"Female Lenses for Art Activism" virtual show by MIA ╳ MTArt Agency

June 09, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

MIA x MTArt Agency Presents Female Lenses for Art Activism

Female-identifying artists everywhere face countless challenges in and out of the art world. MIA Collection’s mission has been to increase the visibility of female artists everywhere. Our founder, Alejandra Castro Rioseco, has made it our defining characteristic to exclusively collect and promote the work of female artists. To help artists we have launched an online museum, MIA Anywhere. After only 10 weeks running, we have featured the work of female artists from Iran to Hong-Kong, Brazil to Spain.

MIA Art Collection and MTArt Agency have curated Female Lenses for Art Activism, where 7 artists from MTArt Agency will be exhibiting. While the range of themes of Female Lenses for Art Activism reaches far and wide, the artists intersect in their multi-layered and multi-faceted artistic practice. The artists on show deal with pressing issues and offer a female lens with which to view these. Consciousness, ancestry, sustainability, mental health, technology, and energies are some of the topics the artists tackle. But while their topics hardly intersect, their savvy artistic skill does. All these women show their work in unique multi-disciplinary ways that combine and remix forms to create work that demands to be seen. The urgency of their work urges us to see these artists as activists, for they are both pushing forth their female lenses with pride while also tackling pressing issues we must acknowledge and observe in our contemporary society.

Lauren Baker, Dark Matter

Sadie Clayton, Fluxy, 2020

Delphine Diallo, Infinite, 2017

Claire Luxton, Seeds of Doubt, 2019

Founded in 2015, MTArt Agency is a certified B Corp® award-winning agency for the most exciting up and coming visual artists worldwide. Every month, the agency reviews 200 portfolios of artists. Its selection committee chooses artists with innovative techniques, inspiring content and strong messaging. For the artists who sign with the agency, MTArt covers their studio costs, sells their works, implements cultural & commercial partnerships and offers press exposure. This is how it accelerates their artistic reputation, visibility and success.

Enter Virtual Exhibition

www.miaanywhere.com

Artists: Delphine Diallo (@delphinediallo), Andrea Tyrimos (@andrea_tyrimos), Lauren Baker (@laurenbakerart), Claire Luxton (@claireluxtonstudio), Elisa Insua (@elisainsua), Sian Fan (@sianfan), Sadie Clayton (@iamsadieclayton)

Featured Artists

Curated by

MIA Art Collection

@mtartagency

@miaartcollection

Absence dir. Arnaldo Iñigo

June 09, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

A haunting audio-visual exploration of love and mourning by director Arnaldo Iñigo. Inspired by the life of Iñigo’s grandmother, who lost 2 children in separate tragic accidents, “Absence” is set to two tracks — “Flesh and Bone” by Black Math and Luke Atencio’s “A ghost,” featuring spoken word by Tom O’Bedlam. As Iñigo explains, the film is a presentation of grief as a process of reflection and acceptance, chronicling the need to reconcile with the purpose of life:

“There’s nothing more tragic than the sudden death of a child, an event that causes bereft, heartbreak and a disruption in the natural law and order of life. This reversed order places the human mind in extreme sorrow as it carries the loss of innocence, the death of the most vulnerable and dependent, it signifies the loss of future, of hopes and dreams, of new strength.”

Directed by Arnaldo Iñigo
Produced by Cineburó
Executive Produced by - Arnaldo Iñigo & Gabriel Stavenhagen
Director of Photography - Matías Penachino
Production Design - Luis Rojas Luino

@a_inigo_martinez

Myth-Making virtual group exhibition at HOFA

June 08, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

HOFA Gallery announces it will feature 9 global contemporary artists in the upcoming virtual group exhibition titled ‘Myth-Making’, which will launch on 10 June 2020. The virtual exhibition, set to run for 5 weeks until 16 July, will showcase select works by emerging and celebrated contemporary mixed-media artists: Florian Eymann, Dean Fox, Fabio Viale, Darian Mederos, Ilhwa Kim, Zhuang Hong Yi, Joel Rea, Romina Ressia and Wang Ziling. 'Myth-Making' will be an immersive visual art experience where viewers will explore constructed realities of exhibited artworks in which mythic icons are deftly referenced, deconstructed, and reimagined.

Kouros by Fabio Viale, 2016

Girl on the Couch by Darian Mederos, 2020

In a time of great and far reaching disruption, HOFA's carefully curated exhibition acknowledges the role myths play as tools for understanding and navigating reality. Through this acknowledgment, 'Myth-Making' invites introspection about accepted notions of temporal and spatial fixedness, and their influence on the meanings of iconic symbolisms. The artists featured in this exhibition are masters at staging the layers of contradiction, incongruity and spatio-temporal perspectives that instigate the meaning- and narrative-making processes by which myths come to be.

United by their layering of artistic techniques and historical tropes, Dean Fox, Fabio Viale, Florian Eymann, and Romina Ressia reinvent classical iconography for the contemporary while also challenging existing social norms. Eymann and Fox haunt the psyche with their reductive and distorted renditions of classical art, while Viale and Ressia, through starkly contrasting historical tropes and mediums, challenge the socio-normative narratives of our time.

For their part, Ilhwa Kim, Zhuang Hong Yi and Wang Ziling employ cultural mediums in novel ways that wield their deep cultural symbolisms as instruments and subtexts for explorations in contemporary reality. Hong Yi sculpts traditional Chinese xuan paper into elaborate, colour-laden flowerbeds that lead viewers to both marvel at the beauty of nature and question humanity's fraught relation to it. For Kim, it is with traditional Korean Hanji paper, painstakingly rolled and dyed, that she conjures multi-dimensional seed universes that awaken the senses to the narrative dynamics of spatio-temporal perspective. Rounding out this cohort is Ziling who brings a sculptural dimension to traditional Asian landscape paintings with an innovative, boundary-defying technique that leads the eyes on a spatial and narrative transition.

Raising Eden by Dean Fox, 2020

Morning Lights by Zhuang Hong Yi, 2020

Hyperrealism, surrealism, and abstraction make a strong appearance in the 'Myth-Making' exhibition through the works of Joel Rea and Darian Mederos. Both artists excel at layering perspective plays on reality. Joel Rea weaves hyperrealism with surrealism in ways that inevitably turn the viewers gaze inwards to emotions of foreboding and vulnerability, while Darian Mederos melds hyperrealism and abstraction, stirring up unsettling feelings as realities seemingly take turns at blending out of sight as others emerge into the fore.

'Myth-Making' exhibition will be accessible via a secure link on the HOFA website
on Wednesday 10 June – Thursday 16 July 2020

@thehouseoffineart

FEATURED ARTISTS

Curated by

Ferment la bouche by Idea Dolls

May 28, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

Creative studio Idea Dolls shares their latest design product case of fermented sauces made by ancient technology. Ferment la bouche was born out of a desire to merge two mega trends which dominate food and beverage in the UK. The first - live food, fermented is everywhere, from kombucha to kimchi of all flavours and varieties. The second is the demand for exotic sauces.

“Our design for the range was inspired by a ‘through the microscope’ concept, a peek into the
unseen world of gut-loving good bacterium, showcasing the sense of movement in the
alchemical-like fermentation process - bubbling, morphing, changing and moving to turn a raw
ingredient into wonderful good-for-your tangy on the tongue fermented sauce.
We wanted to move away from leveraging the middle eastern heritage of the brand which would
have detracted from the fermented concept, overshadowing it and labeling it as ‘world food’.
Amba is well known in the Middle East and India (where it is more of a chutney). To position this
range as something new and different, and in order to allow us to scale up, adding new flavour
SKUs or even new ranges, we had to move away from Amba and create a completely new
brand concept.”

— Idea Dolls

@ideadolls

FIVE by Sebastian Helene

May 25, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

'Five' is a colourful typographic romp through the five senses. The experimental and playful animation of freelance 3D artist and motion designer Sebastian Helene combines with characterful and quirky sound design by London based studio Resonate.

When coming up with the concept for Five Sebastian wanted to work with limitation to come up with fresh new ideas. By only allowing himself to work with letters from the five senses to come up with ideas it sparked some unexpected but exciting results.

@seb_scribbles

BUMASK

May 14, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

Prefabricated antibacterial paper mask with replaceable filter designed by Lead Designer of BMW Group Designworks - Evgeny Maslov, is getting more attention nowadays.

The Bumask is an open-source face mask made of cardboard with a replaceable filter to guard against excess viral saturation. It helps prevent penetration of the coronavirus to the respiratory tract via airborn particles and facial contact. It can be made either independently or on any available domestic printer. It is simple to make and to replace the filters (which are also made of easily obtainable materials). Plans and instructions are openly available as a PDF download.

@bumask_project

Louise Mertens - Antwerp Art Weekend

AM STUDIO

May 12, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

AM DESIGNS is delighted to represent the Antwerp-based visual artist LOUISE MERTENS during this year’s (atypical) edition of ANTWERP ART WEEKEND.

Louise created a complete series without using portraits or the human form, and visualizes the beauty of the coral’s dying process. Fascinated and concerned by the effects of global warming, she looks at the aesthetics of the perishable, the vulnerable and the fragile straight in the eye. The beautiful colors that corals expose when they take their last breath, the white skeletons, the grey inanimate colors and the elegant algae that envelop the dead coral.

Wednesday to Friday: 10 AM to 6 PM
Saturday: 11 AM to 6 PM

am designs @amdesignscom
antwerpart.be @antwerpart

@louisemertens

Long Live The King

May 08, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

A man possessed by an evil entity gathers people around him, infusing life into them, making them his disciples. He makes them party, he watches them self-destroy. In an infernal city, he reigns as their God and their Devil.

Directed by Loïc Foulon

@loic_foulon

Myth-Amphetamine: Beyond Mythology and Modernity

April 13, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

French fashion and beauty photographer Julie Michelet trains her creative muscles during 2020 quarantine by creating a photo project refreshing the Greco-Roman Mythology within the influence of our today's crazy world.

“Myth-Amphetamine is an abstract photo serie setting the scene for authentics mythology characters. They carry with themselves objects or symbols that helps revealing their antique message within the spectrum of modernity in a “cyber-apocalyptic” universe.
Because they are an archetypical allegory of humanity in all its struggle, pointing out our pathetic condition and tragical evolution and virtualization but always with romance and aestetics, they remain an extraordinary source of inspiration. ”

— Julie Michelet

@julie_michelet

Collage art by Patrick Nelson

April 10, 2020 by Arseny Vesnin in 2020

Northern California based collage-artist and visual designer Patrick Nelson is using vintage paper findings to showcase everyday subject matter in extraordinary light. His background and career as a designer gives his work a graphic feel, while his attention to old-time paper qualities gives the finished product its heart.

His collages are primarily made of vintage newspaper and magazine findings (some of which he stains with watercolour), along with niche items like old stamps and carnival tickets. He values simplicity, shadow, light, and contrasting the busyness of printed media into geometric shapes.

@tricksf