Authors

tags

Archives

Feeds

  • Loading...

 

NEW ZEALAND///WTF?!///TONY OURSLER’S SKULLS IN THE TREES…

March 24th, 2008

oursler-nz.jpg
Tony Oursler’s skull in the woods video projection in New Zealand…

For a while now, we’ve been following the rumors regarding one of our favorite artists, TONY OURSLER, and his mysterious & next level video projections in the countryside of New Zealand at the commission of one of the country’s richest men and now MEN’S VOGUE has an in-depth story on the grandiose & awe-inspiring project. HAVE A LOOK:

DARKNESS VISIBLE
In Kaukapakapa, New Zealand, a New York artist takes on the biggest, darkest project of his career—as well as a larger-than-life patron hell-bent on building himself the most outlandish private art playground on earth.
By DAN HALPERN

There was a 100-foot-tall nude woman, her white shoulders like clouds, rolling around on the hill to our right. Below, on the mudflats coming up to the harbor’s banks, huge eyes and mouths popped out of the wet ground, growling and chirping. To the left, on the trees, a gigantic skull twisted and changed, now human, now simian, now some terrible distortion of a head, a tour of death and birth and evolution all at once.

The American artist Tony Oursler, who was responsible for all this—video projected onto the landscape—was watching over his creation one evening last November from the deck of the Kaukapakapa country house of Alan Gibbs—at 68, one of the wealthiest men in New Zealand and one of its leading art patrons. The house itself, overlooking Kaipara Harbour, an hour or so north of Auckland, is a modest enough affair for someone reported to be worth over $450 million, even if little else here is particularly unassuming. A sample fun weekend activity at the Farm: sit inside the caged ball at the top of the world’s largest Tesla coil while several million volts of electricity spin around you before they burst into 40-foot-long lightning bolts. “It’ll knock your socks off,” Gibbs told me a month later, his voice resonating like a pistol shot over the phone. “We’ve all been inside the damn thing: It’s scary as CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING…

tags
POSTED BY J O'Shea/Editor

Leave a Reply

Features

NYC///OPENINGS///OS GEMEOS’ “TOO FAR TOO CLOSE” AT DEITCH PROJECTS…

osgd-58.jpg

The two-headed Brasilian art phenomenon that is OS GEMEOS (Portuguese for “The Twins“) brought their fantastic art circus to NYC when their phenomenal show of new work “Too Far Too Close” opened at DEITCH PROJECTS as the art party of the summer on Saturday nite. In it, identical 24-year-old twin brothers GUSTAVO and OTAVIO PANDOLFO have created a sprawling cityscape within superstar downtown art dealer JEFFREY DEITCH’s cavernous Wooster Street space. Mirroring their psychedelic storybook street paintings that cover the city walls of their native Sao Paulo…

Read Full Article

THE OC///OPENING NITE: THE DEBUT OF THE LAGUNA MUSEUM’S “JUXTAPOZ SHOW”…

jxt10730.jpg

As the editor of JUXTAPOZ ART MAGAZINE from 1996—2006, I had a personal stake in scoping out the LAGUNA MUSEUM’s “Juxtapoz” retrospective group show “In the Land of Retinal Delights” last nite. Celebrating the so-called “Juxtapoz Factor” in the modern art world, the exhibition chronicled the magazine’s golden age, the years when the underground art world literally exploded into public consciousness and began to permeate the fabric of everyday life in the form of ubiquitous art shows, innovative merchandise, and corporate marketing and advertising campaigns. Assembling a roster of over 150 artists including…

Read Full Article

LA///HYPE 2.0///”MR BRAINWASH” KILLS HOLLYWOOD’S FEW REMAINING BRAIN CELLS…

mr-bwash.jpg

To call last nite’s opening of newly minted and ridiculously named “artist” MR BRAINWASH an “art show” would be a disservice to artists everywhere and even Mr Brainwash himself. Instead, let’s call it what it really is: a grand art prank of epic proportions. A heist. A spoof. A joke. Or maybe just the biggest, funnest, sloppiest high school art fair of all time. But let’s not call it an “art show.” Unfortunately, the majority of the Hollywood zombies lined up around the block for the better part of four hours awaiting entrance didn’t quite get the joke…

Read Full Article

CHINA///ROADTRIPPING///CLIMBING THE GREAT WALL…

l1000958.jpg
One of the most memorable experiences in life has to be climbing the legendary GREAT WALL OF CHINA. Built between the 6th century BC and the 16th century, the 4,000 mile Great Wall was constructed to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during the rule of successive dynasties. The area pictured here is closest to Beijing, the former capital city of the Ming Dynasty which was responsible for building the most strong, fortified, and enduring segments of the wall. At its peak, the Ming Wall was guarded by more than one million men and historical records indicate that around two to three million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall. Now, the colossal structure is a modern tourist trap where American, Euro, and native Chinese travelers mingle to gawk at each other and the monumental gigantitude of the twisting path before them. HAVE A LOOK:

Read Full Article

NETHERLANDS///AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW SCHOULTZ…

ashoultz1-sharp.jpg

Dreamer & renderer of mythic battles, ANDREW SCHOULTZ made his solo European debut at the renowned MAMA GALLERY in Rotterdam Netherlands last week, bringing his chaotic and apocalyptic landscapes to the otherwise peaceful nation. Filled with a curious mix of Middle-Eastern and medieval imagery, Schoultz’ large-scale murals can be overwhelming in their complexity of composition and heavily layered imagery, both hallmarks that have come to define the artist’s enigmatic work. Now, in an attempt to de-mystify his oeuvre, Schoultz sounds off on the method to his madness in the enlightening interview below. HAVE A LOOK:

Read Full Article