Design Lexicon #02
James Turrell 04 Christian Boltanski 06 Olafur Eliasson 08 Damien Hirst 10 Julien VallĂŠe 12
United Visual Artist 14
Personal Reflection 16
1943 - active
JAMES TURRELL
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I’ve always felt that night doesn’t fall. night rises. there are these incidences in flying where you just sit there. it’s one of the best seats in the house.
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James Turrell is a American Artist whose main discipline is manipulating light and utilising space to engage viewers with wonders of human perception. He considers the sky as his studio, material and canvas. He was originally trained in perceptual psychology and grew up with a fascination of light, Turrell started of experimenting with light as a medium in mid-1960’s and has continued using light and the sky as a medium. He has won over 30 awards to his art and 8 awards for his use of Architecture. Turrell has work displayed internationally and his work can be seen in the
YSP (Yorkshire Sculpture Park), Guggenheim Museum in New York as well as exhibiting his work inside of a extinct volcano Roden Carter. He is still producing work today and has scheduled work to exhibited in Germany, Israel and Australia. His style of using light and engaging the viewer on a emotional scale and sentimental manner is something
in my studies. His use of bold bright colour choice appeals to my style of work and I personally prefer his earlier work rather than his later, I like how he has worked on a smaller scale using light rather than the sky so viewers can move round the space he has created emerging themselves in the emotions they perceive.
1944-active
Christian Boltanski
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I hold a mirror to my face so that those who look at me see themselves and therefore I disappear.
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Christian Boltanski is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker. In 1986, Boltanski began creating mixed media/materials installations with light as essential concept. Tin boxes, altar-like construction of framed and manipulated photographs of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna in 1931. Boltanski has participated in over 150 art exhibitions throughout the world. Among others, he had solo exhibitions at the New Museum (1988), the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Magasin 3 in Stockholm the La Maison Rouge gallery and many others.
From July 1 to September 25, 2011, museum Es Baluard exhibited “Signatures”, the installation focused on the memory of the workers who in the 17th Century built the museum’s walls. In 2002, Boltanski made the installation “Totentanz II”, a Shadow Installation with copper figures, for the underground Centre for International Light Art in Unna, Germany.
Boltanski is inspiring to me as he demonstrates unique ways of displaying photography and using light to engage the audience and adds elements to photography. I like the idea on creating sculptures on a small scale and projecting light through them. His use of extreme close ups show the emotion and character behind each subject and challenges the viewer.
1967-active
Olafur Eliasson
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Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.
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Olafur Eliasson is a DanishIcelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research. Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London. Eliasson has engaged in a number of projects in public space, including the intervention
Green river, carried out in various cities between 1998 and 2001; the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007, London, a temporary pavilion designed with the Norwegian architect Kjetil Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. I like Eliassons use of spacial awareness and how he produces his installations on a large scale
the sense of movement in physicality in his installations. I also enjoy how he has had work exhibited outside of a gallery which I fell is a great way of gaining awareness to your exhibition and you as a artist. His use of colour and light adds another element challenging the viewer with their emotions.
1965-active
Damien Hirst
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In an artwork you’re always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
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Damien Hirst was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds. In 1984 he moved to London, where he worked in construction before studying for a BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths college from 1986 to 1989. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. Hirst developed his interest in exploring the “unacceptable idea” of death as a teenager in Leeds. From the age of sixteen, he made regular visits to the anatomy department of Leeds Medical School in order to make life drawings. The experiences served to establish the difficulties he perceived in reconciling the idea of death in life. Of the prominence of
death in his work he has explained: “You can frighten people with death or an idea of their own mortality, or it can actually give them vigour. Hirst is great inspiration as a artsist who produces work on multiple media and ties them all together into now installation and how he sells his artwork. I admire his lack fear in design and bold statements he
perceives to live by. His work around his idea of death is incredibly moving and makes a bold stance in to how I design and look at artwork. I enjoy a sense of irony in his ‘A shark is not art’ were he has put a shark in a tank of formaldehyde as well as a sheep to mock himself and the public who view his art.
1983-active
Julien Vallée
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I find absurd how some people don’t seem to be concerned about it
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Vallée is a graphic designer and artistic director living and working in Montreal, Quebec. He has created works for many international clients including MTV, Swatch and the New York Times Magazine. His work was also featured on the covers of several magazines like Computer Arts and IdN, and the book Tangible published by Gestalten. Vallée studied graphic design at Université du Québec à Montréal. He then received a scholarship to go study at the École supérieure d’arts graphiques Penninghen in Paris, and did workshops with international designers like Stefan
Sagmeister, among others. Since then, he won numerous prizes like the ADC Young Guns in New York, and his work has been published in various graphic design books and magazines. In his projects, he always tends to keep experimentation and playfulness in the foreground, and mixes computer images with tangible, simple materials like paper, mirrors, plastic or wood.
Vallée shows how you can combine traditional disciplines them with the digital to interact with them. Personally I prefer his sculptures more than his animations and really enjoy how he is starting to experiment with light to create another dimension to his design work such as shining text onto transparent surfaces so the text appears to be floating.
2003-active
United Visual Artist
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Our internal model of time, movement, mass and space is based on a lifetime of experience, perhaps even genetically encoded.
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United Visual Artists (UVA) is a multidisciplinary art and design group founded in 2003 by Matt Clark,Chris Bird and Ash Nehru in the United Kingdom. The group specialises in light installations. Their designs have used 3-D scanners, lasers, moths LED lights, sound, movement, digital technology, shadow, and pendulums. Their work includes concert lighting and art installations. They utilise responsive architecture, live performance, and sculpture. Members also give lectures. Among the most recognised interactive light installations by UVA are Volume, created in collaboration
with Neil Davidge and Robert Del Naja in 2006. It won the D&AD ‘Yellow Pencil’ Award in 2007. The group won an AZ Award from Azure in 2011. UVA was initially formed to do stage design for Massive Attack. The group transitioned into the production of artistic works of various kinds, including permanent installations and gallery exhibitions.
UVA is where I aspire to work when I graduate university I like the fact that it is a group of designers with different specialisms collaborating to produce work on a large scale. I admire their use of light at architecture to place you in a state of mind. I first became aware after seeing Momentum at the Barbican since viewing this exhibition it is my goal to work there.
Personal Reflection
art to his design. He produces animations and has projected them onto opaque surfaces to cause a illusion that the text is floating. The same can be found about the difference between Boltanksi and Turrell. Turrell tends to use bold colours to make the audience feel what he intends whereas Boltanski tends to use photography and the structures he produces to engage his audience. They both use light in their installations Bolatnski tends to use lights bulbs which can give a yellowy tint to his work or using white lights to make his photography stand out from the canvas. Turrell however uses bright lights adding another dimension to the colour he uses. Turrell utilises natural light in some of his installations and frames the sky. Eliasson practises spacial awareness in his design using bold lights and contrasting tones of colour. The attention to detail
and careful planning in his installations creating pathways to guide his audience to the motive of the piece. Life all the artists listed he experiments with different materials and appears to favour transparent objects and shining light through them. UVA adopt a similar stance with their awareness to the space around them and like Vallee they produce their work on a computer first but creating it physically. However instead of going of one motive they give more freedom to the audience and allow them to reach their own understanding of their work.
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A collection of artists, sculptors, photographers and designers. Each showing different ways have captivating audiences in their own unique and contradicting styles. Each have influences in my design whether that be colour, spacial awareness, light, portrait photography and how they combine different media’s in all their work. I admire how they work outside the box and our not afraid of exploring new materials and techniques and have the confidence to pursue their ideas to the end. However each individual explores their concepts in unique ways, Hirst explores the idea of death in his work and produces work around that mindset. This is contradiction to Vallees style of work, he enjoys producing work around his idea of colour and using that has his main influence. He is the only artist n the list to combine digital