The artist talks digital expression, pushing the surreal, and her collaboration with NARS Cosmetics.
Weekly top 10 picks by an
“Mulholland Drive”
Weekly top 10 picks by an
2 years ago
When I was a kid, my dad would always take me surfing with him. This morning routine has always had an impact on me and makes me look forward to getting up at sunrise and heading to the beach. On a crisp morning in Oceanside I happened to see an old green Buick cruising down the street and luckily was in the right place at the right time.
The area of transition between the world and the Pale is called “porch collapse”. The “Porch Collapse” series is heavily inspired by the concept of the Pale in the world of Disco Elysium. The Pale is achromatic, odourless, and featureless, the “enemy of matter and life”. Therefore, it can only be measured through the matter that surrounds it. It is not like any other – or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness. It is a “location without a defined location, into which one’s memories scramble with others’ and no one’s.” By the time I became familiar with the Pale I had already started working on the series, so my plan wasn’t to make a direct translation of it in photographic form. Finding out about the Pale only further solidified my idea. In a way, both the concept of the Pale and my work are ways to illustrate something that is mostly in the realm of intuition and outside of language and description.
“I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.” — T.S. Eliot Music and sound design by Planes Beyond, a project by UN Studios.
This artwork represents the fusion of my imagination and my passion for abstract northern landscapes. As my genesis piece on SuperRare, it vividly illustrates what videography and photography mean to me: A form of art that can be anything you imagine, inviting you to dream and inspire. — The aerial video of the Atlantic coast was taken during my 18th trip to Iceland in the summer of 2021. This island has become my second home over the past 10 years, and no other place inspires me more as an artist.
The city lay below, it’s glow spreading into the distance, lights shining like a handful of colored jewels scattered across the surface of a frozen pond. I had imagined what Tokyo would look like, had even seen it in some deeper dreams, but any expectations I had held were shattered by the technicolor reality that spread to the edges of my vision. Canyons cut across the cityscape, illuminated, glowing- as natural as the phosphorescence of algae on a shoreline, as artificial as the rigid construction of a circuit board. Up here we were alone. Below us was a sea of life, that ebbed with time like tides that fill the inlets, when the moon pulls the water into the small pools where life itself began. I’m not sure if I’ll ever forget the feeling of seeing this perspective, though I suspect someday I will. Though if I do, I write these words to bring me back, and make these images to remind me of that rare feeling- they will combine as a catalyst for a cascade of fading memories.
ABOUT – sheet glass, autumnal virginia creeper petals, hydrangea petals, printed paper, dried flowers, gold leaf, the artists fingerprints. 12809 x 18059 pixels – 103 X 141 cm – 40 X 56 inches @ 350dpi. 1/1 NFT + fine-art giclee print on Hahnemühle cotton rag – signed and titled by the artist. ABOUT ‘THE PORTRAIT AUTOMATIC’ SERIES – A collection of deconstructed, gravity-defying portrait sculptures – built from traditional fine-art materials and found objects collected from the streets of London, UK. Each artwork is composed and assembled directly onto my A3 scanner and captured in a single exposure in other-worldly macroscopic detail and incredible resolution. Once captured, the composition is broken down – and so exists only momentarily IRL before traversing eternally into the machine ether… Inspired conceptually in part by Metzger’s “Machine, Auto-Creative and Auto-Destructive Art” (1960s) as well as Jean Tinguely ‘Métamatic’ artworks (1950’s). NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION OR MY HISTORY WITH THE MACHINES – I began working with scanners in 2001 (aged 15), at school there was an Epson in the computer lab and so (working opportunistically so as to remain unseen by the IT teacher; who would no doubt feel my actions as a terrible abuse of his nice, clean scanner ???? I began to place dried plants, flowers, leaves and so on directly onto the scanner glass and make artworks… I discovered that images made in this way had a distinct depth and look to them – a sense of weightlessness, of floating and the ethereal… I had discovered ‘Scanography’ in my own way. The digital cameras available at the time were crap – 1 megapixel and prohibitively expensive. The scanner, in contrast, was relatively affordable at a fraction of the cost and capable of capturing imagery in far better resolution and detail. I had a job working weekends and holidays doing the washing up in a busy pub near to my mothers house. This income allowed me to save up enough £dosh to purchase my own cheap Epson A4 scanner. I could now produce my first significant series of artworks – ‘Pauses’ in the year 2002 – these works were shared on my website www.karborn.com and gained me some attention ‘on the web’ in the early 2000’s and so it all began… I was in. TODAY – The time feels right to reprise these artworks and present them as a coherent collection – the culmination of many years working with my scanner and my first significant body of fine-art masterpieces, perhaps I will build some more heads soon too… Thank you. K
Growing up in the Bay Area, I always dreamt of experiencing the snow days that I saw in movies. I had so much envy for the kids that got to stay home from school, build snowmen, and have snowball fights. During the pandemic, I moved out of California, and headed north to Seattle, WA. My first winter living here, I finally got to wake up to snow. I was overjoyed, and couldn’t wait to wander and experience snow where I lived for the first time. This year, it snowed again on Christmas night. The next morning, I went out and explored with my camera. I came across this vintage Mercedes and loved how the iconic hood ornament was mostly submerged in snow.
Inspired by “Mulholland Drive”, this photograph conveys a vision of being lost in time, two places at the same time, in a dream that has no beginning and no end. The dramatic look of the model overlayed with a scene shot outside of a motel at night gives us the perfect combination for what feels like a vision of past and present, of home and abroad. We all want to live in our dreams, this is one of mine.
an
Curator @SuperRare
Tech
The Future of Giving is On-Chain: NFTs for Social Causes
Tony Fantano interviews artists and NFT project founders who sought to support Ukraine, gender equality and raise awareness about mental illness through selling art and building DAOs.
Curators' Choice
Curated Conversations: Emily Xie
SuperRare Labs digital editor Shutong Liu interviews Emily Xie about how her Art History and Engineering background informed her work, her past year as a full-time artist, and the generative art landscape.
