artactuel – Because Art Is

Kristian Nygaard, Installation at NoPlace Oslo. 2014.

« The One Thing After Another
Per Kristian Nygaard at KHM Gallery
by Wojciech Olejnik

Per Kristian Nygaard’s exhibition The One Thing After Another explores the influence of social and political ideologies on public and private space, on its material composition, on its architecture. Consider House (2010), a model of a high-rise building constructed out of unfinished plywood. It towers over the viewer like a modernist sculpture, simple and elegant in its design and use of material. Such simplicity marks much modernist city planning and architecture, which seem to embody a bare rationality developed out of a rigorous consideration of the placement and arrangement of objects. This approach involves the implementation of an overarching order, where even ornamentation stems from its very structure, according to an inner logic. House (2010) presents the deduced, bare essentials of such a logic: form and material. Presented as a model it acts as a demonstration of the original design, of the formal concerns that precede the eventual completion of the structure, and in its unpainted state it brings attention to the raw material used in its construction.

It is no secret that in modernist architecture the materials used were often left exposed, that they themselves symbolized new engineering feats, but also represented a new modern age. Nygaard’s work such as Unapologetic Architect II (2010), brings attention to certain forms and shapes that have also been crucial in establishing the modernist aesthetic. This piece is a drawing of an imagined building, which compresses rectangular shapes to form a complex architectural structure, reminiscent of a mall or some other social space. A uniform grid of windows covers the walls and the roof, with steel frames and glass convening in an angular geometric reality of cubes and squares. Unlike a circle or a triangle, the cube is infinitely divisible into the same shape, into equal portions, and thus it may represent equality itself. Here, the clean lines and Lego-like units that define this public place suggest a uniformity of the social body, of its infinite mass, and how its wealth and property can be portioned into discrete, equal yet separate units. »

Entire Article / Suite de l’article

Text: The One Thing After Another. by Wojciech Olejnik – Interview in Måg magazine 2011. Were do artists come from, by Per Kristian Nygård 2011

De Zeen Article and pictures here

Harmonie, Laurent Chehere Flying Houses

Laurent Chéhère

Site internet de l’artiste Laurent Chéhère

« En mixant photographie traditionnelle et manipulation numérique, sa série surréaliste Flying Houses élève l’architecture à un niveau jamais vu. L’artiste isole des bâtiments de leur contexte urbain et les libère de leur environnement étouffant. Les maisons volent ainsi dans les nuages, tels des cerfs-volants.

Inspiré par une vision poétique du vieux Paris et par le célèbre court-métrage Le Ballon rouge d’Albert Lamorisse, Laurent Chéhère a parcouru les quartiers de Belleville et de Ménilmontant en posant son regard sur leurs maisons typiques et « fatiguées ». Les images de l’artiste saisissent une lévitation inattendue : maintenues au sol par des mains invisibles, comme autant de ballons retenus par des fils, ces anciennes bâtisses flottent dans le ciel, glissant sur la surface, elles nous dévoilent leur beauté cachée. » (suite de l’article sur le site ArtActuel)

« Laurent Chéhère is an award-winning French photographer known for his commercial work for clients such as Audi and Nike. He left the advertising industry to travel the world and along the way was born his flying houses series, a collection of fantastical buildings, homes, tents and trailers removed from their backgrounds and suspended in the sky as if permanently airborne. » (read the entire article on Muriel Guepin Gallery’s website)

« Laurent Chéhère only began exhibiting his photography in 2012—before then, he was solely known as an award-winning editorial and commercial photographer. A shift in interest led Chéhère to leave advertising behind to travel around the world. It was during this that he began to kindle his love for architecture and its narrative possibilities. Chéhère’s most famous series, titled “Flying Houses” (2012–), is comprised of fictional buildings suspended above backdrops of clouded skies. Each image is a composite of up to a dozen real buildings, homes, tents, and trailers that Chéhère has photographed in similar lighting conditions, and composited using Photoshop. Chéhère describes the series as a means to help buildings tell their stories, whether “real or not, funny or sad.” (from Artsy)