About Nathan Durfee:

Nathan Durfee was born in the small town of Bethel, Vermont on June 26, 1983. Nathan’s artistic aspirations first showed themselves in the classroom: a self-described “doodler,” moments of boredom became sketches and designs in notebook margins. After spending his high school years in Nevada, he migrated South to attend the Savannah College of Art and Design to become a traditional portrait artist. As his current work boldly exhibits, Nathan instead decided to take his art in a unique, wholly personalized, direction. […]

His fanciful, often abstract, subjects share an organic connection with his informal school-day sketching. While working, he says, “I try to keep that wandering state of mind—as I start laying down brush strokes, a narrative begins to develop. I keep molding and polishing the story until I’m happy with it, and in most cases it’s something completely different than what I started out with.” (read more)

Visit Nathan Durfee official website.

Here’s the statement related to this piece of art:

At a distance of 18,000 km from the earth the elephant Würsa would be able to balance on her trunk. It is on the basis of learned scientific calculations that Daniel Firman reached this conclusion and came to produce this extraordinary work which confounds all our certainties regarding the gravitation of bodies.

This hyper-realist sculpture calling on the skills of a taxidermist conjures up ideas of both lightness and of heaviness, so enabling the artist to offer a novel and spectacular physical and psychological experience.

Exploring the huge territory of sculpture, Daniel Firman presents anonymous characters and elements from everyday life in situation that seem to be in precarious equilibrium. For more than a decade he has been developing a unique formal language and is particularly interested in the question of bodies: Würsa à 18,000 km de la Terre, a novel creation made specially for the Palais de Tokyo is the new expression. (Source).

Same sculpture, but on the artist’s official website. Daniel Firman is a French artist born inn Bron (France) in 1966. He currently works and lives in Paris.

Previsously on Skandalon

About Marc Séguin:

Originally from Ottawa, Marc Séguin lives and works between Montreal and New York. Since his first solo exhibition in 1996, his work has been presented in Madrid, Barcelona, Venice, Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, New York, Chicago and Florida while participating in international art fairs such as the Miami Basel. He is currently represented by several galleries including Corkin Gallery in Toronto as well as Envoy Gallery in New York. (Bio)

Art takes time. It takes time to create, and it takes time to experiment as well. If the artist creates himself while he paints, I guess the spectator creates himself while he takes some time to examine a piece of art. Or maybe it’s the other way around. One doesn’t take the time to watch a film or read a book : rather, one gives some of his time to experiment with a piece of art (DeLillo plays with this idea when he writes about Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hours Psycho). Maybe art has something to do with a dance between sacrifice and gift : one sacrifices a part of his life and, in return, is given the gift of himself through artistic journeys.

Here’s an example. Just quickly surfing the web, browsing through hundreds of pictures, one would missed the fact that the above painting was created with tar, real feathers and real butterflies (all glued to the canvas). The painting is huge : the crow hanging from the Pope’s necklace is real.

Here’s an excerpt from a 2008 interview with Marc Séguin:

In addition to the road kill series you have the pope series. Is there a correlation between the two of them besides the material that you use?

Maybe. I’m really too close to all these series to reflect on it, or it’s for people like you to find a link. I’m sure it makes sense somewhere, with the use of the use of the symbol of the crow, with the idea of infallibility of the pope in the Roman Catholic Church. There’s questions there, because in that way it addresses serious issues.

Serious issues being what?

Infallibility, or the fact that we’re living in this era where we can’t question what the Roman Catholic church does, but we can question what the Quran says or what the Muslim people do, or the Buddhists or what the Chinese do, but we never question ourselves. Dogma is a very dangerous thing. They’re supposed to stand for modesty, poverty, and whatever, and here they are—posing like peacocks. They’re blown up as these big statues, presenting themselves as bigger than life, or more important than their subjects.

And here they’re tarred and feathered.

They’re tarred and feathered because it was a way, back in the old days, to tell when somebody was wrong. They’d turn them out of the city and they could be recognized for months or years, because they were tarred and feathered. (NY Art Beat: “Death Becomes Him: The Art of Marc Seguin” by Amanda Scigaj, Oct. 29th, 2008)

See more of his work at the Simon Blais Gallery (Montreal) and Charest-Weinberg Gallery (Miami). The Canadian Art website has a slideshow about recent paintings by Marc Séguin.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ― The Federal Duck Stamp Program: “Retrievers Save Game” by Maynard Reece, 1959-60

Black and white wash and tempera drawing of a Labrador retriever carrying a Mallard by Maynard Reece, the first artist to win the competition three times.

Inscription: Front - “U.S. Department of the Interior. Void after June 30, 1960. Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp. $3. Retrievers Save Game.” Back - “Duck Stamps dollars buy wetlands to perpetuate waterfowl. It is unlawful to hunt waterfowl unless you sign your name in ink on the face of this stamp.” (more)

Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, frequently referred to as just Steinlen (November 10, 1859 – December 13, 1923), was a Swiss-born French Art Nouveau painter and printmaker. (wikipedia)

You may know Steinlen for his famous Tournée du Chat Noir poster (1896).

Library of Congres ― World War I Posters: “Are you fond of horses - U.S. Army - The Veterinary Corps instructs you in their care and treatment, riding and driving” by artist Horst Schreck, lithograph, color, 63 x 49 cm, published in 1919. Reproduction Number: LC-USZC4-9847.

Previously on Skandalon

By now most of us are aware of this story : Mary Bale, a woman living in UK was caught on a CCTV camera dumping a cat in a trash bin. The video was uploaded on Youtube, went viral and made the news worldwide. The response was quick and intense : sheer outrage. Mashable has a good summary of the ways this anger was expressed all over the Internet. Quite a normal reaction, one may think. Yet, something doesn’t add up. How come suddenly nobody seems to be too concerned about the use of CCTV cameras to spy on citizens?

Those are serious topics in our times : the respect of private life, the surveillance of citizens by the Government, the rising specter of Big Brother. It’s one of the recurrent topic on Boing Boing : the rising number of CCTV cameras in big cities, specifically in the UK (try this customized search).

Looks like Big Brother isn’t the problem in this particular scenario : the problem is that we don’t want others to spy on us. But if we happen to find ourselves in a position where we can spy on our neighbors, and maybe catch them doing something we think is wrong, then CCTV cameras are ok, surveillance is good, the system is working just fine.

About Tatsuro Kiuchi:

Tatsuro Kiuchi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1966. Originally a graduate in Biology at International Christian University in Tokyo, He made the change to an art career after graduating with distinction from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He started illustrating mostly children’s books with several publishers in the US and Japan and eventually branched out into editorial work in magazines and the illustration of book jackets and advertising commissions. His first picture book “The Lotus Seed” (text by Sherry Garland / Harcourt Brace & Company) has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide, and has been commissioned by such clients as Royal Mail to do Christmas Stamp Collection in 2006, and Starbucks for Worldwide Holiday Promotion “Pass the Cheer” in 2007. He now lives in Tokyo Japan. (Profile)

Visit his official English website, his blog and his Tumblr account. Some of his artwork can be bought online. I first came to know this artist via Coudal Partners.

Higher Pictures: “Untitled” by Alfred Gescheidt, vintage gelatin silver print, 1961

In an age when Photoshop seems to be a de facto part of nearly every photographer’s creative process, the ways of in-camera and darkroom trickery - montage, collage, double exposure, hand-retouching and re-photographing - are in danger of becoming a lost art. Alfred Gescheidt was a master of all these techniques and more, although his name has, rather unjustly, become largely unknown in recent years.

Once described by former New York Times photo editor John Durniak as “the Charlie Chaplin of the camera”, Geischeidt amassed a rich body of photographic work that was unique, satirical, idiosyncratic and at times even hallucinogenic. (Field of Vision: Alfred Gescheidt)

About Charles Barsotti:

Charles Barsotti is a cartoonist based in the United States. He was the cartoon editor of the The Saturday Evening Post and has been a staff cartoonist at The New Yorker since 1970. His work has also appeared in Playboy and Fast Company, among other publications. A signature artist whose rounded, elegant, sparsely detailed style evokes both the traditional world of a James Thurber and the contemporary sensibility of a Roz Chast. (wikipedia)

Visit Charles Barsotti official website.

Artist’s statement:

In my work this romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment. These pieces are in part responses to environmental stressors including climate change, toxic pollution, and gm crops. They also borrow from myth, art history, figures of speech and other cultural touchstones. In some pieces aspects of the human figure stand-in for ourselves and act out sometimes harrowing, sometimes humorous transformations which illustrate our current relationship with the natural world. In others, animals take on anthropomorphic qualities when they are given safety equipment to attempt to protect them from man-made environmental threats. In each case the union between man and nature is shown to be one of friction and discomfort with the disturbing implication that we too are vulnerable to being victimized by our destructive practices. (read on)

First spotted via Who Killed Bambi.