THE SPRING ISSUE
Art & Design
Tom Sachs
The Sympathetic Illusions of A Modern Day Escape Artist Tom Sachs is not a genius. By his own admission he is not. For Sachs, a genius is a special kind of innovator, one that pairs a new idea with a new vehicle of expressing it. Charlie Parker was one; Louis Armstrong another. Sachs is quick […]
Nacho Carbonell
Perhaps it’s the fact that his studio is located in a 20th century church in Eindhoven, Netherlands, that makes his designs somehow cooler than the majority of recent design graduate students. Or maybe it is the fact that he has a vision, and fathoms it in a way that most young artists are still learning— […]
Shadows of Perception
Specters of material meaning in Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s choreography of life’s debris These are sly works. Deceptively careless heaps of trash littering a gallery floor. Or the fragmented remains of the farm cat bonded together on a stick like a vagrant’s shish kabob. The stuff you throw away. In the basest way of […]
Riding East
With the opening of Infusion Lounge SF, celebrity designer, Kinney Chan, brings his unique vision to the Bay—a brazen mixture of East meets West that reinvents ‘tradition’ for the 21st century. Text by Franklin Melendez After the Beijing Olympics, it might seem impossible to surpass the rich spectacle of Asian history. The pageantry, the drums, […]
Say Hello To Von
THE ART OF ILLUSTRATED MESSAGES. Words inspire, music emotes, but a good piece of art leaves a permanent mark on the soul. Marrying God-given talent and an almost obsessive attention to detail is London’s pencil perfectionist, Von. With a client list that includes Faber,4AD, Non Format, The New York Times, American Express, The Guardian, Nike, […]
Conscientious Design Guru
Tom Hennes ‘Thincs’ things through. The Nickelodeon slime machine is an icon in many of the imaginings of my generation, and somewhere during my less formative years, which roughly took place between a drippy popsicle and impending puberty, Tom Hennes designed the Nickelodeon Green Slime Geyser. Hard to believe that the company that perfected green […]
Gareth Pugh: Send in the Clowns
Text by Franklin Menendez In a relatively short span of time, Gareth Pugh has built a considerable reputation based on inflatable balloon tops, light-up dresses and gold harlequin suits. Ridiculous? Certainly. But these outlandish designs radiate an irreverent energy that has been largely missing from a British scene now spearheaded by the tasteful deconstruction of […]
Banks Violette: Black Metal Dreams
Text by Franklin Melendez Like the rumblings of black metal, the work of Banks Violette resonates with the darker dreams of rock and roll. His sculptures of musical paraphernalia – drum sets, speakers, scaffolding – reverberate like a wall of sound: austere, impassive, nearly abstract. Yet a dark romanticism runs throughout; almost subsonic, it emerges […]
One Flew Over Cuckoo Country
Text by Danielle Grant Photograph by Karl Walter Stand-up comedy is a relatively new form of performance art that has created some of our nation’s most treasured and fascinating personalities, and we want more. Meet Jasper Redd. Redd is a good old-fashioned Southern boy who decided to pursue comedy on a whim and moved to […]
Destination Dia: Beacon
Text by Franklin Melendez As the hard New York skyline is dissolved into a soft geometry by the train’s steady movement, one can’t help but develop an increasing awareness of passing through space and time. Imperceptibly at first, the simple act of moving redraws the landscape according to subtle shifts in architecture, light quality and […]
