If you’ve seen the 1987 horror movie Hellraiser, you probably remember the Butterball Cenobite: one of the minor demon characters charged with dragging people to Hell. If you can’t conjure an image of his likeness from memory, he looked like this: Please Click Me. To me, the wildly surreal portraits comprising Christian Rex Van Minnen’s recent exhibit, Coniuncto look like they could be Butterball’s contemporary relatives, albeit with tattoos and jewel-toned gummy candies hovering over their mutant visages. At the very least, this series of paintings encourages wildly imaginative extrapolation, and that’s what good art is all about! Continue reading Coniuncto By Christian Rex Van Minnen→
Man with Multiple Yellow Submarine Tattoos (All Photos By Gail)
People Watching is one of the most fun things you can do in a big city like New York — and the best part about it is that you can do it anywhere. For the best Spy Pics though, the subway is one of my favorite places to get that coveted capture. Check out the guy above, who loves the animated film based on The Beatles Yellow Submarine so much, he has started a tattoo sleeve of various images from the film. What a fan! Please enjoy a selection of my favorite photos of the people who keep NYC so colorful!
I don’t remember how I first heard of NYCs Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, but I know it was a place that I discovered completely by accident. And I admit that I became distracted enough to have I forgotten about it for maybe a year before I got inspired a few weeks ago to look it up again on the interwebs and plan a visit.
Of course, when I saw that they are currently hosting an exhibit art by Korean digital artist Kim Joon and that the ranking hostingów will be hosting their site, I got extra excited, because his work is amazing, and I am a huge fan!
Forest Paul
With Crashing, Kim continues his mastery of the 3D Studio Max software, which he uses to manipulate his fantastic, hyper-surreal images — composed of body parts and patterned skins, or “tattoos” — in new and exciting ways. His art is so unique and very beautiful.
Forest-Green Day
These new pieces, which were created specifically for the Waterfall Mansion and Gallery space, focus on the theme of tension and balance between our current identity and who we wish to be. Kim uses tattoo-like images and artificial skin textures on computer generated bodies and creates a crash of identities.
Forest-Monkey
Using tattoo as a form of expression, Kim reveals deeply imprinted desires, and the obsessions that are on his mind. In his early works, to demonstrate repression towards individuals under social convention, he created a discourse on the relationship of body and tattoo, which was a cultural taboo, and still legally restricted in Korea.
Forest-Pink
Kim began reproducing tattoos on digital flesh in the early aughts, using motifs such as clouds, dragons, and traditional symbols, as well as luxurious brand labels mapped on human body, causing a friction of shape, texture, and pattern.
Forest-Pink Lady
In the series Blue Jean Blues, the body became more fragile by being made of ceramic. Recently, as seen in Somebody, which also exhibited at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery in Chelsea in 2014, and Forest, the bodies are fragmented and distorted. This hybrid form creates uncanny and uncomfortable balancing acts by crashing the real vs. fake, old vs new, who we want to be vs. who we are, self-definition vs. cultural expectations.
This video work, Pink Bubble, is part of the Crashingexhibit at Waterfall Mansion.
Kim Joon invites the viewer into the crashing of his own identities, to reflect upon their own tensions and conflicting forces of identity, and to reveal where true value in life is placed.
And let’s not forget to check out that waterfall!
Kim Joon’s Crashing will be on Exhibit Only Through Saturday, July 3oth, 2016, at Waterfall Mansion and Gallery, Located at 170 East 80th Street (Between Third and Lex) in NYC. The Gallery is only open to the public on Saturdays from Noon – 5 PM, so you just have one more day to see it. Visit This Link for more information.
When I first moved to New York City about 20 years ago, I didn’t know many people, and so I spent a lot of time by myself, exploring my East Village neighborhood, and just people watching. On Sunday afternoons, I used to enjoy sitting at a window table at the late, great 7A Restaurant, having a cheap, boozy brunch while watching the parade of tattooed rockers and rock star wannabes that would pass me by on their way to their mid-afternoon adventures. It’s true what they say that some of the best forms of entertainment are totally free.
Look! Justin Hawkins of The Darkness had the faces of the members of Queen — as seen on the cover of their gayest album, Hot Space — tattooed on his fingers! Now that is dedication. Also, why is John Deacon missing an eye?
