

What happens when the material body is scanned in, compressed and reconfigured virtually? Where does this non-body now exist? How do we navigate titillation and desire in relation to the simulated, representational acts of sexualised behaviour performed by virtual women? If we can access 360º scans of naked women online without restriction, what does this mean for their bodily autonomy?


Léna Lewis-King was considering these questions when she began to make "Refigure", a short ballad-turned-striptease video inspired by Blue Velvet, Roy Orbison's "In Dreams", and the otherworldly performances of Italian singer Mina.


Over the course of the 3:31 video, you see a human-like figure swaying above a stage, slowly peeling off each layer of skin-clothing, stripping down to floating lingerie and eventually disrobing into nothingness. In all this layering and delayering, you might wonder where the physical footage begins and ends - how much was performed in reality, and how much was constructed virtually. This indecipherability adds to the feeling of the 'uncanny', the same feeling evoked by interacting with photogrammed, hollowed out virtual 'people' that exist within computers and VR headsets.

Refigure

INSIDE –OUT
The concept Inside-Out illustrates the desire for discovery, for bringing out the inner emotions. The personal interior structures let themselves eviscerated and uncovered, showing their secret face to the world, the outcome being sometimes surprising even for his own creator. Within each of us exists a mysterious universe, a world defined by sensitivity, vulnerability but also power, which the artists is trying to bring out and evoke it using his best ways of expression. Even though this world can never show its whole beauty, the piece of art can create a bridge with the outside world. 

Ark, 2017

The border between fantastic and real is crossed over by the Ark, from which explodes the tumultuos inner self, incarnated in characters that preserve the naivity, playfulness and abstract.
Visions metamorphosed into creatures that keep a cold relation between the material reality and the playful and unformulated,  ambiguous inner self.
Game and equilibrum, inside- outside, intuitive drawing translated into ceramics. 

Mouse power, 2017

In a world that animates itself with a click of a mouse, we need to be conscious that every action becomes reality.


Inside-Out

In the set theory, the intersection A ∩ B of two sets A and B is the set that contains all elements of A that also belong to B (or equivalently, all elements of B that also belong to A), but no other elements.
The intersection is a binary operation whose arity is two, and whose two domains and one codomain are (subsets of) the same set. Schnittmenge, German word for intersection, means literally the quantum of objects cropped together. 
Deriving from different sources they are not only congruent but shared, could even stand for the average. The work follows the idea of perception of belonging, affinity or extraneousness to nature, the Italian and the German one, which are not imposed by men like culture, mentality or urban landscape, but by climatical and geographical conditions. Flora and fauna can overlap, interchange, contrast, but finally they belong to the same idea of instinctive and inherent nature, following also Novalis’ romantic vision of nature as ‘Heimat’. Single parts of photographs are extrapolated and reassembled, creating circular spotlights that include overlays but also exit the frame, representing the (non)punctum that encloses more detailed key elements, alternating larger views of German and Italian landscape with fractions. A kind of personal perimeter, reflecting on pattern and its laws: do elements set the structure or does pattern precede the elements?

schnittmenge. punctum.

This sculpture fused two cultural elements which have been lost in history.
First, the Shir Sangi is a lion that stood guard over our graves for many thousands of years. Second, the pattern on the plate (Red Rose Pattern) was very popular in the past, but has been forgotten in recent times. On the body of the lion is written “I am not here”. This is a physical manifestation of our nostalgia, our longing for all those parts of our collective past which we have lost and which we miss. 



Shir Sangi

This is the first AR sculpture in the world related to Calligraphy. During the opening of the Exhibition at the Aisha Alabbar Art Gallery in Dubai Vera DG presented her innovative project «AR Sculpture – Born of Calligraphy»

AR artwork inspired by Arabic Calligraphy and represent the phrase "Love is eternal". The author wanted to show how Calligraphy is born from a lump of metal. Born with love what creativity is.

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information. It is a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction.

To see that sculpture in real life we need to use our phones connected to the internet and be logged into the Instagram account. Using QR scanner on your mobile, scan QR code you will see the sculpture just next to you in real life.

Born Calligraphy Vo1, 2019, AR sculpture, QR code

2020 - Coloured pencil on paper

The red-hued figures featuring in my work present more as alien characters, rather than everyday humans you’d meet on the street – slightly too perfect, almost artificial, strangely unfamiliar. While some are loosely based on real-life people, most are formed using a blend of features from different faces and bodies to create new, fictional personas. They are pictured on their own, perhaps partly nude and often within a cropped, closed-in space. These elements that repeat across my work place isolation and vulnerability at its core. By giving my characters real-life names, I create a sense of intimacy between the character and the viewer – it’s an invitation to connect to the human inside the image and what their story could be, whilst questioning whether one is seeing something that truly exists or works of fiction.

Rosa

acrylic, gesso, cement, plaster, GoogleEarth transfer print on textiles and canvas, graphite, recycled fabrics and threads.
155 x 125 cm
2019-2020



This painting is another from my ongoing series working with GoogleEarth Screenshots to make 2D patchwork tapestries and paintings. The screenshot is from a Desert in Egypt where a glitch in the satellite image depicts multiple times of day and year overlapped in one topography. I am interested in the mechanical error in relation to the dependence humans have on such technology. Questioning the reliability and accuracy of this digital representation of a desert landscape, I paint a layer in addiction to the glitch of what could hypothetically be found between the digital layers of error.

SiO2 + CaO

Feed your demons, 2020, oil on canvas, 140 x 110 cm

Feed your demons

Four Little Swans Study, 2020, single-channel video, 2 minutes. 
Camera: SJ Lee 
Performers: joshua Mccorrmick, Cherrie Yu, Giannella Yt, Jesse Meredith


A section of the ballet Swan Lake reperformed on four pairs of corndogs. 

Four Little Swans Study

Digital drawing, created from an initial pencil sketch, using procreate

Morning light

A winding staircase that is part of the interior of the museum, bends itself towards the space. Steel profiles point out of the wall, that used to hold the pedestal to which the staircase led and which allowed access to a door at the upper half of the room. This pedestal is now leaning at a pillar in the center of the space. 

This “rewinding staircase” takes a functional object and transforms it to a sculpture. The stair elements move like rotor blades at descent towards the middle of the exhibition space. 


Rewinding Staircase

XX 57 - Paul and Anton play chess

Acrylic on cotton
June - July 2017
90 x 125 cm


Painting XX 57 - Paul and Anton play chess

In his engraving work, Jean-Baptiste Monnin highlights architectural details. Each image is the result of an extensive field research. 

He takes pictures of the depicted subjects using unexpected viewpoints such as a low angle shot. Before using the selected picture he reframes, reverses or rotates it if needed in order to create an abstract urban landscape. He wants to give the feeling to the viewer that he can go inside the picture and walk on this landscape.

The image is then used as reference for the elaboration of the engravings.

This technique brings a new aspect to his work. Etching and aquatint are processes that open a path to the unforeseen. It allows him to render the textures of the architecture and give it a living appearance.

Monnin seeks to create futuristic landscapes devoid of recognizable objects in which the boundary between abstraction and the figurative fades away.


Printmaking

Biotope (from Ancient Greek βίος (bios) 'life' + τόπος (topos) 'place') is literally an area where life lives. More precisely, a biotope is an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific biological community. Taken in the broadest sense, a forest or sea could be a biotope but generally a biotope is often considered to be within the circle of human everyday life.

The Biotope series was created as a visualization of a large installation project representing a “city” of trash containers. The project deals with one of the most serious problems today – the problem with the waste that has already not only pragmatic but cultural and social dimensions as well. The increasing consumption leads to increased environmental pollution. The increased production results from the increased supply - consumption. The consumption has become a “social duty” that should keep the economy going. The consumer society has turned into a waste society. The message of the project is quite clear and does not need special explanations: we leave so much waste after us that the place we live in, our “biotope”, turns gradually into a dumping ground thus limiting our outlook and our movements. The coping with the growing amount of waste requires quick and intelligent decisions as well as socially responsible actions and behavior. It would be good if people reflect on these processes and on their personal attitude. I would refrain from further explanations, because I am convinced that an image reveals itself in a specific way that could and should not be completely verbalized.  

Biotope

Kim’s works recount memories of everyday encounters such as sceneries, movies, and books. With ordinary scenes and popular images as his source, the artist constructs a subjective archive.

Work, the result of a 2 year-long project, is the artist’s record of contemporary culture. Each work is an interpretation of a popular image, such as the famous dancing scene in the Academy- winning film La La Land, the scene in Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84 in which the protagonist looks up at the moon, and the lamppost in the C. S. Lewis series The Chronicles of Narnia.

Kim's works show simplicity, sincerity, and authenticity like Milton Avery and Philip Guston. The materials he uses; oil pastels and oil sticks give viewers intimate feelings. This work shows how contemporary film and literature with distinct characteristics are reduced down to uniform colors when processed through a consumer.



Untitled

Work, the social space where people operate producing goods or services, for a social or cultural benefit, creating ties, and establishing behaviors. lt is al the same time, a place where individuality is deconfigured, transforming them into one more piece of the intricate gear system that makes up the current labor pawning their own creative powers. A place of annulments. 

Annulments


During the 'first lockdown' in 2020, I observed that what we use, how we live and that the items we take for granted are quite precious.
​
Replicating a 'passport' booth, in my kitchen, with natural light, I identified key objects, food, general items that are fairly mundane and quite ordinary, then photographically realised still life 'portraits'. 
The recorded 'sculptures' instigated many conversations at home. Evidence of the frustration from the pandemic!

Everything Looks Different

Paint on copper
5 @ 40 x 50 cm
Installation view of exhibition at HilbertRaum, Berlin
2018

Copper is the metal of our telecommunication infrastructure, of our speed. It is also a “native metal,” one that can be pulled directly from the earth with no further transformation. It both possesses a metallic stolidity and is so soft that it can take on organic forms. In this series, the white grid drawn on the surfaces of the copper sheets tightens from field to field. A transformation is underway, from an almost pure copper landscape to a surface more resembling wrinkled paper. Like a map, at first the territory of the copper is marked out and readied for measurement, but as the resolution increases from piece to piece, the dense map lines overtake and obscure the very surface they aim to quantify.

Copper Fields

2020
Oil, Mylar Paper, Cold Wax on Canvas
18" x 22" x .5"

Export

33480. 

But, if we imagine a world like this - one that's endlessly full of magic - then at least it can exist in our minds, right? 

Add

Artists

Opportunities

For Artists

ArtConnect

Support