Hiding Out in the Chinese Urban Landscape

This is a pretty badass artist that was featured a while back on Urban Prankster. Liu Bolin, an artist hailing from China, is definitely taking the local urban landscape to a new level in his art. Using the basic graffiti idea of the street as ultimate inspiration, he literally turns his subjects into the street. The detail of his work is amazing and breathtaking, and frankly a little haunting. There seems to be some deeper message about the Chinese government and how they view their citizens, and seemingly Bolin's take on that is a little bleak. But now matter how bleak his deeper message may be, the works are still crazy amazing.

As far as I can find, Bolin doesn't have a website of his own, and I can't even find any biographical information on him. Which may be his choice, or given the political nature of his work, it may be the Chinese governments. Who knows? But he is represented by a few galleries here in the US, but as it turns out ArtNet has the best selection of his work. I mean, if you can afford one, go for it. If not, just peep it anyway, because you will not be disappointed.



www.artnet.com/artist/425227158/liu-bolin.html

Also, the Asian Photography Blog has some pretty interesting stuff on it, so give that a quick once over as well. Twice if you like it!

www.chngyaohong.com/blog/photography/liu-bolin/

Pop Down Project

Tired of pop-ups? Then it's pretty simple to just click them away. Unfortunately, not so much the case in real-life. That's where the Pop Down Project comes in. Every day, especially here in NYC, we are totally overloaded with advertising and images that we may or may not want to see. On the internet you have a choice (most of the time) to view them or not. The Pop Down project is attempting to make you think about that in real life.

Go to their website, download some stickies, print them out, and Pop Down away! Unfortunately the buttons don't really work (yet), but if anything it will start a nice dialogue on what we are forced to see every day. And hey, who isn't a sucker for a good stickie? I know I am.




http://pop-down.blogspot.com/2008/10/popdown-stickers.html

Folkert de Jong

I saw this guy's stuff at James Cohan gallery earlier in the year when it was being shown at the same time as Xu Zhen's Shanghai Supermarket. It was pretty intense stuff. His people range from life-sized to super-sized and are all made of different types of foam, foam cores, and foam glues. And checkin' out James Cohan's website says that it's going to be the year of Folkert de Jong, what with two consecutive shows.

But anyway, check out this sweet little video that I scooped up off of Monster Children. It gives a nice cross-section of his work. And like Zawada on MC says, his accent is hilariously addictive!



www.folkertdejong.com
www.jamescohan.com
www.monsterchildren.com

peter Fuss

Let's get this out of the way. It was unavoidable that someday I would have to talk about something that used a proper noun that would mean I would have to capitalize my p's. Well guess what, one of my lovely, albeit a little tipsy, friends decided to spill some wine on my computer, so now my disk drive doesn't work and I have to copy and paste my p's. I just can't be bothered to copy and paste capital p's every time I need to. So with that in mind, here's peter Fuss:

peter Fuss is a polish artist who, still kickin it in poland, is maybe one of the most politically charged European artists today. His work is legal, illegal, beautiful, complex, and thought provoking. Dealing heavily with themes of religion and government, he has a stark and somewhat pessimistic style. All I can say is check his shit out. His "pictures for poor and rich" are caught somewhere between funny and uncomfortable. It's a definite statement (in a super Marxist way) about the commodification of art. It's amazing.

Beyond that, his instillations and street art are all biting in their assesments of the world in which Fuss is living. Come to think of it, I'm prett sure it's the world in which we all are living.

It's a shame that some of the pieces are referencing things in poland that most Americans won't understand, but Americans just can't be in on every joke, now can we? No, America, no. But even with that, they are still sick pieces. So give them a peep now, people. Maybe it will cheer pessimistic Mr. Fuss up a little.



www.peterfuss.com