Aesthetica Magazine Issue 96

Aesthetica

THE ART & CULTURE MAGAZINE

www.aestheticamagazine.com

Issue 96 August / September 2020

INTIMATE PORTRAITURE

MODES OF ICONOGRAPHY

DIGITISED LANDSCAPES

Mountain terrains present a test bed for responsive architecture

Zanele Muholi’s powerful imagery provides a reclamation of the lens

Photography taking influence from selfie culture and pop consumerism

Five artists address the effects of global warming across the world

UK £5.95 Europe €11.95 USA $15.49

DESIGN AS ADVENTURE

Aesthetica 1

2 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 3

4 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 5

6 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 7

8 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 9

10 Aesthetica

Welcome Editor’s Note

On the Cover Yannis Davy Guibinga’s bold portraits are part of an expansive conversation about the representation of Africa and its diaspora. Guibinga explores a breadth of cultures and identities whilst tackling biased or limited perspectives of the continent and its communities. (p. 104) Cover Image: Ivy Guerrier-Cadet and Atlas Hapy for Nikon Z50 from the series Of Colour (2020). Photography by Yannis Davy Guibinga.

To say this has been an unprecedented time is an understatement. I started the April / May issue with those very words, but now, somehow, they have become vacuous. The world has changed. I have changed.

For better or for worse, this is the way we live now. Sometimes, I feel like I’m in mourning. The loss we feel for all the things we left behind is extraordinary. It’s the simple things that we often take for granted that have developed the most meaning over the past few months. Still, there are fleeting moments from lockdown that I will cherish. Sometimes there are no words to describe the extent of what we are going through right now, but we can take comfort in humanity’s resilience over the last few months.

Now is the time. This modest sentence is the driving force behind the August / September issue. It’s a phrase that is bold and empowering. It is a call to action. Beyond lockdown, the economic downturn and the climate crisis, we must stand united in support of Black Lives Matter. As a global community, we must change. There is no place for racism in today’s world. We must join together and fight against it.

Inside this issue, we look at the forthcoming Zanele Muholi exhibition, due to open at Tate Modern, London, later this year. Muholi is a South African artist who transgresses the boundaries of race, gender and sexuality with a body of work that reclaims the lens for black lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex individuals. We interview Tate's curator to expand on the themes in this groundbreaking show.

We also survey artists who are harnessing technology to illuminate the severity of the climate crisis, in partnership with Google Arts & Culture Lab. These vital projects remind us of how every action has an environmental cost. We must learn to change and adapt to save the planet.

There is also a presentation of Next Generation photographers – a feature achieved in partnership with London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. In our image features, we showcase five names that move between fine art, digital renders, fashion and editorial photography.

Cherie Federico

Aesthetica 11

30

74

50

64

24

40

104

146

12 Aesthetica

98

58

contents

Art 14 News This edition includes David Goldblatt's first solo show in London since 1986, as well as Bildhalle's summer presentation that brings travel indoors.

20 10 to See As the world begins to re-open, we list 10 key exhibitions to safely experience and enjoy over the next two months, either in person or online.

24 Intimate Portraiture Zanele Muholi is a visual activist who reclaims the lens, providing a platform for black lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex individuals.

30 Imagined Architecture Alexis Christodoulou is a Cape Town-based artist who specialises in three-dimensional renders. He draws on the parameters of video game graphics.

40 Design as Adventure Mountains cover one fifth of the earth’s surface, but are only sparsely populated. We look at how unforgiving terrains offer a test bed for new ideas.

50 Sense of Connection Julia Fullerton-Batten’s latest series, Looking Out From Within, was shot over the last few months of lockdown across London neighbourhoods.

58 Modes of Iconography With the role of the selfie, how has portraiture changed? Is any idea authentic? Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song consider new visual archetypes.

64 Structural Manipulation Alex Lysakowski's unexpected compositions focus on over-consumption and global production, as seen through exaggerated architectural forms.

74 Playful Combinations Ulaş Kesebir & Merve Türkan utilise bold primary colours and minimal sets, using draping materials and block furniture to subvert domestic spaces.

84 Nocturnal Exploration The seventh edition of Next Generation, an annual feature showcasing new photography graduates from the London College of Communication.

98 Digitised Landscapes Following a UN report on the effects of a 1.5°C increase, Google Arts & Culture’s Heartbeat of the Earth series makes sense of the key conclusions.

104 Vivid Depiction Yannis Davy Guibinga’s pronounced photographs are part of an expansive conversation about the representation of Africa and its wider diaspora.

Class of 2020

Film

Music

116 Buckinghamshire New University In lieu of a physical degree show, we provide the space for 12 students to present their final portfolios before they enter into the art world.

122 Stoic Performance Rare and vital is a film such as Clemency – a slow, unflinching portrait of a senior prison warden who has dedicated her life to carrying out executions.

124 Creating The Space 2020 marks nearly a decade of friendship and pop-collaboration for Paul "Polocorp" ArmandDelille and Alexandre "Peter Pan" Grynszpan.

Books

Artists’ Directory

Last Words

126 Experimentation and Discovery Some of the world’s most prodigious architects have created innovative solutions to American residential architecture over the past 120 years.

139 Inside this Issue Practitioners in this edition combine a variety of materials and approaches to express creative and critical responses to a rapidly changing world.

146 Rachel Louise Brown The photographer and Photo Director at Harper's Bazaar discusses the act of wandering alone in darkness to capture nighttime mise-en-scène.

Aesthetica Magazine is trade marked worldwide. © Aesthetica Magazine Ltd 2020.

The Aesthetica Team: Editor: Cherie Federico Assistant Editor: Kate Simpson Digital Content Writer: Eleanor Sutherland Digital Assistant: Saffron Ward

Advertisement Enquiries: Megan Hobson (0044) (0)844 568 2001 advertising@aestheticamagazine.com

ISSN 1743-2715.

All work is copyrighted to the author or artist.

All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without permission from the publisher.

Published by Cherie Federico and Dale Donley.

Aesthetica Magazine PO Box 371, York, YO23 1WL, UK (0044) (0)844 568 2001 Newstrade Distribution: Warners Group Publications plc.

Gallery & Specialist Distribution: Central Books.

Printed by Warners Midlands plc.

Advertising Coordinator: Megan Hobson Artists’ Directory Coordinator: Katherine Smira Production Director: Dale Donley Operations Manager: Cassandra Weston Designer: Laura Tordoff Technical Coordinator: Andy Guy Contributors: Thomas McMullan Charlotte R-A Diane Smyth Beth Webb Gunseli Yalcinkaya Reviewers: Kyle Bryony James Mottram Jack Solloway Matt Swain

Artists’ Directory Enquiries: Katherine Smira (0044) (0)844 568 2001 directory@aestheticamagazine.com Subscriptions: subscriptions@aestheticamagazine.com (0044) (0)844 568 2001 General Enquiries: info@aestheticamagazine.com Press Releases: pr@aestheticamagazine.com Follow us: aestheticamagazine.com facebook.com/aestheticamagazine twitter.com/AestheticaMag pinterest.com/AestheticaMag instagram.com/AestheticaMag

Aesthetica 13

Installation view, Shara Hughes: Day By Day By Day, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Rämistrasse, Zurich, 2020 © Shara Hughes.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich / New York. Photo: Stefan Altenburger Photography, Zurich.

news

Inner Landscapes SHARA HUGHES: DAY BY DAY BY DAY A tree emerges from rivers of yellow. Patches of red and green cascade into a colourful panorama. Blue lightning strikes down from billowing clouds. These are the “psychological landscapes” of New York-based Shara Hughes (b. 1981). The imaginary scenes – which were included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial – are now on view in Day By Day By Day, a new show at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Rämistrasse, Zurich.

Hughes' paintings and drawings build on the literary device of pathetic fallacy, in which human emotions are reflected in aspects of nature, such as the weather. In one painting, purple rain lashes down in sheets. In another, a red sun peers out from jagged moss-coloured mountains. Nature is everpresent in this bright collection, with works such as Dried Up Riverbed or Erosion referring to changes in the environment.

Other titles, such as Anxiety on the Horizon and Turbulance, bring together the artist’s innermost thoughts, with depictions of rolling clouds and dark, twisted palm trees.

These works are designed to stimulate various layers of the subconscious. Expressive brushstrokes and vibrant colours collide on paper and canvas, creating bold statements of self-reflection. Hughes’ process is intuitive and immediate, realised through ink, watercolour, markers, crayons, oil pastels, pencils and paint pens. The essence of these materials does not allow for many changes, so when work starts, Hughes rarely knows the destination. In addition, each draw-

14 Aesthetica

ing is finished in one session. The process is all about the “I believe the drawings present moment – living day by day. It is a statement that work as a release will resonate with many people in light of the pandemic. of my subconscious “I often think about my drawings as a run-on sentence that rather than something never ends,” the artist explains, positioning her works as part that has evolved and of an unfinished whole. “I believe the drawings work as a re- resolved itself. They lease of my subconscious rather than something that has open up questions; evolved and resolved itself. They open up questions; that’s that's the kind of the kind of vulnerable edge I’m looking for.” vulnerable edge Hughes cites Fauvism, Symbolism, Art Nouveau and I'm looking for.”

German Expressionism as influences. This varied pool of inspiration results in an oeuvre that's full of energy, texture and meaning. To illuminate this, Galerie Eva Presenhuber’s show is accompanied by a catalogue that translates the dynamism of each canvas. Published by DCV, the book presents numerous works on paper – most of them in large formats – plus an essay by New York-based art critic Andrew Russeth.

As well as being influenced by a roster of key historical movements, Hughes introduces a new technique in Day

By Day By Day. The “monoprint drawings” are works made Galerie Eva using the discarded sheets of former prints. They “are neither Presenhuber, a copy nor a different version of another print but rather a Rämistrasse Zurich literal déjà-vu, a landscape one may have already seen Until 19 September before, or might be a mere effect of one’s imagination.” This show is full of inner landscapes to explore and discover. presenhuber.com

Playing with Perception IN REAL LIFE

Olafur Eliasson, Moss wall, 1994. Reindeer moss, wood, wire. Dimensions variable. Installation view: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020.

Photo: Erika Ede. Courtesy of the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. © 1994 Olafur Eliasson.

In 2003, Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) transformed Tate Mod- a controlled indoor environment with natural aromas and “Eliasson is best ern’s Turbine Hall into a dazzling space dominated by a textures. Similarly, the immersive installation Beauty (1993) known for playing glowing orange sun. The Weather Project was a memorable injects rainbows into a dark room – synthesising a vivid with human perception, and installation that broke new ground; it blended art and inter- spectrum with fine mist and bright spotlights.

Eliasson is best known for playing with human percep- has worked with action with a deep concern for the climate. Since then, the Danish-Icelandic artist has continued to respond to social tion. He has worked with both mirrors and reflections since both mirrors and and environmental issues through creativity and advocacy. the mid-1990s, making optical illusions that appear to re- reflections since the The results are on display as part of In Real Life – a retrospec- configure space. At Guggenheim Bilbao are Your spiral view mid-1990s, making (2002) and Your planetary window (2019), which encourage optical illusions tive at the newly re-opened Guggenheim Bilbao.

Warmer temperatures have caused the Greenland ice sheet audiences to see the museum in new ways. In a similar vein, that appear to to lose around 200-300 billion tonnes of ice per year, a rate In Your Uncertain Shadow (Colour) is a brand new piece that reconfigure space.” that is expected to increase dramatically. Eliasson’s works encourages audiences to walk in front of bright lights, castfunction as a call for action to address this crisis. In 1999, ing fleeting and vibrant silhouettes on the walls.

In Real Life is part of the museum’s wider summer prodriven by a strong childhood connection to the landscape, Eliasson photographed several dozen glaciers in Iceland. 20 gramme of exhibitions and events. William Kentridge: 7 Fragyears later, he returned to capture the same landmarks again. ments celebrates the acclaimed South African video artist, The glacier melt series 1999/2019 (2019) brings together exploring the history of cinema through dreamlike visuals.

30 pairs of images – revealing the dramatic and palpable Lygia Clark: Painting as an Experimental Field takes a fresh look at the abstraction pioneer, featuring works from 1948impact global warming is having on our world.

Scandinavian topographies provide Eliasson with a constant 1958. Audiences can also discover the career of Richard source of inspiration. From weather patterns to fauna and Artschwager (1923-2013), who developed a unique visual flora, his pieces draw on the elements to foreground our language using new domestic materials from the mid-to- Guggenheim Bilbao, changing relationship with the planet. Featured below is Moss late 20th century. For audiences connecting from home, Until 4 April Wall (1994), an installation made from native reindeer lichen. #GuggenheimBilbaoLive is an online portal full of informaIt brings the outdoors into the gallery space – juxtaposing tion, inspiration and illuminating video interviews. guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en

Aesthetica 15

David Goldblatt, Soweto: At the Soccer Cup Final, Orlando Stadium,1972. Silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper.

Courtesy The Goldblatt Legacy Trust and Goodman Gallery London, Johannesburg, Cape Town.

news

Critical Observation DAVID GOLDBLATT: JOHANNESBURG 1948-2018 “Johannesburg is not an easy city to love. From its beginnings as a mining camp in 1886, whites did not want brown and black people living among or near them, and over the years pushed the communities further from the city and its white suburbs. Like the city itself, my thoughts and feelings about Joburg are fragmented. I can’t bring a coherent bundle of ideas to mind and say, ‘That’s Joburg for me.’” David Goldblatt (1930-2018) was a South African photographer who documented and critiqued racial discrimination, focusing on the ways it became intrinsic to the community’s lived experiences – both in the public and private realms.

Johannesburg 1948-2018 marks the artist’s first solo exhibition in London since 1986. The featured images (available to view in the gallery or online) span 70 years, reflecting Goldblatt’s wider desire to understand the context of segregation, favouring quiet moments of innate tension rather than oblique oppression. He was engaged in the conditions of society – the values by which people lived – rather than the climactic outcomes of those conditions.

Liza Essers, Owner and Director of Goodman Gallery, expands on the emphasis behind the exhibition: “Goldblatt was not a front-line photographer, but was – as he put it – ‘drawn to the quiet and commonplace where nothing happened yet everything was immanent.’ He travelled through Joburg and its surrounds, critically observing the

16 Aesthetica

value systems embedded in its structures. The subtlety in this “The featured images approach allowed his work to uncover difficult realities about reflect Goldblatt's a society pervaded by racial inequality, trauma and injustice.” desire to understand The diverse selection of works has been organised themati- the context of cally rather than chronologically. Audiences take a journey segregation, favouring through rare prints – including early vintage compositions quiet moments from the 1970s and 2000s – as well as pieces from the Struc- of innate tension tures of Dominion and Democracy project. Despite this varied rather than oblique display, Goodman’s show does have a special focus, provid- oppression. He ing a large space for the Soweto series. This iconic photo- was engaged in the essay captured everyday acts – from sports and religious conditions of society.” gatherings to shopkeepers and children playing – in the township of Soweto. These images explored a location that was bubbling with trauma and resistance. Soweto was one of many places where black South Africans could live in order to serve white populations in the inner cities. It later emerged as a political hotbed – home to historic protests – and was given a renewed impetus as the epicentre for an uprising.

Johannesburg 1948-2018 is the first show to feature in Goodman’s official reopening, with a pre-booking system for individual appointments. It comes at a necessary point in time, as Essers notes: “Whilst the show has been in the works Goodman Gallery, London for a while, this is a pertinent moment in light of the protests Until 15 September around continued racial inequalities. There is, without a doubt, a reverberating resonance to Goldblatt’s work.” goodman-gallery.com

Bringing Travel Indoors FERNWEH

Werner Bischof, Italy, 1950, © Werner Bischof Estate/Magnum Photos.

In the last few months, many of us have dreamt about the ers and water droplets all shot through soft, hazy blues and “Bildhalle's summer possibility of visiting new places, immersing ourselves in the luminous yellows. Cabrera’s series provides a retelling of a show stimulates the memories of summers spent abroad. Whilst we’re still unable mythical tale about the child Krishna – wrongly accused senses through the to travel internationally, Galerie Bildhalle, Zurich, evokes the of eating dirt instead of the fruit from surrounding trees. imagination, pulling excitement of journeys. This group show allows viewers to Cabrera’s series of elemental and mysterious images sug- viewers into the imaging flying to Naples with René Burri and Werner Bischof; gest to the viewer that everything they see – no matter how warm heat of the small – contains the divinity of the universe.

Mediterranean Sea; to Rio with Thomas Hoepker; to Japan with Paul Cupido.

Many connections can be made across the images. A mini- the smell of sane; the Mirjam Cavegn, Founder, notes: “People are driven by a deep longing to travel again. That which was normal before mal seascape by Sandro Diener provides a compositional boundless potential – perhaps being able to do a short trip when the impulse equivalent to an iconic black and white photo by Bischof, of the horizon.” takes you – is no longer possible. The very concept of travel which depicts the harbor of Hong Kong in the early 1950s. is burdened by uncertainty, measures and precautions. So, Meanwhile, Thomas Hoepker’s Copacabana beach (shot in to be carried away by art is a beautiful and meaningful 1968) is mirrored in another of Cabrera’s works which dealternative for now. Of course, this can be achieved through picts children playing carelessly along the beach. Cavegn literature, paintings or music, but I think that photographs explains: “Whilst the language and technical possibilities of provide a strong visual catalyst: they evoke memories and photography have developed and changed over the years, the feeling they radiate is still the same. Then and now: artists can even instil the desire to venture beyond the known.”

Highlights of the show include an aerial view of Italy in have been deeply attracted by the beauty of foreign places.”

Bildhalle’s summer show stimulates the senses through 1950 by Werner Bischof (pictured below). The image, cast in dramatic monochrome, shows a cluster of umbrellas the imagination, pulling viewers into the warm heat of the spilling out into a city square, catching a bustle of activity Mediterranean Sea; the smell of the sand; the boundless Galerie Bildhalle, Zurich as groups gather in a sliver of sunlight. Other parts of the potential of the horizon. Golden light illuminates cities, Until 22 August show take a more conceptual approach. Albarrán Cabrera’s deserts and beaches, whilst a sense of freedom permeates Mouth of Krishna (2020), for example, shows trees stretching through rippling water, bare skin and open skylines. A virtual 3D Tour Available Online upwards into cloudless skies, as well as mountain tops, flow- tour is also available, transporting viewers through the screen. bildhalle.ch/en

Aesthetica 17

Anne Zahalka, Exotic Birds, 2017. Source: American Museum of Natural History. Archival pigment ink on rag paper, 80 x 80 cm.

news

Anthropological Perspective FROM ALL POINTS OF THE SOUTHERN SKY In recent months, amidst global crises, we have experienced a profound period of coming together: community blossoming in adversity. From All Points of the Southern Sky: from Australia and Oceania is a powerful group show, curated by Ashley Lumb, about collective action and shared responsibility. It opens at Florida’s Southeast Museum of Photography this September, when these messages have a renewed sense of power. The 13 featured names demonstrate how art can be a mechanism – a rallying cry – turning the lens on the Australian continent and neighbouring countries of Oceania. The works, which have rarely been shown outside of their home nations, explore colonial histories and repressed violence whilst amplifying the voices of Indigenous peoples.

Examples include Kurt Sorensen, whose Port of Call series combines history and anthropology to explore legacies of incarceration. The portraits – made using 19th century techniques – depict contemporary descendants of early European settlers. The haunting project, achieved with wet plate collodian negatives, harks back to 1788 and the First Fleet, which carried 736 convicts and British troops over to the continent. These groups went on to establish the first colony of New South Wales at Sydney Cove.

Meanwhile, Anne Zahalka challenges stereotypical, picturepostcard representations of Australia: redressing a culturally skewed, often Anglocentric record of its landscapes. Hand-

18 Aesthetica

coloured and digitally embellished archival photographs reference museologial dioramas. The images present a more truthful representation of nature in the Anthropocene, which are further subverted by digital intervention. Aluminium cans litter pastel-coloured landscapes; habitats of native fauna are stripped bare; painted backdrops blaze on the horizon.

Stories are also at the heart of Tobias Titz’s portraits. The Polaroid Project provides Indigenous Australians, immigrants and refugees with both visual and textual representation – allowing for both a voice and identity to shine through. Titz creates diptychs that include powerful questions and statements such as: “How come we had to become a citizen of our own country? We were here first!” These words comment on the 1967 referendum in which Australians voted to amend the constitution to include Aboriginal people in the census, in turn allowing the Commonwealth to create laws for them.

Many of the artists are further connected by their concerns for the climate crisis. This year, Australia suffered the most catastrophic bushfires on record. The fires began in mid2019, and more than 240 days and 46 million acres later, they were still blazing. Stephen Dupont’s work explores the impact of the “Black Summer” in which an estimated one billion animals died, with some species now extinct. From All Points of the Southern Sky reflects on the power of images to reveal hidden truths when they are needed the most.

“The 13 photographers demonstrate how art can be a rallying cry, turning the lens on the Australian continent and neighbouring countries of Oceania.

The works explore colonial histories and repressed violence whilst amplifying Indigenous voices.”

Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona 22 September 13 December smponline.org

Decisions at the Crossroads OLI KELLETT: FELLOW HUMANS possibility to slow down in an increasingly fast-paced world.

Other inspirations include The Düsseldorf School and German photographer Thomas Struth (b. 1954), who is recognised for vast – yet extraordinarily detailed – prints of advanced technology and built environments. Both Struth and Kellett are intrigued by how people interact with space, resulting in a precise documentation of the world. It is from Struth, amongst others, that Kellett got the idea to produce variations of the same scene – seeming repeats.

The resulting compositions, although polished and precise, are never staged. “I am never sure what I am going to find or who is going to come into frame. I don't look for people or hunt people down. I show up with my kit, set up and wait for someone to turn up on the other side of the road. I feel like we meet in the middle and then go our separate ways.”

The project began in 2016 when Kellett was visiting Los Angeles during the lead-up to the presidential election. The country was at a literal political crossroads. Since then, the series has continued to evolve – taking on a more universal meaning. Now, spanning locations including Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Mexico City – it has become more about individual people and the directions they choose to take. “I do wonder about the people I take photographs of,” he concludes. “That is why I am taking them in the first place. They are just fellow people, fellow humans.”

“The project began in 2016 when Kellett was visiting Los Angeles during the lead-up to the presidential election.

The country was at a literal political crossroads. Since then, the series has taken on a more universal meaning.”

HackelBury Fine Art, London, 10 September 31 October Viewing Rooms Online hackelbury.co.uk

Oli Kellett, Cross Road Blues (Dartmounth St, Boston), 2017

The act of walking has taken on new significance in recent months, becoming a cherished daily activity for individuals during isolation. It has offered many people a moment of escape and discovery – a chance to see familiar places with fresh eyes and to meet with loved ones at a distance.

“Walking is an honest thing to do; it lets the city wash over you,” notes British photographer Oli Kellett (b. 1983), whose work draws on the relationship between humans and the landscape. On display at HackelBury Fine Art, London, Cross Road Blues is made up of large-scale photographs taken at crossroads in cities across North and South America.

“Everybody has to wait to cross the road. It allows people to have a few seconds of space – to wait and to contemplate.

This is what I have been looking for in the last three years.”

The results are deeply cinematic. Unnamed individuals pause at stop signs, overshadowed by looming buildings and bathed in shafts of warm light. Kellett cites Edward Hopper (1882-1967) amongst his influences, drawing on the painter’s interest in silent spaces and melancholic moments.

“The crossroads becomes this space where (I like to think) people are wrestling with big ideas: guidance, morality and the weight of decision-making,” Kellett states, revealing a deeper interest in the human psyche and spatial awareness.

These images contrast the anonymity of urban spaces with the individuality of our experiences, reminding us of the

Aesthetica 19

art

10 to See RECOMMENDED EXHIBITIONS: LIVE AND VIRTUAL

As galleries begin to re-open, find out about the latest exhibitions available to visit either in person or online. From digital residencies to photography collections, these shows ask poignant questions about the state of the world as it defines a new "normal."

1

Centropy Kunsthalle Basel | Until 11 October

kunsthallebasel.ch For Deana Lawson's (b. 1979) participation in the 34th São Paulo Biennale, the American photographer was invited to travel to Bahia, Brazil, to explore the concept of blackness as well as the wider visual representation of the African diaspora. The resulting series, entitled Centropy, incudes meticulously staged images with a mysterious and ambiguous atmosphere. Each composition balances voyeuristic, ethnographic and theatrical perspectives, moving fluidly between indoor and outdoor places whilst offering a sense of intimacy with the characters.

2

191.49

Spazio Disponibile Power Plant, Toronto | Until 30 August

thepowerplant.org Dawit L. Petros (b. 1972) creates transnational art that explores postcolonialism and migration, in particular through histories that connect East Africa and Europe. Spazio Disponibile, is Italian for “available space.” The exhibition utilises archive material to scrutinise gaps in European memory, particularly that of modern Italy. The works make reference to vacant advertising sections in Rivista Coloniale, a 20th century magazine connected to the Italian colonial project. Petros alludes to the idea that Africa has been an "available" space to exploit.

3

Ensayos: Passages New Museum, New York | Until 15 September

1

newmuseum.org New Museum presents the first ever online artist residency this summer. Ensayos, an international collective, displays work from June until September. “Ensayos” – which roughly translates in English to “enquiries” or “rehearsals” – brings together a fascinating group of artists, scientists, activists and policymakers who have explored eco-politics over the last decade.

They have launched distinct investigations into archipelagos – groups of closely scattered islands. This programme examines ocean advocacy, eco-feminism and costal health.

4

Wabi Sabi IBASHO, Antwerp | Until 30 August

ibashogallery.com The title of this unique exhibition does not translate easily. In Japanese, “Wabi” traditionally referred to the loneliness of living in nature – remote from society – whilst “sabi” meant “chill” or “withered.” At the turn of the 14th century, these words began to take on more positive connotations, referencing a beauty of things that are imperfect, impermanent or incomplete.

IBASHO invites nine Japanese artists and three non-Japanese artists to consider the specificities of this aesthetic concept, moving between ceramics, photography and sculpture.

5

Ten Years of Reportage Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles | Until 1 November

fondationcarmignac.com Carmignac Photojournalism Award commemorates a decade of groundbreaking entries. This survey demonstrates the courage and independence of photojournalists who have witnessed irreparable damage placed on the planet as well as harrowing accounts of human rights violations and attacks on freedom of expression. This retrospective brings together powerful projects that illuminate the destruction of Gaza, human trafficking in Nepal and the startling effects of global warming in the Arctic Circle through a display of over 100 photographs.

20 Aesthetica

2

3

4

5

Aesthetica 21

8

6

9

7

22 Aesthetica

10

6

Eye to I Boca Museum, Boca Raton | Until 20 September

bocamuseum.org Taken from Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery collection, Eye to I highlights how American artists have portrayed themselves through painting, drawing, photography and video since the beginning of the 20th century. Practitioners approach self-representation in myriad ways – from realistic renderings to conceptual alter-egos that reveal or conceal inner lives.

The featured image here depicts María Magdalena Campos-Pons (b. 1959) – a Cuban-born artist who examines issues of belonging, identity and wider cultural assimilation.

7

Trevor Paglen PACE, London | 10 September - 11 November

pacegallery.com PACE gallery, located in Burlington Gardens, reopens its physical space with a showcase of new works by Trevor Paglen (b. 1974). This includes the new Flowers series – a collection of large-scale photographs that include flower formations which have been conceptualised by algorithm. The colours and shapes in the compositions are dictated by the complex AI programme. Paglen notes: “Artificial Intelligence has become ubiquitous. [These] works provide a small glimpse into platforms that track faces, nature and human behaviour.”

8

Human Territoriality Robert Morat Galerie | Until 19 September

robertmorat.de “Borders are a means of separation. They separate two sides, defining a 'here' and 'there.' But they also delineate what lies within the boundaries, instilling a sense of safety and security.

Although they stake a claim to permanence, nothing is as changeable as boundary lines. So, it is ironic that entire nations should develop so much pride on the basis of existing borders, when they are artificial constructs that are constantly changing.” Human Territoriality provides a selection of Roger Eberhard’s (b. 1984) photographs of former borders around the world.

9

Inner Universe

Galerie Templon, Paris | Until 30 September

viewingroom.templon.com Chiharu Shiota’s (b. 1972) works are available to see online with Inner Universe. Through Templon’s viewing rooms, access a series of the artist’s signature sculptures in red, white and black threads. A collection of mysterious boxes deconstruct our conception of the body through suspended clothes, anatomy books and personal belongings. Meanwhile, two in-situ installations invite audiences on a poetic journey to finding and interpreting the idea of an eternal consciousness; layers of tangled threads exemplify the boundlessness of the universe.

10

The Holy Third Gender Perrotin, New York | Until 21 August

perrotin.com The Holy Third Gender: Kinnar Sadhu is the first solo exhibition of New York-based, French photographer and cinematographer Guillaume Ziccarelli. Central to this display is a short documentary film based on the sacred Kumbh Mela festival – a Hindu event that takes place every 12 years across four locations. The 2019 iteration marked a historic moment for India’s transgender individuals. Ziccarelli travelled to Allahabad, India, to document their controversial initiation into the festival as equal, spiritual leaders, viewed very much as saints.

1. Deana Lawson, The Garden, 2015. © Deana Lawson. Courtesy of the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Part of the solo exhibition Deana Lawson: Centropy, at Kunsthalle Basel (9 June - 11 October 2020) co-produced with Fundação Bienal de São Paulo as part of the 34th Bienal de São Paulo – Though it’s dark, still I sing. 2. Dawit L. Petros, Untitled (Overlapping and intertwined territories that fall from view II), 2019. 30x37.5”, archival colour pigment prints. Courtesy the artist. 3. Christy Gast, Fuegian Archipelago, 2016 digital photograph, dimensions variable. 4. Nobuyuki Kobayashi - wa, 2000, copyright Nobuyuki Kobayashi, courtesy IBASHO. 5.

Groenland, Disko Bay, July 2018. Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR for Fondation Carmignac. 6. Untitled from the series When I am not Here, Estoy alla. Artist: María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Dye diffusion transfer print 1996. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Julia P. and Horacio Herzberg © María M. Campos-Pons 7. Trevor Paglen, Flowers 07, 2020. Dye sublimation print. 40 ½ × 54 in. Copyright Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the artist and PACE Gallery. 8. Roger Eberhard, 24 th Parallel South, Chile, 2018. Courtesy of Robert Morat Galerie. 9. Exhibition view of Inner Universe by Chiharu Shiota at Galerie Templon, 28 rue Grenier-Saint Lazare, Paris.

Artwork shown: Out of my body, 2020 – installation of seven pieces of cowhide and goat leather. Varying dimensions. Image by Photos © Bertrand Huet (Tutti Images). 10. Guillaume Ziccarelli. Shalu, Manisha, Rishika, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Aesthetica 23

art

Intimate Portraiture Zanele Muholi MUHOLI IS A VISUAL ACTIVIST WHOSE IMAGES RECLAIM THE LENS, OFFERING A VITAL PLATFORM FOR BLACK LESBIAN, GAY, TRANSGENDER AND INTERSEX INDIVIDUALS.

Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) images have captivated the world.

Creating direct, powerful portraits, the South African artist and visual activist works across photography, video and installation, focusing on race, gender and sexuality. Muholi uses the lens as a space for reclamation – of both gaze and representation. The artist has won a number of prestigious prizes, accolades and honours, including an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography in 2016, a Chevalier de Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2016 and an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2018. This autumn, Tate Modern, London, presents the artist's first major UK survey. Sarah Allen, co-curator of Zanele Muholi 2020, expands on the themes in the show as part of Tate's wider programming, as well as the impact of this groundbreaking work over the last few decades.

Johannesburg, and as part of a conference at the University of Western Cape entitled Gender & Visuality, garnered national media attention. It was very clear that Muholi had an unflinching and unique approach to an important subject matter and their career progressed quite quickly from then.

A: Muholi devoted years to the Faces and Phases series (started in 2006), which directed the camera at members of the black lesbian and trans community in South Africa. Can you discuss how this series began, and how it developed over the years that followed?

SA: The first image that Muholi shot for Faces and Phases was of Busi Sigasa – a talented activist and poet who has written a beautiful poem called Remember Me When I'm Gone, which will feature in the Tate show this autumn. The importance of creating an archive to commemorate and celebrate the lives of black queer individuals in South Africa A: How did Zanele Muholi’s artistic career begin?

SA: Muholi’s entrance to the art world was through activism. really built from that first portrait. The series now includes Amongst early activist work they wrote for the queer blog several hundred portraits of lesbian, transmen and gender Behind the Mask, and in 2002 they co-founded Forum for non-conforming individuals. This is an ongoing project the Empowerment of Women (FEW) in Gauteng – a non- for Muholi, who returns to re-photograph participants profit organisation that promotes and protects the rights of again over time. It is a lifelong series and a living archive. lesbian, bisexual and transsexual women and provides a safe I find that level of artistic dedication incredibly moving. A space for these people to meet and organise. In 2003, they really critical element of the project is giving voice to the graduated from Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg. individuals so that they can speak for themselves rather than Shortly after in 2004, Muholi’s first solo exhibition – Visual be spoken for. The publication Faces and Phases includes Sexuality: Only Half the Picture – was presented at the many testimonies from the participants which reveal the Johannesburg Art Gallery. This, along with their inclusion in diversity of the black queer community. Currently, I am the group show Is Everybody Comfortable? at Museum Africa, reviewing video testimonies that will feature in the exhibition.

24 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 25

26 Aesthetica

Zanele Muholi (b.1972), Detail, Bona, Charlottesville 2015. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper. 800 x 506 mm.

Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York. © Zanele Muholi.

“The overhelming narrative of black lesbians in the media in South Africa is one of victimhood.

This dichotomy between visibility and invisibility is at the core of Muholi's work.”

Previous Page: Zanele Muholi (b.1972), Bester I, Mayotte 2015. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper. 700 x 505 mm. Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/ Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York. © Zanele Muholi.

Left: Zanele Muholi (b.1972), Ntozakhe II, Parktown 2016. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper. 1000 x 720 mm Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York. © Zanele Muholi.

Within these works, the participants tell their side of the story, sharing their experiences and powerful testimonies of navigating gender, sexuality and race in South Africa today.

A: Muholi started the series in the same year that South Africa – the only country on the continent – legalised same-sex marriage. Of course, discrimination and violence are still rife in South Africa, and across the entire world, in spite of this legislation. How do these images remedy a history of black queer invisibility?

SA: It is without doubt that black queer individuals in South Africa suffer from under-representation and a certain level invisibility. But equally, writer Pumla Dineo Gqola makes the important point that they also suffer from a state of “hypervisibility” – one which can make them the target of homophobic hate-crime. The overwhelming narrative of black lesbians in the media in South Africa then becomes one of victimhood. This dichotomy between visibility and invisibility is at the core of Muholi’s work. They document survivors of hate-crimes but also try to create a form of counter-representation against the predominant narrative by creating a positive visual document that will live on beyond them.

years documenting the hardships of their community in South Africa – which have included many deaths, murders and corrective rapes. Somnyama Ngonyama offered an opportunity to heal some of these personal wounds whilst also addressing broader issues related to race and representation.

A: The Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) series includes self-portraits, presenting alter egos that boldly hold the viewer’s gaze. How does this body of work, and the Brave Beauties series come together to challenge Eurocentric definitions of beauty?

SA: Beauty is a powerful word to describe Muholi’s body of work. But it isn’t a beauty born by artificial means – in Muholi’s portraits of others they don’t employ elaborate lighting, makeup or staging techniques. Rather, each participant projects their own beauty on their own terms. In relation to challenging Eurocentric definitions of beauty I think one could read the darkening of skin tone in Somnyama Ngonyama as an act of reclaiming blackness – of challenging a dominant conception of lighter skin as a canon of beauty.

A: The artist’s head is often crowned with everyday objects, such as pegs, sponges and hair picks. What A: Why did Muholi move onto self-portraiture? What new do these objects signify? How do they operate, both thematically and structurally in each piece? creative and professional avenues did this genre lend?

SA: Although many people know Muholi’s work from the SA: Muholi uses material often sourced from their immedipowerful Somnyama Ngonayama series, Muholi actually ate environment. The various materials speak to particular took self-portraits from a very early point in their career – issues or histories. For example, in Nolwazi II, Nuoro, Italy, and we will show many of these important works at Tate. One 2015, they are crowned in felt-tip pens. This references the of the reasons they made a more decisive turn towards this “pencil test” devised to assist authorities in racial classificamedium is the need for self-healing. Muholi spent many tion under apartheid. When authorities were unsure how a

Aesthetica 27

Zanele Muholi (b.1972), Julie I, Parktown, Johannesburg 2016. Photograph, gelatin silver print on paper. 660 x 1000 mm.

Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York.© Zanele Muholi.

person should be classified, a pencil would be pushed into their hair. If the pencil fell out, signalling that their hair was straight (white) rather than curly (black), the person “passed” and was “classified” as white. However, there are other portraits which are much more pared back and don’t feature objects or additional material. I find these images the most haunting. One of my favourite Somnyama images is called Mfana, London 2014. It's a tightly cropped portrait of Muholi staring at the camera straight on. For me personally, it is so raw and honest, as if they have broken through all the white noise of other people’s representation and projections.

A: Muholi has noted that their self-portraits pay tribute to family members, LGBTQIA+ communities and many more. To what extent do the images act as “dedications”?

SA: The images you refer to, in which Muholi uses pegs and sponges, are dedicated to their mother Bester Muholi, who was a domestic worker for the same middle-class white family for over 40 years. Another image, which is a dedication of sorts, was made in memory of the South African activist Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo. Jacob Zumba was charged with the rape of Kuzwayo in 2005, but was acquitted in 2006.

Zumba went on to become president of South Africa in 2009 until his resignation in 2018. Kuzwayo died in 2016 and Muholi made a self-portrait soon after to mark her passing.

Though some images act as dedications, Muholi has spoken about how the series can be understood as an attempt to use the body as a canvas to “bring forth political statements.”

A: Exhibitions like this have never been more important, dedicating major public institutions to the display and

28 Aesthetica

celebration of black bodies. How does this exhibition sit within Tate’s response to Black Lives Matter and to diverse cultural programming for the future?

SA: Whilst this show has been many years in the planning, it of course holds an even greater resonance in this current moment. I hope it will be a catalyst for more conversations about important issues – not only about race but the LGBTQIA+ community. We’re hugely committed to not only continuing to broaden representation in our programme and collection but also our workforce. Over this year, we’ve held Steve McQueen’s Year 3 series at Tate Britain and solo exhibition at Tate Modern, as well as Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus in the Turbine Hall. We're also looking forward to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s exhibition at Tate Britain this autumn. This is just a snapshot of some of the work we’re doing. Tate has an influential platform and it’s important we use it to speak out about racial inequality. Our wider aim is to become truly inclusive with a workforce and audience as diverse as the communities we serve. Muholi has often spoken about how they would like to “turn museums into spaces where we can carve out a new dialogue that favours us.” We are working hard to make sure this show achieves that goal.

Right: Qiniso, The Sailes, Durban 2019.

Courtesy of the Artist and Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York. ©Zanele Muholi.

Words Kate Simpson

A: What kind of resources are Tate looking into for educating staff and attendees about the exhibition?

SA: We want our staff and visitors to have the tools they Zanele Muholi 's new need to explore the exhibition and its themes. We are look- exhibition dates run ing at doing this in a number of different ways – including 5 November - March 2021, commissioning a glossary that deals with terms that are per- Tate Modern, London tinent to Muholi’s practice – and we plan to make contact details for key organisations available in the gallery. tate.org.uk

Aesthetica 29

art

Imagined Architecture Alexis Christodoulou

Alexis Christodoulou specialises in three-dimensional renders, influenced by the potential of digital worlds. The Cape Town-based artist has a longstanding fascination for video game graphics, but often found that the presence of contemporary architecture was missing from many gaming platforms. These images are a simple extension of the desire to see fantastical, virtual spaces brought to life with a clean, modern aesthetic.

Each composition begins with a simple sketch, inspired by buildings in South Africa or through the renowned work of Italian architect Aldo Rossi – one of the leading exponents of the Postmodern movement. References to David Chipperfield – responsible for The Hepworth, Wakefield; Turner Contemporary, Margate; and Museo Jumex, Mexico City – can also be seen amongst the structures. The renders take on sculptural elements, with undulating rocks, rippling waters and asymmetric curves. alexiscstudio.com.

Alexis Christodoulou, Summer 2022.

30 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 31

32 Aesthetica

Alexis Christodoulou, Summer 2019.

Aesthetica 33

Alexis Christodoulou, Summer 2022.

34 Aesthetica

Alexis Christodoulou, Olgiati and the Volcano 11.

Aesthetica 35

Alexis Christodoulou, Olgiati and the Volcano 3.

36 Aesthetica

Alexis Christodoulou, Summer 2018.

Aesthetica 37

Alexis Christodoulou, Summer 2020.

38 Aesthetica

Alexis Christodoulou, Olgiati and the Volcano 7.

Aesthetica 39

Alexis Christodoulou, Olgiati and the Volcano 8.

art

Design as Adventure Living in the Mountains MOUNTAINS ARE THE ULTIMATE TEST FOR ARCHITECTS. THESE COMPLEX TERRAINS ARE SUBJECT TO EXTREME AND UNSTABLE WEATHER, CALLING FOR INGENIOUS DESIGN.

Innovation thrives within constraints. The last few months of lockdown have proved that – within limitations and heavy restrictions – humanity can still find ways to thrive, create and connect. In architecture, there are perhaps no greater limitations for than those posed by a mountain. These high altitudes are bound to extremes – avalanches, storms and impassable terrains – moving from dense forests to barren planes with no signs of vegetation. Building a home in these conditions requires resourceful, adventurous design.

“Despite the significant challenges posed by a sloping, difficult-to-access site, the need for specialised and experienced contractors and seasonal working restrictions, the mountains are continually used as sites of architectural experimentation,” note the editors of Phaidon’s Living in the Mountains.

“Looking far beyond the vernacular of log cabins and chalets, designers of mountain homes have employed innovative techniques and materials to overcome previous limitations of structure and location – suspending homes over steep slopes or else sinking them deep in the rock.”

New York architecture firm GLUCK+’s House in the Mountains (2012), for example, is a guesthouse that has been submerged into the landscape of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Its sloping roof is an insulating and camouflaging “meadow” of grass that avoids imposing on the view from the main house to the south. It looks like an Icelandic turf house, bulging out from the earth. “We found we could conceive of the building as a landform rather than a structure, and thereby gain the flexibility of a much more plastic medium: the ground,” says Charlie Kaplan, Principal Architect at

40 Aesthetica

GLUCK+. “We folded the ground plane up, and as we did this, we found we could create indoor and outdoor enclosures that could be strategically concealed or revealed. It is a kind of ‘peekaboo’ in which the valley floor – now the new guest house – appears to rise up from the lawn of the main house.”

Kaplan says inflecting the ground plane into a single storey (measuring 18-feet) reinforced the idea of the building not as a manmade structure imposing on the mountain, but as a landform that can be used to emphasise the beauty of the surroundings: “Marking and accentuating the landscape moves beyond the idea of making structures to simply 'frame a view.' This extra height works on the interior of the space as well, allowing for a continuous clerestory to extend above the other house, providing panoramic 360-degree views from the inside. Here, one is inside the landform looking through it to the surrounding geography.”

In the same mountain range, Voorsanger Architects’ Wildcat Ridge Residence (2005) is similarly designed to integrate with its environment. The two-storey structure draws energy from 60 geothermal wells, meaning the building is completely off-grid. It also has a folded-plate roof that echoes the peaks of the mountains and, when blanketed with snow in winter, makes the residence all but disappear. Much like GLUCK+’s guesthouse, it pushes engineering to its limits to meld with the territory, taking inhabitants deep into the snow.

If the impulse to find refuge in the earth comes from the earliest modes of survival – the cave as shelter – then the sophistication of the materials at play in these contemporary structures also allows architects to move in the opposite

Aesthetica 41

42 Aesthetica

Alberto Burckhardt + Carolina Echeverri, Twin Houses, 2016, Nilo, Colombia. Picture credit: Alberto Burckhard + Carolina Echeverri.

“Mountains are border spaces.

They hang above normality, teetering in the imagination on the threshold between mankind and the universe beyond, between life and death. It's a mythical dynamic.”

Previous Page: Alberto Burckhardt + Carolina Echeverri, Twin Houses, 2016, Nilo, Colombia.

Picture credit: Alberto Burckhard + Carolina Echeverri.

Left: Robert Konieczny KWK Promes, Konieczny’s Ark, 2015, Brenna, Poland.

Picture credit: Aleksander Rutkowski/ Olo Studio

direction – building outwards instead of sinking into the land. “In previous centuries, buildings in the mountains were practical, simple structures with minimal glazing to prioritise insulation from the cold. Modern building techniques have enabled structures to be built high in the challenging terrain and be opened up to nature through the use of high-tech glazing and transitional interior–exterior spaces.”

House in Yatsugatake (2012), realised by Japanese firm Kidosaki Architects Studio, extends outwards from a slope on a reinforced-concrete base supported by two angular struts, with floor-to-ceiling glazing offering soaring views of the Yatsugatake Mountains. The designers say it is like “living on a cloud” – a description that captures, perhaps accidentally, the otherworldliness of these locations. Mountains are border spaces. They hang above normality, teetering in the imagination on the threshold between mankind and the universe beyond, between life and death. It is a mythical dynamic that endures, even if it is somewhat muffled by reinforced concrete and insulated glass.

This threshold is thinner still in Rabot Tourist Cabin (2014) designed by Oslo-based firm Jarmund / Vigsnæs AS Arkitekter. Situated on a small exposed plateau, 1,200 metres above sea level, the constraints of its lofty location are more keenly felt. Built for the DNT (Norwegian Trekking Association), set amongst the glaciers of northern Norway, it is produced for heavy wind and storms and is inaccessible by road – only to be reached on foot or on skis. Here, the balance between life and death is palpable. A secondary rescue hut is just 50 metres away in case the cabin is destroyed.

Whilst a shelter in this location would traditionally have to be completely sealed off from the elements, specially

calibrated glass has allowed its designers to install fullheight windows. Elsewhere, solar panels provide electricity for the lights, and internal sliding doors allow rooms to be cut-off for more efficient and contained heating.

Thilo Alex Brunner’s On Mountain Hut (2019) provides more ingenious solutions for surviving extreme conditions.

The structure is perched 2,499 metres up the side of the Swiss mountain Piz Lunghin. It is only accessible by a twohour hike, and the precarious demands of its location mean the weight of the single cabin has to be kept to a minimum.

It is also completely self-contained in terms of power and waste, with a reflective corrugated-metal exterior (covering a plywood interior), solar panels for energy and an in-built water harvesting system. It casts a strange figure on the mountainside: like a time machine transported into prehistory. Unlike other projects, which root themselves deep into the landscape, this shelter is purposefully ephemeral.

“We built it with only two materials: wood and metal,” says Brunner. “The whole structure has been constructed from wood – the cladding from metal. It was assembled in a very simple way, [intended to be] very easily taken apart again and eventually recycled. We built the hut in such a way that it only requires the assembly of a small selection of pieces. The few heavy parts were transported by helicopter. The smaller parts and equipment were transported with countless walks on foot. Two people put the whole hut together.”

Some projects go further, using the constraints of the environment to totally reinvent the shape of a home.

Mountain Cabin (2012) by Austrian firm Marte.Marte Architects is a cuboid set above the Austrian ski resort of Laterns. The house is pale grey in colour and has sharp

Aesthetica 43

Alberto Burckhardt + Carolina Echeverri, Twin Houses, 2016, Nilo, Colombia. Picture credit: Alberto Burckhard + Carolina Echeverri.

right angles. It looks as if it could be the entrance to a secret military base. “It is reminiscent of a fortified building like a castle,” agrees Stefan Marte, from Marte.Marte Architects.

He explains that the shape actually came from the need to balance the functions of the house with the steepness of the terrain. “We stacked the rooms on top of each other.

An empty space (cut out of the volume) takes over the sun terrace and becomes a weather-protected entrance. In all conditions, even with two meters of deep, entrenched snow, the entrance still protrudes from the steep slope.”

Marte says that, when building within hillsides, finding the right balance between an expressive architectural language and the landscape is a major challenge. “We are always filled with a certain humility and not everything that is technically possible is conceivable for us in such a place. Designing with extreme altitudes and dealing with the effects of natural forces, especially the unpredictable harshness of winter, is what makes building in the mountains so special.”

These diverse buildings are all connected by a sense of reserve – despite their high budgets. It is, indeed, hard not to marvel at the engineering that allows for a building to be sunk into the ground, to jut out the side of a cliff, or to sandwich a sun terrace between stacked concrete cubes.

However, these complex elements are balanced with an underlying sense of modesty. The materials and aesthetics, as well as the handling of light and space, stem from an understanding and respect for the harsh environments.

The beauty of the mountain comes in part from its threat.

This concept guides all of these projects. The G House (2018), designed by Alfredo Vanotti in Castione Andevenno, Italy, is another example. The raw-concrete structure is built on a

44 Aesthetica

hillside, its entire south-facing side opened up with floor-to- Right: Alberto Burckhardt + Carolina Echeverri, ceiling windows, taking in the vast Bergamasque Alps. On the Twin Houses, 2016, Nilo, Colombia. other side of the building is an old bell tower, its clock face Picture credit: Alberto Burckhard + Carolina Echeverri. hanging above the residence. Vanotti’s building teeters in this way between the manmade and the organic. The south gallery provides views of the changing seasons on the peaks; the bell tower to the north a reminder of how we measure and organise time. “I felt that the beauty of the landscape must be highlighted, and the architecture must integrate and not overpower or destroy it,” says Vanotti. “The house had to be part of the territory as much as possible.”

So what can we learn from these projects away from the peaks? Separate to the clear imperatives that come with steep, snowy heights? Against the backdrop of a worsening environmental crisis, when there is a clear need to reconsider our relationship with the planet, how can we use mountain architecture as a test bed, applying its ideas at ground level?

Responding to the landscape and existing materials instead of imposing a new structure – as well as an attention to varying weather demands – are valuable considerations for cities and towns as much as they are for remote destinations.

Cut off from the grid, forced to come up with self-contained solutions for powering lights or keeping warm, the mountains compel innovation, but the results do not need to be Words the preserve of isolated retreats. Indeed, with the looming Thomas McMullan threats of extreme weather conditions and dwindling natural resources, adventurous architecture will be essential in the coming years as we face a whole different sort of precipice. Living in the Mountains The heartening news is that, on the evidence of these innova- is published by Phaidon tive design projects, humanity has a knack for finding a foothold in even the most challenging and remote conditions. phaidon.com

Aesthetica 45

art

Sense of Connection Julia Fullerton-Batten

“Covid-19 came and life changed, irrevocably. I decided to document this new kind of existence – in which time seems to stand still and everyone feels vulnerable or anxious.”

Julia Fullerton-Batten’s (b. 1970) latest series, Looking Out From Within, was shot over the last few weeks of lockdown. The Bremen-born, London-based photographer advertised the idea for a participatory photo shoot – containing no physical contact – on social media and through local newspapers. After receiving an overwhelming response from the community, she began photographing individuals every couple of days, directing the compositions through phone calls and hand signals from behind glass. The works express widespread emotions of uncertainty, isolation and upheaval, whilst demonstrating glimmers of hope and moments of genuine human connection. Fullerton-Batten’s practice is characteristically cinematic, incorporating surreal settings and dramatic lighting. juliafullerton-batten.com.

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Hannah and Annabella, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

46 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 47

48 Aesthetica

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Bethan, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

Aesthetica 49

50 Aesthetica

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Malaika, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

Aesthetica 51

52 Aesthetica

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Jamal, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

Aesthetica 53

54 Aesthetica

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Serena and Chloe, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

Aesthetica 55

56 Aesthetica

Julia Fullerton-Batten, Penelope, from the series Looking Out From Within (2020).

Aesthetica 57

art

Modes of Iconography Absolutely Augmented Reality KUZMA VOSTRIKOV AND AJUAN SONG WORK COLLABORATIVELY TO EXPLORE THE INTERSECTION OF FINE ART, PHOTOGRAPHY AS WELL AS THE IDEA OF AUTHENTICITY.

Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song’s richly saturated, theatrical and symbolic images focus on costume, character and allegory. In a dream world of strange and alluring portraiture, the viewers are presented with a host of archetypal images, hybrid creatures, surreal motifs and canonical postures, as well as inversions of historic art references. Dual heritage also plays a part in the experimental images; Vostrikov was raised in Russia, whilst Song was born in China. These bold parallel worlds sit between eastern and western cultures as a marriage of colours, forms and iconographies.

A: Your works have been defined as a “new genre” of narrative portraiture that pushes boundaries and transgresses a singular definition. Can you elaborate on your style and how you break away from convention?

KV & AS: Portraiture is a genre unto itself. Western art history says it is impossible to invent a new genre, but it is possible to move deeper into a subgenre. In the past, narrative painting commented on mythology or global historical / religious events. Today, artists work as if for themselves rather than for a customer; the photographer is largely able to comment more specifically on issues that interest them. It has become impossible to represent the entirety of culture as we know it. We, for example, believe that staged photography should work to tell a story. However, if we’re going to discuss innovation, then it’s appropriate to talk about the context of the portrait. Essentially, for us, it’s a question of enriching photography-as-a-handicraft with existential content – the tail of the comet for personal and philosophical concerns.

58 Aesthetica

A: Portraiture has been altered irrevocably through selfie culture. Filters on Instagram allow users to augment and distort their faces, taking on completely new identities that are adaptable and ephemeral. With the release of Apple’s iOS14 system, “memojis” now act as avatars in our place; they are a way to be identified through emails and messages. How do you respond to the changing idea of the self and technological innovation?

KV & AS: It’s almost the same as saying that, thanks to a new 200-megapixel Chinese web camera, Tarkovsky’s films no longer have any value. We’re not applying red-hot metal from open-hearth furnaces to the palms of our hands.

Nobody is swimming across the Atlantic, flying to Mars in a hot-air balloon or chasing a Tesla on a bicycle. Civilisation has been jealous of culture for a long time now and it’s a sucker for splashy statements. Although we’ve invented helicopters, transistors and cophasal arrays, we still pull teeth with pliers and execute people in electric chairs. Augmented Reality arrived several decades ago, and was used in Indian films, to make just one reference. Walt Disney distorted mouse faces and ears. Look at how children draw portraits: naively, purely and grandly. No Rembrandt or Spongebob can make them any better or worse. Museums won’t roll over in their coffins when the latest gadget starts vibrating.

A: Popular culture is deeply embedded within the public psyche, from art, psychology and literature to advertisements and 21st century spiritualism. Your latest title, Absolutely Augmented Reality, responds to contemporary

Aesthetica 59

60 Aesthetica

xInviolability of Sorrow, Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song

“Today's information fields offer us a million things to drown in. Visual culture came to the rescue of global finance. Instagram gave rise to new social patterns of behaviour.”

Previous Page: Unexpected Encounter, Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song.

Left: Gravity Sentiment, Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song.

culture, exploring identities – how we project ourselves based on the images that surround and influence us.

How do your works make sense of this?

KV & AS: Today’s information fields offer us a million things to drown in. Spontaneously, visual culture came to the rescue of global finance as an institution. Instagram gives rise to new social patterns of behaviour: silicon lips; sterile interior design; the projection of success, prosperity and happiness. Financial insolvency, emptiness and boredom are perhaps still the actual foundation of the users behind the shiny profiles. We’re commenting on the construction of contemporary identity more than directly critiquing it.

A: How do your works provide a creative assessment of individuals playing the role of consumer, as well as of themselves? How are the two ideas linked?

KV & AS: In the social sciences, the Observer’s Paradox refers to a situation in which the phenomenon being observed is unwittingly influenced by the presence of the observer / investigator. In physics, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says you can’t measure an object’s speed and its precise location at the same time. Someone who organises a critical artistic experiment is also a participant, and they ultimately influence the outcome. In other words, the critical and creative exist symbiotically. As an investigator ponders any category of modern culture – consumption, for example – they can then, in turn, be affected by the question being asked. They are inside the environment they're studying.

A: The works are also often a reflection of your cultural identities, heavily referencing iconography from Ameri-

ca, Russia and China. How do these influences connect and contrast within your photographs?

KV & AS: In the professional sense, the modern term “artist” can be translated as someone who breaks the canon. In the last hundred years, practitioners have been receiving dividends by breaking laws, as well, for consciously crossing over into criminal acts. Contemporary art and politics are gradually moving closer together. In music, seven notes let you compose complex works. Our background was originally international. We love moving freely and mixing the building blocks of meaning. Despite the globalisation of consumption and mass values (the news, TV, cars, fashion, social patterns, etc.) we don’t believe that cultures have been homogenised; they are still locked in secret confrontation with each other. International iconography, when you look at it closely, is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg, which keeps our curiosity held underwater.

A: In many of the pictures, you arrange or rearrange bodies, symbols, costumes and imagery to create a parallel world. What is the significance of producing this kind of cultural, self-contained microcosm?

KV & AS: In large part, it’s self-therapy. We worked on the projects of Absolutely Augmented Reality in an enormous hangar in dusty Bushwick in New York. It was our secret theatre. Around us, on the neighboring streets, machines milled flour and mixed cement, and frozen fish lay around in industrial refrigerators. We collapsed, blue from exhaustion, after our shifts at work. But in the morning, we felt like running right back to that dusty hangar once again, a place where so many talented people were gathered.

Aesthetica 61

Signals of the Sleeping Sea, Absolutely Augmented Reality by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song.

A: Your works are filled with narrative, utilising mise-enscène. How do you plan each composition?

KV & AS: At first, we planned to shoot 100 concepts for the book. Previously, we had improvised a lot and we were tired of spontaneity. We wanted to give it some thought: to make sketches and then shoot, like they do in the movies. Even though it was a little static – a little stop-and-start – there were so many levels of freedom and stages of productive preparation. First there were discussions, then textual descriptions and then drawings. These illustrative diagrams still only show less than half of the end result, because contrasts and visual conflicts come about from the characters but also with the entrance of costumes, environments and elements on-set. The team discussed the drawings to flesh out details.

Often, problems came up along the way which made us change course, offering new versions of that particular world.

For example, it took us several weeks before we could start shooting for one image titled Quantum Entanglement, because we needed to use the hatch on the hangar’s roof.

the water or through the clouds. Absolutely Augmented Reality is, in a way, a kind of lighthouse like that; it offers various fragments of the same message. Diverse pictures, landscapes and characters are elements of the same overall expression. The project, overall, is a performance.

A: What motifs do you keep returning to? Are there any ideas that recur, either visually or structurally?

KV & AS: We ponder existence. Like flying fish, we try to jump out over the water for a moment, only to bellyflop back down again. We were tired of updating our software, operating systems and product lines. Absolutely Augmented Reality is, in essence, anti-marketing. Increasingly, we return to what cannot be bought: no penthouse moves you any closer to the moonlight; no swimming pool can replace the salty ocean; no prostheses, implants, vitamins or exercises can halt or turn back the ticking of the clocks.

A: Do you believe authenticity exists? Is it an important element to consider when taking a photograph?

KV & AS: Today, technology is helping us to create and print A: Do the images connect in some way?

KV & AS: We are deeply inspired by classic cinematography. out not just copies of ourselves, but also our fears. However, The films of Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini we believe an authentic statement is absolutely possible. brought our dreams to the screen. The resulting images are Photography, if you took it apart from the technology, united by a common rhythm. Fellini’s 1973 comedy drama down to its bare parts, is pretty boring. The most important Amarcord worked as a kind of template for exploring a sense adjustable variable is light. But we must consider why a of subjective truth, putting the personal and individual in robot or Artificial Intelligence system can’t compete with a direct opposition. We often think of the book in terms of this human being when it comes to writing music or novels or kind of visual dialogue. A message shining out from one taking pictures. When we make art, we are working to explore lighthouse has a single meaning, no matter how scattered human issues. Mysticism, magic, miracles, talent, good luck it might seem at first glance, or where it breaks up across – for us, those are the chief elements of photography today.

62 Aesthetica

Right: Detail, The Three Hundred Sixty-Fifth Dinner, Absolutely Augmented Reality

by Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song.

Words Kate Simpson

Absolutely Augmented Reality is published by Scheidegger & Spiess Available from ACC Art Books accartbooks.com scheidegger-spiess.ch

Aesthetica 63

art

Structural Manipulation Alex Lysakowski

Amazon currently ships an average of 608 million packages each year, which equates to 1,600,000 parcels a day. It is thought that there are could be as many as two billion parking spaces in the USA alone. There are an estimated 10 million factories in the world.

Alex Lysakowski (b. 1990) is a Canadian photographer exploring transitional spaces between reality and fiction. Through photo manipulation, he creates a world of the uncanny and absurd. The Antistructure series critiques an age of mass production. These digitally enhanced images exaggerate structural forms, casting them within empty, banal spaces. Corrugated iron extends upwards into the sky in maze-like forms. Lysakowski stretches the exteriors of trucks, storage units, hotels and shipping containers, amplifying the space that industry takes up within our lives. These hyperbolic images express the overwhelming presence of consumerism in the 21st century. alexlysakowskiphoto.com.

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

64 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 65

66 Aesthetica

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

Aesthetica 67

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

68 Aesthetica

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

Aesthetica 69

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

70 Aesthetica

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

Aesthetica 71

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

72 Aesthetica

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

Aesthetica 73

Alex Lysakowski, from the series Antistructure.

art

Playful Combinations Ulas Kesebir & Merve Türkan

Four Surrealist Manifestos are currently known to exist. The first two, published in 1924, were written by Yvan Goll (1891-1950) and André Breton (1896-1996). Each document proposed a revolution against societies ruled by rational thought, tapping into the “superior reality” of the subconscious and the "unsparing qualities" of the imagination. Ulaş Kesebir (b. 1980) & Merve Türkan (b. 1985) utilise primary colours and minimal sets, using draping materials and block furniture to subvert domestic spaces. The compositions are loosely influenced by the Surrealist movement – releasing creative potential through an irrational juxtaposition of movements, forms and gestures.

Many of the works are self-portraits, injecting humour whilst distorting the body. Heads emerge through windows. Legs are tied up in sheets. The self-taught photography duo, Ulas&Merve, is currently based based between Istanbul and London. ulasmerve.com.

Ulaş Kesebir & Merve Türkan, Izmir, Turkey, 2016.

74 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 75

76 Aesthetica

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, from the series, Hide and Seek. Izmir, Turkey, 2016.

Aesthetica 77

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, Izmir, Turkey, 2016.

78 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 79

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, Izmir, Trukey, 2016.

80 Aesthetica

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, Izmir, Trukey, 2016.

Aesthetica 81

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, from the series Laylon, Izmir, Trukey, 2018.

82 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 83

UlaĹ&#x; Kesebir & Merve TĂźrkan, Izmir, Turkey, 2017.

art

Nocturnal Exploration Next Generation

This is the seventh edition of Next Generation – an annual feature showcasing final portfolios from graduates of London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. These talented photographers are entering the industry at an uncertain time.

In spite of this, they transport the viewer to Ireland, Bangkok, Normandy and Budapest, urging them to stop, breathe and observe. The following pages look at the world under nightfall and consider its potential before a new day emerges. Surfacing from lockdown and moving into a period of mass-awakening – with global protests, rallies against social injustice and a wider awareness for the environment – it is more apparent than ever that we can only move forwards. These exciting new names provide fresh perspectives on familiar surroundings, keenly capturing a world on the cusp of monumental change through fine art, documentary, landscape and portraiture. arts.ac.uk/subjects/photography.

Sichan Wang, Moonlight. Hyde Park, London (2020).

84 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 85

Kyle Cheng-Lin Tsai, Brutalism in London, Robin Hood Garden (2020).

86 Aesthetica

Bryan O’Brien, A group of tourists climb "Uluru" Northern Territory, Australia. Commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald to document mass tourism and its impact on the area. (2007). bryanobrien.com.

Aesthetica 87

Lili Gyarmati, 8.30pm, Decide What to Watch from the Pause series. Budapest, Hungary (2020). liligyarmati.com.

88 Aesthetica

Maria Makridis, Reflections, Utrecht, The Netherlands (2016).

Aesthetica 89

Spoon/Jieying Shao, Julia 1956-2006. Clothes kept by her daughter, Lucy. London (2020).

90 Aesthetica

Nick Goring, Untited, Fleet Hargate, Lincolnshire (2020).

Aesthetica 91

Antoni Kowalski, Untitled, London (2019).

92 Aesthetica

Antoni Kowalski, Untitled, Doncaster (2020).

Aesthetica 93

Emma Dunaud, Dust. Digital photograph, Normandy, France (2020). @emmadunaud | emmadunaud.com.

94 Aesthetica

Nick Goring, Untitled, Spalding, Lincolnshire (2020).

Aesthetica 95

Sophia Wรถhleke, Der Raue Charm, (2016).

96 Aesthetica

Eugenia Falqui, 28.03.2020 – On a night walk around my neighbourhood, a few days before the Thai government announced a national curfew from 10pm to 4am. Bangkok, Thailand (2020).

Aesthetica 97

art

Digitised Landscapes Heartbeat of the Earth GOOGLE ARTS & CULTURE LAB, IN COLLABORATION WITH THE UNITED NATIONS, COMMISSIONS ONLINE ARTWORKS THAT RESPOND TO AND INTERPRET CLIMATE DATA.

Kicking off the Heartbeat of the Earth programme is Fabian “Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of warming above pre-industrial levels, with a range Oefner’s (b. 1984) immersive work, Timelines. The Swiss of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C artist has mapped out the ever-shrinking dimensions of two between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the glaciers, taking data from the last 140 years. Then there’s current rate.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Coastline Paradox by Finnish duo Timo Aho (b. 1980) and Change (IPCC) released this vital information in a report Pekka Niittyvirta (b.1974), which uses Google Street View to released in 2018. Detailing predicted changes such as demonstrate projected sea levels over the next 280 years. increases in floods, droughts, ocean acidification, food Meanwhile, Diving into an Acidifying Ocean by Cristina Tarquini (b. 1990) allows users to scroll through underwater shortages and extinctions, it makes for sobering reading.

No one will escape the consequences of the climate crisis, visualisations from a richly diverse past to an empty future. and the report makes that abundantly clear, though the Finally, there’s What We Eat by Laurie Frick (b. 1955), which countries with the smallest economies – who have contribut- highlights the impact of the consumer, mapping CO2 footed least to the problem – will undeservedly bear the brunt of prints for diets in the USA, UK and France.

Google has been showcasing projects in its Experiments extreme weather conditions. More daunting still is the notion that the effects will be worse if the Earth heats up even more. Lab since 2009 and has hosted more than 1550 to date.

If the increase in temperature reaches 2°C, all species are set Divided into categories such as Arts and Culture, AR, AI and up for a terrifying future. Just over a year ago, the UN pub- Digital Well Being, these projects push the boundaries of art, lished another report finding that around one million animal technology, design and culture in order to “inspire, teach and plant species are now threatened by extinction. The aver- and delight.” So far, a number of large and established age abundance of native species in most major land-based institutions have been involved, such as MIT Media Lab and Serpentine Galleries as well as individual artists, designers habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900.

The IPCC document, though illuminating, is not by any and coders. It’s an impressive initiative that came into its means an easy read – couched in careful terms and aimed own during lockdown as museums and galleries around the at policymakers. Despite the fact that climate change will world closed. However, it’s an interesting approach to take affect everyone, and is also everyone’s responsibility, the at any time – moving art and culture out of the traditional report is not aimed at the individual. That’s where initiatives gallery walls and placing it directly into people’s hands and such as Google Arts & Culture Lab's Heartbeat of the Earth homes (provided they have internet access).

This is the crux of the Heartbeat project because, as Cristina series comes into play. Freely available online, the initiative features four artworks primarily focused on user-interaction. Tarquini – one of the five key artists – points out, it’s an

98 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 99

100 Aesthetica

Cristina Tarquini, in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, developed by New Chromantics. Oceans give us every second breath we take but we are changing their chemical composition and endangering all marine life.

“If you're producing a piece about the planet it's important to have that sense of connection so that you're not just looking at numbers.

I used to go hiking on the glaciers and I saw how much they had diminished.”

Previous Page: Timelines - Trift Glacier (2019). © Fabian Oefner.

Left: Timelines - Rhone Glacier (2019). © Fabian Oefner.

issue that people need to engage with urgently. Her hope is that, by looking at these projects within the safety and comfort of their own homes, people “will find the time to explore without rushing through.” For Tarquini, art should make an impact; it’s one of the main reasons she focuses on participatory projects. This latest piece, Diving into an Acidifying Ocean, is an interactive website. Upon visiting, the user can choose a particular time frame, scanning the ocean over the years and seeing how it’s changing with the click of a mouse. The page is dark, visceral and all-encompassing, but individual plants, animals and objects cut through the black – bursting into view as neon blobs which then, rather heartbreakingly, disintegrate. Along the way, viewers can find out more about each of the species and their position as the ocean acidifies. Pop-up facts can then be easily shared via social media, allowing viewers to propagate their learning further. “Interactivity really brings people into the midst of the story and helps them better understand and relate to the different problems. I also think it makes the experience more fun and appealing to try.”

Timelines is also an interactive website – and also unfolds chronologically – allowing users to choose a year and see how large a glacier was at that point, before scrolling through the years to see how it changes shape, reducing in size. Oefner has devised “maps” for two glaciers – one at Rhône and another at Trift – both of which clearly show the same thing: the ice is receding shockingly fast. Whilst the information is bleak, the images are anything but – with the edges of the ice mapped out by light trails and recorded onto large images of the landscape. These pictures and gifs can also be easily shared, via social media or email.

Oefner specialises in creating work at the intersection of science and art, and his previous projects include a series of objects sliced into sections, as well as visuals made with chemicals and electricity. When working with the climate, he felt compelled to produce something with which he could personally connect – deliberately selecting landforms from his home country. This sense of empathy goes beyond hard science. He notes: “If you’re producing a piece about the planet it’s important to have that connection so that you’re not just looking at numbers. I used to go hiking on the glaciers and I saw how much they had diminished.”

Tarquini, on the other hand, considered the acidification of the ocean because it’s not the most obvious topic, nor one represented often in the media. “Pollution, overfishing and rising temperatures are absolutely crucial, but if the chemistry of the oceans changes then all lives collapse. We have historical proof that a change like this caused great mass extinctions: this is something with which we cannot turn a blind eye. We depend on the oceans.”

Whether personal or not, both of these projects look at large-scale ecological issues. Meanwhile, the other two pieces in the Heartbeat series – The Coastline Paradox by Finnish duo Timo Aho and Pekka Niittyvirta and What We Eat, by American artist Laurie Frick – focus on the micro scale. The Coastline Paradox is a website that allows audiences to search for particular locations and witness how those places will be affected by rising sea levels. Comparatively, What We Eat asks visitors to generate a personalised menu and see its direct C02 emissions. It’s human nature that most users will look up their own homes and diets, which means that individuals will only become more attune

Aesthetica 101

Cristina Tarquini, in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, developed by New Chromantics.

Mussels: elongated bivalve suffering the effects of ocean acidification.

to their actions and perhaps make slight, but considered, alterations to their diets, consumption habits and lifestyles.

All of the Heartbeat projects put emphasis on the data, but Tarquini and Oefner, in particular, have also created visually appealing work. Dark palettes are punctuated with neon flashes of colour. Bright dots coalesce as plants, animals or waste. Rippling blue lines trace the undulations of rock and ice. For both practitioners, making projects with strong aesthetics is just another strategy to help draw in viewers. Oefner notes: “The climate is such a complex topic; I didn't want to project the sole idea that everything is gone and the whole planet is going down. Lots of projects include photographs of glaciers side-by-side – one from the 1900s where it's completely visible, then one where it has disappeared. After a while, that gets to be very depressing. I thought it was important to keep the beauty of the planet as well as the issue.” For him, presence is more effective than absence – allowing for inspiration and hope.

The graphics are, in indeed, stunning. However, they weren’t just randomly selected for their appeal; both artists selected approaches that were intimately tied to the issue.

Tarquini chose to show renderings of plants and animals that cohere together then fly apart for good reason. She was inspired by a study of the Pteropod – a small sea creature whose shell will dissolve in the pH conditions expected in 2100. “With code, we replicated the same dissolution of the study and brought it into the experience.” Oefner, meanwhile, reproduced the glacier’s contours with a drone kitted out with lights. He flew across the mountain at night, mapping the co-ordinates and photographing with a long exposure. Behind-the-scenes images of the painstaking

102 Aesthetica

work – both in flying the drone but also piecing together the information – are equally as compelling.

In addition to rendering the ripples of the landscape, Oefner also emphasised the importance of putting the information first. It was vital to make sure that the pictures were accurate – working with the Laboratory of Hydrolics, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH Zurich, as well as getting the project validated by Dr Andreas Bauder. Similarly, Tarquini worked with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and World Meterorological Organisation, and had her work validated by Frédéric Gazeau from the Laboratoire d’Oceanographie de Villefranche.

Oefner says: “What makes the project more than just an image is inserting clear-cut scientific value. That was very important. To me, art and science are not so different, because both try to look at the world and comprehend it. But often people can’t make a connection, they just see numbers and data. I hope that, as an artist, I can explain what the data means and help them connect with it.” Tarquini agrees: “For non-scientists, sometimes it’s hard to really grasp the facts about the environment and really understand its cause–effect implications,” she adds. “The role of the artist is to bring audiences closer to understanding and empathising with important aspects of society. Interpreting issues is what creators can do to facilitate this process.”

Given that 71% of adults agree that, in the long term, the climate crisis is as serious as the Covid-19 pandemic (Ipsos, May 2020), we’re at a crucial crossroads. Every vote, action and lifestyle change matters if we're to tackle the climate crisis. To achieve this, people must not only understand the data, but connect with it and, ultimately, take action.

Right: Timelines - Trift Glacier (2019). © Fabian Oefner.

Words Diane Smyth

Heartbeat of the Earth was created in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture Lab and the UNFCCC artsandculture.google.com studiocrtq.com fabianoefner.com

Aesthetica 103

art

Vivid Depiction Yannis Davy Guibinga

Yannis Davy Guibinga’s (b. 1995) bold portraits are part of an expansive and necessary conversation about the representation of Africa and its diaspora. The work depicts “a new generation of Africans” – using photography as a tool to face up to globalisation and western imperialism. Guibinga explores a breadth of cultures and identities whilst tackling biased or limited perspectives of the continent and its diverse communities. To do so, the photographer uses colour and contrast intuitively. Aqua complements luminous yellow, whilst pillar-box red, blush pink, vivid orange and deep indigo draw the eye into a scintillating spectrum of forms and ideas. Though minimal in composition, bed sheets, flowing clothes and painted concrete subtly play with texture in the background.

Originally from Libreville, Gabon, Guibinga is currently based in Montréal, Canada. He has been featured in CNN Africa, i-D, Afropunk and Condé Nast Traveller. yannisdavy.com.

Atlas Hapy for Nikon Z50 (2020).

104 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 105

Marine Nina in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from Stillness Is The Move (2019).

106 Aesthetica

Atlas Hapy in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from the series Of Colour (2020).

Aesthetica 107

Atlas Hapy in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from Heatwave (2018).

108 Aesthetica

Ivy Guerrier-Cadet and Atlas Hapy for Nikon Z50 from the series Of Colour (2020).

Aesthetica 109

Marine Nina for Nikon Z50 (2020).

110 Aesthetica

Atlas Hapy in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from the series Of Colour (2020).

Aesthetica 111

Atlas Hapy in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from the series Of Colour (2020).

112 Aesthetica

Emma Perrault in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from the series Solar Sisters (2019).

Aesthetica 113

Atlas Hapy in MontrĂŠal, Canada, from the series Motley (2020).

114 Aesthetica

AĂŻda in MontrĂŠal, Canada (2017).

Aesthetica 115

art

Class of 2020 Every decade is defined by a life-changing moment. This pandemic is ours. Each year, graduates have the opportunity to showcase their final major projects to industry, but this year, new solutions had to be applied to disseminate this work. We team up with Buckinghamshire New University to present fine art, product design, fashion, illustration, interior design, graphic design and creative advertising works. Visit aestheticamagazine.com/bucksartanddesign.

1

Hannah Dolden BA (Hons) Textile Design

artsthread.com/profile/hannahdolden | IG: @hannahdoldentextiles The Kitsch Deco series combines references from Art Deco architecture and The Memphis Group – an Italian design movement founded in 1981 by Ettore Sottsass. Dolden explores bright and tactile soft furnishings, using cotton and elastic yarns to experiment with texture, shape and form through varying stitch techniques. Dolden’s colour palette has an emphasis on the vivid – bringing together joyful hues in coral, pink, orange and yellow. She references bold, clashing forms from The Memphis Group, creating unexpected harmony through specific knit techniques that tame, emphasise or disrupt the flow of an object.

2

Afreen Fazil Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art Design and Media

afreenart.com | IG: @afreen.art Typography is the art and technique of arranging forms to make written language legible, readable and appealing. It has developed rapidly over the last few years. Afreen Fazil’s final project explores the evolution of Arabic typography from angular Phoenician texts to the current cursive Arabic scripts as well as digital calligraphy. Fazil’s main focus is on the evolution of the alphabet – how it has developed and changed shape over centuries – whilst exploring how the invention of new technologies pushes written languages into something altogether new. The pieces tell a story through comparative contrast and transitions.

1a

3

Camilla Olesky BA (Hons) Textile Design

IG: @camillaoleksydesign Camilla Oleksy is a material designer who creates textures through hard materials. Her final project – Neo-Traditionalism: Hard to Wear – combines the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi (the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete) with contrasting western ideals.

She uses a mixture of textured and smooth concrete – inspired by conflicting relationships between forms – which are then connected by macramé knotted rope. Then, Olesky uses a monochromatic colour palette with a hint of terracotta and pink. Olesky utilises concrete to reflect the feeling of loneliness within the ideals of Wabi Sabi design.

4

Natalia Gasior BA (Hons) Graphic Design

nataliagasior.com Natalia Gasior had a love of mathematics as a child. The combination of maths and design has evolved into a practice that is multidimensional. Her understanding of numbers helps to see the world in myriad ways. “From the spoon to the city” is a quote by Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers, which perfectly summarises her love of design. Developing brand identities is her passion and by working to create new concepts through effective design, she feels she can contribute to a number of clients’ needs. She is committed to broadening her horizons in order to interpret this varied research into a range of visual communications.

1a. Hannah Dolden, Holding Check Fabric from Kitsch Deco (2020). Knitted using cotton and elastic yarn on a 10 gauge dubied industrial knitting machine. 68 x 40cm. 1b. Hannah Dolden, Final Product Collection Shoot from Kitsch Deco, (2020). All cushions knitted using cotton and elastic on a 10 gauge dubied industrial knitting machine, various techniques. Colour ways and shapes available for customisation. 2. Afreen Fazil, Still from film Evolution of Arabic Typography. 3. Camilla Olesky, Neo-Traditionalism: Hard to wear (2020). H 90cm W 82, Smocked Latex. 4. Natlia Gasior, I am Polish (2020).

116 Aesthetica

3

1b

2

4

Aesthetica 117

5a

6

7

4b 6b 5b

118 Aesthetica

8

5

Mirabel Hammond Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art Design and Media

IG: @mirijoart For Mirabel Hammond, lockdown, self-isolation and the further stages of quarantine have presented the challenge of finding alternative ways to produce work – visualising new approaches and media. For many of us, the last few months have required creativity and an open mind, changing routines and seeking out ideas in unexpected places. Hammond has consistently used the time to explore and experiment with materials, playing with the wider purpose and meaning of vessels. In doing so, she considered the beauty of destruction and reconstruction, pushing the boundaries of decoration and utilising broken fragments of pattern to explore how they might fit back together. The idea is both conceptual and deeply tactile; materials are used in groundbreaking ways – for purpose and repurpose.

6

Danielle Feheley BA (Hons) Fashion Design

artsthread.com/portfolios/the-evolution-of-denim | IG: @dfeheleyfashion It is estimated £140 million worth of clothing goes into landfill each year. Danielle Feheley’s final piece was driven by the desire to create a completely sustainable fashion collection by upcycling vintage denim. This method enabled her to expand the lifespan of materials whilst reducing the need for further production, adding to the carbon foorprint of a garment. Feheley designed a collection that is fashion-forward – weaving and layering patchwork whilst experimenting with eco-conscious finishes that included laser etching which gives an acid wash effect without using harmful dyes and chemicals. These unique designs raise awareness of upcycling. They prove that we can uphold higher standards in the industry, without limiting creativity. For Feheley, it is crucial to reduce the impact of the fashion industry on the planet.

7

Francesca Gillett BA (Hons) Textile Design

IG: @fg_printdesigns In the 19th century, William Morris (1834-1896) rose to prominence as a British textile designer, novelist, translator and social activist. He was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production, famously quoting “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Francesca Gillett references craftsmanship from the Victorian era, combined with an analysis of nature in the 21st century. Specifically, she looks at tropical shapes and forms, often travelling to Kew Gardens, Oxford Botanical Gardens and the Barbican Conservatory for inspiration. Her final project includes a collection of fabric wall hangings that use both traditional and contemporary textile techniques, using three-dimensional wallpapers and fabric manipulation.

8

Becky Place BA (Hons) Graphic Design

beckyplace.wixsite.com/lifeasbeckkyy | IG: @beckkyy.design For artists working in the digital age, a multidisciplinary and flexible approach is often necessary. The vast majority of projects that Becky Place has been involved with have comprised working with an original idea – workshopping, developing and then pushing it to the limits. For the designer, process is just as important as the end result. She believes that inspiration is always present, but you need to welcome it into a project and see where it leads, spontaneously. The subject of Place's final project is of female objectification, beautification and sexualisation. For the designer, these are complex issues that are deeply embedded in today's media. The aim of the final project – Woman in a Box – is to encourage audiences to begin loving themselves in whatever way they see fit, shedding feelings of vulnerability.

5a. Mirabel Hammond, Vessels Project, 4 x 32 x 18cm, Plastic, wire and mixed fabrics and materials (2020). 5b. Mirabel Hammond, Vessels Project, 22 x 26 x 22cm. Polypropylene plastic. (2020). 6. Danielle Feheley, The Evolution of Denim (2020). 1080px x 1080px.

Material: Up-cycled Denim Jeans. 7. Francesca, Gillett, Paradise Palm Tree (2020), from the series Victorian Abstract Impressionism.

Abstract paint marks combined with 3D paper manipulation to make a digital design. 8. Becky Place, from the series Woman in a Box (2020). A project intended to help audiences feel empowered and love themselves in whatever way they see fit.

Aesthetica 119

9

Mominah Aslam Diploma in Foundation Studies in Art Design and Media

IG: @mominahaslam Mominah Aslam’s final project included creating the visual branding for a Pakistani Film Festival. Aslam researched the history of cinema in Pakistan, experimenting with traditional design and contemporary graphic work, referencing the colours and forms of cinematography and iconography. For inspiration, Aslam interviewed the designer of a film festival to understand the processes used in the film industry today – responding to changing ideals, goals, viewers and markets. The final project includes Urdu script, highlighting its beauty and cultural significance, whilst connecting to the desired Pakistani audiences. The use of bright colours and patterns was inspired by the regional decorations of South Asia – including Pakistani Truck Art – as well as well-known archetypes from posters made in the Golden Age.

10

Gemma Singleton BA (Hons) Textile Design

IG: @g_singletondesigns Tokyo to Kyoto is a textile series that connects to the ideas of biophilic design – a concept used within the building and interior design industries to increase occupant connectivity to natural environments through the direct or indirect incorporation of organic forms. Singleton explores if and how visuals can replicate the experience of a bio-organic world, through the duplication of plant life or bodies of water. Her work has also been inspired by travels through Japan, taking ideas from a range of sources including fish markets and city streets as well as contemporary architecture and gardens. The pieces begin with intricate ink drawings that are translated into digital designs. Then, they head to a print room, to be produced in multilayered silk-screens. An array of colours and forms stimulate the viewer.

11

Amy Louise Dance BA (Hons) Textile Design

amyloudance.co.uk | IG: @vamylou In May 2019, the UN published a report finding that up to a million animal and plant species are currently being threatened by extinction – more species than ever recorded in human history. The document continued to state that the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20% since 1900. Responding to this is textile designer Amy Dance, who works with sustainable materials to reflect current trends whilst creating awareness of wider environmental issues. The concept behind Dance’s Menswear Fall 20/21 collection reminds viewers of the beauty that has been lost within the animal kingdom and the importance of preservation through celebration. Dance combines skills in painting, collage, appliqué, collage, screen printing and laser cutting.

12

10

Charlie Batterbee BA (Hons) Graphic Design

charliebatterbee.com | IG: @c_k_b_design For Charlie Batterbee, the creative process is one of continuous development. It’s about making something, then evaluating its success. Does it achieve what it set out to? How does the end-user interact with it? Are the key messages conveyed through form and concept?

Graphic design isn’t just about making things look beautiful and grabbing people’s attention, but also about making a difference. Her design ideology is centred around one concept: to create something that helps people in a meaningful way. Editorial design is something she fell in love with during her studies. She has produced a number of pieces on topics, including providing clear information about food ingredients to information about stress. She utilises her skills in editorial design to create books that educate readers on health and wellbeing.

9. Mominah Aslam, Programmes for Kara Film Festival (2020) 16x23cm. 10. Gemma Singleton, Arashiyama, from Tokyo to Kyoto, (2020). Dimension of chair: H84cm x W47cm x D42cm, Material: Velvet 11a. Amy Louise Dance, Look Seven from The Lost Beauty of the Animal Kingdom Menswear Fall 20/21 collection. 'Endangered Tropics' features the extinct Western Black Rhinoceros (2011) and the critically endangered Javan Rhinoceros and Sumatran Elephant. Half drop repeat block size 42cm by 59.4cm. 11b Amy Louise Dance, Look Ten from The Lost Beauty of the Animal Kingdom Menswear Fall 20/21 collection. Featuring the extinct Dodo (1662) and Carolina Parakeet (1939). Men's Longline Coat, Medium. Outer Coat: Digital print onto Warm Leatherette (Vegan Leather), 700gsm.

Lining: Plain and Hemp Cloth, 55%H 45%C - 6.2pz. Dyed with Dylon Eco-Reactive Dye. Print and Garment Design: Amy Louise Dance.

Garment Construction: BA (HONS) Fashion Design Graduate Bethany Jefferys. Photography: Amy Louise Dance. Photo Studio: 4 Benjamin Road, High Wycombe. 12. Charlie Batterbee, Self Help for Stress (2020). Chapter opener and double page spread from an A5 booklet which forms part of a self-help subscription box.

120 Aesthetica

11b

9

11a

12

Aesthetica 121

Courtesy of Bohemia Media.

film

A Stoic Performance CLEMENCY Rare and vital is a film such as Clemency, a slowly unravelling, unflinching portrait of a senior prison warden who has dedicated a large sum of her life to carrying out death row executions. Played by Alfre Woodard in a role that will no doubt define her expansive career, Bernadine walks the corridors of an unidentifiable prison, oversees the administration leading up to the inmate’s execution, and stands in the room whilst the lethal injection is administered.

Director Chinonye Chukwu allows audiences to follow along with Bernadine at a glacial pace. At times, the scenes draw upon the startling mundanity of the passing days, whilst in other moments, a prolonged feeling of suffocation summons a restrictive phantom force that encloses around the inmates. Hope streams steadily out of their bodies.

The film begins with a sequence of excruciating depth.

As Bernadine stands diligently, stoically, at the head of a padded platform upon which an inmate is strapped, her expression bares the stony resolve of someone seasoned in a profession that very few can endure. She’s very good at it as well, greeting her guards by name, methodically keeping unwanted outsiders from interfering with the process – namely Richard Schiff’s battle worn attorney, whose work defending the prisoners has driven him to retirement.

However, before he goes, there’s one defendant left: Anthony Woods, a man found guilty of murdering a police

122 Aesthetica

officer and whose execution date is fast approaching. In “The fact that another career-defining performance, Aldis Hodge plays Woodward was Anthony – a largely silent, soulful man – whose presence overlooked by suddenly begins to snap the tightly wound coils that make The Academy feels up Bernadine. As the feature presses on, it becomes clear that like more than an she has been struggling for much longer than we originally oversight, such is the anticipated. Her marriage is failing in spite of a loyal yet power with which occasionally misunderstanding husband, and a drunk night she succumbs to this with a colleague pushes her fragility to the surface in a way vastly complicated that, for some, could be dismissed as careless behaviour, but and compelling with Bernadine feels uncomfortably necessary. character.”

Though this is only her second feature, Chukwu is notably skilled in drawing out the absolute best in performers, not only in Woodard and Hodge but in the smaller parts that require just a few scenes, like Danielle Brooks as Anthony’s ex-partner, and Michael O’Neill – a character with a long career who brings fleeting tenderness to the story.

There is little relief to be found in the rigid rhythm of Clemency, but it demands an audience. This is a tense subject that has never quite been captured with such stark Words poignancy. It’s also an extraordinary feat of filmmaking, Beth Webb that is both steady and strong consistently. The fact that Woodward was overlooked by The Academy feels like more than an oversight, such is the power with which she succumbs Bohemia Media to this vastly complicated and compelling character. bohemiamedia.co.uk

Clash of Cultures IN HER HANDS time, the clash of cultures can no longer be ignored.

“In Her Hands is a Benchetrit’s character is perhaps better framed in a Young Parisian fairy tale Adult setting, with wholesome, classically good looks and about a streetwise a visibly tortured soul. This argument is only strengthened young man with by his shared scenes with Anna (one in particular sees them a quietly dazzling share a giddy kiss whilst rollerblading past the Cathédrale talent for playing the Notre-Dame de Paris). This doesn’t dilute the film as such, piano. It showcases but reinstates the feature’s coming-of-age trajectory, which a promising lead focuses on the underdog narrative and simplistic dialogue. debut for actor Benchetrit’s casting for the part pays off. His frame carries Jules Benchetrit.” the weight of his duties back home, whilst balancing an almost guilty sense of desire and curiosity as his world opens up with a nudge. Boosting his presence, Touré delivers a charming performance, though she would, perhaps, have benefitted with more room to grow outside the confines of the love interest. Meanwhile, Scott Thomas is a highlight. Her character captivates as the connection with Mathieu grows.

As director, Ludovic Bernard (who has upheld a lengthy career assisting on significant French films like La Haine and Little White Lies) makes sure to amplify the music. It sits so Words integrally at the heart of the story, with carefully arranged Beth Webb lighting and pristine sound design. His expertise lifts In Her Hands into a new realm, where its theatricality feels welcome and not overly performed. Ultimately, Bernard blows away Curzon Home Cinema the idea of the film as a hackneyed rag to riches story. curzonhomecinema.com

xxx

In Her Hands is a Parisian fairytale about a streetwise young man with a quietly dazzling talent for playing the piano. It showcases a promising lead debut for actor Jules Benchetrit, who plays Mathieu – a meandering teen caught in a systematic web of petty crime whilst his mother works long hours to support their small family. Between jobs, he indulges in short performances on a public piano installed in the Gare du Nord (a short peek into his past shows lessons with a beloved mentor before being forced to stop when money runs short). Fate shifts Mathieu’s path when he’s discovered by Pierre (Lambert Wilson) – the music director of the National Conservatory in Paris, who saves Mathieu from criminal punishment if only to become a protégé instead.

The story is far from groundbreaking, but it still holds intrigue. Mathieu struggles to keep adrift as his surroundings change dramatically – from the backstreets to the polished, sparse interiors of the National Conservatory. His scrappy nature and Imposter Syndrome also make him prone to outbursts, especially when training alongside Kristen Scott Thomas’ prim yet impassioned piano teacher. Grappling between a troubled past and the prospects of a bright future, he discovers new feelings for fellow musician Anna (Karidja Touré, a standout in Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood). Mathieu continues to play with an urgency that translates into cascading melodies, but gradually he becomes unstable. After

Aesthetica 123

Polo & Pan. Photo: Fiona Torre.

music

Creating the Space POLO & PAN 2020 marks eight years of friendship and collaboration for Paul “Polocorp” Armand-Delille and Alexandre “Peter Pan” Grynszpan. The French electro pop duo – who record together as Polo & Pan – first crossed paths in 2012, as fellow resident DJs at the now defunct Paris nightclub Le Baron. Impressed by each other’s DJ skills, the pair were fast friends, says Polo. “We are quite different in temperament, which makes for a rich debate around the creative process.

We enjoy the same pieces of music but often for different reasons. Our differences and mutual respect are both crucial.”

Indeed, the pair has gone from strength to strength since then, releasing a handful of well-received EPs and a winning debut full-length with 2017’s Caravelle, certified Gold in France and Platinum worldwide. Their sound is both charming and playful – a dapper, family-friendly cut-and-paste blend of vintage samples, globe-trotting influences and exotic instruments. The pair cites everyone from Giorgio Moroder and LCD Soundsystem to film composer Vladimir Cosma and vintage Disney scores as influences.

Moon Safari, the 1998 landmark space-pop opus by fellow French duo Air, also looms large in the twosome’s personal canon, earning a semi-homage on Attrape-Rêve, the second track on Pan & Polo’s newest, four-song EP, Feel Good. Polo in particular counts Moon Safari as a personal touchstone – in fact, the catalyst for his entire career. “I actually started

124 Aesthetica

making music after hearing that record. I was absolutely “Feel Good, which obsessed with Air’s sound for years. [It's] poetic and timeless.” shows the duo on fine Feel Good, which shows the duo on fine form, was conceived form, was conceived before the Covid-19 lockdown in France and recorded before the Covid-19 throughout the confinement. The initial vocals were done lockdown in France long-distance in the duo’s respective country studios, with and recorded through Polo in Normandy and Pan in east Paris; the EP’s effervescent the confinement. The title track is notable for featuring Polo in his first lead vocals initial vocals were solo appearance. “I worked hard on getting a vocal track so I done long-distance in could enjoy a more direct experience with the crowd.” the duo's respective With so much uncertainty surrounding the music industry country studios.” and global live music circuits, Polo & Pan are in no rush to get back out there, preferring instead to work on their as-yetuntitled follow-up to Caravelle – initially stalled when the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded. The pair is now back at their respective mixing desks, reports Polo, and are excited about what’s to come. “We have a lot of interesting tracks in the works. However, the finishing touches are always the trickiest.”

Carving out space for the things that give us pleasure and hope seems more important than ever, especially whilst fear, unrest and anxiety are so prevalent. So, what’s giving Polo Words & Pan that feel-good factor at the moment? “Well, Alex has Charlotte R-A recently become a father, and I just got my hands on a love child of my own: a 1975 Minimoog Model D synthesizer, which makes its debut at the end of Feel Good! carolineinternational.com

Turning a New Page ARY booked to play her first gig at the Operahouse in Oslo.

“As a young artist, As a young artist, her style is yet to be established, but the her style is yet to be sound is clear as a bell; Ary does big, crisp, minimalist electro established, but the that allows her vocals – melancholic, emotive and heavily sound is clear as a treated – to take centre stage. It’s surprising, then, to learn bell; Ary does big, that she has battled a degree of reluctance around singing crisp, minimalist live, having told Wonderland in 2017: “I guess I always electro that allows her wanted to sing, but never to be a singer. When I was younger, vocals – melancholic, I told my mother that I couldn’t sing in front of people emotive and heavily because I felt like they could see right through me. I still feel treated – to take that way sometimes.” Has that feeling dissipated? centre stage.”

Yes and no, she explains; in the breaks between those early tours, Ary realised she missed the adrenalin rush that comes with performing for large, expectant crowds. “I realised there’s nothing else in my life that takes me quite as high as pouring my heart out on stage. I feel nerves as an intense rush of energy that fills up my entire body, but I’ve learned that I have a choice in my own mind to feel, experience and interpret this rush as either excitement or stress.”

Having been recently diagnosed with Bipolar syndrome, Ary knows better than most how important it is to honour the Words extremity of those waves, and to embrace the way they might Charlotte R-A power her work as a songwriter, performer and producer. “I still have [bad] days but knowing why they come has helped me accept myself, and to find a way to live with them.” islandrecords.co.uk

Jonathan Vivaas Kise.

“Trying to explain to a producer how I want the music to sound is a lot like breathing down the neck of a painter,” explains Ariadne “Ary” Loinsworth. “It doesn’t matter what your description is – it’s still their hand holding the paintbrush.”

The up-and-coming Norwegian artist speaks from experience; she’s worked with her fair share of producers since releasing 2015's debut single, Higher – sessions that have taken the Oslo-based electro popper everywhere from London to Los Angeles. Her 2017 follow-up, Childhood Dreams, proved to be a breakout number, bagging festival appearances at Roskilde, Glastonbury and Pitchfork Paris.

This time around, things are different. Her latest single, Oh My God, marks not only a debut release via Island Records, but also the first self-penned, recorded and produced track.

It’s the start of a new era for Ary – one where she’s able to make “exactly what [she] wants.” It’s also a return to how the rising star – who cites Röyksopp, Datarock and Tokio Hotel as her core influences – first began making music.

In 2016, at 20-years-old, a period of ill-health – most likely depression, she acknowledges now – found her back with her parents in her native Trondheim. Sofa-bound and increasingly bored, a friend recommended she check out some production software. Months later, she’d taught herself the basics via free YouTube tutorials, and was not only sending rough demos to established producers but also

Aesthetica 125

Sculptured House, GOLDEN, COLORADO. Charles Deaton (1965). Photograph by Richard Powers.

books

Experimentation and Innovation THE ICONIC AMERICAN HOUSE Some of the world’s most prodigious architects, including vast landscape. Bauhaus alumni Gropius, Breuer and Mies “Whilst vastly Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, have van der Rohe, for instance, brought with them a fresh design different in style and used their skills to create innovative solutions to American philosophy forged in the likes of Germany and France, but form, these houses residential architecture over the past 120 years. Whilst vastly adapted to the context of their new surroundings. Whilst are a reflection different in style and form, these houses are a reflection of Gropius and Breuer took inspiration from the New England of their site and their site and context, made with local materials and built to landscape, opting for a regional modernist approach, Mies context, built to fully fully maximise their lived experience. Spanning the whole headed to Chicago to develop what his acolyte Philip maximise their lived continent, Dominic Bradbury’s The Iconic American House Johnson described as the “International Style” – a crisp, experience. Spanning the whole continent, highlights 50 of the most timeless houses designed since utilitarian way of building for the modern age.

Early projects, built at the turn of the century, were heav- The Iconic American 1900, and how American architecture has evolved since then.

The publication charts a journey across time, embracing ily influenced by French neoclassicism: decorated with ter- House highlights 50 many different aesthetics and formal expressions. Structures razzo and marble floors and complete with grand marble timeless houses.” by the likes of Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra, Peter Eisen- fireplaces and ceiling mouldings. Meanwhile, projects like man and Thomas Gluck reveal the sheer wealth of approach- Greene & Greene’s Gamble House (1909) point to the ines towards the “American Dream” of which “a home to call fluence of the Arts and Crafts movement – championed by one’s own” is a fundamental part. “In America, the idea of John Ruskin and William Morris. Later projects show an excitbuilding a home for oneself has always had an extraordinary ing shift in the country’s design sensibilities, most notably in resonance, beginning with early settlers on the east coast, the 1960s and 1970s where postmodernism, propelled by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, becomes an antidote followed by adventurers pushing west,” explains Bradbury.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to ignore the negative connotations to the severity of corporate America, under the now-famous Words that come with the American Dream – the term is pushed tagline, less is bore. It’s this wealth of approaches that The Gunseli Yalcinkaya forward by westernised ideas of privilege and wealth. Still, Iconic American House makes for a perfect text for students, Bradbury exceeds in tracing the various ways in which US design aficionados, or anyone who dreams of building a architecture – especially residential – originates with its house of their own. These are shining landmarks within an Thames & Hudson European settlers, and varied interpretations of America’s architectural dreamland – full of life, drama and invention.” thamesandhudson.com

126 Aesthetica

Sculpture as Experience ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN PROVENCE La Coste presents a new and dynamic framework.”

“In placing no Each of the creations appears as a direct response to its sur- emphasis on a rounding environment – an extension of the landscape’s ex- single building, in isting beauty, just north of Aix-en-Provence. “The sculptures being true to its seem to have sprung up naturally,” Ivy agrees. A sense of geographical setting adventure is key, and it’s only by exploring the full extent of and acknowledging its the grounds that viewers can unlock all its treasures. For in- historic antecedents, stance, follow the border between open lawn and vines, and Chateau La Coste the trail of crushed stone transforms into a low, narrow deck presents a new, of wooden strips, which begin to disperse with pavers. It’s dynamic framework.” here that you’ll find Paul Matisse’s Meditation Bell – a sound sculpture made from four aluminium pillars and a centred rope that strikes the bell when pulled by visitors.

Wander further afield, and you’ll spot oversized rectangular metal plates planted vertically into the ground by Richard Serra, to encourage visitors to view their surroundings differently. Meanwhile, Louise Bourgeois’ imposing yet protective bronze and stainless-steel Crouching Spider is suspended on water, legs protruding from a glass-like surface. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Mathematical Model tapers into a needlepoint to- Words wards the sky. “Despite the beliefs of pure conceptual arts, art Gunseli Yalcinkaya can be very physical,” explains Alistair Hicks, co-author and previous curator at Deutsche Bank. “Walking down a path and finding three steel Serra walls is an experience. These Merrell Publishers encounters are both physical and psychological.” merrellpublishers.com

Photograph by Alan Karchmer, showing Crouching Spider by Louise Bourgeois (2003). Copyright The Easton Foundation / VAGA at ARS, NY and DACS, London 2020. Crouching Spider was one of Patrick McKillen's earliest acquisitions for Château La Coste.

Between shifting light and the shadow of conifers where “only the wind and the occasional call of a bird break the quietude,” is Château La Coste. The 500-acre estate – 300 of which are made up of bio-dynamically cultivated vineyards – is an architect’s paradise: an open-air museum is home to some of the biggest names in contemporary art and architecture.

Forewords by architect Tadao Ando, artist and activist Ai Weiwei and photographer JR open Château La Coste, which then takes the form of a walk round the grounds. Readers can experience them like a visitor would. There’s a pair of shiny aluminium winemaking chais (sheds) by Jean Nouvel and an angular V-shaped structure made of raw concrete and glass

by Tadao Ando. Frank Gehry’s music pavilion is a chaotic jumble of wooden beams, glass and steel. Renzo Piano’s glass and concrete pavilion is half-buried in the ground as to be in symbiosis with its natural settings; its undulating roof, we’re told, is covered with a canvas stretched over slim metal arches that mirror the rhythm of the rows of vines.

Despite being packed with the work of starchitects, however, no work takes precedence over another. Robert Ivy, co-author of the book and Chief Executive Officer of the American Institute of Architects, notes: “In placing no emphasis on a single building, in being true to its geographic setting and acknowledging its historic antecedents, yet being committed to the personal responses of architects and artists Château

Aesthetica 127

128 Aesthetica

film reviews

1

The Girl with a Bracelet STÉPHANE DEMOUSTIER

The Girl With a Bracelet is writer-director Stéphane Demoustier’s remake of the 2018 Argentinean film The Accused. Demoustier’s French-language courtroom saga begins with a rare moment of tranquillity. As the credits roll, a family enjoy a quiet day at the beach, until two police officers arrest Lise Bataille (Melissa Guers), an 18 year-old who finds herself at the centre of an investigation over the murder of her best friend, Flora.

With Lise the only suspect in this brutal slaying, the film cuts to the day of the trial two years on, as a nervy father Bruno (Roschdy Zem) instructs his daughter on how to address to the jurors, whilst mother Céline (Chiara Mastroianni) makes feeble work-related apologies about why she can’t be in court. Lise, we learn, was on remand for six months but has since been allowed out – on the proviso she wears a tag: signifying the “bracelet” in the title.

What follows is a precise and increasingly gripping drama that lays bare the inner workings of the French judicial system, as the prosecuting lawyer (Anaïs Demoustier, the director’s sister) cross-examines Lise whilst the judge also questions her. At times, the accused falls silent, refusing to answer certain questions – hardly endearing her to the jury. She seems cold, lacking emotion – a sure sign of guilt, we’re made to think.

There are red herrings – a missing kitchen knife – and motivations, with Lise reputedly angry at Flora for putting an explicit video of her online. But as the film unfolds, so our sympathy with Lise grows, not least as her carefree sexuality is put under scrutiny. Guers is terrific in the lead, an able sparring partner with Demoustier’s stone-faced prosecutor. As the film blends crime with coming-of-age, it eschews hysterical melodrama for hypnotic realism.

Words James Mottram

curzonhomecinema.com

2

Baby Teeth SHANNON MURPHY

Shannon Murphy’s feature debut, Babyteeth – adapted from the stage play by Rita Kalnejais – is a coming-of-age story with an original perspective. Milla is an Australian teenager dealing with schoolwork, violin practice and a terminal cancer diagnosis. When she falls in love with a slightly older smalltime drug dealer Moses, her parents smell trouble, but decide to allow Milla a little freedom to live like a normal girl. What follows is a deeply moving, darkly hilarious vision of girl in love living each moment like it’s her last – because it may well be.

Broken up into sketch-like chapters chronicling Milla’s treatment, each scene adds depth to the family as they struggle to retain some sense of normalcy. Moses crashes onto the scene, spouting exciting theories which are wildly out of sync with anything Milla’s parents will allow. Eliza Scanlen, as the lead character, is a newcomer

to watch. Previously making her mark as Beth in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, she’s an arresting screen presence, breaking the fourth wall to share emotions with the audience in a single glance.

Scanlen holds her own even in the company of Aussie greats Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn, who play the parents: former musician Anna and psychiatrist Henry.

Their relationship is a muddle of power dynamics; Henry prescribes his wife’s medication, and Anna’s dependence on prescription drugs gives Davis an opportunity to walk the line between physical comedy and infuriating hypocrisy as she criticises Moses whilst high on Xanax.

Murphy has offered a fresh take on a story that has the power to become overbearingly morbid. Instead, it offers recognition that, even in the face of overwhelming odds, people will still find laughter in most situations.

Words Steph Watts

bfi.org.uk

3

Family Romance, LLC WERNER HERZOG

German filmmaker Werner Herzog is famed for transporting audiences to the far reaches of the world – whether it’s the Amazonian jungle of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) or the snowy wastes of Antarctica seen in Encounters at the End of the World (2007). By comparison, his latest jaunt – to Tokyo – seems almost quaint and unadventurous. But Family Romance, LLC still brings us sights unseen, with a story that feels like a blend of documentary and fiction (although Herzog insists it’s the latter).

The story is inspired by the work of entrepreneur Ishii Yuichi, who stars as a version of himself. In Japan, he has built a successful company – Family Romance – that allows people to “rent” surrogates. When we join him amidst the beautiful cherry blossom of a Tokyo park, he is playing patriarch to Mahiro Tanimoto, a 12-year-old girl who never had a relationship with her own father. It’s

just the first of several bizarre but charming encounters.

Whilst Yuichi's evolving relationship with Tanimoto takes centre stage, Herzog’s film isn’t high on drama.

Its strengths lie in unusual observation of everyday Japanese life and culture. In one scene, the director takes us on a detour to a robot-staffed hotel, complete with a tank full of mechanised fish. The point here, perhaps, is that we are increasingly lacking in human connection, that we are akin to the automatons at the hotel.

By the director’s standards, this is gentle, soft-centred material, but it captures modern-day anguish with flair.

Amusingly, Ishii stands in for one man, a railway station employee, who faces a dressing down from his boss because a train was running marginally late. The film asks: is this what we’ve come to – a world where we’d rather deploy a substitute than face up to our problems?

Words James Mottram

modernfilms.com

Aesthetica 129

130 Aesthetica

music reviews

1

Another Me SARAH WALK

Sarah Walk’s opening song Unravel echoes with a powerful first line. Appearing from the silence are the words “nothing’s hurt me more than men that grew up with no consequences.” It is an immediate, important lyric that sets the tone for Another Me, Sarah’s sophomore long player release. Each song gives the impression that it had more of a cathartic purpose to Walk than the last, with lyrics emanating from a deep sense of grief and longing – wrapped with self-conscious introspection – ruminating around the need to fix one’s problems.

The over-familiar line of questioning and inner turmoil that accompanies relationship limbo is documented on the aptly titled What Do I Want? Meanwhile, the lamenting album closer No Good Way To Say Goodbye sounds wonderfully akin to Annie Lennox – with warm, slow vocal layers. Crazy Still is reminiscent to the kind of

Fiona Apple music that we all wish she was still making, with heavy, emotive piano and a kind of perversely jovial storytelling with a wider sense of pathos.

The drifting sleepiness of Flowers Grow has a similar pace and feel to classic Sade, with hazy rambling music co-produced alongside Leo Abrahams (previously known for his work with Regina Spektor). There is a strong thread of defiance throughout this collection of 11 songs – music for survival amidst a transitional period and deep emotional contemplation.

Meanwhile, Take Me As I Am is a pleading ode to needing acceptance in whatever form it comes, and the conflicting ideas we have when love comes into the picture. A strong second album that deserves a deep listen, especially from anyone in need of a kindred spirit whilst experiencing a profound period of change.

Words Kyle Bryony

olirecords.com

2

Pure Luxury NZCA LINES

The third album from multi-instrumentalist and producer Your Love with a string section that could sound heavenly Michael Lovett (better known as NZCA Lines) is noth- even through the tinniest of speakers, and a twanging ing short of triumphant. To be slightly reductive, Pure bassline that would make Daft Punk jealous.

Each song is more of an ode to the present moment Luxury is a disco pop adventure threaded delicately with grooves from synth heavy basslines and classic hip-hop than the last. At a time where are minds are racing and breaks. The knocking Real Good Time samples the game our bodies are static, NZCA Lines’ latest work is incredibly changing and much used (but welcome) opening drum refreshing. The speed of Larsen requires listeners to find energy and move along with the fast tempo. loop of The Gap Band’s Outstanding.

Elsewhere deep and hedonistic synths are layered over Album opener and title track Pure Luxury is layered with chorused vocals like a melting pot of Jungle a drum sequence that sounds completely out of place meeting Andre 3000 in a futuristic Rick James inhabiting – yet makes perfect sense. Even the casual listener can distant galactic world. As someone who has played on appreciate how clean and beautifully mixed this project records by Christine & The Queens, and toured as part is, with every tiny detail audible in full and glorious specof Metronomy, Lovett’s musical chops are as loud and trum of colour. This is a fun and impeccably produced clear throughout as is his esteemed CV. There are slower record that needs repeat listening and will continue to moments too – such as the clinically orchestrated For successfully uplift literally anyone’s mood.

Words Kyle Bryony

memphis-industries.com

3

WEIRDO CARLA J EASTON

Following on from the critically acclaimed Impossible Stuff – which was shortlisted for Scottish Album of The Year 2019 – Easton began work writing and recording Weirdo with the help of Scott Paterson (Sons and Daughters) in CHVRCHES’ old basement studio in Glasgow. The album features appearances from Honeyblood’s Stina Tweeddale, Micah Erenberg and Dave Hook (Solareye, Stanley Odd) collaborations which enhance the already punchy synth-pop arrangements and orchestral strings that are pivotal to the overall sound.

Lead single Get Lost is a sweeping ode to the desire to escape the pressures and anxieties of adulthood. The tale of a romance about to begin, it is pop at its most pure, both escapist and celebratory, somewhat like Taylor Swift might sound if she covered a New Order song or a lost gem by Ladyhawke. Another foray into dazzling pop

arrives with Never Knew You, which was written following Easton being diagnosed with anxiety and beginning Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

There are numerous other reference points on the album including Christine and the Queens on Over You and even more notably on Coming Up Daisies on which Easton unleashes her inner Kate Bush, building to a crescendo as the track dramatically unfolds. The expressive title track Weirdo sees Easton team up with Honeyblood for an anthemic celebration, spiralling over big beats and warm synths. Lyrically, it is a précis of many of the album’s key themes, an uplifting pop record aimed at misfits, offering just enough sugar-coated vocal stylings to tantalise the mainstream. On a varied and promising record laden with clear influences, the next step for Easton will be to forge a unique, singular identity.

Words Matt Swain

olivegroverecords.com

Aesthetica 131

132 Aesthetica

book reviews

1

An Attic Full of Trains ALBERTO DI LENARDO, CARLOTTA DI LENARDO (ED.)

A library. A secret door. An attic full of trains. Carlotta di Lenardo’s grandparents’ house in Italy is shrouded in mystery – with bookshelf passageways leading to hidden model railways. It is also the place where an extraordinary archive of over 8,000 photographs was found. Taken by Carlotta’s grandfather – Alberto di Lenardo (b. 1930) – the collection captures the world in vivid colour. It spans 70 years of travel across Europe, the USA, South America, Africa and beyond.

The pictures in this book have never been published before. They present a world of leisure, journeys and endless summers – all rendered with a saturated palette.

Lenardo’s subject matter is equally rich and vibrant: beaches and bars, mountains, road trips, strangers, lovers and friends. Close-up faces speak of intimacy and human relationships. Languorous landscapes highlight

the heat and freedom of holidays. There is a palpable sense of movement – figures sleep on planes, drive vintage cars and splash through rolling waves. When viewed together, these images provide a joyous crosssection of life in the 20th century.

An Attic Full of Trains is also about experimentation.

Lenardo continually plays with reflections, angles and framing devices. People shift in and out of focus, caught in mirrors or through windows. Crowds blur in front of bright city lights. Rows of cars line up like dominoes.

Sometimes, we are offered “before and after” shots – a rare glimpse of two versions of the same scene. This is a portrait of a photographer honing their craft and revelling in the act of creation. Lenardo’s work is reminiscent of some of Italy’s best-loved photographers; MACK cites Luigi Ghirri and Guido Guidi as likely counterparts.

Words Eleanor Sutherland

mackbooks.co.uk

2

Perfect Strangers MELISSA O'SHAUGHNESSY

“The photographers and cameras of the 19th to early 20th centuries dealt with the present moment in longer fractions at an easy pace: lived in promenade tempo on wide boulevards, where horses clopped along and people sauntered and took pleasure in looking at each other. That is not the tempo of the 21st century. Today, time is often measured in thousandths of a second.”

Industry icon and colour pioneer Joel Meyerowitz (b.1938) opens Melissa O'Shaughnessy’s new monograph, Perfect Strangers, so it’s clear from the get-go we’re being introduced to something special. Golden afternoon light illuminates tired cross-walkers, plugged into Apple earphones whilst pushing sunglasses fervently back onto the top of their heads. Lone toddlers wait for their parents to return as a crowd of passers-by are oblivious to the abandoned child. Women grabbing

their chins stare, disorientated, at something beyond the camera – their hair swept over their faces. Sisters make their way through the city streets with flowing red hair – one staring directly at the camera, the other disengaged.

Moving through New York’s city streets with the flick of a page, viewers are asked questions about their experience of the everyday and innate curiosity. Undoubtedly, these images are intriguing, offering a wealth of information frame-by-frame. But would we pay the same attention if we were immersed in the physical crowds?

O'Shaughnessy offers no answers, but captures chance unfolding into action – moments the eye would otherwise miss – with wit and flair. As Meyerowitz explains: “Photographs are always present tense. The best [artists] understand this fact.” These images do just that – recording people making snap decisions.

Words Kate Simpson

aperture.org

3

Unconscious Places THOMAS STRUTH

For German photographer Thomas Struth (b.1954), buildings express “the testimony of people’s character, [their] pride, anger, ignorance, love.” Unconscious Places – an understated collection mostly comprising monochromatic street views from 1970 to 2010 – explores empty cities as a stage for social encounters.

The publication is an impressive travelogue capturing “portraits” of places such as Edinburgh, Pyongyang, Naples and New York. These unpopulated urban environments share an eerie kinship with Struth’s images of crowds in the Museum Photographs series (1989-2001) or group Family Portraits 1 & 2 (1982-2008). His interest in abandoned street furniture – as the character of a place – resonates across his entire impressive oeuvre.

Struth’s images are pedestrian but rarely anecdotal, inviting “slow” looking from the ground level up with a

cool, documentarian attentiveness to human scale. The works reveal what architect David Chipperfield calls “the smallness of life.” Struth moves from shooting vacant buildings in his hometown of Düsseldorf to kitsch billboard screens dwarfing a newly gentrified Times Square at the turn of the millennium.

In a notable image, Struth shoots Crosby Street, New York, during the 1970s financial crash. A Cadillac Fleetwood is parked in rubble and flanked by planes of high-rise buildings. The road divides the street row into equal halves – a perspective known as “equivalente” – tapering to a vanishing point in the distance. This is a compositional technique favoured by the artist; Struth is a pioneer for transforming a “man-on-the-street” view into a deeply considered reflection on the interplay between photographer, viewer and landscape.

Words Jack Solloway

prestel.com

Aesthetica 133

134 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 135

136 Aesthetica

Aesthetica 137

138 Aesthetica

The Destination for Art and Culture

Subscribe & Save 40% 12 months from ÂŁ20.95 + p&p.

Available in both print and digital formats.

www.aestheticamagazine.com/subscribe Aesthetica 139

artists’ directory

MICHAEL MATZKO

J.V. MARZO

Michael Matzko is a Cincinnati-based photographer. As the first segment of a larger project On Being Human, which asks the fundamental question: “What does a healthy world look like?” Matzko began working on a series during the Covid-19 lockdown, entitled The Self Isolation Project. The works depict the multitude of emotions captured throughout a combination of inperson and remote sessions. The images were created using multiple layers to mirror the complexity of the world we are currently experiencing.

Zurich-based J.V. Marzo is an Italian digital artist and Senior Brand Designer for a luxury firm. In his art practice he utilises a combination of graphic design, photography, 3D and animation to explore social themes. As such, human presence is a constant feature throughout his artworks, and is accompanied by a minimalist style injected with powerful notes of colour.

In the piece shown here, entitled Quarantine is Killing Me, Marzo notes: “The house is also the weapon that is killing my persona.”

www.michaelmatzko.com I Instagram: @mmatzkophotos

Instagram: @jvmarzo

MARTA ZAWADZKA Marta Zawadzka is a Warsaw-based artist who qualified as an architectural engineer at Bialystok University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning. It is her background in architecture and design, along with extensive travels, that inspires and informs her artistic practice. Through processes of experimental paintwork, Zawadzka has invented an energetic visual language in which portraits and cityscapes come to life in bold articulations of fluorescent colour. She achieves this using vibrant acrylic and spray paint, partnered with expressive brushwork in vivid strokes, streaks and paint drips – reflecting a joyful, spontaneous manner. www.MartaGallery.com I Instagram: @marta_zawadzka_art

140 Aesthetica

LEXOVA Lexova is a France-based multidisciplinary artist who enjoys experimenting with colour and shape. Inspired by urban design and street scenes, she takes numerous photographs from unusual angles or unexpected perspectives.

The images are subsequently edited, distorted, connected, associated or dissociated. The resulting works are pictures, graphic designs and digital artworks or collages that give a nod to pop art and 20th century abstract artists. Lexova’s art often purchased for private and corporate collections.

Instagram: @lexova7

PIA KINTRUP The themes behind Pia Kintrup’s latest series the nonexistent areas are of particular interest include the impact of borders and control of information.

The project is built like a novel, in which the reader receives slow, considered drips of information about a given place. The jigsaw of images create a metaphorical place within the imagination whilst altering the perspective.

www.piakintrup.com I Instagram: @piakintrup

VAN LANIGH Originally from Saint Petersburg, Van Lanigh is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Haarlem. She believes that we experience our strongest emotions and memories with our eyes closed: “It’s like lightning flashes on a dark night: fast, blinding and almost impossible to catch with the naked eye.” The resulting 3D pointillism works are a colourful and impactful mix of abstractionism, figurative art and surrealism, whilst the additional dimension is used to amplify form and texture in landscapes and portraits.

www.vanlanigh.com I Instagram: @vanlanigh

WANG ZIANG Wang Ziang is a Chinese artist based in London. He completed a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, then continued with an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. Ziang explores social and psychological aspects of the human experience, focusing on a kind of dystopia – fractured, moribund and abandoned elements appear throughout his paintings.

www.wangziang.co

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

Aesthetica 141

artists’ directory

Cecilia Di Paolo

Cristina mato

Cecilia Di Paolo is a London-based artist. Her body of work, primarily realised through photography, film and performance, deconstructs cultural notions of intimacy, tenderness and love through a dystopian lens. At the heart of her work is the intensely human pursuit of connection; a reimagined line between art and audience, fulfilled through the tactility of still lifes and self-portraiture. www.cecilia-dipaolo.com I IG: @cecedipaolo

For Spain-based artist Cristina Mato, ceramics can act like fabric. Slabs of clay are cut into threads in order to build structures full of “seams." This multidimensional approach allows Mato to push each piece to the limit of its physicality and design. She says: “I find joy in building something original and meaningful from something that did not previously exist.” www.cristinamato.com I Instagram: @crsmato

helen warner

ian Hardcastle

UK-based artist Helen Warner has created a bold variety of paintings and sculptures. She chooses not to say too much about her artwork, as she believes that art should speak for itself. Warner notes: "I like the viewer to see what they see and feel what they feel. It is a continuous journey of exploration, and it is all about and in the creativity." www.hayhill.com/docs/warner.html

Ian Hardcastle is an abstract artist based in York. His latest work, Boxing Art, involves experimenting with punching a canvas once a day for 365 days. Since 18 December 2019, he has documented each day's colour and major events on the verso. Hardcastle adds: "It's turning into a piece of history in a crazy year. With a third of the year left to go, who knows what will follow." Instagram: @ianhardcastleart

jason clarke

jessica thacker

Jason Clarke found art to be therapeutic – a way to manage and express his experiences with bipolar disorder. Through detailed compositions, he made sense of visions and voices, allowing them to be transformed into visual information. His work appeared in the Artists' Directory numerous times since our first collaboration in Issue 52. We are deeply saddened by the news that he passed away from Covid-19 on 16 April.

Jessica Thacker is an abstract mixed media artist based in London. She co-founded The People’s Art of Kindness – a unique studio which creates art with a strong sensibility in mind. The profits from paintings contribute towards the education and well-being of children and their caregivers in order to help support grassroots charities around the world. www.thepeoplesartofkindness.com I Instagram: @Jessthackerart

142 Aesthetica

JIYOUNG KIM

Jonni Cheatwood

Working with the properties of fibre, the art of Seoul-based Jiyoung Kim focuses specifically on the elasticity and variability of fabric. Extensive research and development allows her to explore the formative beauty of textiles and create unique three-dimensional works that demonstrate the artist's command of colour, texture and perspective.

Instagram: @jingleing_art

Los Angeles-based Jonni Cheatwood’s work is an exploration of nostalgia and tension, colour and texture. Combining materials – found, gifted and custom-made – he creates a patchwork backdrop of sewn fabric as the basis for expressionist canvases. He then lays down acrylic and oil paint through subconscious gestures, working both intuitively and strategically across assemblages. www.jonnicheatwood.com I IG: @jonni_cheatwood

Pablo Ruiz Ortiz

pybus

Egosystems features photography inside a sculpture. It is a complex work that, when opened, shows both content and argument: that we are victims of a hidden war. Ortiz notes: “So-called globalisation focuses on spreading a ‘well-directed fear’ that gives rise to emotional competition.

Hobbes so well described this in his 1651 work Leviathan, noting the proverb ‘homo homini lupus – man is wolf to man.’” www.aliveart.es

UK-based Pybus is a digital abstract artist who pushes the boundaries of creative freedom. Lockdown has offered the artist time to express without distractions or limitations; the featured images reflect this sense of energy, as well as endurance of the human spirit – colourful, resilient and free.

The bold line work is a manifestation of memory and ideas unfolding outwards. www.pybusart.net I Instagram: @pybusart

Saundra Fleming

Susan Williams MRSS

Painter Saundra Fleming holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Inspiration was previously used as a defence against pain – nihilism in a world of loss and depression. Fleming's current inspiration is driven by questions of human motivation: invention of the self, social interconnectedness and the movement towards joy. www.saundrafleming.com I Instagram: @painting.squirrel

UK-based Susan Williams works with light and wind. Utilising open spaces – both internal and external – she produces “interventions” which play with the connection between materials and their surroundings. Many of the pieces include visual illusions such as floating and evanescence, conjuring the magical and metaphysical; the many-layered works transform into a meditation of time and place. www.susanwilliamsart.com

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

Aesthetica 143

artists’ directory

ashley andersen

Denise Blackburn

Colorado Springs-based Ashley Andersen is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is motivated by the sensual ambiguity within conversations around issues of memory, histories and experiences.

By examining the memory housed within materials through immersive site-specific installations, she opens a dialogue between the present and an ignored or forgotten past – the familiar juxtaposed with the strange.

Instagram: @ashley.andersen.studio

Denise Blackburn is a UK-based professional holistic therapist and artist. In addition to her personal art practice, she frequently runs abstract painting workshops as part of her Soul Art business. It is through the experience of training, teaching and mindful living that Blackburn has unleashed the innate creativity that can be seen in her paintings: colour, light, layering and texture are used to full effect. www.soul-art.co.uk

Photo: Frieda Mellema

Heyning W/D Studio

jad oakes

Netherlands-based Heyning W/D Studio stands for the combined work of Wied and Diederik Heyning.

Complementary skills in different disciplines give their porcelain pieces a unique character in which the harmony of image, texture and pattern is key. In the Basket series, light is broken by open spaces whilst shadows are part of the work – their delicate expression in contrast to the hardness of the material. www.heyningwd.com

Jad Oakes explores the possibilities of photography and moving image for installations, prints and drawings.

The Passing is part of the Vessels collection and was created during lockdown in London. Made using a variety of woods, the sculpture features a plano-convex lens; rays of light are captured in a silent film.

The intimate, emotive work entices contemplation and memory. www.jadoakes.studio Instagram: @jado_studio

Jeni Bate

jon wong

California-based artist Jeni Bate notes: "I paint the skies with peace and passion, because that's the way they paint me." Each piece begins as a watercolour skyscape – using unlimited colours – which are cut and reassembled. Terminology for her signature technique "refracturing" was recognised by Kolaj magazine in 2016. Bate also writes poems, which are then incorporated into the paintings. www.skyscapesforthesoul.com

Jon Wong is a Cambridge-based multidisciplinary artist who explores the concepts of alternate dimensions and the value of consciousness. Latest works, such as Ouroboros' π, examine the relations between geometry with trees and human anatomy.

Undertaking extensive research, Wong is inspired by universal connections between nature, geometry, spirituality and science.

Instagram: @psylico

144 Aesthetica

Katharina Goldyn

melody lane studio

Katharina Goldyn is a professor of drawing and painting at Studio Zeiler in Munich. Her bold, conceptual multidisciplinary works fuse traditional imagery with new age semiotics. Upcoming shows in Rome include Chromatic Harmonies, 5-16 September at Museo Crocetti, Projeckt, 24 October-5 November at Gallery Arte Borgo and Woman's Essence 2020 in collaboration with UNESCO, 11-13 September at Palazzo Velli. www.goldyn.de

Melody Lane’s work features mandalas; her aim is to "bring the motifs of ancient cultures into a contemporary form." The resulting pieces revel in the present moment as sunlight passes through the glass and casts changing colours and shadows onto surfaces. Lane’s work has been shown in the Art in Embassies programme in Washington DC and at the Smilow Cancer Center at Yale University. www.melodylanestudio.com

Ori Gerard Frances

REVELE DESIGN STUDIO

Ori Gerard Frances is a photographer and digital artist whose work has been widely exhibited. He believes the language of poetry and art is the only way to express certain aspects of our experience of reality in subtle and complex ways. Frances' recent awards and honourable mentions include the Fine Art Photography Awards, Tokyo International Foto Awards and the IPA's International Photography Awards. www.origerard.myportfolio.com

RVL was founded in London by Vivee Barengo and Jade Removille.

The studio focuses on creating interactive art installations that exist autonomously, although they do necessitate the viewer’s input for a fuller experience. RVL's aim is to create beautiful objects for everyone to appreciate and reflect upon whilst reconnecting the self with wider surroundings. www.reveledesign.com Instagram: @reveledesignstudio

Rohini Jones

Russell Ashcroft

Leeds-based photographer Rohini Jones responds to themes of culture, race and gender. Tending to both commercial and fine art briefs, her approach to the medium is visually stimulating. The images offer a platform for discussion surrounding pressing contemporary topics and asking numerous difficult questions.

Jones won the 2020 Aesthetica York St John Degree Show Award. www.rohinijones.com IG: @rohini_jonesphotography

Russell Ashcroft is a UK-based artist with a background in graphic design and a keen interest in photography.

A multimedia artist, he prefers working with charcoal. Ashcroft's self-portrait The Struggle not only depicts the physical challenge of climbing but taps into the struggle to progress and the choices we face – the duality between the emotion of the heart and the logic of the brain.

Instagram: @thattheruss

Samvel Budaghyan

susan milne

For Yerevan-based artist Samvel Budaghyan, wood is a vital natural material and a medium waiting to be repurposed. Through carving, he connects with the wood, imbuing the material with emotion, whilst responding to its warmth, shape and colour. The artist notes: “I give damaged trees a second life; they are reborn into surreal sculptures that carry messages to the world.” www.samvelbudaghyan.com IG: @samvel_surrealist_sculptor

Susan Milne is a British artist with a practice based in the Welsh mountains. She considers all her work to essentially be drawings whether they are produced in two or three dimensions. The work is influenced by a deep connection with the surrounding natural environment and her ideas are informed by the experience of walking this distinctive land. www.susanmilne.co.uk

thomas lust

Tyreece Gary

Germany-based Thomas Lust works primarily with oil-oncanvas painting, graphic arts and photography. The focus is on capturing memorable street scenes and portraits within the modern urban landscape. His works have been exhibited in Paris, Berlin and Shanghai; they can also be viewed in the artist's Galerie Art of Lust, which is located in Schwerin. www.artoflust.de Instagram: @artoflust

Tyreece Gary, aka TY, is an African American artist. Though his primary focus is portraits, he experiments with various subject matters, themes, and mediums. He admires the work of van Gogh – particularly the vibrant use of colour and application of brushstrokes to convey mood. TY utilises these techniques whilst developing a style of his own. He asks: "Everyone has a story to depict. What is your story?" www.tlgartistry.wordpress.com

For submission enquiries regarding the Artists’ Directory, contact Katherine Smira on (0044) (0)844 568 2001 or directory@aestheticamagazine.com

Aesthetica 145

Detail, The Street, West Palm Beach. From the series Simulations (2014). Courtesy of Rachel Louise Brown c/o Wren Agency.

last words

Rachel Louise Brown Photographer / Photo Director, Harper's Bazaar

146 Aesthetica

This photograph was taken on the first roll of film I shot during my first night in Palm Beach, Florida. I’d landed earlier that day to begin an artist residency at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, which evolved into a fouryear exploration of the state. That night, feeling displaced, I headed out to begin my observation of this unfamiliar place. I always begin my projects in this way: wandering alone at night with a cumbersome medium format camera. During this stroll, I was almost arrested. I quickly realised that my journeys would be impossible on the heavily patrolled, affluent island of Palm Beach, so I hopped over the bridge to West Palm Beach. I walked the streets – mesmerised by the homes of strangers – documenting those which felt as though they had a story to tell. rachel-brown.com | wren.agency.

Aesthetica 147

148 Aesthetica