06.27.14

Eye Candy

Anny Wang’s 3D Illustrations

Today we posted an interview with the up-and-coming Swedish designer Anny Wang, who we found when she posted her BA project to Instagram. But Akin, that slamdunk furniture collection, is only half the story: In school, when Wang was trying to teach herself how to digitally model in 3D, she had trouble with some of the more typical programs and found herself turning to a little-known software called Luxology Modo. “People use it primarily for animation, but I began to play with it and understood I could use it as a canvas to make pictures,” Wang says. We’re presenting the resulting 3D illustrations here today, which look like some sort of mash-up between the Tumblr visual culture of today and the Archizoom movement of the early 80s.

06.23.14

Eye Candy

Los Objetos Decorativos by Rosa Rubio

Barcelona-based Rosa Rubio founded Los Objetos Decorativos with a focus on creating editions of handcrafted objects designed to forge a subconscious emotional bond with their owners. Her first collection consisted of Surrealist, unconventionally tactile brushes and mirrors outfitted with ostrich feathers and synthetic hair, while her newest series — Obj. No. 5, 6, 7, and 8 — is meant to evoke the emblems of an imaginary tribe or clan. "Their patterns provide a feeling of belonging," says Rubio, which in turn conveys a sense of "protection" and "gratification, which every culture stores through these kind of elements." The one-of-a-kind pieces are made from recycled textiles which Rubio has embellished with dried plants and small clay beads.

06.17.14

Eye Candy

Milleneufcentquatrevingtquatre

Is there any better canvas than the square silk scarf? Not for Amelie Charroin and Marie Colin-Madan of the French accessories brand Milleneufcentquatrevingtquatre. (That's 1984 for the less Francophilic among you). The two women use the fashion staple to explore hand-drawn, screen-printed themes that take inspiration from video clips, art history, and instances of timeless pop culture.

05.28.14

Eye Candy

Matter—Made’s 2014 Lookbook

At Matter's ICFF booth, we managed to snag a copy of the design store's brand-new Matter—Made lookbook, which was art directed, styled, and photographed by our personal Sight Unseen dream team, Benjamin Critton and Brian W. Ferry. The collection itself was already fantastic — brand new, disc-shaped LED pendants and stocky oak stools by Matter owner Jamie Gray, an expanded HS1 shelving system by Henry Julier in the cutest colors, and the first commercially available pieces from Jonathan Zawada's Affordances line. Add to that Critton's custom type treatment and props sourced by Critton and Ferry — which included black Slinkys, gold-plated hands, and a blue squiggle that looks like it fell off a Thighmaster — and you've got an excellent collectible object.

05.12.14

Eye Candy

Field Experiments

From June to September 2013, Benjamin Harrison Bryant (New York), Paul Marcus Fuog (Melbourne) and Karim Charlebois-Zariffa (Montreal) set up a studio in Lodtunduh, a farming community on the outskirts of Ubud in Bali, where they generated a trove of conceptual works through daily experimentation. They collaborated with local stonemasons, woodcarvers, batik-makers, kite designers, and painters, all while "absorbing the sights and sounds of everyday Balinese life and documenting commonplace objects, agricultural implements, traditional dress, and makeshift items from the local culture," they write on the project's website. The result is a collection of more than 100 handmade objects meant to "challenge the traditional notion of the souvenir." At Sight Unseen OFFSITE, the collective will present these Field Experiments for the first time, including sketches, photographs, and personal stories from the makers.

05.01.14

Eye Candy

The Past Is Never Dead, by Philipp Schenk-Mischke and Matthias Klas

The Past Is Never Dead is the thesis project of Philipp Schenk-Mischke and Matthias Klas — soon to be graduates of the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt, Germany — and as such it has the required amount of critical thinking to back it up: "Taking an object and shifting the focus from form and use to the thoughts it provokes was the starting point of this project," the designers write. The shape of their Cabinets (above), they add, "comes from the metaphor of breaking conventions: parallel ash frames stand for the stuck structures of today's world while skewed lines ... try to break free from common notions to discover the new." That's all well and good, but we think all you need to understand this work is two eyeballs. We're looking forward to using them to see what the pair does next.

04.29.14

Eye Candy

Arlene Shechet, Artist

Pulp paper pieces and much-lauded ceramic work have brought the artist Arlene Shechet to the forefront of the contemporary art scene. A late career artist, Shechet has been included in recent group exhibitions with hot young ceramicists of the moment as well as showing alongside veterans Betty Woodman and Kathy Butterly. Her paper work focuses on the idea of the bleed and impregnation in addition to the fluid nature of water, formlessness becoming form, change and fragility. Shechet's ceramics also include this liquid plasticity, coming to life through moment-to-moment alterations, always on the verge of failure and containing "a hybrid comic clumsiness" as she explains it, "while at the same time, they have airiness and elegance." Shechet lives and works in New York City and upstate New York.

04.21.14

Eye Candy

Luke Armitstead’s Ceramics

We discovered the ceramics work of Luke Armitstead — born in Seattle, currently in grad school in Wisconsin — at Johnson Trading Gallery here in New York, where we spotted one of his colorful, organic planters standing sentry just outside the space's entrance. Yet as it turns out, Armitstead isn't a designer but an artist who frequently references the built environment. "In my work, one may see colorful fragmented structures, primal bodily forms, architectural models, or funky planters," says Armitstead, whose inspirations span Antoni Gaudi and Friedensreich Hundertwasser to Sterling Ruby and Thomas Houseago. "However, aside from my organic forms, my projects are driven by structured ideas that seek to relate to, or interact with, a physical landscape or place."

04.10.14

Eye Candy

The Tortoise Shell Trend is Back, And We’ve Got the Proof

We've been in Milan at the furniture fair all week, and though we'll be posting more extensive coverage over the next few days, we wanted to begin by featuring a duo that's fast becoming an old favorite of ours, despite hardly being out of school. We've featured the work of ÉCAL alumni Josephine Choquet and Virgile Thévoz twice before, but when we saw them with a booth at this year's Salone Satellite — the Milan fair's showcase of up-and-coming talents — we knew we had to share their new work. The brass and acetate Acapulco lights at the top of this post employ the same materials as their sunglasses to fantastic effect, while their new mirrors play with something that was a major trend at this year's fair — iridescence. Inspired by a bubble’s prismatic surface, the mirrors are available in three colors that change according to your point of view. The London-bound duo are certainly ones to watch.

04.08.14

Eye Candy

John Hogan, Glass Artist

It goes without saying that not every artist who grows up in Toledo, Ohio, famed birthplace of the American studio glass movement, ends up dedicating their life's work to that medium. But for John Hogan, that's exactly what happened — he started experimenting with glass at a young age and, even after relocating to Seattle a few years back, hasn't stopped since.

04.04.14

Eye Candy

Ashley Helvey’s #IRL Exhibition

Today on the site, we're giving you a peek inside Seattle creative Ashley Helvey's home and studio, but we also wanted to show you the results of the work that was being created there during our visit. Last week, at Seattle's Love City Love art space, Helvey debuted an exhibition with possibly the best name — and best concept — we've heard to date: "#IRL (internet shorthand for 'In Real Life ') is Helvey's exploration and reflection on being an artist in the age of Tumblr, Instagram and the reblog," the show text reads. "With the vast array of technological opportunities we have to broadcast our identity and redistribute images of art and design, at what point do we create our own content? #IRL presents work created by Helvey, that references images and works from the internet, many of which have been re-posted on her blog, HunterGathererer. These works, brought together under Helvey's distinct aesthetic and material sensibility, reject the lament that there is really nothing new. Instead, this exhibition celebrates the impact of technology and social media and its wealth of imagery as direct inspiration for creating real and tangible art objects.'"

04.01.14

Eye Candy

Amanda Ringstad, Photographer

Amanda Ringstad is a Seattle-based still-life and product photographer, and though there's remarkably little written about her on the internet, the information that's there makes perfect sense the instant you look at her work. She has a BFA in photography and studied sculpture and art theory in graduate school; in practice, this translates to the most arresting images you've ever seen of staples, garlic shoots, and those weird foam thingys you put between your toes during a pedicure.