THE SPRING ISSUE
Art & Design
Christian Louboutin: Tattooed Shoes
How does Christian Louboutin, master of the red-soled shoes and innovative fashion icon, stay one step ahead of the saturated designer footwear game? Already a household name known for shoes that range from demure to sensuous and classic to bold, Louboutin introduces the next in must-have shoe fetishism (of which we are all guilty). Just […]
Decoded: Chic, Meet Geek
A unique kind of buzz was in the air at New York Fashion Week this year, the undeniable excitement about fashion’s blossoming romance with technology. From live streaming and live tweeting to models Instagram-ing from their smart phones on the runway (thank you, Kenneth Cole), no one can deny the current focus on technology in […]
Continuum: 3D Printing
“Maybe data is the new black,” quips Mary Huang, half of the pioneering design duo Continuum. It might take a moment to wrap your head around, but she and her partner, Jenna Fizel, are onto something—and their work has been making waves across the fashion and design communities over the past few years. With the […]
Aussies Got Talent!
From the humble Hills Hoist invented long ago to dry our threads in the outdoors to ear worms “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye or Tame Impala with their album “Lonerism,” topping many global best-of album lists in 2012, Australians create a stir beyond their far-away Southern Hemisphere borders. Perhaps it’s something in […]
Nike ‘Flyknit’ Collective
When does an athletic shoe transcend its initial function and become art? How does said sneaker-cum-objet d’art inspire a host of artists of various disciplines to pay tribute to it? It does so when it’s the Nike “Flyknit”—footwear so unique that last July the corporation was granted an injunction against Adidas, who may have disregarded […]
Poetic Time Objects
What would happen if we dislocated time or perhaps split it in two? While the concept of changing time or perhaps stretching time in its mechanical and precise terms is an interesting thought, a much more appealing concept is getting more quality time and staying more focused on what really matters. We honor anyone who […]
As Time Goes By
On her: Dowa rider jacketEcomaco baige pants On him: Dowa shirt, VBN pants Shida Tatsuya coat, Kagure skirt, Matohu boots Another Important Culture leather jacket, Shida Tatsuya skirt, Ecomaco white wrap skirt, Models own shoes Kagure shirt, VBN t-shirt and pants, Models own shoes Matohu yellow dress, Shida Tatsuya scarf Another Important Culture dress, Matohu […]
Sonos Studio
Nestled between Hollywood and downtown LA, the La Brea Design District has an oddly under the radar reputation for designer shopping, cafés, food trucks and vintage. The neighborhood’s newest attraction, Sonos Studio, is a 4,000 square-foot showroom and multi-functional art space with a particular focus on the audio arts. A producer of wireless audio systems, Sonos […]
The Synergy of Art & Music
As a child, when Luke Rothschild was sent to his room for misbehaving, he would collect pots and pans and take them with him to “make sounds.” His earliest memories center on him making music, but he was also constantly drawing, forever painting and always creating. This childhood preoccupation with several media proved strangely prophetic. […]
Traces of Nature
Text by Emilie Trice German artist Sonja Hinrichsen’s epic environmental installations manifest more than the natural beauty of her chosen canvas. They are exercises in meditation, philosophically tied to the native tribes of America’s vast landscape, their symbols, rituals and mythologies. Best known for her series of “Snow Drawings,” Hinrichsen creates ephemeral compositions that […]
In the House of Art and Food
Text by Michael Cohen Photography by Andrew Strasser “Imagination is important for creating new beauty in the world,” says Thu Tran about her artistic perspective. Best known as the host of Food Party, Tran is an artist, often described as part Martha Stewart, part Pee-wee Herman, and part Chewbacca. Just like LeBron James, Tran grew […]
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
Fashionistas are waiting with bated breath for the upcoming exhibit, The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From Sidewalk to the Catwalk, which celebrates 35 years of the designer’s cutting-edge creative genius. The exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco will run from March 24, 2012 to August 19, 2012. A multi-media extravaganza […]
ARCHITECTURAL HARMONY
Like the physics theory after which it is named, String Theory, too, attempts to blend together two seemingly conflicting areas. While the former aims to harmonize quantum mechanics and relativity, the latter combines music, dance, and sculpture. This venture is such new territory that even String Theory co-founder, composer, instrument designer, and performer Luke Rothschild […]
INDULGING WILL COTTON’S EYE CANDY
Like many art enthusiasts, my annual income prohibits the acquisition of actual masterpieces, and, as such, I’ve found the best way to possess the works on my wish list is to purchase books by the artists I covet. Collecting monographs is not entirely unlike collecting bricks, or at least it seems that way when living […]
EXISTENCE DECODED
Binary code has come to define our increasingly virtual reality, but Nicky Broekhuysen’s dense numeric compositions represent worlds far more complex than your average computer operating system. The Berlin-based artist obsessively stamps her 1’s and 0’s by hand, performing a deceptively simple action that’s repeated hundreds of times to complete a single work. Primarily stamped […]
DAVID ALTMEJD
Artist David Altmejd is concerned with beauty, both the outer and inner constructions of physicality. In sculptural works, he’s shown the ability to update a classical type of study on human form, twisting bodies into unexpected grotesque forms, offering oversized figures, using mirrors to reassemble a person or showcasing werewolf heads. He’s also turned the […]
READY FOR THIS JELLY
Magicians are hard to come by these days. Sam Bompas and Harry Parr, however, have achieved just that: magic. And they have done so with the least imaginable medium. Their jelly creations have taken over London, their hometown. They have many times recreated these masterpieces in rainbow-hued gelatins and are now making waves all over […]
LOVE IS IN THE AEROSOL
Text by Denise Kitt When artist Max Ehrman is not completing privately commissioned works, he is zealously spray painting the walls of start-up companies in the SOMA district of San Francisco. Don’t recognize his name? Perhaps you know him as Eon75, a pseudonym Ehrman uses that stands for “Extermination of Normality” (and “75” denotes the […]
Raw Edges
A Marriage of Work & Life Littered haphazardly with wood cuttings and blue prints—all the necessary tools needed for conceptualizing creative ideas—the small North London studio is the backdrop to Shay Alkalay and Yael Mer’s designs that run the gamut from cork lamps to plaid benches for their label, Raw Edges. In a partnership that […]
Stronger Space
With the rise of the figure of the freelance curator, curating has ventured out of the museum into galleries and beyond—to the extent that those who take themselves to be on the very edge of hip go so far as to claim that they “curate” menus and music playlists. Architecture writer and curator Carson Chan […]
Three to Watch
The only constant about the artistic landscape in Berlin is that nothing stays the same. Sure, there are common practices in the city: a rich culture of artist-run project spaces, hybrid/mixed-used venues and an unusually high concentration of artists who regularly DJ. However, mostly due to the financial precarity of earning a living here, it’s […]
Into the Abyss
48 Hours in Berlin It’s 6p.m. on Saturday and my boss, a 50 yr-old Canadian art dealer, has turned on the techno music, filling the gallery with deafening electro-beats. This announces his plan for the evening: it’s his ritual warm-up before heading to Berghain, Berlin’s most hedonistic nightclub. I’ll probably wind up there too, but […]
Space Lab
We crowd our big cities and so they expand. Unbound and frontierless, new buildings, subdivisions and freeway infrastructures swell the urban landscape upward and outward. Meanwhile, as people flood the Metropolis, neighboring towns and smaller cities are drying out, losing population and in turn industry, culture, civic pride, character… Raumlabor, an architecture team based in […]
Rebecca Welsh & Halo
HALO, the Kansas City based non-profit that offers guidance, counseling and art therapy for hundreds of orphans around the world, was founded by a determined young woman who, before dedicating her life to helping poverty stricken children, was an actress, model and world-champion Taekwondo practitioner. Rebecca Neuenswander Welsh, said founder, credits the success she achieved […]
