Bartosz Nalezinski

I went to see Soilwork live on August 12th. Aside from a night of brutally awesome music with great melodies, I found a new artist. I bought their latest album "The Panic Broadcast" last month as soon as it was released in North America. Notice I said bought, not downloaded. The main reason I wanted to have a solid copy of it in my hands was because of the album artwork. It's unlike anything I've ever seen before, an odd fusion of Asian and European styles that, well, looks quite panicked.



Soilwork is a melodic death metal band from Sweden, which makes such a colorful album cover unusual. Between the artistic style and colors, I was very confused. Then I open the booklet. Each page is covered in a surreal, beautiful design that is somewhat reminiscent of Art Nouveau, but more jagged and, for lack of better words, metal. It made a bit more sense now, but I still didn't get the title.

Fast forward a month to the night of the concert.
I'm driving to Richmond with my brother and a friend to see them live. It's pouring rain, I can't see, and traffic is terrible. We stopped for dinner and the rain let up a bit, but not for long. It downpours again and we get lost for about 2 hours. This was very panic inducing indeed. Well, we finally get there, halfway through the show. My friend missed the band that she came to see, but was rewarded by Death Angel's performance. After their set it was my brother and I's turn to let loose and have a bit of fun. While waiting for Soilwork to set up I saw some banners unfold in the back of the small stage and pattern light projectors come out, very exciting stuff for me. Before they take the stage the infamous radio broadcast of the infamous radio broadcast of an alien invasion made in October 30, 1938. Everything clicked in my head at this point! The album artwork made sense, the colors made sense, and the title made sense.

Swedish artist Bartosz Nalezinski, who created the artwork for this album, was asked to convey a feeling of panic, and the illusion that the mind can create about reality. The figure in the center of the piece is the emperor of the illusion, using the two dragons to spread his deception to the masses. The rest of the pieces is the chaos that ensues.

His style is very difficult to describe, especially after looking at other album artwork he has done for various bands. It's amazing how versatile he is. He can produce classic death metal images, such as Jesus in skeleton form as an icon gone wrong, or something completely abstract and beautiful, such as The Panic Broadcast. I would love to achieve such a broad range of imagery in my senior material. With the dualities theme, I think it can be done.

Needless to say, I bought a shirt after the show. It features some of Nalezinski's artwork from the album's booklet, which appears on the adjacent page of the lyrics for "Enter Dog of Pavlov". I think this is supposed to be Pavlov's dog after he rang the bell one too many times;

Artist 16: Chet Zar

Yup, more dark artwork. Zar was born in 1967 in San Perdo, California. He's a long haired, bearded man that you'd expect to see at a heavy metal show. He's always been interested in art and spent the majority of his childhood drawing, sculpting, and painting. Unlike most artists who start out young, Chet was fascinated with darker themes and bizarre imagery. He made strong connections to horror movies and how the affected the human mind, creating fear, anxiety, and alienation.

Today Chet does his own oil paintings and special effects and makeup for film. You may have seen his work in "The Ring", Hellboy I & II", and many videos by the art metal band Tool.

His work may be considered frightening to some, but I find it beautiful, in a way. The attention to detail is unsurpassed, leading to sometimes life-like images.

"The Dance"


This haunting piece carries a lot of momentum in it. The bubbling flesh tones make the surreal machine-headed figure look sickly, thin, and frail, yet at the same time elegant and graceful. One also has to wonder where the hell that tube is leading and what's on the other side.

Julie Taymor

My dad and I find Taymor's work to be fascinating. I remember we went to see one of her exhibits when I was younger. Her wearable puppets dwarfed me and made me feel powerless. At a stand still, some of her designs, costumes, and puppets look down right intimidating. And then they start moving..... Well, about a decade later this is what I'm trying to do with my own wearable artwork, albeit no puppets, yet.

Taymor is best known for her work with Broadway's "The Lion King". Personally, I don't think this is her best work. If you've seen her work with the recent revival of Mozart's "The Magic FLute", you know what I'm talking about. The costumes are unbelievably gorgeous and dream-like. Just take a look at the dancing bears scene;



While the bears look large and bulky, they're actually very light weight. Taymor uses light weight fabric as a skin and plastic pipes as a skeleton. Not only does this make the puppets easier to operate, but they flow with a kind of grace. However, not everything Julie does is pleasing to the eye and mind.

One production she worked on was a modern version of Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus." While this is regarded as Shakespeare's worst play, this interpretation was quite shocking and gruesome. This play isn't the typical "viewer friendly" one that most common theatre goers would take a date to, in fact that would be the last thing you'd want to do. "Titus" has a plot based around common themes found in mainstream media today; rape, murder, villainy, and organized crime. Unlike movies and TV shows today, there is no happy ending. It's about a Roman general who is engaged in a seemingly endless cycle of revenge against the Queen of the Goths. As the plot thickens, others are pulled into the general's obsessive vengeance, leading to sons being sacrificed and murdered, assassinations, rape and mutilations (tongue and hands cut off) of daughters, and much more. So, to quench your inevitable blood thirst after the description, here's a still from the movie;

Artist 14: Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo is a prominent Russian sculptor and pioneer of kinetic art. His ability to speak German, French, English and Russian great helped him in exhibiting his work across the world. His style of sculpture is almost architectural and falls in with the Constructivist movement.

When WWI broke out he moved to Copehangen, then Oslo, Finland with his brother, Alexei. After the war ended he moved back to Russia in 1917 and became engaged in both art and politics. He contributed to open air exhibits and taught at Vkhutemas with Wassily Kandinsky (a synesthete artist). At this point he began experimenting with kinetic sculpture.

A lot of Gabo's sculptures used machined parts, which was a big deal in Russia at that time since machinery was a rarity. It was at this point that the term constructivism was coined within the 'Realistic Manifesto', which he wrote with his brother, Antoine Pevsner in 1920. The key elements of Constructivism that were outlined in their Manifesto still hold value today and are used by constructivist sculptures all over the world.

Now, on to his artwork.
Gabo aimed to put feeling and emotion into his sculpture by giving them flowing lines, occasionally mixed in with sharp angles. His sculptures often used thick, metal frames with a lighter gauge machined wire to fill in spaces that he wanted to have mass. His pieces are often heavily abstracted or completely non-objectional. Example, "Linear Figure #4"



The interior lines are what make this piece. Without them it would just be an open cube, and not very original. However, Gabo adds subtle curves that change depending on the direction it is viewed. The interior form draws the eye to a central focal point. The wires on the inside remain straight, but the points of origin shift slightly os it appears to be bending, like a double helix.

Brian Jungen

Last weekend my family and I took a trip to DC to revisit the American Indian Museum. We knew that they were having a visiting group from Argentina, but we didn't know about a new temporary exhibit they were doing. Oh were we in for a surprise.....

This new exhibit was a solo show for a Brian Jungen, a Dunne-za tribe member from British Columbia. His approach to is work is jaw dropping and very strange. His medium qualifies as found objects, but the materials all look very new. His imagery focuses on traditional indigenous designs and subject matter, consumerism, pop culture, and environmental awareness. For example, a raven mask made out of Nike Air Jordan's



and a skull made out of softball skins;


And one of my favorites, a warrior made out of baseball gloves!


Jungen wrote a little excerpt for this piece which is explains it, and made me laugh. He explained that he has always had an interest in sports, but finds the use of native languages, imagery, and bastardized practices by North American sports teams offensive. If this is considered to be acceptable to use sports equipment in his art.

Just around the corner from "The Prince" was a small whale skeleton made out of white plastic chairs (it was small for a whale, maybe 15-25 feet long). This piece symbolized the carelessness of modern man towards the environment, which is killing these massive marine mammals. This message really hit home with me, and relates back to part of my theme of my senior seminar work.

Alberto Giacometti

I've always found Giacometti's sculptures visually interesting. His work is very surreal and a little weird.

He was born on the Italian border of Switzerland in 1901. His talent for sculpture cam into being at the school of Fine Arts in Geneva. As he progressed with his sculptures they became thinner and more elongated. Apparently, this is how he saw the world. After he married Annette Arms his sculptures grow to life sized proportions and became as thin as nails. He said that this was the feeling he got when looking at a woman.

The cool part about Giacometti's sculptures is more than just the sculptures themselves, but the shadows that they cast. As thin and elongated as his sculptures are, the shadows are even more exagerated!

Here are some of my favorites of his;

Nose


Woman with her Throat Cut


Hund

Ilias Lalaounis

While in Athens I found an amazing little museum called the Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum. This guy was something else! On top of being an amazing and renowned jeweler, has was also a sculptor and art collector. Before even entering the actual museum you are greeted by 3 original sculptures made by Salvador Dali!

The museum itself contains thousands of designs and "micro sculptures" that Lalaounis designed and/or made. Many of his designs are based off of historic design motifs from many periods of Ancient Greece, American native tribes, Byzantine art, and other cultural influences. Another influence in his designs was science, mainly biology and astronomy. He didn't just make rings, bracelets and necklaces, he made body jewelry as well. One of my favorites of these was a Mycenean snake that draped over the neck, like a real snake (it was the size of a small python).

As I am focusing a sculptural aspects for senior seminar, I am going to post pictures of his sculptural work.

Armored Owl


Owl Face


Scorpion