pocket flasks occupied a special cupboard. The salesmen had used their ingenuity to decorate the display with all their white china pots and all their white glass phials. The customers were delighted by a silver fountain in the centre, a shepherdess standing in a harvest of flowers, from which a continuous trickle of violet water was flowing, tinkling musically in the metal basin. An exquisite scent was spreading everywhere, and the ladies soaked their handkerchiefs in it as they passed. 

''There!'' said Madame Marty, when she had loaded herself with lotions, toothpastes, and cosmetics. ''That's enough, now I'm at you disposal. Let's go and find Madame de Boves.''

Emile Zola, The Ladie's Paradise, 1883

The shop described by Zola is Le Bon Marché mall in Paris. This was a nice discovery! One of those that makes you smile and feel proud of an exciting research back in the XIX century! Some more curiosities have still to come!!!

1875