Archives: Artists

A featured artist

Shiro Kuramata

Shiro Kuramata was born in 1934 in Japan where he received traditional training in woodcrafts and later went on to work in a furniture factory. His university studies already had a heavy focus on the western concepts of interior design.

He is considered to be one of the most important Japanese designers of the 20th century. His style is characterised by the use of industrial materials such as wire steel mesh, lucite and corrugated aluminium to create interiors and furniture pieces. His style is said to incorporate the ever changing dynamism and creative energy of post-war Japan. While he heavily relies on traditional Japanese aesthetics, he also uses innovative materials. This unique blend has set to create a new and unique style which imposes surreal vision on everyday mundane objects. He is recognised not only by the art public but also by the French government that awarded him with one of the highest honours Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his immense contribution to the spheres of art and design.

Marc Newson

Marc Newson was born in 1963 in Sydney. He was influenced by other cultures and places from an early age. He has worked in a variety of styles, focusing on furniture and design, but he has also done commissioned work for private clients. His style is characterised by smooth lines, lack of sharp edges and is often described by other designers as ‘ biopmorphic’.

After he won a grant for his first exhibition, he dedicated his attention to design and has since been working with prestigious brands. The work which granted him world wide acclaim and distinctions like The Royal Designer for Industry in the UK along with a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) was undoubtedly the Lockheed Lounge. Marc Newson has also dedicated time to developing his own business enterprises, including fine art watch company as well as managing client companies, such as Qantas Airways. His experience and undeniable talent have gained him a position in the Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His affluence is also proven by the fact that his work is held by major museums like the MoMA, the V&A, and the Centre Georges Pompidou. 

Sally Mann

Sally Mann is an American photographer best known for her portraits of her children and for landscapes that reference death and decay. Born in Lexington, Virginia Mann began taking photographs using her father’s 5×7 camera when she was attending the Putney School in 1969. In her early career she took photographs for Washington and Lee University, which led to a first solo exhibition 1977 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. A second series, At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women attracted controversy and interest, but it was her third series Immediate Family, which has garnered the most critical attention for this artist. This series is comprised of 65 black and white images of her children, all under the age of 10, and touch of themes of typical childhood activity, as well as broader and darker themes such as insecurity and death. Mann has been criticized both in the US and abroad for a perceived pornographic element of her work, as it includes nude images of the young children. Mann argued that the images were seen through the eyes of a mother, a response that critics agreed with. In her later career Mann has continued to use her original 8×10 camera, as well as a wet plate collodion 8×10 glass negatives technique. Subjects of her later series have included landscape, decomposition and her husband’s muscular dystrophy. 

Zaha Hadid

Zaha Hadid was born in 1950 in Baghdad. She studied mathematics in Beirut and later moved to London to study in the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After she worked with a couple of her previous tutors in 1980, she established her own studio in London.

What is interesting about her work, is that a couple of her award winning designs were initially never built. Some of her most notable creations include the new city casino of Basel, the MAXXI in Rome (for which she won the Stirling Prize in 2010). She was also in charge of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul, South Korea. Her non-architecture work includes cooperation with leading Italian furniture designer B&B (for which she designed the Moon System Sofa), Lacoste, as well as creating the interior design at the Millennium Dome in London. Her architectural achievements and cutting edge style has won her numerous recognitions and awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She has been ranked 69 on the Forbes list of “The world’s 100 Most Powerful Women”and has been recognized as an “influential”thinker by the Times Magazine. She has been on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation and is currently teaching at the University of Applied Arts in Austria.

Marcel Wanders

Marcel Wanders was born in Boxtel, Netherlands in 1963. He graduated in 1988 from the Institute of the Arts Arnhem and started producing soon after. Major part of his career he has been focusing on interior and industrial projects. One of his signature works include the Knotted Chair, produced by the Dutch design brand Droog, in 1996.

He has a studio in Westerhuis, Amsterdam. He has been working with brand names across the world, including B&B Italia, Bisazza, Cappellini, Droog and Mooi. He is also the art director and co-owner of the latter. Some of his later projects include Lute Suites, the first ‘all over city suites’, hotel situated in the vicinity of Amsterdam. His interior design projects also involve restaurant interiors. His talent and works have been recognised in a variety of ways. The knotted Chair has been acquired as part of the permanent collection of MoMA. Parts of his collections are exhibited in V&A Museum in London, Museum of Decorative Arts in Copenhagen. His works have been covered by many international editions and he has been used as a juror for various design prizes, such as the Rotterdam Design Prize. In 2008 he was also named ‘Master of Design’ by Fast Company, magazine dedicated to successful entrepreneurs.

Takashi Murakami

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese artist born in 1962 from Tokyo. He studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts. His work includes painting, prints, and sculpture, as well as performance pieces, retail collaborations and animation. His self-described “superflat” style is characterised by bright a bright, Pop art colour palette, manga cartoon influence, and glossy surface treatment. His popular visual motifs include anime characters, smiling flowers, mushrooms, skulls, otaku imagery, and Buddhist iconography. In 2007, his first retrospective was organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Peter Doig

Peter Doig was born in 1959 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and experienced an international upbringing in Scotland, Trinidad, and Canada. In 1979, he moved to London to attend the Wimbledon School of Art at Saint Martin’s and the Chelsea School of Art. Doig also taught at the Art Academy of Dusseldorf. His preferred medium is painting, and he often depicts scenes of nature inhabited with people–canoeists and skiers, for example. He also painted a series of works after Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation in France. In 1994, he was nominated for the Turner Prize.

Bill Viola

Bill Viola was born in 1951 in New York and educated at Syracuse University. He is one of the key founders of video art, and often applies a painterly aesthetic to his often slow-motion videos. His works often contain a vaguely spiritual element and allude to existential poles: awareness and unconsciousness, chaos and calm. The Whitney Museum of American Art awarded Viola’s innovation with a 1997 retrospective of his work.

Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught artist from Padua, Italy. He began his artistic career making furniture for his apartment, but soon realised he preferred to make sculpture and performance art. Cattelan is one of the best- known Italian artists to emerge internationally in the 1990s. His work challenges contemporary art value systems through irony and humour. Influenced by the anarchism of Dada, Cattelan’s “characters” take on theatrical and absurd appearances. For example, his life-sized representation of the Pope in a prostrate position after being struck by a meteorite, La Nona Ora (the Ninth Hour) subvert the typical representations of the Pope with humour. He refuses to take an ideological stance rather concentrating on representing the complex rules of culture and society.

Jeff Wall

Jeffrey Wall was born in 1946 in Vancouver, where he lives today. He has an extensive academic background, having studied at the University of British Columbia and the Courtauld Institute, and taught at the University of British Columbia and the European Graduate School. His signature artistic style consists of large-scale cibachrome photographs, lit from behind. His subjects, urban, suburban, and landscape contexts are often given a seemingly photojournalistic treatment. He has received various prizes for his work, including The Paul de Hueck and Norman Walford Career Achievement Award for Art Photography in 2001, the Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2002, the Roswitha Haftmann Prize for the Visual Arts in 2003, and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in 2008. Wall is considered an influential figure for the Dusseldorf group artists, including Candida Hofer and Andreas Gursky.