Pattern Pulp

Around the Globe, Visiting Singapore




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If you do a compare/contrast of Singapore’s creative class over the past few years, there’s been significant leaps and bounds. My brother and sister-in-law (and now baby) moved there three years ago, and over time and yearly visits, I’ve slowly watched the pages turn. Things finally feel different, like design (beyond the brand) and the appreciation of innovation is weaving it’s way into side streets, cafes and local services.

Makes sense, right? An economic and business hub can only cater to a singular culture for so long before expats and international influences mix things up. I think my brother-in-law, Steven, would agree that creatively, Singapore’s evolving into a melting pot of new ideas, catering to more than just food. Here are few photos from Books Actually, some public housing that looks architecturally interesting, Chinese New Year preparations, my sister-in-law and I on New Years Eve, sugarcane at a Hawkers Center and the most beautiful moving drop display I’ve seen at an airport.

 

January 9, 2014 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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As we settle into 2014, the art of reflection reigns supreme in this week’s gallery picks.

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1. Shezad Dawood’s work explores the multiple possibilities engendered by the play between cultures, histories and fictions at Paradise Row
2. Zio Ziegler’s mesmerizing patterns at Artists Republic 4 Tomorrow
3. A Collective Reflection at Ruiz-Healy Art
4. Leo Xu combine’s Chinese middle-class’s worn-out windows with the paintings of western style architecture behind them at Leo Xu Projects
5. In Mayumi Hamanaka and Brooks Salzwedel’s work, the vulnerability of our environments, histories and memories is brought to the forefront at Johansson Projects
6. Combining  Chinese middle-class’s worn-out windows with the paintings of western style architecture behind them at Ana Cristea Gallery

January 7, 2014 | By: Shayna Kulik

Textiles from the Eskayel Neverworld




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Yesterday we focused on hard motifs and circular themes, today’s devoted to ethereal delights. We’re highlighting the beautiful and enchanting symmetry coming out of the Eskayel Studio. Run by Shana Campanaro and Nick Chacona, this Brooklyn-based company excels in interior fabrics.

I recently spotted their couch at ABC Carpet and wished I could bring it home and make it a permanent part of my living room. There’s a freshness and a familiarity to the work that shines through the color combinations and subtle application of pattern. If you’re looking for a sophisticated gift this holiday season, I’d recommend visiting their shop, as the stationary, iPhone cases, coasters, pillows and baskets would all be stunning additions to any home.

 

December 19, 2013 | By: Shayna Kulik

Trend: Circular Styles




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Circular motifs never get old. When history, science and creativity are hinged upon these forces, you realize why cyclical flow is a part of our daily vernacular. Much of the branding and styling I’m attracted to incorporates this concept, and you realize, over time, that it’s actually easy to reinvision a brand, packaging or any design for that matter, if the underlying direction has a timelessness to it.

From the mechanical curves of the Sonos logo to Dan Funderburgh’s recent illustration collaboration in the Manual for Speed, to ABC Carpet’s spiritual and nature-inspired retail merchandising to the graphic styling techniques in this Dazed and Confused spread, all overlap in relatable, defined ways.

 

 

December 18, 2013 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks highlight the process behind the artwork.

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1. Betty Woodman’s evolving relationship with painting, the vase, and the history of ceramics at Gallery Diet
2. Matthew Weinstein’s art on library cards at Carolina Nitsch
3. This exhibition is the first large-scale installation of Xaviera Simmons’ ongoing Index series, photographic works whose core are found in the language of the sculptural at David Castillo Gallery
4. Derrick Adams’s work references the collages of the influential African American artist Romare Bearden and act as a continued development and ongoing exploration into envisaging a direct relationship between popular culture, aspirational American cityscapes and the persons, politics and issues of the African-American community at Hales Gallery
5. While Robert Minervini’s works function independently, they are reliant on each other to unravel a long-form narrative space that wraps around the gallery, inviting the viewer to experience the passage of space and time at Marine Contemporary
6. With multiple access points to an excess of information at any given time, artists who are working in one direction sometimes start working in another; the flow is brok and redirected toward a new and exciting place at Garis & Hahn

December 17, 2013 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s artists examine the nature of duality with their work.

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1. In the sensitive, finely balanced, and often transparent application of delicate colors arises the impression of an exciting connection between the constructed and the freem between chance and control, calculation and spontaneity – a dialogue between fizex order and dynamism at 333 Montezuma Arts
2. Paul Fägerskiöld’s work assumes painting as a language and then works within it to develop meaning, to explore form and to provide poetics. For his first solo exhibition in the United States, Paul will articulate two clear faculties of painting, its semiotic voice and its aesthetic voice, via two distinct series at PRISM
3. Julie Cockburn transforms second-hand objects and vintage photographs into meticulously constructed, psychologically charged artworks, by using a mix of embroidery and collage techniques at Yossi Milo Gallery
4. Christopher Astley and Saira McLaren’s work is more than meets the eye at Sargent’s Daughters
5.Constructing entire worlds of colorful, larger than life, composite creatures and hybrids, Nosego and Curiot explore the symbolic possibilities of juxtaposition; working with the known of the every day and transforming it constantly through free association at thinkspace gallery
6. AJ. Fosik explores the idea that humanity faces an inherent struggle between its dualistic nature—a physical self and a symbolic self. Works in the show are greatly inspired by The Denial of Death, a 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of psychology and philosophy by Ernest Becker at Jonathan LeVine Gallery

December 10, 2013 | By: Shayna Kulik

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