highlike

Eve Bailey

ИВ БЭЙЛИ
ENTASIS DANCE IV
My work is based on the concepts of balance and coordination. The body interests me as a perceiving mechanical structure. I use my own body as a primary tool to create pieces that experiment with equilibrium through physical, mechanical, plastic and conceptual means. My studio practice is rooted in the tradition of the artist engineer. I design and build suspended and pendular constructions that can sustain their own weight and mine as I perform with them. By climbing and inverting on the structures, I challenge my own perception and creative process.

ALWIN NIKOLAIS

Noumenon

A truly universal artist, the American Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) devoted his life to a radical form of staged art he called “dance theater.” Inspired (perhaps unconsciously) by the experiments of Bauhaus members such as Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, Nikolais devised a style of abstract dance that encompassed costumes, stage sets, choreography, lighting, and music, all under his control. Also in 1963, Nikolais met analog synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who was at the time just starting his business in New York. He was fascinated by the sounds of Moog’s machines, and with the money provided by a a Guggenheim Fellowship, Nikolais bought the first ever commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was the primary sound-source for all of Nikolais’ scores from 1963 to 1975. The instrument is now housed at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

RYUNOSUKE OKAZAKI

Ryunosuke Okazaki 001
For his graduate project from the Tokyo University of the Arts, Ryunosuke Okazaki created a collection consisting of three couture dresses in bold colours and shapes titled JomonJomon that are informed by Japanese Jōmon-era pottery and Shinto, an ancient religion that originated in Japan. The striking designs are modelled and decorated on Jōmon-era pottery, where vessels were decorated through pressing rope and coils into wet clay to create ornate designs. The JomonJomon collection was made using polyester, cotton and ribbed knits, in red, blue, black and white as the primary colours.

Robert Breer

Float
The Floats – or floating sculptures – that Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. The word “float” meaning something floating – a marker, fishing float or buoy – and which also describes those carnival vehicles whose pretend wheels give them the appearance of floating above the tarmac, enabled Robert Breer to apply this principle to works of a new genre. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. Motorised and on mini-rollers – which raise them slightly above ground, giving them an air of weightlessness – they glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter.

Irena Haiduk

Spinal Discipline
Irena Haiduk is the founder of Yugoexport, an oral corporation whose primary goal is to demonstrate how to surround ourselves with things in the right way. Her works have been heard or seen at the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, and the 14th Istanbul Biennial.

Nohlab

Journey
JOURNEY is a 4 min. immersive audiovisual experience, telling the story of photons, primary elements of light, from the moment they approach the eye until the brain reconstructs them into perceivable forms. Our journey begins with the formation of photons in blank space, the colored photons approach the eye and we find ourselves in the capillary structure of Iris, the first layer of the eye. Next stop for the light particles is the Lens, which has a more crystalline form. We find ourselves in a refractive and fractalized environment. With an accelerating pace, we move towards a structure of many capillaries, aka optic nerves, gradually becoming thinner and eventually transmitting light particles towards neurons.

Charlotte Posenenske

Posenenske applied primary coloured sticky strips to paper, creasing them and then applying them in layers until shapes were built up – as in CMP 65 (1965) for example. She progressed to using sheet metal sprayed with monochrome paint which she then folded into sculptural shapes, and combined this with corrugated cardboard to produce the series ‘Vierkantrohre’ (Square Tubes, 1967) which look like ventilation shafts. She conceived these early sculptures as modules that could be adapted according to available space, each one assembled into a shape ultimately appropriate to the context it found itself in.

ATSUKO TANAKA

Electric Dress
«‹Electric Dress› is a powerful conflation of the tradition of the Japanese komono with modern industrial technology. Prior to her conception of this work, Tanaka had appeared in a larger than-life paper dress that was peeled away layer by layer, not unlike the peeling away of Murakami’s paintings; she was ultimately disrobed to a leotard fitted with blinking lights. Tanaka began to envision ‹Electric Dress› in 1954, when she outlined in a small notebook a remarkably prophetic connection between electrical wiring and the physiological systems that make up the human body. (…) After fabricating the actual sculpture, she costumed herself in it in the tradition of the Japanese marriage ceremony. Hundreds of light bulbs painted in primary colors lit up along the circulatory and nerve pathways of her body.»
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