What's up! trouvaillesdujour: January 2013

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Alain Delorme's "Little Dolls"; A Contemplation of Children's Dreams and their Parents' Fantasies

The series Little Dolls questions the identity of the little girls who are playing with their looks as candidates of beauty contests. Through a pixel surgery as Alain Delorme puts it, he captures and changes the girls' looks and brings a sour criticism of how our society uses innocence.

Nowadays, little girls want to look like their idols: Lorie, Priscilla, Britney Spears… The “Lolita phenomenon” keeps growing, really ingrained in our society. These baby

women can be seen everywhere: on TV, in magazines, films, etc… My series “Little Dolls” questions

this phenomenon.

This work has been inspired by a photography of a little girl, taken for an advertising campaign of the

multinational company Mc Donald, an apostle of the standardization of the way of life. This little

blond head for magazines, as sterilized as the cake in front of her, was being offered a Barbie doll in

the end of the shooting. This gave me the idea of hybridizing her face with the one of the toy. A body

mutation operated by computer tools, in the same artistic line as Aziz and Cucher or Inez Van

Lamswerde. Creative works where one plays with pixels as a scientist does with genes, to recreate the

Man, the child here, at will.

The process is always the same: a little girl, a cake, a colourful background and the parents. Then the

transformation begins, thanks to a software retouching images. I apply a mask on the face of the little

girl and remodel the nose, polish the features and modify the carnation, change the colour of the eyes,

of the hair and recomb her. The background, position and proportions get standardized. This form of

digital plastic surgery erases the real, replaced by completely artificial image. However, despite the

lifting and relooking, I wanted to keep a certain idea of childhood. The hair can be somehow tangled,

the nails are not well-groomed, the clothes, the accessories remain and help producing an impression

of reality which leaves its identity to each image. This operative mode leads to a form of personalities

normalization.

The “Little Dolls” series is ambiguous. Neither family photography nor advertising imagery, the

representation oscillates between womanhood and childhood, fantasy and reality. The digital

technology subtly infiltrates the image, as the aesthetic codes of adults have impregnated the world of

childhood. The digital photographic creation that I present here with “Little Dolls” wants before all to

mirror our society, reflect the children’s dreams and their parents’ fantasies.

~~~Alain Delorme

Alain Delorme lives and works in Paris, France.

Alain Delorme

Little Dolls

Emma © Alain Delorme

Anissa © Alain Delorme

Lilou © Alain Delorme

Hanna © Alain Delorme

Evencia © Alain Delorme

Sarah © Alain Delorme

Tara © Alain Delorme

Courtesy of the artist
Alain Delorme is represented by Magda Danysz Gallery

Also on the Huffington Post

Friday, January 18, 2013

Marc Quinn's sculpture of a Giant Baby unveiled at Gardens by the Bay

Singapore, 18 January 2013 – Planet, a giant sculpture of a sleeping baby by internationally acclaimed British artist Marc Quinn, was unveiled at a ceremony at Gardens by the Bay in Singapore this evening. The sculpture has been donated for permanent display at the Gardens by Mr and Mrs Putra and Imelda Masagung.

Located at The Meadow, Planet is one of Marc Quinn’s most important works. The sculpture, which is a depiction of the artist’s infant son, appears to float above the ground and is a technical tour-de-force. It has been shown internationally to great acclaim in the Beyond Limitsexhibition of contemporary sculpture at Chatsworth House in 2008, and in the exhibition The Littoral Zone at the Musée Océanographique de Monaco in 2012.

“To me, Planet is a paradox – hugely heavy, yet the bronze appears weightless; overwhelmingly big, yet also an image of vulnerability. It is both a reflection of ourselves and the earth upon which we live,” said Quinn.

Planet forms the newest addition to the over 40 artworks nestled among the horticultural splendour of Gardens by the Bay. It is also set to become a prominent landmark to the Gardens’ new city gateway, which connects the Gardens to the Bayfront MRT Station and provides greater access to the Marina Bay downtown.

Marc Quinn

Planet, 2008

Courtesy of Gardens by the Bay

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Thomas Jorion: "Forgotten Palaces", where beauty meets decay

In his series Forgotten Palaces, French photographer Thomas Jorion has captured deserted palaces and stunning villas abandoned by their owners for various reasons. Mostly shot in Italy, these poignant images underlie the ephemeral, the fragility of human existence. These forgotten palaces reflect a singular aesthetic between decay and eternal beauty, quiet places where the sound of our footsteps still resonate, where melancholy is ever-present, a poetry of absence and silence.

Thomas Jorion photographs urban ruins and condemned buildings, spaces that no longer serve the purposes for which they were built. He lives and works in Paris.

Thomas Jorion

Forgotten Palaces

Pianoforte, 2012

Scalone, 2010

Porpora, 2010

Palma, 2010

2009 © Thomas Jorion

Gli angeli, 2009

La scala rossa, 2009

Courtesy of Thomas Jorion

On the Huffington Post

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Lluis Barba's new artworks; 'Self-Portraits' of outstanding artists in modern background contexts

Although each self-portrait is an independent work, with its own message and its own identity, each is part of a larger project. The portraits take a unitary meaning within the entire Self-Portraits series, allowing a unified dialogue of the absurd.

Self-Portraits is currently on view at Dean Project Gallery, NY. The exhibition displays seven self-portraits of artists who are, by the point of view of Lluis Barba, outstanding artists in the evolution of art history. Until now Barba has interpreted the artworks of the selected artists to create his subjective re-readings of their works. However the artists chosen in the Self-Portraits series are the center of attention.

Lluis Barba reworks iconic artworks to comment on contemporary society, introducing modern characters into Hyeronimus Bosch's or Pieter Brueghel's medieval scenes. His work leverages the language of artistic symbolism to critique both modern society and the art world, utilizing society darlings and art world players such as Kate Moss, Brad Pitt and Jay Jopling.

Born in Spain, Lluis Barba has exhibited his work in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Canada. His work is held in major public collections, such as the Artothèque d'Art Anekdota in Paris, Museo International Cairo, Museo Marugame Hirai Japan and more.

Lluis Barba lives and works in Barcelona.

Lluis Barba

Self-Portraits