Under-the-bridge Pressionism

"Curator and collector Alain-Dominique Gallizia presented his personal collection of 500 works by mostly French graffiti artists on canvas to the public at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco. This exhibition is an anthology of 40 years of “Pressionism,” divided into eight sections. The work on display featured US-style tag graffiti transposed to uniformly sized canvases that glow like DayGlo stained-glass windows. Gallizia coined the term “Pressionism” from the pressure exerted on the spray-can nozzle."
His Majesty Prince Albert honored the exhibition with his presence, something totally unthought of some decades ago. While modern cities struggle to cleanse and rinse vandalized walls and remove this pariah of art, graphic designers creatively borrow the fonts, styles and images of incognito artists. There is a little square in Antwerp where the blank walls are the permanently changing exposition of graffiti artists, where masterpieces do not last long, but the artists seem to be indifferent to the fact that their creations are over-painted by newcomers. French graffiti artists were lucky to have an admirer like Alain-Dominique Gallizia to safeguard the future of their paintings.
Even if (like in Antwerp) they have specially assigned "graffiti allowed"places, graffiti artists migrate from one concrete debris to another,"Blank walls are criminal!". I found these fine examples of Pressionism under one of the bridges in Antwerp.

Tatlin's Tower of London

The Whitechapel Gallery presents the project of a group of artists named Henry VIIIs wives.
The Wives who are apparently very much alive decided to accomplish the dreams of Russian artist Tatlin by building his Tower .Their works are certainly not as ambitious as Tatlin's and some of them look more like items from a museum shop. On the other hand the exhibition is a tribute to my famous compatriot and will attract attention to his creation that was planned to surpass Eiffel Tower in height and became equally symbolic as Babel Tower. The artists have been trying to bring back to life this unbuilt symbol of constructivism for several years.
I love the hairdo!


Textiles are also a part of the exhibition. Designed in Ghana and printed in Italy they repeat the elegant curvy lines of the Tower


Warning! The following images have no connection with the exhibition mentioned above whatsoever)) Isabella Baikova's quilt



Wim Delvoye 'Tower' lazer-cut steel

The great mosque of Samarra, Iraq, 9th century

Pieter Breugel's  Babel Tower, 1563

A tomb of unknown craftsman-must see exhibition

Grayson Perry RA, Turner Prize winner and a celebrity artist says about the exhibition
‘This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the man made wonders of the world…
The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.’
Some pictures in The Telegraph.
I wish I lived in London!
The interview from the Guardian


GRayson Perry is famous for his intricate ceramics and for his transvestite alter-ego Clair

Wim Delvoye - a lace maker

This Belgian artist is a gift for an art student
Wim Delvoye makes lacy objects out of tires






Wim uses pigs as art-objects
He experiments with stained glass
He cuts beautiful Gothic churches out of steel

Cement truck
Concrete mixer

Stained glass- Guido Van Damme

Some years ago Antwerp got a new court building, the old one was too small and too easy for prisoners to escape. The new spacious and modern Femida's Palace had to become a gem of architecture and a tourist attraction. To make it even more attractive the huge lobby is regularly used as an exhibition-hall, where this month Guido Van Damme's stained glass birds are installed.
The blog Annie's tekenkamer has good quality pictures of the birds. If someone is interested to have more pictures of Guido's birds for Module 1 essay, let me know, I'll take my camera with me to the exhibition.

Homework

All my group-mates have chosen their materials to study, I am almost envious of those who will explore iron, glass and especially paper. My homework for tomorrow (6-7 autumn photographs) I decided to do in our local forest, where I also could make photos for my "Concrete" essay. One can't rely on weather in Belgium, today could have been the last sunny day in the foreseeable future, so I had to go outside and take these shots. A perfect example of multitasking)) First, I managed to do my homework for the photography class as an exemplary student, second, I made pictures for my essay and third, I added some nice images to my "textures" collection.

The Great and Terrible Walter van Beirendonck

The most scandalous figure of "the Antwerp six", the Great and Terrible magician Walter Van Beirendonk has his retrospective exhibition in MOMU-the Antwerp museum of fashion. His reputation of being terrible is built by his students (he teaches at the fashion Academy of Antwerp) and nobody who has visited his exhibition and familiar with his work can deny his greatness.
Don't be fooled by this nice bearded guy meeting you at the doors.
Entrance to the museum.


Wait until you go upstairs, to the exhibition hall.
Entrance to the exhibition hall


Those piercing eyes will follow you while you pass from one hall to another, because never has the personality of the designer been so vividly reflected in his creations.


I brought home 8 GB of images, but all his collections are carefully documented on his website