For the second year Spanish based artists Remed & Okuda return to London Southbank to celebrate the Streets of Spain festival curated by Campo Viejo. Using their trademark multicolour symbolism both artists painted a glass box live for the delight of the onlookers.
View the full set of pics here
With over ten years in the making, Jellyfish Eyes is the feature film debut by renowned Japanese multidisciplinary artist Takashi Murakami.
Set in a post-Fukushima world, the sci-fi fantasy film blends computer-animated graphics with live-action cinematography. The movie tells the story of Masashi, a young boy who moves to a sleepy town in the Japanese countryside with his mother in the wake of a natural disaster. After returning home from his new elementary school one day, Masashi discovers a flying jellyfish-like creature whom he befriends and names Kurage-bo. Masashi soon discovers that all his classmates have similarly magical pets, known as F.R.I.E.N.D.s, which are controlled by electronic devices that the children use to battle one another. Despite their playful appearances, however, these F.R.I.E.N.D.s turn out to be part of a sinister plot that will threaten the entire town.
Takashi Murakami – Jellyfish Eyes, 2013. Film still
© 2013 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Murakami is currently doing a screening tour of art institutions and cultural venues across the United States. For more info visit www.jellyfisheyesthemovie.com
Brooklyn based artist and film-maker Julian Schnabel is returning to London after 15 years with an exhibition titled Every Angel Has a Dark Side at the Dairy Art Centre.
Bursting onto the New York art scene in the late 1970s, Julian Schnabel became one of America’s most famous living artist. But Schnabel artistic career was almost eclipsed by his second passion as a film-maker. In 1996 he made a biopic of his late friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, played by Jeffrey Wright, which also starred Gary Oldman and David Bowie. In 2007 Schnabel was nominated for an Oscar and won Best Director at Cannes and the Golden Globes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. On a humorous note he mentions ‘All the guys that were in my movies end up being in Bond films — Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric and Javier Bardem. But I don’t want to direct a Bond movie!’
Now Schnabel is back in vogue on both sides of the Atlantic. Already this year he has had two exhibitions in New York ( at the Gagosian NY) and one in Dallas (his first museum show in the US since the 1980s). For his London show Schnabel is keeping with his trademark use of multi-textured materials, using cowhide, polyester, canvas and tarpaulin. A video on Nowness shows his creative process.
“This show is a capsule of what happened, a selection of paintings from the past 10 years, more or less. It’s a continuum of ways that I have made marks, used materials and created images.”
View the full set of pics here
Every Angel Has a Dark Side
The Dairy Art Centre
Until July 27 2014
When Banksy recently updated his website with new pictures featuring a stencilled couple holding mobile phones, it generated a complete frenzy.
Banksy website
It was located and identified in Bristol on a wooden door outside a youth club.
Within 24 hours the door was removed by Dennis Stinchcombe, the Broad Plain Boys’ Club manager, who decided to charge viewers before trying to sell it at auction in order to support his ailing club.
However the building of the youth club is council owned. So the Bristol Council then started to intervene and confiscated the artwork. The Mayor of Bristol has asked the piece to be to moved to the Bristol Museum while a battle of ownership continues.
Banksy Mobile Lovers is currently on display at the Bristol Museum until further notice…
View all pics here
Having exhibited in Beijing and New York, contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Huan opened his first UK solo show at Pace Gallery. Spring Poppy Fields feature fourteen new oil on linen paintings inspired by his travels to Buddhist sites in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India between 2011 and 2014.
Using a pointillist technique, his colourful and psychedelic paintings provide the viewer with some optical illusions. Looking closer skulls appear from their abstraction, while some grinning faces remind of the Cheschire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Drawing inspiration from the hallucinatory effects of the poppy’s opiate properties, the use of skulls motifs reflects the Tibetan beliefs of endless deaths with their cycle of birth, death, rebirth and journey to nirvana.
View the full set of pics here
Zhang Huan – Spring Poppy Fields
Until 31 May 2014
Pace London
6 Burlington Gardens, London, W1S 3ET
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