The process behind Carsten Höller’s Birds and Canaries poses challenging ethical questions about what it means to be a creator. For centuries the goal of artists was to represent nature; many even attempted to locate divinity there. Höller has gone further, edging into the realm of Bio Art by generating his own species, and the knowledge that his birds were born to be extinct adds a tragic character to their portraits.
Like each of Chagoya’s prior codices, Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien’s Survival Guide leads us on a path into a foreign world, providing just enough familiar material to entice—we become anthropologists of our own time, seeing ourselves through the lens of the other. Chagoya revives the ancient codex form as a thoroughly engaging and enriching entertainment: amusing, erudite, clever, and poignant.
Wallpaper is constantly adapting to fashion, economies and society. This book describes its development from single sheets to paper rolls, from hand printing to mechanical rotary printing, from a luxury affordable only by the elite to a product for everyone. At Prangins, roughly 100 different motifs were found, dating back over the course of 150 years.
In these photogravures, based on McElheny’s photographs of the chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera House, the subject are in some places recognizable as earthly objects, but elsewhere could almost be traces of explosions, or, in the artist’s words, “galaxies inhabiting the universe.”
