Let’s get Digital

Antonio Mora’s mind-blowing portrait compositions challenge viewers’ imagination and posit innovative statements on the use of digital photography.

The brave new world brought about by the amazing development of technology has also been the source of new forms of art, offering countless and unexpected possibilities. Digital photography and the tools associated to it have triggered explorations which have resulted in awesome artworks within totally innovative fields.

This, in turn, has fired the imagination and creativity of talented photographers and artists coming from different media for the benefit of the arts community which has, thereby, widened the scope of its possibilities. Antonio Mora, a Spanish photographer based in Elche, near Alicante in eastern Spain, not far from Valencia, formerly an art director and artist, is a good example of how far innovation in such areas can contribute to the creation of new art forms.

This time, for a change…

...Touching Art was invited to the opening of a solo exhibition by Portuguese painter Alexandre Magalhães. Held on May 1, 2014, at Ericeira, a small beautiful fishing village a few kilometres north of Lisbon, we couldn’t miss this opportunity to offer you something different and to introduce a Portuguese artist.

Alexandre Magalhães, born in Lamego, a small town in the north of Portugal, and living in Ericeira, is a retired colonel who has dedicated his time to his favourite activity: painting. A self-taught painter, he started painting in 1995 having first tried his skills at watercolours. About ten years ago, however, he resorted to oil paint on linen canvas and a palette-knife. Since then, he has exclusively been using these materials and perfecting his technique through a long and patient process of experimenting, which gives him the pleasure of challenging his own limits, skills and talent.

Humming Beauty

Insects seem to cause contradictory reactions on people. Some find them irritating, dangerous, a never-ending source of discomfort. On the other hand and curiously enough, there is a great number of children’s stories in which they play the main roles and are depicted as sweet, loveable creatures. They have inspired the famous Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov’s “The Flight of the Bumble-bee” and Alexander Scriabin, another Russian composer and pianist, said about his 10th Sonata (1913) that “(it) is a sonata of insects. Insects are born from the sun... they are the sun’s kisses”.

Going Vintage

Look around you and check if there is any vintage object within your sight. An old magazine, your father’s camera, an old-fashioned picture frame, one of your mother’s favourite trinkets, memorabilia of some kind. Most certainly you will find something. As Sloane Crosley, a young writer living in New York and a professor at Columbia University, puts it “our culture’s obsession with vintage objects has rendered us unable to separate history from nostalgia. People want heart”.

Touching Wood

“In all things of Nature there is something of the marvellous”, said Aristotle and, yet, not everybody has the capacity and/or the sensibility to see that. We have to be grateful for the talent of artists who can help us rise above our limitations to actually see how much beauty there can be in materials we tend to simply ignore.

Magic Tape

“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect”, someone quoted Teller, a sixty-four years old full-time magician since 1975, to refer to Sarah DiNardo’s artistic production. And, in fact, nothing would more fittingly describe what she, herself, calls her “love for using tape”.

The Throne of Africa

Today again, and just as it happened with our previous posts on the Tree of Life, the Transforming Arms into Art Project or the Freedom sculpture, we bring you another art piece produced within the scope of a humanitarian project devised with a deep concern for social awareness and social justice. Its ultimate objective is that of encouraging a culture of peace in a country emerging from a sixteen-year long civil war. We are referring to the unique project “Transforming Arms into Art” developed in Mozambique. We, therefore, expect to touch your hearts and alert you to the global need for solidarity and against the destructiveness fuelled by illicit arms trade throughout the world.

Shooting Poverty into Art

Although not so much falling within the aesthetic pattern of the artworks we have been dealing with in this blog, we bring to you today something that, however, totally meets its objective of also introducing art pieces which have been produced within the scope of humanitarian projects with a social purpose. In fact, and just as we hope to have achieved with our post on the Tree of Life and the project behind it, we expect to touch your hearts and to emotionally engage you.

Bigger than Life

A long life (in fact, he lived until he was 104), a huge talent, a lively man, Oscar Niemeyer, the renown modernist Brazilian architect, left remarkable buildings throughout the world with the unmistakable signature of his genius. He was responsible for the construction of Brasilia in a record time (1956-1960), the present capital of Brazil. This astonishing city, which was born out of the dream of another visionary as was President Café Filho, was to be inaugurated by Jucelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, in 1960.

Blowing in the Wind

Imagine freshly washed linen hanging on endless lines, neatly arranged and put on to dry.  Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen uses second-hand clothing, and mostly hundreds of discarded men’s shirts and jackets, to create huge installations which have been raising contradictory opinions and political controversy, which immediately reminds us of the open air laundries of Mumbai, for instance.

From Rags to Riches

Ghana or Nigeria. Western Africa. A region of the world where everyday life is made of poverty, hunger, starvation, struggle for survival; where people find a use for everything they can get hold of; where people cherish the rags they wear as treasures they would never discard.

Weaving Webs of Wonder

 Consider transparency, translucency. Consider something delicate, subtle, vaporous, ethereal. Consider gauze, lace, tulle. No, we are not thinking of ballerinas’ tutus, wedding dresses, ball-gowns. We are introducing you to the wonder that is the very essence out of which Benjamin Shine’s most recent artworks are made.

“Magic Mirror in my Hand…”

Human-shaped, life-sized mirrored sculptures by Rob Mulholland strategically placed within urban, rural or natural surroundings, camouflaged by its very essence or becoming intriguingly conspicuous, trigger the most unexpected reactions from viewers and passers-by.

Wondering in Wonderland

This is an invitation for all of you to join us in the magic process that metamorphoses scrap material, wastes, discarded items and so many other rejected objects into works of art. To the wonder of our eyes and senses and through the hands of talented artists, what seems to most of us to be merely trash turns into objects of sheer Beauty.

Back to Life

Discarded materials of all kinds, from wire to old keys or clock parts, to cutlery, dog collars or cupboard handles are skilfully metamorphosed in the hands of sculptor Barbara Frank into animals, plants and other organic shapes that come back to life for the pleasure of our eyes and senses.

She has gradually been using more and more discarded materials as a result of her fascination for objects which carry in them a past (hi)story, thus offering an added challenge to her work as well as an increasing and more familiar interest to the final product. The fact that she resorts to the use of such materials further enhances the connection viewers may create with her sculptures when they find themselves identifying the different elements which make up the artwork at which they are looking.

A Tribute From the (HE)ART

On this day, when Nelson Mandela completes 95 years of a life entirely dedicated to the struggle against apartheid, fighting for his strong beliefs in freedom, peace, dignity, solidarity and reconciliation – among so many other equally deep and relevant human values – our contribution could not address any other subject.

Beyond Beautiful

Ordinary galvanized mesh and other kinds of wire delicately worked into lace-looking, life-sized figurative sculptures of awesome, spiritual, uncommon beauty may surprise you as you wander along the rooms of an art gallery or museum, stroll through a public park or visit a private garden in Britain.

Transforming Arms into Tools

The Tree of Life sculpture was produced within the scope of the “Transforming Arms into Tools” (TAT) project founded by Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, Chairman of the Christian Council of Mozambique, a partner organisation of Christian Aid, an international development charity founded in 1953 and working in more than fifty countries with over 600 partner organisations helping some of the poorest communities irrespective of religion, race and background.  

Tree of Life

The Tree of Life, a sculpture.  Different sized gun barrels, butts and magazines, triggers, trigger guards and even complete pistols are transformed into the bark of a tree. Sliced, opened out and flattened metal sections from gun barrels and magazines become leaves, making up the thick foliage of this tree. This is how dismantled, chopped off weapons are made unusable for its original functions and exhibited as artworks in museums.  The Tree of Life, commissioned by the British Museum and created in 2004 in Mozambique to commemorate peace, is the first object we bring to you, inviting you to share it with us, to observe and to appreciate it, and – why not? – share it with others.