Of Mirrors, Mirages and Reflections

Shirin Abedinirad’s stunning mirror installations defy viewers’ perception of reality, while also offering unexpected perspectives of the places into which they have been set.

Much could be said about mirrors and the different roles they have played in different cultures throughout the times.  From stealing souls, to showing the manifestation of one’s mind and soul, to doors leading to different worlds, they offer an endless field of speculation and challenge us to question our very essence and our inevitable frailty and transience.

Tales of Books and Art

Ekaterina Panikanova’s fantastic three-dimensional artworks on books blur the lines between painting, installation and collage, while taking viewers down memory lane on a journey into childhood.

Let us go down memory lane and back to our childhood, to times of innocence and joy, to tales filled with fantastic characters and magic stories. Let us take our old storybooks and revisit them, feel their unmistakable smell, fall again under their irresistible spell.

Ekaterina Panikanova, born in St. Petersburg in 1975 and presently based in Rome, invites us to do just that with her art. She creates highly original, densely layered paintings across large spreads of old books, school magazines, posters from different times and other such materials which she finds in flea markets.

Venetian Fantasy

Dale Chihuly’s stunning glass art creations conjure the fascination and wonder of colour, transparency and shape to offer viewers pieces that seem to have come out of magic hands.

Think of Venice and we immediately dream of the intense, beguiling and romantic beauty of this city, of the intimate connection of town and sea, of its worldwide famous and luxurious Carnival, of the truly fabulous glasswork produced in the nearby island of Murano. Everything about Venice invites us into a universe of beauty, romance, glamour, charm and art.

Fluidity

Penny Hardy’s awesome sculptures, conveying a strong sense of life and vitality, address the concept of fluidity so characteristic of present-day society.

‘Fluidity’, or ‘liquidity’, are fitting metaphors to understand the nature of our present times, of modernity, when nothing is stable, nothing can be taken for granted, nothing actually lasts long. This has been magnificently explained by Zygmunt Bauman, the famous sociologist, in his well-known work “Liquid Modernity”. The notions of solidity, stability and sturdiness so appreciated in times before ours have been replaced by the concepts of fluidity, liquidity, the capacity to quickly change and adapt to new and different conditions or environments.

Circles and Spirals

Sally Smith’s environmental art features delicate, ethereal sculptures illustrating the simple and fragile beauty of the natural world.

“Round, like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning…” goes the song. This has set us thinking about the prevailing use of circles and spirals in art works included in what has been agreed to call Land Art, as is the case – among others – of Andy Goldsworthy, already featured in our blog. And, yet, we are suddenly struck by the fact that we find it quite natural. After all, Land Art deals with Nature and a mere glance around us reveals how far circles and spirals are basic elements in Nature.

Mystery and Drama

World-renowned Philip Jackson’s awe-inspiring sculptures never fail to move viewers with their aura of mystery, their sense of drama and their emphasis on form.

This time, for a change, we are featuring a well-known sculptor, whose work can be seen in many public places throughout London, as well as other towns. However, the aesthetics of his sculptures is so mesmerising and compelling that we have not resisted including him in our body of work, most commonly dedicated to less famous artists.

DyslexArt

Bronia Sawyer’s talent and creativity have broken down the barrier of her dyslexia to offer viewers book art in which texture, strength and versatility combine to produce sheer Beauty.

“I am dyslexic but I enjoy working with text. I like the idea of working with words in an abstract way, as sometimes that is how written language feels for me. When I write, my words are often mixed up or missing: folded away in part of my brain I can’t quite get to.” This is how U.K.-based artist Bronia Sawyer explains the reason of her passion for using books as her medium to express herself within the art world.

Flower Shower

With Nature as her primary source of inspiration, Rebecca Louise Law has challenged the boundaries of Art by bringing floral art to the limelight with her stunning, sublime large-scale installations. 

Colour. Beauty. Freshness. Awe. The exhilarating feeling of wandering through the very core of Paradise. Imagine yourself strolling in such a place, where suspended flowers shower you with the sheer feeling of having been suddenly blessed with a visit to Paradise…

From Rusty Nails to Glorious Art

John Bisbee’s mesmerizing sculptures made with nails are pushing the limits of the current concepts of Art, while creating a mature body of work that magnetizes viewers with both its grace and strength.

Think about the triviality of nails. Consider the effect of time over these more than common tools. Imagine the transfiguration they undergo, according to the various shades that rust gradually gives them as it covers their surface, metamorphosing them into something apparently different. And yet, they remain mere nails.

A Moving Tribute

Vhils's awesome depiction of Amália Rodrigues’ face made with black and white cobblestones is a moving tribute now enhancing the beauty of one of Lisbon’s most typical areas.

When something really sad happens, a Portuguese saying states that “it gets tears flowing from cobblestones on the pavement”.  It makes sense to refer to this since our feature today focuses on a beautiful artwork made of cobblestone and created to pay a tribute to the greatest Portuguese “fado” singer, Amália Rodrigues (July 1, 1920 – October 6, 1999).

An Explosion of Colours

Truong Buu Giam’s awesome paintings display an overwhelming explosion of colours, challenging the limits of conventional art and subtly blending Eastern and Western Art traditions.


Very much in tune with the editorial line of this blog, the artist we are featuring today states the following about Art: “Art is an international language, it doesn’t matter what race you are, where you come from, you have a feeling when you listen to a song, look at a painting, you have your emotion, only you know it in your soul, so Art touches the heart and makes people feel.”

Dreamland Cityscapes

Sunga Park’s fragmented watercolours display mesmerizing and extremely beautiful cityscapes, which seize our senses and soothe our eyes.

Mark Twain once described the Mississippi Valley as being “reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it…” In fact, this could easily suit Sunga Park’s watercolours of cityscapes.

Fallen Leaves

Susanna Bauer’s stunning crocheted leaf sculptures are incredibly delicate and mesmerizing art works, which defy our imagination and seize our attention.

“Anyone who thinks fallen leaves are dead has never watched them dancing on a windy day”, stated Shira Tamir, an Israel born and New York based eclectic artist. This could well be adapted to describe Susanna Bauer’s uncommon, extremely delicate and deeply mesmerizing art works made out of dead leaves.

Black Mirror

Romain Crelier’s arresting and mind-blowing installation creates a harmonious juxtaposition of two unlikely elements, thereby breaking the boundaries of art.

Consider the Chinese philosophy concepts of yin and yang, according to which “apparently opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and (…) they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another”. Now, bearing that in mind, think of dualities such as light and dark, fire and water, male and female which, if thought of as complementary, form dynamic systems of great harmony fuelled by the fact that everything has both yin and yang aspects.

Dripping Life

Regardt van der Meulen’s mesmerising steel sculptures posit questions about the strength and vulnerability of human life in modern society.

“A drop of water hollows a stone, not by force, but by continuously dripping” stated Ovid, the ancient Roman classical poet and author of “Metamorphoses” (43 BC – 17AD). In fact, this easily applies to life as it slowly flows and withers human life in its course, thus somehow acting like a process of metamorphosis upon human beings.

A Kind of Magic

Rob Gonsalves’s mind-bending and stunning paintings invite viewers to step into the magic realm of his unique Magic Realism.

“It’s a kind of magic; one dream, one soul, one prize, one goal, one golden glance of what should be”… sing “The Queen” in their famous song. And, indeed, it is in a kind of magic that we are about to enter taken by the talent of Rob Gonsalves.

Back to Nature

Andy Goldsworthy’s awesome and thought-provoking art creations nurture our respect for the environment, while also offering viewers extremely beautiful examples of imaginative Land Art sculptures celebrating Nature.

The nostalgia of winter often invites us to contemplate about Nature, its cycles and the mutual interaction between humans and what surrounds us. Present day environmental movements and concerns have motivated many artists to direct their creativity to what has already been acknowledged as Land Art, offering viewers unexpected and stunning art works often found in surprising sceneries, therefore emphasizing our awareness to the mentioned concerns, while also opening new perspectives on what can be regarded as Art.

Let There Be Colour!

Mark Lovejoy creates stunning hypnotic images, which are colourful psychedelic statements of a ground-breaking art field. 

At the outset of a brand new year, let us try to look at the world with fresh eyes and bright colours! When news broadcasts open daily with descriptions of natural disasters, devastating wars, dramatic accidents and other such sad situations, we do need to “wash” our eyes with beauty and colour.