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SHIRO KURAMATA

7/31/2014

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Kuramata's designs reflect the confidence and creativity 
of postwar japan, retaining a strong identity based on 
traditional japanese aesthetics while breaking new ground
through the use of innovative materials. he combined the
Japanese concept of the unity of the arts with his fascination 
with contemporary western culture, inventing a new design 
vocabulary: : the ephemeral, the sensation of floating and 
release from gravity, transparency and the construction of light.
Kuramata reassessed the relationship between form and function, 
imposing his own vision of the surreal and of minimalist ideals 
on everyday objects.

Born 1934 in Tokyo between the wars, the son of an administrator 
who became vice-director of a scientific institute, Kuramata was 
raised in Japan. He received a traditional training in the woodcraft 
department at Tokyo's Polytechnic High School, and then went on 
to work in a furniture factory, the 'teikoku kizai company' (1953). 
he pursued his studies in interior design at the 'Kuwasawa Design 
School' in Tokyo (1956) -institute that taught western concepts of 
interior design- the he was hired by the small department store 
'San-ai' as a designer of showcases as well as floor and window 
displays (1957). after a brief stint as a freelance designer for the 
retail giant 'Matsuya department store' (1964) the following year 
he opened his own design office in Tokyo (1965).

During the 1970s and 80s, Kuramata, alert to the revolutionary 
possibilities of new technologies and industrial materials, 
seized upon acrylic, glass, aluminum, and steel mesh to create 
objects that appear to break free of gravity into airy realms of 
transparency and lightness. 

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/kuramata.html
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IN PURSUIT OF ELUSIVE HORIZONS: Richard T. Walker, David Blandy and the return of the Quest in contemporary art

7/28/2014

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Richard T. Walker’s three-channel video projection, the speed and eagerness of meaning (2011), sees the artist wandering across the epic expanses of the Mojave Desert on a quest for revelation; a pilgrimage in search of the sublime. As he traverses the vast barren landscape, a monologue describes the insurmountable chasm he encounters between meaning and affect:
- As you try to assemble what is now before you, you mourn a little for what you have lost, for you could never again acquire the not knowing that so beautifully placed you in the centre of it all. Now you can only draw parallels, assign differences, translate things into opposites, find commonalities, draw distinctions and embrace the overarching failure of all this togetherness.



Walker has made his way to this remote corner of the globe from his native Britain in order, in that most clichéd of fashions, to find himself, to be ‘at one’ with the world. And yet, as he begins to experience the reality of his vision of unbound nature, he cannot help but collapse what he sees back again onto a familiar pictorial plane, constrained by language and proportion. The compulsion to command and compartmentalise nature appears overpowering, cementing man’s place at the centre of the world, imposing order like one of those “frock coats” so despised by Bataille (who instead envisioned an essentially formless universe).

The great American landscape has long resonated in popular culture as a site of ultimate romantic escapism, from the seductive wilderness of Marlboro Country advertisements, to countless film and television productions. Walker himself cites ‘couple on the run’ movies such as Badlands, Bonnie & Clyde, Gun Crazy and Natural Born Killers, where “the theme seems to be that in order for the couples to be together they are forced to transgress, often committing successive crimes and escaping civilization for the limitless bounds of the American landscape. It is only here that their love can exist.”

But in Walker’s works we find no violence, no romanticised form of Bataillean transgression that might act as an ultimate gateway to the Real. The subject of Walker’s love is instead the landscape itself, his works centring on an intense, solitudinous relationship with nature. He engages in the pathetic fallacy, anthropomorphising the land as an entity capable of reciprocating his desires. And yet the landscape remains impassive; a love destined to be perpetually unrequited.


Link to full article: http://www.metamodernism.com/2013/03/13/in-pursuit-of-elusive-horizons/
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ACHILLE CASTIGLIONI

7/25/2014

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ACHILLE CASTIGLIONI
Born in Milan in 1918, he graduated in Architecture in 1944.

Since 1940 he had dedicated himself to experimenting on industrial products with his brothers Livio ((1911-1979) and Pier Giacomo (1913-1968). Their interests were directed towards Urban Planning, Architecture and Design; they performed analysis and research on new forms, techniques and materials, aimed at developing a process of “integral design”.

In 1995 on the occasion of the award “Primavera del Design”, his “personal” exhibition “A la Castiglioni” was organized in Barcelona and then again at the Furniture Fair in Milan, at the Modern and Contemporary Art Gallery in Bergamo, in 1997 at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, at the MoMA in New York, in 1998 at the Living Design Center Ozone in Tokyo, at the Art Museum in Niitsu and at the De Beyerd Museum in Breda.

Very many objects designed by Achille Castiglioni have been produced by remarkable companies such as: Aerotecnica Italiana, Alessi, Aura, Brionvega, Bernini, B&B Italia, BBB Bonacina, Cedit, Cimbali, Danese, De Padova, Driade, Feg, Flos, Fusital, Cassina, Gavina, Ideal Standard, Italtel, Il Coccio Umidificatori, Interflex, Lancia Auto, Longoni, Marcatrè, Moroso, Nagano, Olivetti Synthesis, Omsa, Ortotecnica, Phonola Radio, Poltrona Frau, Poggi, Phoebus Alter, Perani Fonderie, Rem, San Giorgio elettrodomestici, Teorema, Kartell, Up & Up, VLM, Zanotta.

His professional activities spanned throughout the fields of Architecture and Urban Planning; he earned international recognitions for his projects applied to serial production in the fields of lighting fixtures and furniture as well as for his breathtaking installations realized around the world.

Achille Castiglioni died in Milan on December 2, 2002In 1969, he was nominated Professor of “Artistic Industrial Design”; he chaired the Faculty of Architecture in Turin until 1980 and taught in Milan until 1993 as Professor of “Industrial Design” at the Polytechnic of Milan. - http://www.achillecastiglioni.it/

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OTTO & GERTRUD NATZLER

7/24/2014

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Both born in 1908 in Vienna. Otto Natzler pursued violin studies, attended a school for textile design, and worked as a textile designer. He met Gertrud Amon in 1933; she had attended commercial school and was working as a secretary while taking art instruction. Gertrud almost immediately interested Otto in clay. Primarily self-taught, they studied at the ceramic workshop of Franz Iskra for less than a year, then opened their first workshop in 1935. Almost from the start, their collaboration involved a division of labor, with Gertrud’s remarkable throwing and Otto’s mastery of glazes. They quickly found success, winning a silver medal at the 1937 World Exposition in Paris. In 1938 they married and emigrated from Austria to the United States, settling in Los Angeles, and soon acquired an international reputation. More exhibitions and awards followed, including retrospectives at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design), New York. By Gertrud’s death in 1971, they had created 25,000 works and Otto had developed 2,500 glazes. In the mid-1970s, Otto returned to work in clay, concentrating on slab construction. He went on to have numerous solo exhibitions and was named an American Craft Council Fellow in 1990. The Natzlers received the American Craft Council’s Gold Medal in 2001. Otto Natzler died in 2007.

http://craftcouncil.org/artist/otto-natzler-gertrud-natzler



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SLOVAJ ZIZEK: EXAMINED LIFE

7/23/2014

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Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets. In Examined Life, filmmaker Astra Taylor accompanies some of today's most influential thinkers on a series of unique excursions through places and spaces that hold particular resonance for them and their ideas. Peter Singer's thoughts on the ethics of consumption are amplified against the backdrop of Fifth Avenue's posh boutiques. Michael Hardt ponders the nature of revolution while surrounded by symbols of wealth and leisure. Judith Butler and a friend stroll through San Francisco's Mission District questioning our culture's fixation on individualism. And while driving through Manhattan, Cornel West - perhaps America's best-known public intellectual - compares philosophy to jazz and blues, reminding us how intense and invigorating a life of the mind can be. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy's power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it. - imbd.com

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