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Anicka Yi

Biologizing the Machine
In Biologizing the Machine (tentacular trouble), the artist uses a stretched leather-like kelp to create hanging incandescent sculptures that conjure up images of organisms such as human organs and insect eggs through chrysalis-like pods within which animatronic insects flutter about. The use of this material calls attention to the ecological history and exciting potential uses of algae, a powerful and shapeshifting entity comprising the largest biomass on the planet. The ground beneath evokes a swamp (not too dissimilar from the watery underbelly of Venice) from which these organisms and other primordial beings may have come.

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD

ديفيد شيبرفيلد
大卫·奇普菲尔德
데이비드 치퍼필드
דיוויד צ’יפרפילד
デヴィッド·チッパーフィールド
Дэвид Чипперфилд
Knees of my Nose to the Belly

David Chipperfield tem em seus projetos um alto padrão de acabamento e um traço limpo, levando a resultados extremamente elegantes e funcionais. Seu conceito pode ser visto tanto em uma grande obra como em um pequeno objeto de design.

GROUP GELITIN

big pink bunny
Apparently, a controversial Viennese art group, Gelitin, has erected a giant pink rabbit on the side of an Italian mountainside where they plan for it to stay until 2025. According to Gelitin group member Wolfgang Gantner the bunny was “knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool” and is “supposed to make you feel small, like a daisy.” The artists added that they “want people to scale the rabbit’s sides and fall asleep on its stomach”. Apparently the intent of the project was to make climbers smile and provide them somewhere to lay back and relax. Gelatin members insist that the bunny is not just for walking around and that they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly. Livestock are apparently urged to not eat the bunny as it is constructed out of straw-stuffed fabric.

JENNIFER RUBELL

جنيفر روبل
제니퍼 루벨
ジェニファールベル
Portrait of the Artist

Jennifer Rubell, the American artist and niece of Studio 54 co-founder Steve Rubell, brings a maternal touch to this year’s Frieze Art Fair with her autobiographical piece Portrait of the Artist. The pristine white nude, cast from steel-reinforced fibreglass, reclines like an odalisque at the Stephen Friedman Gallery stand. The sculpture is a replica of Rubell’s own eight-months-pregnant body, except it is eight metres high: the large belly, which is carved out to leave an egg-shaped void, can accommodate a fully grown adult. Spectators are able to clamber into the artwork and curl up inside as if they are the artist’s unborn child.Rubell’s intention was to create a monumental gesture of unconditional motherly love. There is a feminist statement here, too: Rubell has appropriated a style and scale historically reserved for male leaders to show, she says, “an emotion that is intensely personal and un-heroic”. The artist adds that watching members of the Frieze audience enter in the sculpture’s womb is “tremendously satisfying” – in her eyes the enlarged form was “incomplete until the first viewer entered”. Amid the hustle of Frieze’s mini-city there is something undeniably appealing about the opportunity to put your feet up in the foetal position in the name of art. Not to mention the comfort factor.