Art, design, and visual culture

Art, design, and visual culture

A Taipei City Design Studio Is Recreating Historic Mosaic Tiles Found Throughout Taiwan

The Taipei City-based studio Pan Pan Hua is preserving local heritage by recreating the historic details unique to the region’s built environment. “Through years of research, we have found that the mosaic tile, once thriving in Taiwan, ceased production nearly half a century ago. Neither tile factories nor construction material suppliers offer similar products anymore, resulting in a gradual loss of Taiwan’s architectural identity,” a statement says...
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Merging Past and Present, Tavares Strachan Wrests Light from Darkness in His Expansive Installations

In 1887, an African-American man named Matthew Henson was hired by U.S. Navy engineer Robert Peary to accompany a team of explorers to be the first to navigate to the Geographic North Pole. On April 6, 1909, after several failed attempts, Henson was the first to arrive with the help of Inuit guides, but Peary—whose records were later interrogated and found to contain discrepancies—was credited with the achievement for a century...
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Weathered Wood and Marble Visualize Time Passing in Stefaan De Croock’s Poetic Portraits

Lush with material textures, Stefaan De Croock’s portraits have no identifying attributes. The Belgian artist (previously) puzzles together fragments of wood or marble into figures with distinctive postures and presences but no facial features. Anonymity can lend itself to universality, De Croock believes, and he strives to pinpoint the experiences and stories that touch many lives...
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Tang Shuo Casts Himself as Members of His Small Chinese Village in a New Series of Paintings

In The Narrators, artist Tang Shuo inserts himself into the stories of his native Boulder Hill by painting himself as the protagonist. He envisions life as a sweaty worker hunched over a field of weeds or a child angling to capture a butterfly. Like previous bodies of work, the pensive series takes the divide between memory and fact as a starting point and how that tension arises within his small village on the edge of Guilin, China...
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The Floating Bosch Parade Makes a Spectacle of Online Life on a River in The Netherlands

The Bosch Parade, a theatrical and musical art spectacle on the Netherlands’ Dommel River, kicks off on Thursday, June 20. For four days, spectators on the riverbanks can experience a procession of 19 floating, paddling, and swimming works of art in the middle of the historic center of ’s-Hertogenbosch, the birthplace and home of Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516). The tenth edition of the parade is dedicated to our contemporary demons...
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Seasonal Blooms Capture Sunlight in Jessica Saunders’ Delicate Stained Glass Sculptures

“Flowers are connecting, grounding, uplifting, healing, and worth treasuring,” says Essex-based artist Jessica Saunders, whose delicate stained glass sculptures highlight an array of familiar and beloved blooms. From daffodils and poppies to cornflowers and hydrangeas, her pieces celebrate the cyclical nature of the seasons and the incredible range of specimens in both our backyards and the wild...
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Inspired by Impermanence, Juliette Minchin Burns Down Her Elegant Wax-Dipped Installations

French artist Juliette Minchin appreciates wax for its ambivalence. Activated by heat, the modest material can be smooth or crinkled, firm or pliable, and molded into a distinct shape or pooled into a puddle of liquid. No matter its current form, though, wax can quickly morph from one state to another, and this impermanence is partially what inspired Minchin to incorporate the sticky compound into her practice about five years ago...
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Immerse Yourself in ‘DIMENSIONS,’ a Site-Specific Interstellar Village by HYBYCOZO

Collaborative artists Yelena Filipchuk and Serge Beaulieu, who work as HYBYCOZO, explore light, geometry, and pattern in a new large-scale, immersive installation at Sensorio. The culmination of three years of research and development, DIMENSIONS invites visitors to wander around an “interstellar village” of striking metallic structures. During the day, sunlight glints off the gem-like facets, and at night, colorful lights illuminate each piece from within, casting elaborate shadows...
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At 600 Pages, Escif’s First-Ever Book Takes an Ambitious and Playfully Irreverent Approach to Street Art

Escif (previously) gained a foothold in street art by portraying playful scenes that tap into themes of capitalism, politics, and society, often relying on humor to convey messages related current events and activism. Now, the prolific Valencia-based artist is producing his first-ever book, a whopping 600-page tome titled The Foundations of Harmony and Invention, with help from a fully-backed crowdfunding campaign...
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Photos from 41 Countries Juxtapose Blocky Architecture and Verdant Gardens in ‘Brutalist Plants’

In the mid-20th century, during reconstruction following World War II, an architectural style emerged in the U.K. and Europe that favored bare, industrial building materials, a monochrome palette, and angular geometry. Both iconic and divisive, the hulking, concrete facades can be seen in the likes of London’s Barbican Centre or the National Theatre. In the U.S., think of Boston City Hall or Met Breuer. These stalwart structures represented modernity, resilience, and strength, serving as civic hubs and governmental centers—the opposite of “soft around the edges.”..
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Tali Weinberg Entwines Human and Ecological Health with Climate Data Sculptures

Anyone who’s tried to untangle a ball of yarn understands that fibers have a habit of knotting in ways that can seem impossible to unwind. These twisting, interlaced qualities ground much of Tali Weinberg’s fiber-based work as she pulls at the individual threads of our changing climate, using abstract weavings and textile sculptures to explore the inextricable nature of the crisis and the necessity for human intervention...
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In Venice, Jeffrey Gibson Envelops the U.S. Pavilion in Kaleidoscopic Color and Flawed Promises

Written in blocky, bright typography, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” wraps the top of the neoclassical facade of the U.S. Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale. The opening lines from the Declaration of Independence greet visitors to the groundbreaking exhibition the space in which to place me by artist Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to represent the U.S. with a solo exhibition...
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With Few Glimmers of Hope, the World Press Photo Contest Documents War, Migration, and Devastation

From Israel’s ongoing assault leaving the people of Gaza in horrific destitution to a record-breaking surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, the last year has seen incredible devastation around the globe. The 2024 World Press Photo contest gathers a profound and illuminating collection of images that approach myriad crises with compassion and clarity...
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Transforming Fabric into Flesh, Tamara Kostianovsky Fuses Cruelty and Beauty

If you walked into an exhibition featuring work from Tamara Kostianovsky in recent years, you likely encountered life-sized carcasses dangling from meat hooks. The Argentine-American artist (previously) is perhaps best known for these carnal sculptures of bone and flesh made from patterned fabric scraps. Newer additions include botanical vines winding through ribs and tropical birds perched inside that vacillate between beauty and brutality...
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