San Francisco photographer Alex Fradkin has made some beautiful photos of concrete bunkers ruins around the San Francisco Bay Area. Built by the U.S. military to defend against an enemy that never came., some have fallen into the Pacific Ocean and some just sit quietly as they are absorbed back into the earth.
The annual “New Photography” exhibit at MoMA is getting some nice reviews. The New Yorker’s Vince Aletti calls it the best one in years. The MoMA site has only one photo a piece from the six artists in the installation, so check these links to see more work from Walead Beshty, Daniel Gordon, Leslie Hewitt, Carter Mull, Sterling Ruby, Sara VanDerBeek.
In case you missed it, here’s Kseniya Simonova, the 2009 winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent.
There’s a crazy faux-archeological dig going on in New York Harbor right now. Belgian artist Geert Hautekiet is curating a dig on Governors Island which includes artifacts from the former Belgian/French settlers’ collection of commercially unsuccessful snow globes, like one depicting a small boy being chased by two polar bears. Read a full report in the New York Times or go to Hautekiet’s site, The Archaeological Dig to read more. For pictures of the site, check out this photo slideshow.
The site also includes a number of sculpturelike apparatuses for scaring off birds, the result — according to what Mr. Hautekiet said the archaeologists have pieced together — of a troubling period in the town’s history in 1953 called the Plague of Birds. A monthslong infestation was apparently caused when the Spanish gas station owner, distraught that his wife had left him for a trucker, built hundreds of intricate and alluring bird houses and placed them around his business, where they can now be seen.
Japanese artist Yanobe Kenji created an animatronic fire-breathing dragon boat for the ongoing Aqua Metropolis festival in Osaka.
Ottawa-based company, DNA11, has come up with a great concept commercial art concept. For as little as $200 you can hang attractive representations of your actually DNA or fingerprints on the wall. After you order online and choose your color and style, you get a DNA collection kit, send by your sample and wait 4-6 weeks for the art.
While working as a bartender at McGlinchey’s Tavern in Philadelphia, photographer Sara Stolfa took some great photographs of the regulars on the otherside of the bar. Take a look at her work at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia and at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York.
Dutch artist Ron van der Ende makes really amazing wood relief sculptures inspired by photographs and reproductions he finds. Read his blog here (if you read Dutch) or just want to look at the pictures. Read an interview with van der Ende.
You might like Amy Casey’s paintings of houses and buildings intertwined with roads and stilts. See more of her work at the ZG Gallery, in Chicago.
Finalists for the Turner Prize 2009 have been announced. Enrico David, 43, a surrealist who creates paintings, drawings and sculptures; Roger Hiorns, 34, a site-specific artist whose 2008 work “Seizure” filled a derelict London apartment with blue crystals; Lucy Skaer, 34, who creates drawings, sculptures and films from found photographs; and Richard Wright, 49, who creates wall paintings in unexpected locations. Tate Britain will exhibit works by the finalists beginning Oct. 7th and the winner will be announced Dec. 7th.
As a part of last weekend’s Roppongi Art Night in Tokyo, sculptor Kenji Yanobe unleashed a 24-foot tall Giant Torayan robot that sings, dances and spits fire. See more pictures of the giant fire-spitting baby robot.
One of the world’s great street photographers, Helen Levitt has died at the age of 95. Listen to a 2002 NPR interview with Levitt and see a gallery of Levitt’s photos.
Things are a lot creepier underwater. In 2006 English artist Jason de Caires Taylor created one of the world’s first underwater sculpture parks in Grenada, West Indies and soon will create another, larger one off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan pennisula. He’s also got plans for a land-based sculpture park in Crete that uses sculptures filled with earth and seeds from native plant species which will eventually continue his theme of organic transformation. See some photos or watch a video and swim among de Caires Taylor’s creepy sculptures.
Danish photographer Nicolai Howalts has taken some beautiful photos in several disparate series. In 3×1, his portraits of a family living in a Danish suburban counsel flat show a different kind of crazy. Other great series include his portraits of very young boxers taken before and after matches, and his How to Hunt photo series of a Danish bird hunt that looks like beautiful, detailed 19C paintings.
A very cool-looking piece called Enfolding 280 Hours by Korean-born, New York City–based artist Sun K. Kwak will open later this month at the Brooklyn Museum. It’s an enormous mural created by using about 3 miles of black masking tape. The title refers to the number of hours the artist estimated that it would take her and her assistants to install the piece. Checkout photos of the taping process. The piece will be up from March 27 to July 5.
A major exhibition of the artist Jenny Holzer opens today at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This is the largest exhibition in the U.S. of Holzer’s work in more than 15 years. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the show centers on Holzer’s work since the 1990s and includes her LED sculptures, paintings and some Projections. See images and video from the exhibit. The show closes May 31st….[edit] And also…There’s a nice review by Roberta Smith in the New York Times, where she singled out Holzer’s piece “Red Yellow Looming,” as what may be the most beautiful yet most sinister piece Ms. Holzer has made. See more photos of the Holzer show.
Brooklyn artists Doug and Mike Starn have recently completed See It Split, See It Change, a 250 foot-long wall of fused glass panels and mosaic that curves along the walls of the new South Ferry subway station in New York. The $1.5 million installation looks stunning in pictures with its luminescent glass tiles and an especially nice looking mosaic made from a topographic map drawn in 1640. Read more about the installation or see more pictures here.