The process behind the artist's large-scale portraits pairing cultural icons

Kim Dong Yoo

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by Anna Carnick

Already a household name in Asia, Korean painter Kim Dong Yoo's inaugural U.S. exhibit at NYC'sHasted Kraeutler gallery aims to introduce the artist to a new, American audience. The self-titled show features a series of large-scale paintings that, from afar, depict a single grand portrait of notables from John F. Kennedy to Michael Jackson. Upon closer inspection, however, one realizes that the work is actually comprised of hundreds of smaller portraits of other, connected figures from Marilyn Monroe to Madonna.

Ground up bones and porcelain dust in a series of biological sculptures

Studio Visit: John O'Reilly

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by James Thorne

In advance of his first solo exhibition "I stand and look at them long and long" at RH Gallery, we stopped by John O'Reilly's Brooklyn studio to see what the young artist had on tap. The warehouse space is shared between four sculptural artists working with communal equipment and unparalleled resourcefulness. O'Reilly, for his part, mixes porcelain with bone powder and polyrethane resin to cast realistic biological altarpieces from silicone molds.

The artist let us in on the process behind his creations, which all start off as clay models. Silicone is applied by brush to the clay forms until the film reaches a 1/4-inch thickness. The mold is cut along a set of seams and reattached in a plaster mastermold for rigidity. The bone powder comes from his dog's leftovers, pu

lverized in the studio and added to the resin and porcelain mixture to create a translucent, off-white coloration.

Anonymous nudes explore the mystery of the human form

100 Headless Women

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by Greg Stefano

To say that nudity is trending is nothing new. The statement has certainly rung true for the

last 60,000 years, or at least since we began walking upright and admiring each other's progressively less hairy bodies. Appreciation of the naked form plays many roles in art, culture and society, and while photographer Max Snow doesn't strive to dissect this complicated relationship in his show "100 Headless Women", his unique take on portraiture explores how the body can tell a deeper story.

Adel Abdessemed

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

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A collection of new works opens today at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York City, showcasing the creative talents of Adel Abdessemed. The Algerian-born artist tackles a range of materials and mediums in a collection focusing on themes of violence, war and spectatorship. The namesake piece "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" is built to the dimensions of Picasso's "Guernica," and is made from a mass of taxidermic animals. Abdessemed has scorched the fur to achieve a blackened effect, a process that a

ctually fills gallery space with a distinct sulfuric smell.

Frank Yamrus's self portraits take inspiration from a midlife crisis

I Feel Lucky

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by James Thorne

Debuting a series of self portraits at NYC's Clamp Gallery , Frank Yamrus returns from a photographic hiatus after several years of soul searching from out behind the camera. "I Feel Lucky" marks the photographer's response to his mid-life crisis, reproducing significant moments from his life in an exploration of faith, relationships, mortality, photography and health. Reveling in the changing lines of his face and facing demons of his past, Yamrus creates a thoroughly personal examination of his life to date.

Knife, fork and scoop combine in one biodegradable utensil

Heart Part

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by Graham Hiemstra

Share food with a loved one with Heart Part, a cleverly designed eating utensil

that opens up into two pieces combining fork, knife and scoop. Recently spotted at the NY International Gift Fairby our

friend Alissia Melka-Teichroew of byAMT design studio, the Heart Part appeals to both food and design nerds with its smart use of form and space.

Cinematic influences pervade the annual photo fair

Photo LA 2012

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by Max Gold

Photo LA was sprawled across the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with as much bustle as the city itself. Wandering through the labyrinth of pop-up exhibitors, those that stood out most conveyed a strong cinematic narrative with a sense of humor.

In his Skeletons in the Closet Klaus Pichler ameliorates the dusty archives of Vienna's Museu

m of Natural History with austere yet personality-loaded behind-the scenes-photographs. The stuffed animals become characters, or as Pichler puts it, "they are full of life, but dead nonetheless."

RAC

Recession Art at Culturefix

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by James Thorne

Sensitive to the cash-strapped culture lovers of the world, Recession Art began with the simple premise of uniting aspiring collectors with emerging artists. After three years of shows at Brooklyn's Invisible Dog, they have now opened RAC on New York's Lower East Side. Seated atop Culturefix, an artsy watering hole with adjoining event space, RAC combines a storefront shop with a permanent gallery.

"We wanted to bring together two groups of people we knew personally," says founder Emma Kat

z. "Artists who were making work but had no way to get it out into the world, and young art lovers who were maybe furnishing their first apartment and wanted access to original artwork." True to their mission, Katz and curator Melanie Kress stocked the storefront with prints and books by emerging artists, along with affordable original works.

Studio Visit

Ouattara Watts

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by Karen Day

While we all like to tap into an artist's brain, find out exactly what goes on in their mind to make them create what they do, sometimes there isn't really more behind a work of art than simply a vision that a p

erson is unable to explain through words. The different approaches to making art—from pragmatic to utterly emotional—is part of what keeps the field perpetually intriguing.

A reticent painter originally from Côte d'Ivoire, Ouattara Watts recently opened up his studio to Cool Hunting for a preview of the newly formed works comprising his forthcoming exhibition. The lar

ge, garage-like space is located in an industrial part of Brooklyn between Williamsburg and Bushwick that's home to numerous emerging artists. With both the Whitney Museum and Venice biennials on his résumé, the veteran painter may hold more clout than his neighbors, but his artistic spirit seems unaffected by his widespread success.

First look at the second issue of the Lindsay Lohan-focused zine by Bibiru and The Wormholes

Lindzine #2

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by Jacob Resneck

The 25-year-old actress-singer-jailbird Lindsay Lohan has attracted as much publicity off-screen as she has for her roles in slasher films and family comedies alike. The hijinks that have led her in and out of rehab centers and through the criminal justice system has always left us wondering whether she's a celebrity trainwreck or a brilliant self-publicist—or both.

Late last year Mexican-American artist Bibiru and his cohorts The Wormholes put together a 56-p

age zine dedicated to Lohan, a brilliantly titled, vaguely tongue-in-cheek tribute that captured massive attention and prompted renewed reflection on her undeniable beauty.

The studies that inform Arne Quinze's monumental installations

My Home, My House, My Stilthouse

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by James Thorne

Best known for massive, vibrant wood canopies installed in metropolitan locations, Arne Quinze presents "My Home, My House, My Stilthouse", a collection of smaller works that helps to explain his larger undertakings. On view now through 31 March 2012 at the Vicky David Gallery in NYC, the new pieces explore themes of escapism, order and voyeurism. The exhibition gives a fascinating glimpse inside the quiet studio work that underpins Quinze's precariously balanced structures.

Fab Ciraolo

Chilean illustrator combines pop culture, sci-fi and fantasy

in a mind-bending amalgamation

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by Greg Stefano

The work of Fab Ciraolo makes it immediately clear that the Chilean-born illustrator has a very interesting outlook on this world. His pieces combine re-imagined elements of nostalgic popular culture with fantastical sci-fi standards and beautiful space-like atmospheres. Incorporating classic cartoon characters, fairy tale favorites and edgy popular icons, Ciraolo constructs compelling and enchanting artwork that stirs up whimsical feelings for the past while keeping one foot forward. We recently caught up with C

iraolo and got some insight into his process and where his surreal scenes take root.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez

Modern-day Cairo society in the style of the 17th-century masters

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by Jacob Resneck

Spanish photographer Miguel Ángel Sánchez moved from Madrid to Cairo in 2009, a year before the Arab Spring thrust the country into the world's spotlight. Despite being in the eye of one of the greatest political and social storms of a generation, he's used his talent to capture the nuances of 21st-century Egyptian society in the style of a 17th-century Spanish painter.

"We have a very important pictorial legacy in Spain. My work is the result of my love for the Spanish baroque imagery and the Italian and Spanish naturalism by Caravaggio and Ribera," says Sánchez. "It's a tribute to those Spanish paintings, where myth and reality mixed to create an intermediate state that I try to translate in images. Cairo mixes these sensations very well."

New Design

Ango Lighting Design

by Isabelle Doal

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Seen for the first time at the recent Maison & Objet trade show in Paris, the forthcoming lighting collection by Ango is a sophisticated balance of modern forms with the distinct natural vibe that comes from a masterful use of silk cocoons.

The organic appeal of the cocoons—bright white when the lamps are off and a soft, warm diffusion of light when on—form the basis of Ango's new collection. Produced with composite materials and innovative assembling techniques, the material (one he's worked with to great success before) seems to provide an endless source of inspiration for lighting designs.

For the gourd-shaped Drop lights, the silk cocoon is cast into polymer, while in Evolution the cocoons are invisibly bound together using a special technique to form the amorphous oval cloud. Even when exploring new materials, Ango maintains its organic aesthetic.

Ecriture Infinie

Leave your mark in a massive notebook filled with handwriting for the future

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by Bryn Chernoff

Starting at Tokyo's Mori Art Museum in 2006, Cameroon-born artist Bili Bidjocka and Lausanne-born curator Simon Njami have been traversing the world inviting creatives of varied professional backgrounds to write on the blank pages of eight enormous books “as if it were their the last opportunity to hand write something.” Their project, called Ecriture Infinie, emphasizes the gestures of writing and the flow of pen on paper rather than a
ctual content.

Live...Suburbia!

Chronicles from America's disaffected, pre-digital youth

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by Josh Teixeira

On the brink of adolescence my best skate buddy Tim and I found a statue of the Virgin Mary with red paint on it in the woods. Convinced that this was the site of a recent Satanic ritual, we gathered the other neighborhood kids and went with flashlights in the dark to investigate further. As we huddled around, I spent most of my time trying to feel up the girl who lived across the street from Tim. I was making serious headway when we saw a car pull up at the edge of the woods and hit the brakes. Convinced it was the Satanists, we scattered like rats.

Experiences like this made me naturally inclined to love the new book, Live...Suburbia!, a collaboration between Max G. Morton and Anthony Pappalardo

Biomimetic lamps created from leaf-based algorithms

Hyphae

by Karen Day
in coolhunting.com


Design studio Nervous System's new Hyphae lamps uses a complex 3D computing process to mimic the naturally beautiful and unique structure of plant leaves. Each lamp is grown through a controlled process based on the Auxin Flux Canalization theory, positing that vein formation occurs from the growth hormone auxin which flows "where it has flowed before and cells with high levels of auxin differentiate into vein cells." The two MIT grads behind Nervous System translated this computer model (devised by the University of Calgary's Algorithmic Botany group) into an algorithm for creating physical objects, with no two pieces ever the same just like veins on a leaf.

Design

Zombie Snow White Macbook Decal

by Nicholena Moon
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While looking for a way to jazz up my plain white Macbook, I came across this zombified Snow White sticker. And what is she holding? The infamous Apple logo, of course! Being an undead enthusiast, I ordered on on the spot.

OHWOW's show

Post 9-11

by Deborah Herr
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As its name suggests, OHWOW's "Post 9-11" show presents work by nine New York-based artists whose pieces are evocative of the mixed American mood following the attacks on that day in September 2001. While none of the work addresses the pivotal event explicitly, the curators explain that the exhibition "title puts a time stamp on this particular decade and marks a turning point for this group of artists."

New Design

Vermont Wooden Spoon Co.

by Evan Orensten
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We recently came across Jordan Marvin and his hand-carved kitchen utensils at a farmer's market in Dorset, VT, where we spoke with the young woodworker about his newly formed and aptly named company, Vermont Wooden Spoon. Personally selecting each block of sustainably harvested local wood—typically a hardwood like cherry, maple, black walnut or apple—Marvin crafts each utensil with impeccable attention to detail. The personal consideration given to each piece is evident in both the artistry and understated design.