UrbanicaBlog
by Israel Baumgartner
Currently viewing the category: "Installation"
Guinness is the daughter of Jonathan Guinness, 3rd Baron Moyne and his second wife, Suzanne Lisney. She has designed a range of clothing with Dover Street Market and released an eponymous fragrance in 2009 with Comme des Garçons. Guinness has collected fashion, specifically haute couture, for a number of years, and in 2010 bought the entire wardrobe of the late Isabella Blow , in her owns words, to ‘prevent Issie’s possessions becoming mere morbid memorabilia… to preserve it’. She has a fascination with armour, and in 2006 approached her great friend Shaun Leane to create a gold and diamond arm glove. Titled ‘Contra Mundum’ or ‘Against The World’, this handcrafted, intricately made objet d’art took five years to create and develop and is perhaps one of the most technically advanced pieces in the world of artisan jewels.
Vogue Italia Supplement September 2008
Documentary filmmaker Brennan Stasiewicz infiltrates the cosseted world of Daphne Guinness in Daphne’s Window. Featuring intimate footage of the icon at her Fifth Avenue apartment, the short follows the eccentric fashion patron and socialite as she prepares for her recent installation in the windows of Barneys New York. The storefront showcased her collection of pieces by designer Lee Alexander McQueen and a selection from the archive of fashion editor Isabella Blow, which Guinness purchased in its entirety last year. The display culminated in a performance art piece in which Guinness dressed for the Met ball in one of the flagship’s windows, modeling a lilac feathered gown designed by McQueen’s Sarah Burton. “She appears to me as someone always in a window,” says Stasiewicz. “Someone you can approach and see, but you remain on the other side.” This year brings a multitude of projects for the heiress: her sculptural armored glove collaboration with jeweler Shaun Leane (pictured in today’s film) will be exhibited by Jay Jopling in a private viewing in London later this month; and in September a retrospective at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology will pay homage to her style. “Daphne is someone to take pleasure in, and in many ways, someone who incites moments of wonder,” says Stasiewicz.
Altar of Energy
Alta of Light
Altar of Ideas
Altar of Home
Altar of Time
Altars is one of the new photographic work by Dutch artist RACHEL DE JOODE. Her intention is to decipher human existence in absurd and surreal ways, through installations, mise en scenes and still life photography: “I seek to portray the otherworldliness in the most profane aspects of our world. My work depicts people and objects and their performative gestures. I explore the balance between the mystical subconscious and the rational daily life.”
According to the service/mission/function of every Altar piece, a special selection of items is arranged and applied at specific places that reference both their primal purpose and their metaphorical energy, for which many of them were once renowned and appreciated. These altars appear to be secrete entities, placed in a number of urban locations, including public spaces, strips of urban nature, facades of domestic building and parking lots. They serve to praise, bless and conntect us to important components of human culture: food, energy, transmission, light, the physical body, nature, home, growth, time…
Kyung Woo Han is a Seoul, Korea born artist who received his BFA in sculpture from Seoul National University and his MFA in film and video in Chicago at the New Media School. With nothing more than a little paint, some furniture, and clear wire he’s created one of the most stunning spacial visual effects.
Elmgreen & Dragset
Katharina Fritsch
Frederik Heyman studied Graphics and Photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Abstraction, humour and detailed Visual language are always present in his work.
