Sondra and Erin, PA, 2011

There is none. In his collection Touching Strangers, Renaldi’s focus was to find two complete strangers who happened to be near each other who, for one moment, would meet, share a photograph, and then go their separate ways. It is likely that the subjects might never meet again. Yet in the brief instant the artist catches on film there is a familiarity and comfort between some of the models who despite all appearances have only met just before the photograph. Note that this is only for some of the models, as many of Renaldi’s pieces show a stiffness about them where some participants are undoubtedly uncomfortable with their present situation.

Elizabeth and Brandon, PA, 2010

Julie and Xavier, IL, 2007

It is simple to understand the awkwardness of some of the photos despite the amateur models. The one condition that Renaldi required of all of his subjects is that they must be touching in some fashion in the photograph. The contact helps visually confuse the knowledge that the models are strangers with evidence of some sort of feigned relationship. When all is said and done, the compositions bring forth the question of our interpersonal relationships, and whether there is pretense in the connections of family, friend, and lover.

Eddie and Winnie, NY, 2011

Tim, Victoria and Derek, NY, 2008

Portraits, or mere snapshots? You make the call.

Richard Renaldi’s personal website and photography blog.
Richard Renaldi on Time

Round Midnight

Following a study in ink drawing and embroidery, the Italian-born artist began stitching on photographs, using the unique geometry of the figures to direct the outcome of the final product. Symmetry, rhythm, form, function, order, and cacophony—all hidden behind the familiar lines of the human form. The focus of Anzeri’s photo-sculptures (a term he coined for his pieces) is often solely the face of the subject. Crafting masks with fiber, Anzeri paints a new character on the old portrait, one found burrowed beneath the formality of the camera displaying solely what it can see.

Marcel

Robert

The compositions flow between the bold and the beautiful, highlighting features about each figure. The color choices are often striking, standing out against the monochromatic or sepia tones of recorded light from times forgotten.

Nicola

Rita

Anzeri works now out of London and has been featured in the Saatchi gallery as well as BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and his work has been featured in original commissions for Dazed and Confused.

Nadia

Should the needle and thread be left to the tailor, or can you stitch emotion into a still frame? Vote below.

Maurizio Anzeri at Yatzer, Saatchi Gallery, BALTIC, and Dazed and Confused.

Conjoined Triplets

Shain Erin has created a unique collection of non-traditoinal art/fashion doll sculptures that many describe as creepy or disturbing. His mixed media creations explore the ability of the doll to emulate living entities more so than a painting or drawing, and still remain an object fashioned out of inanimate parts.

Fallen

Study for a Portrait of a Human Soul (Female Figure)

Shain refers to his pieces as “morbid fine art” and “monsters” that often resemble a collection of medical oddities, though only Babette (following) seems to be loosely based on a real medical condition, hypertrichosis, famously belonging to Kung Fu grandmaster Su Kong T’ai Djin and sideshow performer Stephan Bibrowski.

Babette, the Beastly Beauty

Not all of the dolls resemble living creatures, though Shain will argue the dolls are likely more a representation of the soul more than a body. Edgar Allan Poe’s last poem, “Annabel Lee” is the inspiration behind Shain’s doll of the same name. The distinguishable bright eyes of the poem’s fallen maiden are haunting on the doll’s visage, and her gaunt appearance and pale skin beg the viewer to wonder if the form is a spectre or a corpse found in the sepulchre.

Annabel Lee

Many of Shain’s sculptures, dolls, and poppets now belong in private collections as the artist, through the use of several online outlets, has made his art easily accessible to those who appreciate it.

Sentinel

Creepy or captivating? Tell us what you think below.

Photos courtesy of the artist’s website.
Shain Erin on: Artbreak | Etsy | DeviantArt | Flickr

Dirty White Trash (With Gulls)

Don’t assume that this is any critique of the work from the connotation of the word. The artists may take the statement as a compliment. While Noble and Webster create many lighted sculptures, another oft-used medium of the pair is that of used goods (i.e. trash). The work that Noble and Webster display, however, is not just the created pile of trash (which in the case of Dirty White Trash was 6 collected months of the artists’ trash and a pair of dead seagulls), but the projection of the shadow of the work from a fixed position. Their first shadow sculpture, Miss Understood and Mr Meanor, drew huge crowds when they exhibited it in 1997.

Miss Understood and Mr Meanor

Keeping with the theme of heads on pikes, Noble and Webster presented Dark Stuff over a decade later: another pair of unfortunate crania, this time crafted out of 189 mummified animals including rats, crows, and a fox.

Dark Stuff

The shadow work of the artists is not always as macabre as impaled, disembodied heads. Quite a bit of their work, both light and shadow, is lighthearted and easily relatable, or at the very least, uninterested in the topic of death, at least on the surface.

Wasted Youth

The Original Sinners

A common focus in their shadow sculptures are couples (Noble and Webster having been partners for some time before marrying in 2008 may have played a part in their subject matter), many which are seen as self portraits. Each work is painstakingly created out of innumerable pieces of trash, each painstakingly placed to ensure the shadow is created with striking detail. But not all of their works are based on a pair of lovers or compatriots. Sunset Over Manhattan brings a skyline to life out of aluminum cans, peppered with holes created by air pistols.

Sunset Over Manhattan

While each work is designed to be viewed from a certain perspective for the shadow to appear properly, not all works have a single shadow. For Cheap and Nasty, an electronic mechanism rotates the pair of faces between two different views. The work at once shows duality within a person, a being and a façade, each hidden in the shadow of the other.

Cheap and Nasty

Cheap and Nasty (alternate view)

Yet, at the very heart of their pieces, there is a universally dirty, yet natural and accepted, quality to their work.

HE/SHE

Are Noble and Webster’s sculptures nasty, or are they just plain rubbish? Let us know below.

Article found via WebUrbanist.
Photos courtesy ofDeitch and Gagosian.
The artists’ personal webpage.

John Baldessari - Orange

John Baldessari - Green

John Baldessari - Blue

As with many of John’s silhouette groups, Nose/Silhouette focuses on a repeated subject, though never the same image between the pieces. What stands out among these silhouettes is that the hair of the models obscures the silhouette but does not have shape itself in the image outside of it’s intersection of the solid color. The resultant image becomes an exercise in creativity and a subconscious attempt to recreate the image despite the mind lacking any useful background information of the photo itself.

John Baldessari - Yellow

John Baldessari - Red

Prints of Baldessari’s Nose/Silhouette series are available in a limited edition of 50 from Gemini G.E.L.

John Baldessari - Purple

How do silhouettes hold up in the field of visual arts? Your opinion counts, make yourself heard below.

Images courtesy of Gemini G.E.L.
Video interview of John Baldessari at The Met, courtesy of Tate Modern and Tate Media.
The artist’s personal webage.