Heroes 13:23

 

Whooooops! I completely forgot to tell you about the new exhibition my friend Philip Paquet is having. Oh, boy, he’s going to be soooo crossed with me….

Well, you can forget about going to the opening. That was yesterday. But the work will be on display ‘till the 7the of August, so that gives you plenty of time to visit.

 

 

The works on display are portraits from some of his favorite musical heroes. Yes Jazzmen, of course, but also people like Bowie and Lou Reed, Flea and Frank Zappa. The man has an exquisite taste, what can I say…

Half of the pieces are “normal” drawings, but the other half are these strange multi-layered semi-transparent paintings made out of some see-through emulsion. I don’t know how all that works exactly, but he’s been experimenting with this technique since his previous show, and he’s getting better and better at it. If you are anyway near Antwerp, do stop by and check it out.

One more thing…

Paquet’s show is held at Tune Up, which is a record store. And I do mean a “record” store. The first floor shop is filled with nothing but actual vinyl records. No flimsy CD’s whatsoever. Nothing but big assed sleeves with analog information carriers.

It’s been ages since I have been to a place like that and man, it was awesome! All these beautiful designed sleeves, many of which I’ve only seen either as an online reproduction or resized for a CD-case. Here they were as it was intended: big and square and impressive.

One particular LP caught my eye: The soundtrack for the James Bond movie Thunderball. You can see a picture of it below but that’s of course not doing any justice to the experience I had.

Imagine holding this image in your hands, record-sleeve-sized, printed on sturdy cardboard. You can clearly make out all the details of the action scene. You can even see the brushwork of the illustration  (by Frank McCarthy). You vaguely remember the theme song (big Tom Jones voice holding that last note: “Thunnnnnnnn… Der Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalll”. You remember nothing of the movie, you actually start wondering whether you’ve ever seen it and promise yourself to see it (again?) soon.

And you don’t buy the record.

You don’t even own a record player. Money is tight. It would be silly!

You leave the big, beautiful, square record sleeve in the store.

 

But maybe, just maybe, you’ll go back tomorrow and get it anyway…

 

Tim Enthoven: Binnenskamers 13:30

 

 

Tonight, Dutch illustrator and comic creator Tim Enthoven presents his new comic book at the Bries Space in Antwerp (Belgium). This small but always surprising new venue for graphic art will be transformed into the room of the graphic novella. If you are in the neighborhood, go check out the original drawings shown there. The exhibition only runs for today, tomorrow and Sunday, but the artist will be present the whole three days.

The comic book seems to be the kind of delightfully experimental comic publisher Bries really has a knack for. I haven’t read it yet, but it looked mighty promising. To wet your appetite, here are some pages from the book…

 

 

Check out some more of the work of Tim Enthoven as an illustrator on his portfolio-site www.timenthoven.nl

 

 

The Bries Space can be found at :

Lange Scholierstraat 10, 2060 Antwerp, Belgium.

The opening starts today at 20h.

Saturday and Sunday you can visit from 12h till 18h.

More Serge Baeken… 13:02

 

 

We’ve had a little post on Mister SRG, Serge Baeken before (check it here). Today he is presenting his new book “50/50” filled with “wonderful and nauseating” sketches at Galery Lambiek in Amsterdam. If you have the chance, be sure to visit!

 

 

 

To visit Galerie Lambiek check this. More work By SRG can be seen on Sergeontherocks.com

Contemporary Collage 11:11

 

Master collager James Gallagher is curating the Cutters Exhibition, which brings together over 50 artists from around the world…

 

A Cutter's Edges - James Gallagher on Creating and Curating Contemporary Collage from Gestalten on Vimeo.

 

Find the work of James Gallagher at Gallagherstudio.net.

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(Found via The Strange Attractor)

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Gastrotypographicalassemblage 11:52

Kemistry Gallery in London has been exhibiting the work of legendary designer Lou Dorfsman, art director for CBS network.  The exhibition centers on his most notable creation, the 11 meter wide handmade wooden typographic wall that he named Gastrotypographicalassemblage. With custom type created by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, the wall contains almost 1500 individual characters.

 

Gastrotypographicalassemblage from christian carlsson on Vimeo.

 

The exhibition closed at the end of October. Well… it was a bit far for me anyway…

http://kemistrygallery.co.uk/

(Found via The Casual Optimist)

Dan Wolgers, Studies 12:43

Poetic. Erotic. Rickety.

But perhaps it is better to not say anything.

See for yourselves.

 

Dan Wolgers, Studies from Lars Bohman Gallery on Vimeo.

 

For more info: visit the Vimeo pages of the Lars Bohman Gallery (plenty of other interesting videos to be found, although some are in awkward languages like Swedish…) or check out their website.

Zimoun – Sound Sculptures 12:06

Zimoun’s sound sculptures are described as graceful, mechanized works of playful poetry. He often makes simple constructions in large series, objects becoming moving patterns and generating sound.

What strikes me is how beautiful these look on film. Sometimes the little mechanical things seem almost ethereal. But when the camera pulls back a whole different reality is revealed. Take for instance the set up of the installation you can see at the 4:45 mark, and compare this with the images that came before. Sometimes you would think these things are made to exist on film, rather than in real life.

Check out the video. See what you think…

 

Zimoun : Sound Sculptures & Installations | Compilation Video V1.9 from ZIMOUN VIDEO ARCHIVE on Vimeo.

For more on Zimoun go to his website at zimoun.ch

Pretty Loaded 16:53

 

 

We all know them, those little counting-thingies (oh, how I love the word thingy… :)  ), when you have to wait for a website to load. We don’t want to see them. We want to see what comes next. But we have to wait…. Aaargh, cruel, cruel internet!

Pretty Loaded is a flash preloader museum curated by digital creative agency Big Spaceship. It’s an archive of preloaders that preload other preloaders, which in turn…yes…. a never-ending preload preloading preload…uh…thingy!

Check it out here. Go on. It’s fun…

 

 

(Found via The Donut Project)

Tom Schamp 11:10

 

 

 

Tom Schamp is a Flemish illustrator with a long track record. He used to make a lot of work for magazines and newspapers, cd-covers and other commercial graphics, but nowadays he’s more into making picture books (he has made 15 of them in the last 5 years).

The “Literair Museum” (literary museum) of Hasselt, Belgium is having a nice exhibition of Schamps’ work which focuses mainly on this more recent work for picture books. The illustrations are far more detailed than his older work and always very humoristic. Schamp has a fascination for strange objects, little hand painted boxes, stamps, animal-shaped coffeepots, you name it… They appear in his pictures but apparently, they are real too. A whole collection of them is on display at the exhibition.

Also worth discovering is the more technical aspect of his work. Schamp uses acrylic paint to achieve the typical intensity of his colors, but he makes all the different elements of an illustration separately on pieces of cardboard, which later get scanned to be puzzled together digitally.

If you are anywhere near Hasselt, Belgium, try to pay a visit to this lovely artist and his work. For now, here’s a small selection of older and more recent work.

 

Visit the site of the Literair Museum Hasselt here. (The exhibition runs ‘till November 7, 2010). Or go to the site of Tom Schamp himself for some more work here.