Through the lovely blog Today and Tomorrow, I stumbled upon these French art-pranksters, prank-artists, guerrilla-dudes called  Encastrable (loose translation: built-in, I think).

This French duo (Antoine Lejolivet and Paul Souviron) uses street-art-type techniques and applies them to the über-dull world of DIY shops and supermarkets. Just using items that are on the shelves and without permission, they create these ephemeral installations that turn the supermarket into an artistic space. Nice. Funny. Critical.

Also, for some reason that reminds me of a Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder ) quote I read this morning: “Creativity is a renewable source.”
It’s a lovely day.

I like street art. Bumping into cool, beautiful, silly interventions always makes me smile. The fact that someone uses the world around us as a canvas just, you know, is great.
Mmmm, feels like it’s hangover Friday today.

Anyway, this one would definitely make me stop if I saw it. German artist Jan Vormann uses Lego blocks to fill up cracks and holes in walls. Dispatchwork, he calls it.
He’s done it in Italy and Israel before, but his latest contructions are set in Berlin. 

Photo by Kathleen Waak

Aaron Koblin was part of the team that made that Radiohead-video-without-cameras and these are some amazing visualisations from US flights paths that he made. Check out the animation here.
Can we have that hanging on the wall please, with live updates, as a living painting?
In any case, another great Koblin example of technology meeting art. 

By the way: suggested by @bbhlabs, a rather inspiring bunch. Because yes, I got on Twitter (@leftrightcentre). When friends start sending you emails, saying “I wouldn’t have to email you this link, if you were on Twitter”, you know it’s beginning to make sense.
So far, so fun. I’m enjoying it and do think I’ll start finding it useful.

Big billboard ads are an obvious source of inspiration for any street artist. Simply because they’re an intrinsic part of any big city street. There’s even a Poster Alteration Art group on Flickr. 
London has its Decapitator but I do like Poster Boy, a New York street artist that spices up the subway stations over there with his radical mash-ups of posters. Armed with a razor blade as his weapon of choice, he cuts up ads and re-arranges them on the spot into something funnier, more political, more thought-provoking. 

Check his Flickr stream here, films from Wooster Collective, Animal Magazine and his own YouTube channel and articles in NY Mag and the Guardian. 

Lots of attention, so answers on a Tweet: will he show up in an ad soon, sell out to galleries or is he using the media to start his own little revolution. From his interview with the Guardian:

“That’s what I want Poster Boy to be about,” he enthuses. “The idea of taking your environment into your own hands and making it what you want. As long as you’re not hurting other people, it can’t be bad.”

Feel inspired by the collaborative effort of Bart Hess and Lucy McRae, quite aptly called Lucy And Bart.
In their own words: “instinctual stalking of fashion, architecture, performance and the body”.

I never mentioned it here and I didn’t manage to vote, but Volvo, Vice Magazine, The Independent and Yahoo ran this competition called Creative 30, to find the leading creative think-ers and do-ers in the UK. The winners have just been announced and the jury chose artist Katie Paterson, while the public vote went to milliner (isn’t that a beautiful word for hat-maker) Will Chambers. Paterson’s pieces are particularly intriguing. She makes various sound sculptures, influenced by science and nature and general cookie-ness. Charming stuff. 

But have a look at the other 28 nominated creative talents and check out their profile films. I particularly liked the work of photographer Jonnie Craig (see picture above), illustrator Mimi Leung, the beach chairs from furniture designer Max Lamb and ‘possible sculptor’ Daniel Mort.  
Nice initiative and interesting to see that a brand like Volvo wants to spend some money on this (Paterson wins £10,000 – Chambers a Volvo).

Art that’s suitable for the festive season.
New York artist Rosemarie Fiore uses all kinds of found objects to make her art, but her firework paintings are particularly intriguing pieces. By bombing sheets of paper with fireworks and controlling the explosions, she creates these abstract environments. I’d love to see/smell a real one and sounds like a lot of fun to make. 
Nice.
So who’s gonna turn that into a music video or a commercial?

The first one was the great 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa. If you’re familiar with the work of design studio Sanaa, you’ll understand it when I say that the space is quite minimal. Still, it works very nicely, also because they had a few art works commissioned as part of the architecture. There’s one of those James Turrell sky-windows, but the real clincher was this clever, but beautiful piece by Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich. 

They also had a really nice collection, mixing Western conceptual chaps like Jan Fabre and Damien Hirst with local artists and incorporating more ‘popular’ platforms like animation and figurines. I particularly liked this great installation by Yoshitomo Nara, in collaboration with graf.

The other museum we visited was possibly one of the most amazing buildings I’ve ever seen. The ChiChu museum was commissioned by some big cheese at the Benesse Corporation, on the old fishing island of Naoshima, just to house his 4 ‘Water Lilies’ by Monet. That’s right: one museum for 4 paintings. But it’s an amazing space, designed by boxer-turned-architect Tadao Ando and built more or less into a hill. 
It’s all very Nihon-clinical and almost lab-like (you have to take off your shoes before you tread on the white marble mosaic that makes up the floor of the main room), but it’s so well done it makes you smile. 
Taking pictures if forbidden, but this person managed to take a few.
Just go.

If you happen to be in The Hague or in Holland, pop by the GEM museum for ‘Les Beaux et Les plus Beaux’, what looks to be a fantastic exhibition by Dutch artist/sculptor Silvia B. 

I once had the pleasure of visiting her studio in Rotterdam and was immediately sucked into her wonderful world of hybrid creatures and thought-provoking esthetics. You have to love someone who creates a series of gloves like this Skinover series.

In the previous Japan post, I mentioned the Japanese tendency to experiment a lot with design and their obsession with it. When we went to visit the 21-21 Design Sight pavillion (made by Tadao Ando), we stumbled upon an exhibition called ‘Second Nature’, curated by a designer called Tokujin Yoshioka, which confirmed that thought. 

Apart from very interesting art/design pieces, like human/tree hybrids and chairs made of crystals whose growth is influenced by playing different kinds of music, the setting was amazing. The ceiling of the gallery was covered in 360,000 plastic straws, which made you feel like you were walking in another eerie, beautiful universe. 

We weren’t allowed to take pictures (an interesting habit in most of Japanese galleries), but Wallpaper has a nice collection of stills, plus a Q&A with the designer/curator. 

Apologies for the shocking lack of posting activity recently, but I’ve been on holiday in Japan. And guess what: the internet access there is surprisingly limited. Wireless: forget it. Internet cafés: if you ask, they look at you like they’ve seen a ghost. Because wifi is sooooo 2004-5-6, sir. Everybody over there is on their mobiles, surfing the worldwide wap web. Interesting. 

Anyway, Japan is a crazy, beautiful, funny place with lots going on. And they have good beer. So I’ll try to filter the creative info in my head into a few posts over the next few days. 

The first pleasant surprise came straight when we arrived. 

It turned out that the Tokyo flat that we had rented through a friend of a friend belonged to French ‘conceptual stimulator’ Item Idem. Not just a flat, more like a 3-room-installation-stroke-gallery. Thanks Cyril, for letting us stay in your crazy place. 

Yes, it’s true. Everything and everyone in Japan (or at least in Tokyo) is designed. Even the local laundromat looks cooler than the average London flat. Definitely cleaner. And technology’s everywhere.

So a company like Kenwood happily experiments with the design of their speakers. Check out these 2 beauties, which we saw at the Morphonics launch. The left one is meant to be hugged, so the bones in your body enhances the sound or something strange like that.
And the right one, designed by Claudio Colucci, was completely made in corian and costs something like €60.000.

Colucci is a pretty interesting designer. Some of his stuff is a little too organic for me, but at least he has a sense of humour, lacking in most design. I particularly enjoyed his Mutant Attack chairs, which were shown at the very nice Clear Gallery, next to some Japanese 60s/70s design classics from Shiro Kuramata.  
And he’s a funny chap in real life too. Him, his girlfriend and producer/curator Laurent took us out a few times and fun was had by all. I’ll never forget Claudio’s karaoke rendition of Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’.
Yes it’s true, everybody does karaoke in Japan. 

The header of this blog contains a few words that consist of more than 2 syllables, but the guys from design studio Zeitguised know how to describe things properly. Check out the title and explanation to their new piece ‘Peripetics’. More importantly: check out the film itself. It’s weird and wonderful and even though I’m not always a fan of abstract work, this is amazing to look at. 
A few years ago, I had the chance to work with Zeitguised on this mobile content project for which they created some ‘visual haikus’ and since then I’ve always followed their work. They’re one of the most intriguing design/animation units around; very technical, but there’s always this enthralling element of humanity and outlandishness in there. 
And if you describe yourself with ‘Breaks stuff, puts it back together and sells it for less’, you can do no wrong.  

One of the most intriguing artists that has used, abused and appropriated the www with freshness and creativity is Han Hoogerbrugge. Artist, animator, designer, interactivist, call him what you want, but he’s always been intriguing, if only for his constant consistent attire of pin-striped suit.

And this week seems to be Hoogerbrugge’s week.

If you happen to be in Rotterdam, go check out his interactive installation ‘What You Say Is What You Get’, commissioned by the Boymans van Beuningen museum. He’s been developing a keen interest in installations recently and this is a next step. 

And then there’s the release of ‘Modern Living’, a book-cum-DVD all about Han and his wide range of work. A monograph as they say. It’s been a while in the making, but it’s all yours now. Check out Submarine Channel for more info.

And if you like the darker side of Han’s work, you should visit his new project, Prostress 2.0, an intriguing series of  ”Daily fresh servings of professional stress”. Different, as they say. 

I like the man. 

In times where street art is hitting the galleries big time, it seems only fair that tiny street art is picked up by more tiny galleries. Ha ha ha. 
This exhibition at the Cosh gallery in Soho, London hosts the first solo exhibition from miniature street artist Slinkachu. For a few years, he/she (not sure about Slinkachu’s identity) has been making cute interceptions/installations in the London streets. Beautiful, funny, a little bit sad: these pieces are pretty clever. 
If you can’t make it to the gallery, there’s a lot of stills here.