I frequently entertain the idea that everything we perceive might actually not be real at all, that the world around me could actually just be my senses lying to me. The idea that “reality is a hoax” completely freaks me out, so naturally it became the concrete starting point for my collection. From this, I began to develop different ways of “imagining” garments, of finding ways of putting things that are not really there into existence. I wanted to blur the lines of real versus imagined//artificial. Print was the best facilitator of this goal.

cellule No. 5
Absalon’s best known works, the Cellules, rewrite Cezanne’s “treat nature as the cylinder, the sphere and the cone” to read “treat architecture as the cell, the bunker and the turret.” Not that the Cellules are straightforwardly architecture: they equally evoke Minimalist sculpture, Matt Mullican’s maquettes, Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbauen and the Concrete sculptures of George Vantongerloo. But the model that the Cellules most overtly evoke is the monastic cell. The Cellules were fabricated in wood, cardboard and plaster, and painted entirely white; their average proportions are roughly those of a caravan, and the catalogue informs us that there is always an area in which one can stand up. Their interiors are fitted–fitted rather than furnished–with unobtrusive minimal representations of desks, seats, beds, etc.

Contours
Contours proposes a distancing through de-familiarization of what has become concrete by way of image and language. Active contradiction and abstraction are central to the works through a mixture of variables often seen in opposition or as dis-harmonious. Through the presentation of puzzling symbols, both familiar and skewed, a legible illegibility is produced: information being transmitted, but the immediate read obscured and hidden from sight. Through this, current sight-lines are made visible allowing for critical reflection, while simultaneously revealing the flexibility of language and image in order to engender the possibility of alternative understandings of the world: a crucial consideration in context of our contemporary global social and political shifts.
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Concrete Storm
On first impression, visitors experience solid forms, which draw on minimalist motifs and underscore the stable properties of concrete. While wearing the HoloLens, viewers enter a mixed reality, enlivened by responsive holograms that augment the physical environment of the installation. With Concrete Storm, DRIFT explores the layer between the parallel worlds, whereby the real and the virtual worlds co-exist. People’s attention is now constantly divided between these two worlds in which they coexist. The artists believe that combining these two seemingly separate worlds they can study the unlimited possibilities of the unstoppable evolution. Concrete Storm expands the boundaries of the digital world, freed from screens, and integrated into the fabric of physical existence.

NEST

Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey
Loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, Marshmallow Laser Feast’s light installation lit the primary performance space within the chapel’s hazy internal dome. Grid-like projections crossed with mobile structures (designed by the architectural practice Studio Weave) as agile bodies crept over, in and through the many lit towers and surfaces. This first act was seen by the audience from the left and right balconies above. The second act, down flights of rope-lined staircases in the concrete basement, was more disorienting, lit only with triangular neon tubing and an eerie glow that seeped from an open door. The style of dance, in keeping with the more rapid and percussive score, by Canadian composer Christopher Mayo and electronic music composer / performer Anna Meredith, confronted the audience and was staged without boundaries dividing the dancers (some of whom were in street clothes) and viewers.

colormirror dornbirn
Regine Schumann is a minimalist artist who works with Light Art, initially inspired by Color Field Painting and artists as Mark Rothko, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. Schumann’s boxes and installations are made of acrylic colour plates especially produced for her. Her work is more than just Concrete Art. Conceptualized as emotive spaces, Schumann’s colour– lled light rooms provoke intense feelings of something otherworldly. Her minimalistic approach affects everything from her choice of materials to the way she plays with form and colour.

NEON – Fantastical Architecture, Art and Design

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT
South Georgia Heritage Trust launched an open call for a site-specific commission to be located on Grytviken the former whaling station of sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia. The project was required to celebrate the whale through a reinterpretation of the former Flensing Plan (a large timber deck used to process the captured whales) and offer a message of hope for future generations by demonstrating how humankind can move from exploitation to conservation. Our proposal imagines that the deck of the Flensing plan has been cut like a piece of flesh from the ground and bent upwards to form an arc. The timber deck is replaced with concrete pavers which are coloured based on the activities which took place in the sites past and present (whale processing and whale watching). The coloured pavers are positioned to create a gradient which provides the visitor with a visual representation of the way the site has changed over time.

Marsha
Marsha is a AI SpaceFactory’s NASA-award-winning design and prototype for a 3D printed Mars habitat. The prototype was printed nearly autonomously in 2019 within a 30-hour construction window. “Our 3D print technology uses a recyclable biopolymer composite which outperformed concrete in NASA’s strength, durability, and crush testing. ASTM lab tested and certified to be two to three times stronger than concrete in compression, our space-grade material is also five times more durable than concrete in freeze-thaw conditions.” Ai-Spacefactory