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| Antidote Magazine - The Animal Issue Daphne Groeneveld. |
Friday, 19 October 2012
159
Graduating from Central St. Martins, Polish
artist, Jan Manski has been progressively sculpting a neo-dystopian amalgam
since his graduation. This process has culminated in “Onania” a deeply
evocative series of sculptures and instruments alluding to a social torrent of
turmoil. In this world, mythologies and social norms have become all consuming,
temerarious and explicitly over-indulged to the point of ego-depletion.
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| Aetiology Unknown 24 - 2012 |
The divergence of synthetic and natural
materials illuminate the superficiality which embodies the distorted, tortured
breeding ground of this biosphere. Consumer culture and rabid fascination of
the obsolete has spurned a self-destructive and ugly self-obsession.
Illustrative of these ritualistic reforms are his use of materials, including
abandoned fat sourced from liposuction clinics. In this very indicative world,
grotty slimy tentacles splurge and writhe across a mannequin’s jaw, like a
fleshy fossil that is planted atop a glossy torso and glamourous fur stole.
These hybrid-swollen masses, which appear borne out of some guttural Promethean-abyss,
are made even more provocative via their association to the mirror, the clinic
our aesthetic addiction. Inspired by both the medieval and renaissance
paintings of Bosch and Brueghel as well as the mainstream, fashion and consumer
culture, Manski brings these sculptures to a pinnacle of sensationalism. This
medieval, underworld dimension is balanced with our present-day modernity and a
future age of dystopian mystery.
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| Aetiology Unknown 03 - 2010 |
Sickly pink. That colour which is neither bright nor pallid, sweetness with a melancholic, almost bucolic tinge slicks the equipment at Onania. This candyfloss greasy shade is an apt opposition to the molten, mouldy texture of these hideous sprouting sci-fi demons. Narcissism flirts with brutal prissiness to inflame a rich debate about the consumer culture that appears grotesque in Onania’s hallucinatory state of sterilized happiness. Inevitably, Manski employs a balance between the veneer of control and pleasure to the depths of vulnerability and sedimentary hollowness. Boundless, often destructive pleasure underscores the whole essence of Manski’s Onania, which calls into question our culture and values in very direct symbols. For example, “Aetiology Unknown 24” is an alien combination of mannequin and creature entombed in a glass vitrine. However, the harrowing is in the detail. The face ridden thick in a fatty celluloid substance curves outwards to form a protruding jaw but the unnerving detail lies in the pearlescent pink stud on the earlobe. Tiny and discreet yet encumbered with striking ambivalence.
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| Aetiology Unknown 32 - 2012 |
Elements of Francis Bacon come to mind with its encased delicate horror. This too, made more startling via Manski’s use of fur, leather and normal clothing fabrics alongside polyvinyl acetate, fat and curving jaws. We have entered a world of colossal ingenuity in a deceptively refined state. Welcome to the Manski milieu.
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
158
Guido Mocafico's images steer the viewer into a systematic and specifically engineered perspective. Built as an alloy of the sharp, the arcane and the sterile, Mocafico's works appear hyperreal in his unflinching focus of real detail. Take the fluffed tarantulas in his "Aranea" series, the robust acuteness releases a hypnotic abstraction. These natural forms become 3D Rorschach inkblots unfurling with unusual asymmetry. With tendons leeching outwards like barbed wire or electric cables, these familiar shapes and wholly natural simplicity begin to export a far more reactive illusion. However, it is not all miracles of nature. Mocafico's imagery is shaded with clues.
For example, painterly characteristics are manifested in "Stilleven". The indistinguishable facet of these still-life ensure a decisive traction between the photographic image and the painted canvas. Understandably, as Mocafico - having studied Dutch and German still-life of the seventeenth and eighteenth century- rendered the fine details from paintings by Floris van Dijck and Pieter Claesz with exacting precision, bringing a new spirit to these antique paintings. A carbon copy of a golden age. Through this reassembling, Mocafico acknowledges antediluvian practices and contorts them with the lightest touch. The reminiscence of spirit in these images is countered with wavering verisimilitude.
With this ambivalence between truth and falsity lay claim to an altogether elusive correctness that embodies much of Mocafico's work. From jellyfish that float like sparkling melancholic bacterium, guns which sit doe-eyed and stiff like anarchic apparatus from some ancient regime to watch faces which seem like satellite images of a sic-fi metropolis, the abstract is installed into the everyday. What we see is so obvious, so rigorously pedalled to our reception with its vitrine-like confinement, the simplicity on show can appear indefinable. Collaborating with magazines such as Self-Service, Wallpaper and Paradis, Mocafico has tempted the world of fashion. Maybe it's no sin to be tempted by his serpents either.
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| Avicularia Aurantiaca - Aranea |
For example, painterly characteristics are manifested in "Stilleven". The indistinguishable facet of these still-life ensure a decisive traction between the photographic image and the painted canvas. Understandably, as Mocafico - having studied Dutch and German still-life of the seventeenth and eighteenth century- rendered the fine details from paintings by Floris van Dijck and Pieter Claesz with exacting precision, bringing a new spirit to these antique paintings. A carbon copy of a golden age. Through this reassembling, Mocafico acknowledges antediluvian practices and contorts them with the lightest touch. The reminiscence of spirit in these images is countered with wavering verisimilitude.
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| Vanitas - Stilleven |
With this ambivalence between truth and falsity lay claim to an altogether elusive correctness that embodies much of Mocafico's work. From jellyfish that float like sparkling melancholic bacterium, guns which sit doe-eyed and stiff like anarchic apparatus from some ancient regime to watch faces which seem like satellite images of a sic-fi metropolis, the abstract is installed into the everyday. What we see is so obvious, so rigorously pedalled to our reception with its vitrine-like confinement, the simplicity on show can appear indefinable. Collaborating with magazines such as Self-Service, Wallpaper and Paradis, Mocafico has tempted the world of fashion. Maybe it's no sin to be tempted by his serpents either.
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| Rhizastoma - Medusa |
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
Thursday, 4 October 2012
Saturday, 22 September 2012
155
The fruits of Gabriella Crespi's labours fold metallic extravagance with utilitarian innovation for the sharpest of palates. Crespi, an international designer, artist and socialite dazzled the stars with her tactile and erudite reflective forms. Born in Milan in 1922, Crespi grew up in the mellow and rural twilights of Tuscany, in such a landscape the sensual harmony of Proserpine would saturate both mind and soul. Undeniably, this languid affair with nature influenced Crespi's outlook and sculptural style. Initially studying architecture at Politecnico Instituto, this introductory foray into design would manifest itself within Crespi's hidden pockets of pragmatism.
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| "Yang Yin" desk/bookcase 1979 |
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| "Ellisse" - "Cuba Tonda" - "Scultura" 1976 |
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| "Yang Yin" bar 1979 |
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| "A Kumquat for John Keats" by Tony Harrison 1981 |
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| "A Kumquat for John Keats" by Tony Harrison 1981 |
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