Users simply upload 10 to 20 photos of their faces, and the app’s AI-powered image generating tool does the rest. It may seem like harmless fun, but some artists say the AI is stealing their work. Even worse, the app is generating sexualized images of minors, and users are unwittingly signing away the rights to their own images.

Fantasy Portraits Ignite Ethical Concerns

Artificial intelligence often learns by scraping the internet for content. The Lensa app’s Magic Avatar function draws from sites where real artists upload their work, like DeviantArt, Behance, and ArtStation. Lensa runs on Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image app trained to learn patterns through an online database of images called LAION-5B.

Some artists are recognizing their distinctive styles and even the remnants of their signatures in the AI portraits, like Kim Leutwyler, a Sydney-based artist who told The Guardian she saw almost every portrait she’s ever shared on the internet in the Lensa results.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Spanish illustrator Amy Stelladia says she learned her art was being used by AI apps after discovering a website called haveibeentrained.com, which allows artists to search the LAION dataset for their work. The tool also provides an easy way for artists to request that their art be removed from the AI-training network.

For artists, the problem is twofold. First, the AI is flooding the market with cheap art that exploits and devalues human creativity. “They are meant to compete with our own work, using pieces and conscious decisions made by artists but purged from all that context and meaning,” Stelladia says. “It just feels wrong to use people’s life work without consent, to build something that can take work opportunities away.”

Second, AI photo apps like Lensa are making bank while the human artists they draw from barely scrape by. By some estimates, Lensa is drawing in $1 million USD per day, and the artists seeing their work in its results aren’t even getting credited, let alone compensated.

Portrait Results are More Than a Little Problematic

Some users have found that even when they submit source images that are fully clothed and show no skin at all, the results are often semi-nude and sexually suggestive. At MIT Technology Review, Melissa Heikkilä writes that out of 100 avatars she generated, 16 were topless and another 14 were barely clad. Heikkilä notes that she and another colleague of Asian descent seemed to get more images like these than their white colleagues who tried the app.

Lensa’s Magic Avatar has also generated nude art based on photographs of children, lightened black skin, and made users significantly thinner than they appear in the source images they uploaded.

AI training data like LAION is full of racist stereotypes, pornography, and even explicit images of rape. Of course, AI training data reflects the biases and prejudices of human artists and other content producers, but there doesn’t appear to be any attempt on the app creators’ part to moderate that data. While Stable Diffusion offers a filter on its dataset to limit graphic results, Lensa doesn’t appear to use it.

Lensa also doesn’t seem to enforce its policies prohibiting nudity and minors, and it doesn’t prevent users from uploading source images of people other than themselves. That makes it easy for anyone to exploit Magic Avatar and produce sexualized images of anyone they want, including children.

Signing Away the Rights to Your Own Image

When users upload their own images to Magic Avatar and similar apps, they’re essentially selling their personal information for a very low price. Lensa’s privacy policy allows them to “collect and store your Face Data for online processing function.”

Though the images are supposedly automatically deleted within 24 hours after being processed by Lensa, they’re used to train the AI to produce more portraits. Users aren’t compensated when the company uses their images for that purpose. The app thus becomes just another way to give corporations more control over our identities — and that doesn’t seem worth the four bucks.

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Her passion for creating Black art stems from her childhood as a minority in Pomona, California. “Growing up, I was often the only Black kid in my class, and I found it hard to find things that represented my background,” Brown says on her website DomoINK.com. “My father and I would go out of our way to find greeting cards that had images of Black families on [them]. We’d buy them from individual sellers because many retailers didn’t carry them.”

As an adult looking to decorate her own home, the artist recognized there was still a severe lack of Black art at big-box stores. That’s when she decided to do something about it by starting her own brand of art prints, apparel, and home décor in her spare time.

“Our voices, idea, and stories still remain unspoken for in the art world,” Brown says. “I want my portraits to tell unknown stories. I want people of color to be represented.”

One of her most popular prints is her “Black Hair is Dope” portrait, which depicts a Black woman with a head cover and long twisted braids. Brown says of the piece: “I created this portrait to challenge stereotypes about Black people wearing durags. It serves to humanize and normalize that this headpiece is an essential aspect of our culture.”

At the start of the pandemic, Brown was working two full-time marketing jobs, putting in 80-hour weeks and making roughly $130,000 a year. She then quit one of those jobs and started designing in her evening hours. Although “there were a lot of sleepless nights” in the beginning, her artistic investment soon paid off. Brown’s after-hours work now amounts to less than two hours a day now and earns her $22,000 a month, thanks to sales on her website, Etsy shop, Society6 shop, and retail partnerships.

World-renowned companies including Disney, Samsung, and Lowe’s quickly took notice of Brown’s distinctive style and asked for collaborations. She’s even created art for the L.A. Lakers.

This year, Bath & Body Works commissioned Brown to craft a piece in honor of the Juneteenth. The result was an image of a Black family enjoying a picnic on the national holiday. She also recently completed a one-of-one artwork to decorate the walls of a Santa Monica Dr. Martens shop.

While her art career has officially taken off, Brown continues to work a traditional job as a marketing manager for an insurance company offering health care options to low-income Californians — but she loves making her mark with her side hustle.

“My ultimate goal is to make DomoINK a lifestyle retailer that can be a source of representation for those who are underrepresented,” Brown says. “The feedback I have gotten from people who feel seen by my work has been incredibly gratifying, and it inspires me to grow my business even more.”

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The countercultural art movement began with a group of students at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kinshasa, who decided to make art from what they could find around them. Most of what they found was the waste of faraway strangers: tires, foam, bottles, paint cans, CDs, flip-flops, exhaust pipes, and more. In 2015, the artists founded the collective Ndaku Ya Life is Beautiful, led by Eddy Ekete, and began performing while wearing their startlingly creative costumes.

Each costume echoes the ancestral clothing arts of the Congolese, and each has its own story to tell. Jared Kalenga’s “Robot Annonce” is a suit made of broken radio parts in a warning against the spread of fake news. “Femme Électrique” is a costume made of electrical wiring by Falonne Mambu, symbolizing the Congo’s inconsistent electrical service and the kidnappings and sexual assaults that occur when the lights go out.

“Tin Can” by Mvunzi Muteba Jr. aims to raise awareness among Africans about how the presence of multinational companies (such as those mining for rare minerals) has affected the continent and kept its citizens poor despite its many riches. “Tire Man” by Savant Noir is a protest of those stolen resources, like the rubber used to manufacture tires. Other issues represented by the costumes and performances include gang violence, viruses, pollution, a lack of safe drinking water, and the Western-style consumerism that’s beginning to creep into the country.

Gladieu’s photos capture these costumes against relevant backdrops, including graffitied concrete walls, industrial sites, gutters full of trash, and public street markets with locals looking on. In publishing the book, he hopes the levity and creativity of the images will catch the attention of Westerners who don’t want to be guilted into caring about where their waste ends up. His approach celebrates the Congolese culture and the resilience of the community of Kinshasa, sharing the ways in which the artists have reclaimed their experiences and translated them into something beautiful.

“(In the photographs), we are talking about ecology, but we are talking about ecology through African masks,” says Gladieu. “As you can see, they’re completely covered up. You don’t see any part of the skin. The traditional masks were done with natural materials. They symbolized the spirit of the ancestors or the spirit of support of the natural world. These young artists reinvent these traditional masks in a way, but they do it today with trash because they find more trash and natural materials.”

Published by Actes Sud, Homo Détritus was released in hardcover in November 2022 and is now available for backorder from Bookshop.org. You can see more of these images at Gladieu’s website, and on Instagram.

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Ceysson & Bénétiere Gallery Presenting Daniel Firman

Entitled Attitude Jade #3, this piece by Daniel Firman had many visitors hesitantly approaching, afraid they were about to experience a jump scare or a performance piece a la Marina Abramović. It appears, at first, like perhaps a young woman is taking a long time gazing at some kind of artwork mounted on the wall and shrouded by a piece of fabric. But the whole thing is actually a hyperrealistic sculpture made of resin, clothing, a wig, and shoes. It was definitely among the most Instagrammable pieces in an event designed to produce Instagrammable pieces.

The Future Perfect at Design Miami/

If you’ve ever thought that furniture design was boring, even momentarily, take in this booth by The Future Perfect like a shot of espresso for your brain. Presented at Design Miami/ 2022, a collectible furniture fair exhibited as part of the larger Art Basel Miami event, the booth includes an alluring array of fascinating works, including a wool carpet by Claudy Jongstra, a Chris Wolston bronze coffee table, and boucle-and-aluminum club chairs — get all the details about every last element in this photo here.

Leandro Erlich Retrospective

Presented at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is Leandro Erlich: Liminal, the first monographic exhibition of Argentinian artist Leandro Erlich’s work in North America. The exhibition features 16 works spanning more than two decades throughout PAMM’s special exhibition galleries. The works are arranged to create a narrative storyline as visitors make their way through the gallery, encountering reality-shifting interactive installations like Swimming Pool, originally created in 1999.

Mark Grattan at Design Miami/

Also at the Design Miami/ fair, furniture designer Mark Grattan’s sexy mirrored bedroom display was like 1980s cocaine culture softened up for 2023, its hard chrome edges contrasting with soft, curving lavender upholstery. Located in the booth by T&C O.G. Cristina Grajales, the display served up an aesthetic we didn’t know we were craving.

Perrotin Presenting Hernan Bas

Miami native Hernan Bas captured both the attention of festival goers and an excellent sum for his painting, titled Conceptual artist #15 (Performance based, along with a troop of hired actors he takes residence in ‘fixer upper’ homes and feigns nefarious occult activity to stir up the neighbors). Presented by Perrotin, the piece sold for $450,000. The title alone might be worth the price.

Savannah College of Art & Design Collaboration with Cerámica Suro

The Savannah College of Art and Design booth was an unexpected revelation at this year’s Art Basel, displaying works created in collaboration between SCAD students and Cerámica Suro, a Guadalajara-based studio known for pushing the boundaries of what artisanal ceramics can be. Founder José Noé Suro evolved his family’s manufacturing business into a globally renowned powerhouse through partnerships with leading contemporary artists. The vibrant collections of glazed tiles were created by SCAD alumni artists Nicolas Barrera, Lauren Clay, Gonzalo Hernandez, Cory Imig, Abel Macias, and Nikita Nagpal.

Thaddaeus Ropac Presenting Georg Baselitz

One of this year’s highest-selling works at Art Basel was also one of its most striking. London-based dealer Thaddaeus Ropac sold an abstract oil painting by Georg Baselitz entitled Emilio macht das Licht Aus (2020) for $1.4 million. The painting depicts a nude figure partially concealed within black and white brush strokes.

Sikkema Jenkins Presenting Maria Nepomuceno

Who doesn’t love to look at weird, slightly fleshy textile sculptures? Okay, maybe not everyone, but there’s no denying that Maria Nepomuceno’s work pulls you in to look closer and marvel at its complexities. Her display of colorful, organic forms was beautifully presented at Art Basel 2022 by gallery Sikkema Jenkins. This is just a taste of what the gallery has staged using Nepomuceno’s creations, so make sure to check out their previous exhibitions for more elaborate displays.

The post Our Favorite Works and Exhibits at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022 first appeared on Dornob.

Van Hoff’s career as a textile artist began in early 2020 after a series of shocking life events pointed her in a new direction. Her husband Matt died unexpectedly in January, and then the pandemic cost her her job as a graphic designer and art director. To process her grief, Van Hoff turned to art, experimenting with new techniques that applied her graphic design background to physical objects. The things she made to fill her time during quarantine resonated with her followers on Instagram, and now, over two years later, her pieces sell out practically as soon as they’re posted online.

“Quilting and embroidery are my current tools of choice to execute my dreams of physical, tactile graphic design,” Van Hoff says. “This combination results in fresh and unexpected forms that will shine in your home and get you all the compliments as you wear them out into the world.”

Van Hoff’s “squiggle quilts” are her most popular works, ranging from 18 to 30 inches wide and up to 40 inches tall. Not only do they bring a graphic punch of color to any room they’re in — they also have a textural element that adds a little bit of extra visual interest. Stuffed pillows in surprising shapes like eight-pointed stars and “noodles” are also big hits. Van Hoff applies her skills to wearable art, too, producing items like quilted dresses, tote bags, and giant patches to customize your favorite garments.

“One of my favorite things is finding the absolute perfect piece that fully expresses the personality I want for my home and wardrobe,” she explains. “It’s exceedingly rare, but when I do stumble across that perfect thing, it’s like meeting a brand new bff. That’s why I make what I make: to provide you that thrill of discovery.”

A recent residency at the Pendry Chicago boutique hotel produced an intriguing variation on Van Hoff’s signature style. The artist drew inspiration from the Art Deco architecture of the landmark Carbon & Carbide building where the hotel is located, producing a new wall hanging in a nuanced palette of green and gold fabric.

“This is the first event where people are able to see my work in person, which is very exciting,” Van Hoff told Chicago’s ABC 13 News. “I wanted to figure out how to incorporate some Art Deco details of the building into my designs and into my quilting.”

Van Hoff’s success is part of a larger trend celebrating traditional arts and crafts. The tufted rug TikTok craze and techniques like quilting and embroidery offer new ways for young people to express their creativity.

“I do think that sewing and quilting are having a bit of a comeback right now,” she says. “I think we’re all sort of drawn to very tactile, textural things in our digital world.”

Check Emily Van Hoff’s website regularly to catch new items as soon as they hit the shop, or follow her on Instagram @emilyvanhoff.

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California-based Egyptian artist and architect Hassan Ragab uses the AI art-generating program Midjourney to stimulate his own creativity, and his latest project may be his most surreal yet. “A State of Decay” takes the aesthetics of Art Nouveau architecture and warps them into dreamlike shapes and proportions. While parts of the buildings appear to be solid stone, others look like billowing smoke condensing down into solid, weight-supporting masses. Check out an animated version on Ragab’s Instagram.

The results are eerily beautiful. The characteristic sinuous, sculptural lines and asymmetrical shapes of Art Nouveau are amplified and exaggerated, morphing from the feasibly real to the blatantly unreal. The fact that such structures are not physically possible (at least, not yet) is actually part of the point. If we don’t believe something is possible, we don’t even attempt to work toward it and solve problems that could make it possible along the way.

It’s clear that AI isn’t quite up to the task of designing buildings that are safe, practical, and realistic, and there’s no danger of it replacing architects anytime soon. For artists like Ragab, using AI programs like Midjourney is a way to push their own creative ideas to the next level and introduce elements of surprise. They input text prompts into the program — perhaps something like “Art Nouveau buildings partially consisting of smoke” in this case. That’s the extent of their own control over the results. The AI inserts its own perceptions, resulting in ideas that could actually be feasible as a source of inspiration for wildly creative new architectural forms and materials.

Some users who are new to AI programs like Midjourney might find they’re getting results that are too similar to those of others. Ragab recommends that they get more specific and experimental with their prompts. “Using the right prompts is only one part of the process,” he writes on Instagram. “There are thousands of possibilities that the prompt alone won’t generate. You have to have a process for prompt writing, generating variations, and tweaking your process as you go. And of course not to mention the most important factor (your unique idea).”

In previous projects, Ragab has used AI to help envision conceptual green facades inspired by nature, organic Gothic facades resembling the work of artist H.R. Giger, an interplay of glass walls and red feathers, and many more awe-inspiring images.

“The more I work with Midjourney the more I know there is more to it,” Ragab adds. “As creatives we always have the moment where we stop. Sometimes because we need to, but most of the times we can’t go any further because we are bored, tired, or because it’s time consuming. And therein lies the true power when working with AI. It allows you to make that push, to add something to your limits in the same way [the] plane allowed us to fly. It’s another barrier that we are breaking. And although there are doubts and too many unknowns, I think we will carry on and time will reveal itself to us with even crazier scenarios than the ones we already have about the future.”

The post A State of Decay: AI-Generated Architecture Envisions Surreal Art Nouveau Structures first appeared on Dornob.

Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, tweeted “Ukraine today is the center of attention, center of resistance, freedom, true art. @banksy confirmed that he created seven murals in different parts of Ukraine, including Borodianka, Irpin, and Kyiv. It means a great deal to us. We are so grateful, Sir!”

In Horenka, on the ground floor of a devastated apartment block hit by Russian bombs in March, one mural shows a man lounging in a clawfoot tub, scrubbing his back with a brush. “For me, it means washing off all the dirt. The dirt of the Russian Federation,” local resident Tetiana Reznychenko told Reuters. “And this drawing makes me feel as if I have cleansed myself of the dirt that descended on us.”

Reznychenko told reporters that she served Banksy’s team a mug of instant coffee in her apartment when she saw them outside in the cold. Her damaged building currently has no electricity, heat, or running water, but she’s using a wood stove to get by for now. “Winter has begun, and we don’t know what will happen next,” she told Reuters. “Firemen brought us non-drinking water… but it will freeze unless we move it inside.”

Another mural in Borodyanka depicts a man resembling Russian president Vladimir Putin being thrown to the ground during a judo match with a young boy. Putin held an honorary black belt in judo until it was revoked earlier this year by World Taekwondo. The fourth mural shows children playing on a seesaw made from part of a tank. The fifth mural depicts a young gymnast holding a streamer aloft, and the sixth is a woman in a gas mask bearing a fire extinguisher. They all share a common theme of resilience in the face of horror and destruction.

Located about 35 miles northwest of Kyiv, Borodyanka was besieged by Russian forces early in the invasion and suffered extensive aerial bombardment, with many buildings reduced to rubble. Most of its 13,000 residents fled prior to its Russian occupation in late February. When the town came back into Ukrainian control in April, returning residents found that even those structures that had escaped bombs and shelling had been ransacked and burglarized.

Ukrainians like Alina Mazur, a 31-year-old from Kyiv, have traveled to the Borodyanka area to see the murals in person. “This is such a historic moment for our country, that people like Banksy and other famous figures are coming here and showing the world what Russia has done to us,” she told Smithsonian Magazine.

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He created 10,000 original pieces the size of a standard sheet of paper, each with an NFT twin. Each piece was truly unique, as no painting had a single repeated color in its dots. Every artwork was also signed by Hirst, numbered, stamped, watermarked, given a microdot, and included a hologram of the artist’s portrait on the back. Further utilizing modern-day technology for his first NFT project, Hirst fed his favorite song lyrics into an AI-enabled computer program to generate titles for all 10,000 pieces. Standout titles include “Totally gonna sell you,” “Laugh in our faces,” and “None of this mattered.”

The purchasing period began in July 2021. Buyers could opt for the physical or the digital copy of the piece, and the one they didn’t choose would be destroyed. They had a full year (until July 2022) to decide.

Interest in Hirst’s collection boomed for the first month, with 2,036 purchases and over $47 million in sales. However, over the course of the remaining 11 months, the collection’s gimmicky nature lost its shock value, causing floor prices and trading volumes to steadily decline. By the spring of 2022, “crypto winter” hit and sent the NFT market into a nosedive.

In the end, buyers were fairly evenly split. “The final numbers are: 5,149 physicals and 4,851 NFTs (meaning I will have to burn 4,851 corresponding physical Tenders),” Hirst wrote on Twitter, beneath a photo of himself despondently laying prostrate over boxes of his artwork.

That same day, Hirst also tweeted: “I have no idea what the future holds, whether the NFTs or physicals are going to be more valuable or less. But that is art! The fun, part of the journey, and maybe the point of the whole project. Even after one year, I feel the journey is just beginning.”

Partnering with HENI, Hirst put the pieces on display at London’s Newport Street Gallery from September 9th to October 31st. Everyday for an hour, the physical counterparts of purchased NFTs would be thrown into a fireplace for visitors to watch. The remainder were all burned simultaneously at the close of the show.

Public reception for the show was mixed. Artist Roy Tyson, known as Roy’s People, snatched up the tangible piece #4,967 entitled “What Am I To Know,” opting instead to destroy the NFT version. He says: “I’m a big fan of Hirst and I love the way he pushes the boundaries and doesn’t answer to anyone, doesn’t really sort of stick to any old-fashioned rules of the art world.”

On the other hand, detractors see “The Currency” as a shameless commercial ploy. Art critic Florence Hallett wrote in Britain’s i paper that the collection is “rather like a small child dangling teddy over the lavatory in a bid for the upper hand — only with considerably less sincerity and stupendous amounts of money.”

In his early days, Hirst himself said “I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it ,and then say ‘f off’. But after a while you can get away with things.”

Known not only for his spots, but his art of taxidermized dead animals, Hirst is considered the richest living British artist today. More of his work can be viewed on his Instagram account.

The post Artist Damien Hirst Burns Physical Copies of His NFTs first appeared on Dornob.

“Public Art Electric Vehicle Charging Stations” is a collection of proposals that merge art, architecture, and technology, giving people something fun to look at and interact with while they’re charging their electric vehicles. The project addresses one major anxiety of transitioning from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to EVs — a lack of charging stations. Jantzen believes that creating massive, bright, and oddly-shaped charging stations could draw attention to the need for sustainable options and reassure the public that such stations actually exist.

Perhaps even more importantly, these EV charging stations don’t rely on grid power. Electricity in most of the world is still supplied by fossil fuels like coal and oil, and EVs usually depend on that energy to charge. To get around that issue (which will only be solved by shifting power grids to renewable energy sources), Jantzen’s charging stations are all solar and/or wind-powered.

The five public art charging stations are respectively named the Silver Solar Charging Station, the Black Waves Solar Charging Station, the Red Solar Charging Station, the Yellow Solar Charging Station, and the Solar Wind Charging Station. Each one sort of resembles a futuristic car wash, but each has its own set of distinguishing features.

The Silver Solar Charging Station is a corrugated steel structure supporting a large photovoltaic panel that’s held high in the air on two massive silver arms. The Black Waves Solar Charging Station, also made of steel, has a more fluid, aerodynamic design, with ribbon-like sections of steel covered in photovoltaic panels undulating over the top.

The bright pops of color seen in the Red Charging Station and Yellow Charging Station stand out even from afar, drawing the curiosity of passersby for miles around. The Red version has zig-zag solar panels on top, while the Yellow version features an eco-friendly concrete composite dome, with a series of circular disc-shaped solar panels mounted on its roof.

The only one that isn’t designed to be entered is the Solar Wind Charging Station. “Instead, people can drive alongside of the station to charge their vehicles,” says Jantzen. “It is also made of steel with a large curved shaped photovoltaic panel mounted onto the overhang. In addition to the solar panel, it also has a large vertical axis wind turbine incorporated into the design. Both the solar panel and the wind turbine make electricity from the sun and from the wind to charge the electric vehicles directly, and/or with batteries they continually charged.”

Thus far, these sculptural EV charging stations are just concepts, but perhaps they’ll spark some creativity as new charging stations continue to pop up around the world.

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The pieces are designed to be experienced in conversation with the city of Vierzon, where they each present a conversation with its past, present, inhabitants, and dreams for the future. Integrated within the landscapes of everyday life, the exhibition is divided into four themes: “The Utopia of Territories,” “The Third Feminism,” “Subversive Tenderness,” and “The World Built by Women.” The latter is a parallel exhibition bringing together three French collections (Centre Pompidou, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, and FRAC Centre-Val de Loire) exploring the works produced by women architects.

The Biennale’s website explains: “The concept of ‘feminist democracy’ that we borrow from author Marie-Cécile Naves gives rise to several questions that lie at the heart of the Biennale: which cities and urbanism programs are devised by and for women? How can their productions emerge from their invisibility? What interpretation of the history of the arts can be seen through the lens of feminisms?”

“Entitled Infinite Freedom, A World for a Feminist Democracy and dedicated to the exclusive invitation of around fifty women artists and architects, the 2022 Biennale of FRAC Centre-Val de Loire is primarily intended as a festival geared towards a new imaginary founded on equality, in which various social, militant, and artistic readings cohabitate, with a view to instilling a new kind of common sense.”

The Utopia of Territories consists of works highlighting new dynamics of participatory democracy, such as women’s marches, set within highly visible urban locations in Vierzon. “While the geography of gender has demonstrated that urban space is a sexed territory where women have always maintained complex relationships with the city, this Biennale is intended as a site of symbolic appropriation,” the organizers explain.

The Third Feminism explores ways in which feminism can maintain its diversity and its heritage of participation in political, social, and anti-colonial struggles as interpreted through art. The organizers add “If this Biennale wants to overcome its singular relationship to the history of art and to use the concept of feminist democracy to update the interpretation of the discipline, it therefore needs to question the new practices of equitable citizenry, the role of women in the creation of cities and territories, while taking into account the specific history of Vierzonnaises.”

Subversive Tenderness focuses on “the contemporary alternative to the modernist avant-garde,” defining tenderness as the juncture between nature and culture. To subvert that is to flip it on its head with an exhibition that “occasionally makes us pay a visit to some of the beings that we refuse to look at. At other times, it reminds us of our recurring temptations to contain freedoms, or twist bodies to injure them. Especially those of women.”

The 2022 Biennale of FRAC is on display through January 1st, 2023, and a map of the public works can be found on the FRAC Centre-Val de Loire website.

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Christophe Guinet mainly works with natural materials to create his botanical sculptures. His latest project “highlights a series of sculptures representing tree trunks that come straight out of a fantastic and magical universe,” as he explains on his website. “This series of works consist of five tree trunks which connote through their shapes emotions that we can find in nature.”

The collection includes five large sculptures: a heart, an infinity loop, a spring coil reminiscent of barbed wire, a simple knot, and a more complex knot he calls “Wooden Lace.” Guinet stages the pieces in the forest and photographs them in their “natural environment,” adding to the illusion that someone has stumbled upon strange natural formations. The artist hopes the sculptures spur a sense of childlike wonder, awe, and appreciation for everything trees can do.

We’ve seen other works of art in which living trees are painstakingly guided into certain shapes over years or even decades, like the stick buildings of Patrick Dougherty and “Baubotanic” living architecture by students at the University of Stuttgart. Sometimes nature itself does the shaping, like when trees grow around objects, twisting themselves into surprising and unexpected forms. Monsieur Plant makes things happen a little faster than that with his own artistic methods, which involve plaster and real pine bark.

Guinet says forest walks inspired him to work with natural materials, raising questions about how nature adapts to its environment and its own innate creativity. His previous works often incorporated wood, bark, and moss, like an entire wearable Batman suit made of pink bark, a tree bark skateboard, arm-shaped moss sculptures wrapping around a real tree, and Nike sneakers made out of flowers.

“Contemplative and passionate aesthete of the plant world, he uses his findings related to places and seasons, to create works of art with care and a concentration close to the meditative state,” reads Guinet’s artist statement. “The artistic process is thus an integral part of the final work of art. As ephemeral and fragile as a bouquet of flowers, Christophe’s compositions show us the beauty of nature through everyday and cult objects. His care to minimize the harmful impact on the environment is in contrast to the escalation of consumerism and the race to keep producing objects which are ever newer, more technical, more ‘hype’.”

“His fields of reflection revolve around love, life, death, as well as the ambiguity of the cycle of life in a society where death has become extremely taboo. It is interesting to see a work fade, die, follow the cycle of the seasons. It reminds us of our own cycle: a flower blooms and fades to resume the same cycle the following year. We too follow certain cycles & states: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, then death. It is inevitable and every stage of life should be celebrated and magnified.”

The post Monsieur Plant Molds Tree Trunks into Shockingly Unnatural Sculptures first appeared on Dornob.

Nomura’s latest exhibition, “Life Through Holes,” showcases her unusual artistic method at Hibiya OKUROJI for the 2022 edition of DESIGNART Tokyo. Consisting of a refrigerator, a dining table with four chairs, and an assortment of associated objects, the works obscure the seemingly rigid and artificial qualities of plastic, calling to mind sea creatures, spiderwebs, and other creations of nature. We often think of plastic as a manmade material that’s somehow separate from every other material on Earth, as if it crash-landed here from outer space. But Nomura’s works aim to remind us that it has the same origins as any other material we consider more desirable.

“I was fascinated by the way plastic products that seemed to be inorganic were given a new sense of life by harboring cells of light,” says Nomura. “Petroleum, the raw material of plastic, was born from ancient plankton carcasses under the heat and pressure of the Earth over many years. The act of making a hole is to reveal the origin of this material and reproduce it as a mental landscape.”

“Although the material called plastic is considered to be a disgusting material in terms of environmental problems, the brilliance of these cells of light illuminates the value hidden in our modern lives. What is the true value of materials and where is the true richness of the relationship between things and people in the present age where things are overflowing? As if to keep asking myself that question, I can’t help but keep drilling holes today.”

To create these objects, Nomura works with a soldering iron and an air filter mask, transforming ordinary objects like appliances and household furniture. Everything from disposable utensils to yogurt cups seem like entirely new objects once she’s done with them.

“Life Through Holes” doesn’t change the fact that plastic breaks down into tiny particles that end up in the furthest reaches of our planet, from our own digestive systems to those of creatures lurking in the deepest, darkest corners of the oceans. But it does prompt us to ponder whether we could change how we use this material, and thus, its impact. Are there potential reuses we just haven’t thought of yet? Could the new plastic-digesting bacteria currently under development help plastic re-enter a more natural life cycle?

Nina Nomura was born in Tokyo in 1993 and graduated from the Space Design Program at the Kuwasawa Design School in 2021. She received the MIKIKO award at SICF22 Spiral Aoyama that same year. You can follow her work on her website and on Instagram @_ninanomura.

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Members of the group Just Stop Oil (wearing t-shirts bearing the same slogan) splashed the soup onto the “Sunflowers” painting to protest the extraction and use of fossil fuels, and then glued their hands to the wall. The spectacle was so absurd, some wondered whether it was a psy-op to make climate activism look bad.

Perhaps you’ve added this recent protest to a mental list of other annoying activist actions: road blockages during the protests against racial injustice in the summer of 2020, for instance, and the vegans pouring out milk in British supermarkets. A group of activists has even started deflating tires on trucks and SUVs across the UK and United States this year to call attention to the climate crisis. These acts do not involve violence or direct harm, but they are disruptive. They’re inconvenient. They are, indeed, annoying, even for people who sympathize with the causes they champion.

But you know what’s really inconvenient? Getting killed on the streets by police because of the color of your skin. Suffering that goes unnoticed or ignored by the world at large. Altering the planet we live on enough to kill off our own species, along with thousands of other innocent species. The Earth will survive humans, but why are we so hell-bent on destroying ourselves?

Maybe it’s because collectively, we’re too distracted to see the reality of what’s happening. We’re focused on living our individual lives, consuming media, getting to work on time, receiving packages two days after we pressed a button to order them. We don’t believe it’s really true that such a terrible thing could occur — that our own children and grandchildren will suffer as a direct result of our inaction.

In this context, the actions of the Just Stop Oil activists suddenly appear gentle and tame. They chose that specific painting because it’s protected by glass, and thus easy to clean. No permanent harm occurred. The activists deflating tires aren’t slashing them, they’re temporarily immobilizing the vehicles. And nobody should be crying over a little spilt milk.

There’s no doubt that such actions will make some onlookers angry enough to turn them against the associated causes, but those people are likely a small minority. Others will (rightfully) be annoyed. But will you feel merely annoyed if your area is suddenly struck by extreme heat waves that kill vulnerable people, destroy crops, and dry up sources of drinking water? Will you be inconvenienced when climate change leads to food shortages and spurs mass migration to the few temperate areas that remain?

It’s very easy to bury our heads in the sand and ignore crises that are happening all around us. For activists and others who are vividly aware of the consequences, these are desperate acts attempting to break through that complacency.

The United Nations just announced that there’s no longer a credible pathway to the 1.5-degree Celsius goal needed to reduce carbon emissions to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis, and the world barely noticed. We’re frogs slowly boiling in a pot while watching Netflix and debating whether roughly half the human population should have the right to reproductive autonomy. At least the Just Stop Oil activists got us talking about climate change, even if was only for a minute.

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Cox and his wife Alena (aka Mrs. Doodle) started by recruiting friends and family to help them paint everything stark white, inside and out. When the pandemic restrictions and lockdowns started in spring 2020, Cox took advantage of his sudden downtime, devoting himself entirely to this project. He did all the doodling himself, working on one room at a time, starting with the upstairs bedrooms. Each one has a loose theme, like birds, sea creatures, food, clouds, robots, or “heaven and hell.” Cox doesn’t sketch anything out or even come up with a particular idea before he starts working, preferring to just draw whatever comes to mind in the moment.

Everything is monochromatic, and anytime Cox made a mistake, he left it in place. “The nature of a doodle is to let it be,” he told The Washington Post. By the time he was done, Cox had used 900 liters (238 gallons) of white paint, 401 cans of black spray paint, 286 bottles of black drawing paint, and 2,296 pen nibs. He also took 1,857 photographs of the process, later stitching them together to create a roughly two-minute-long stop-motion animation that reveals what the project looked like as it came to life.

Though Cox greatly enjoyed getting into the improvisational flow of constant doodling, it did have an effect on his psyche. In February 2020, he got the flu and started having doodle-related hallucinations, spending six weeks in a psychiatric ward. “It’s a scary feeling to think you are losing your mind and not know what’s real,” he told the Sunday Times. “I’m glad I have a grasp on reality again and now I want to make sure to go on walks and step outside of doodle world now and then.”

While he was working on it, Cox did his best to keep his doodled home under wraps. He limited visitors and was always afraid a delivery driver would snap a photo and put it on the internet. Luckily for him, that never happened. His neighbors have been supportive (and the fact that his house is hidden behind a dense layer of trees probably helps with that). However, the couple who sold him the house probably don’t love the results now that Cox has shared them with the world. “They told me whatever you do, please don’t doodle,” he told the Evening Standard. “I didn’t listen.”

Cox was able to buy the house in the first place after his career took off, the result not of agents or gallery representation, but social media and word-of-mouth. By 2021, the 28-year-old was selling nearly $4.7 million worth of doodles around the world over a period of just nine months. He now has over 2.7 million followers on Instagram and more than 95,000 YouTube subscribers, not to mention collaborations with major brands like MTV Europe and Puma.

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“It is not the oldest of its kind, but it’s the most complete and the rarest,” said Hammam Saad, Associate Director at Syria’s General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in an interview with the Associated Press, adding: “We have no similar mosaic.”

The artwork in question, made of half-inch square stone tiles, is remarkably well-preserved, having been hidden underneath the 1,600-year-old Roman building that stood above it until recently. The property was bought by businessmen with the Nabu Museum in Lebanon and donated to the Syrian government for excavation.

“There are other buildings, and it’s clear that the mosaic extends far wider,” Sulaf Fawakherji, Syrian actress and board member at the Nabu Museum, told the AP. “Rastan historically is an important city, and it could possibly be a very important heritage city for tourism.”

Having unearthed roughly 1,300 square feet so far, the grand floor covering depicts scenes from the Trojan War, featuring soldiers with swords and shields and the names of many Greek leaders who fought in the 1200 B.C. conflict. The Roman water god Neptune is also highlighted in one panel along with 40 of his mistresses. Another segment shows the Greek demi-god Hercules battling the queen of the Amazons and her ancient warriors in one of his 12 labors.

“What is in front of us is a discovery that is rare on a global scale,” says Saad. “We can’t identify the type of the building, whether it’s a public bathhouse or something else, because we have not finished excavating yet.” Syrian officials heralded the discovery of this mosaic as the most important archeological find since the civil war started 11 years ago.

Rastan was one of the first Syrian cities to rise up in rebellion against the totalitarian government of Bashar al-Assad, experiencing a tumultuous seven years until the Syrian government regained control in 2018. The city has had a rich historical past as an important locale during Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman rule.

Many of the country’s national treasures were vandalized or destroyed during the civil war. All six of Syria’s UNESCO sites have been damaged in some way amidst the fighting. The worst artifact offense was in 2015, when the Islamic State took over the ancient city of Palmrya and destroyed the first century A.D. Temple of Bel with explosives, as well as the third-century Roman Arch of Triumph and the second century B.C. Temple of Baalshamin. Since the Syrian government has reclaimed the city, it has been working on plans to restore all three sites.

Even this latest mosaic was under threat of removal from rebel armies in the recent past.

“Unfortunately, there were armed groups that tried to sell the mosaic at one point in 2017 and listed it on social media platforms,” Saad explains. Luckily, it’s once again protected by the government — even if that government is tyrannical and should not be allowed to continue ruling.

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Meade, who’s best known for painting directly onto the human body, chose to splash her panels with textural brushstrokes in a gorgeous shade of cobalt blue.

Vittoria, an artist and a poet whose pieces are often inspired by femininity and the female form, created a graphic work of art in which voluptuous curves cascade across the panels.

Illustrator and designer Brown wanted her panels to bring the relaxed feeling of being on vacation into the kitchen. Her colorful design is complete with a sunset, a rowboat, and turquoise water.

The panels can be mixed and matched with Samsung Bespoke’s portfolio of panel colors and finishes so you can truly design the fridge of your dreams. Pair Meade’s blue brushstrokes with dark blue and white for a more subdued effect, or contrast it with an unexpected pop of bright contrasting color. Vittoria’s design pulls right from Samsung’s available colors, so it’s easy to get a beautifully complementary effect. You can punch up Brown’s bright scene with clementine orange, yellow sunrise, or emerald green, or make it moodier with navy, charcoal, and morning blue.

“Lowe’s is the No. 1 home appliance retailer, and our customers know they can trust us to deliver on quality and innovation. But we also know they’re looking for the total home style package, with products that don’t just offer performance, but style and personal expression, too,” says Jen Wilson, Lowe’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Brand and Marketing. “Through this collaboration with Samsung, a trusted leader in innovation, we’re thrilled to be bringing these one-of-a-kind panels to customers who are not only looking to upgrade their appliances, but are also craving a unique way to express their personal style through art.”

“Samsung’s Bespoke appliances embrace emerging home customization trends that express personality and style using bold colors, new materials, and artful designs,” adds Gary So, Vice President or Marketing and Digital Appliances at Samsung Electronics America. “Lowe’s limited-edition Bespoke refrigerator panels inspire more ways for consumers to personalize their living spaces and show off their style like never before.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ISwK9Y2pXk&feature=youtu.be

The Lowes x Samsung Bespoke Artists Series can be seen on display at select Lowe’s stores, and the entire line can be ordered and customized online as part of Lowe’s House of Style. Each panel is sold separately and can be switched with the other Bespoke panels. These artist panels will only be available for a limited time, but you can shop the whole Samsung Bespoke series as part of Lowe’s regular selection.

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