Thursday, April 20, 2006

Gleaning Light



I found more of Tokihiro Sato's work but these photos are in colour which adds a whole new dimension to the image. All the more gritty greys of the concrete and natural blues of the sky contrasting against the artificial glaring lights of the fairground carry on Sato's theme of creating an unreal world within the real world. His photos shows its easy to blur the line between imaginary and reality.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Light and Space




I recently came across the artist Tokihiro Sato, a photographer, who focuses mainly on his ideas about light and space. His work concentrates mainly on his movements through different locations and different spaces and then tracking his movements using light. Because of the long exposure he uses on the camera, and the fact that Sato is always moving to create the various light spots, the photos dont actually depict the image of Sato, they just depict his prescense.



I love these photos, the way that everything feels so busy and alive with movement yet its perfectly still and calm at the same time. Each image allows itself to become bathed in light but doesnt get dominated by it, it still maintains its original atmosphere. Even though the photos were taken in fairly ordinary landscapes, Sato has managed to create a much more lyrical poetic world of his own within the image.

Cvijanovic's 'Love Poem' portrays a world with no gravity, freeing us of all our everyday worries and burdens, creating for Cvijanovic, his own world where he would feel more at ease, like his own paradise.
Sato creates a similar aura in his photos; by portraying his prescense in different spaces using light, he is able to create his own atmospheric paradise where he is free to roam anywhere.
Both artists have managed to create their own lyrical poetic world using normal objects in this one. In a way, it's like they are saying there is just as much beauty in the world we are already living in, we dont just see it or dont appreciate it as much as we should.

Thursday, April 06, 2006


I was taken along to a private exhibition on Tuesday of an artist called Gbenga Ilumoka in The Millinery Works Gallery. Ilumoka had had previous exhibitions at this gallery before as a solo artist and also part of a group exhibition and it was also interesting to find out that he used to be on the Fine Art course at Middlesex. I was quite excited because I'd never been to an actual private exhibition before but I was slightly disappointed when I saw the work.

The exhibition was called 'Reflections' with the idea coming from the 'close scrutiny and observations of objects in relation to eachother'. The paintings reflecting certain aspects of the artists life with colour and light playing a huge part in his work.

One side of the room was covered with still-lives and nudes, the other side being more of landscapes and natural surroundings. To me the paintings seemed very bland, it wasn't very exciting or stimulating, it was all quite ordinary. Don't get me wrong, they were good paintings, I could never paint like that but it wasn't the kind of work that I'm interested in. Some of his landscape paintings appealed to me as they had quite a similar style and feel to Cezanne's work, bright rich paintings of vine yards in Spain filled with yellows and greens.
However the painting of a pair of old trainers just put me off really, it's not something that I myself found particulary intersting to look at, which is where I think the more personal aspect of the artists work plays a bigger role. It was a good exhibtion with a variety of good paintings but it was just not something I was interested in personally. By the end of the evening, I was more interested in the free wine and crisps!

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Love Poem


I was looking through Art Us magazine and spotted this artist called Adam Cvijanovic and just loved his work. He has an online exhibition on the Bellwether Gallery website and I thought it was great. He creates a lot of large-scale illustrational landscape murals and the one I saw, 'Love Poem (10 minutes After the End of Gravity) I thought was pretty amazing.

It depicts Los Angeles 10 minutes after gravity has failed and all the houses, bungalows, cars, street signs and household items are exploded into the skies, floating around in the air all around you, freeing us of our everyday burdens and worries which is what all these objects embody.

"CvijanovicÂ’s utopia ascends in a whirlwind of consumerist ecstasy"


http://www.bellwethergallery.com/artistsindex_01.cfm?fid=10&subid=1





The images cover three walls so it's literally surrounding you and I can't begin to imagine and amazing it must look full size and up close. There's something quite scary and terrifying about it yet really spectacular.