Chiquita Banana by Mel Ramos (2007). Seen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Kunsthal March 18, 2018. (Reshaped Reality. 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Sculpture).
Popartist Mel Ramos is known for portraying iconic candy girls of ’60s and ’70s pop culture. His Sculptures parody the trivial imagery of the advertising industry by combining a commercial product with eroticism of pin-up girls…
In Rotterdam I saw an exhibition about real life like figures in Kunsthal Rotterdam.
Three wax arms protruding from the wall.
Maurizio Cattelan, in a mixture of Don Camillo, Pinocchio and court jester, always carries his pictorial statements to extremes so that the realistic depiction of well-practiced social and art world conventions tips over into the absurd and ridiculous. Rather theatrical and ephemeral in his actions, objects, and installations, but deploying ironic sophistication and unexpected turns, the artist spares no taboo in unmasking deceitfulness. Born in 1960 in the North Italian university town of Padua, he started his career in the eighties creating anti-functional design objects before deciding to work in the art world, which, in his own words, he found “much more appealing.” Since then, Cattelan has become an internationally renowned artist, even though he would not describe himself as one.
A recent photo of Newborn from a recent visit to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam at the occasion of the Hyperrealism Sculpture Exhibition, till July 1, 2018. Go and see for you self if in the neighbourhood…
Not so long ago I saw the following installation by Patricia Piccinini in Vienna at the Ankere Bread Factory
I wrote about it in my significant other blog post Unfurled
Patricia Piccinini (born 1965 in Freetown, Sierra Leone) is an Australian artist who works in a variety of media. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1991. In 2014 she received the Artist Award from the Melbourne Art Foundation’s Awards for the Visual Arts.
Piccinini has an ambivalent attitude towards technology and she uses her artistic practice as a forum for discussion about how technology impacts upon life. She is keenly interested in how contemporary ideas of nature, the natural and the artificial are changing our society. Specific works have addressed concerns about biotechnology, such as gene therapy and ongoing research to map the human genome… she is also fascinated by the mechanisms of consumer culture.