Wolfgang Stiller

German artist Wolfgang Stiller created the ‘Matchstickmen’ using head moulds that he had laying around his studio. The giant matchsticks created of thick pieces of lumber are standing or lying in the room. The faces are all different and meant to look as if they simply emerged in the wood after burning each flammable tip.Wolfgang Stiller acquired several head moulds and large pieces of wood. After experimenting with the various components the artist struck on an idea to create several large-scale burnt matches where the charred remains of each tip appeared as the face of a human, a series he calls Matchstickmen. While Stiller leaves the meaning of the artworks open for interpretation the pieces exist in a surprisingly strange area between morbid and humorous. At a distance each match seems almost laughable in its appearance almost like a toy bobble head, but up close the sombre, lifeless faces often resting in coffin-like matchboxes are pretty disconcerting. 

All images © Wolfgang Stiller | Via: Hypenotice

Lauren Dicioccio

Artist Lauren Dicioccio uses a needle and thread to memorialise news articles, preserving the black and white images of The New York Times via multi-colored stitches. She embroiders snapshots of Hillary Clinton and Lady Gaga in her series "sewn news" -- a palindrome paying tribute to the familiar touch and smell of the printed page.

California- based artist Lauren DiCioccio uses needle, thread, and cotton muslin to "mummify" newspapers. The newspaper's photographs and portraits are punctured and woven with pockets of colour, bringing her own style and life to aspects of each picture. "The dedious handiwork and obsessive care I employ to create my work aims to remind the viewer of these simple but intimate pieces of everyday life and to provoke a pang of nostalgia for the familiar physicality of these objects."

Alexa Meade and Sheile Vand

Alexa and Sheile have collaborated on a body of work that explores the fluidity of form in relation to time and space. By stripping the subject of depth and dimension, a displacement of identity ensues, demonstrating the power of context over content.​​

Meade paints on Vand’s body, submerged in a canvas of milk. Vand’s performance is dictated by the opposing forces of fixed shadows and fluid space. The surface of the milk intersects Vand’s body at an uneven and unusual plane, creating a sense of movement and depth beneath her compressed form. This play on dimensionality in the picture evokes an optical illusion that activates the viewer’s experience by challenging their common perceptions. The identifiable becomes ineffable, giving the flat photography of the painted three-dimensional space an unsettling tone. By blending the borders between the subject and its surroundings, identity is muted and we’re left with the distilled nuances that shape the space.

All images © Alexa Meade and Sheila Vand

OLE UKENA

Ole Ukena is  a conceptual artist that interweaves a variety of media including text, video, photography, drawing & sculpture. Ukena’s diverse media work takes various forms, bound by a common thread of complex simplicity. This unfolding dance between challenging artistic practice and innocent questioning of the “is-ness” of our world defines the very essence of his works. Ukena’s dance often mesmerizes as the juvenile forms an unlikely yet impactful partnership with the spiritually refined.  With a wink and a nudge, youthful, playful enthusiasm confronts buttoned-up “maturity”. Sometimes poetically narrative, and in other moments purposefully reduced, Ukena frequently uses language as a tool to build riddles that await completion in the viewer’s mind.  His choice of material and medium becomes a metaphor that challenges the status quo. And as his childlike game continues the underlying message invites the viewer into ongoing personal 

12,000 toy soldiers fixed to a canvas-like board, forming a peace sign. A bright colored rainbow, a symbol of paradise, seemingly harmless at first, but made of barbwire. Building riddles that await to be solved by the viewer himself, artist, Ole Ukena, creates diverse media works with an intriguing sense of humor.

He draws his inspiration of sources as psychology, philosophy, spirituality, always positioning his themes around subjects as individual vs. collective, identity and transformation as well as the creative potential of failure. Exploring the field of interrelated opposites his message of his recent work manifests itself through the precise choices of medium. He is sometimes poetically narrative or purposefully reduced, binding his work by a common thread of complex simplicity, leading the viewer astray but always lending a hand on the way back.

 ROGAN BROWN

The paper sculptures Rogan Brown are full of delicacy and grace. Inspired by natural macroscopic or microscopic forms and patterns, the artist shapes the paper with precision and detail. An impressive work experience to be discovered in pictures. Rogan Brown creates incredibly intricate sculptures out of layers of hand-cut paper. Inspired by scientific illustration and model making, he constructs imaginary organic forms that reflect his fascination with the immense detail and complexity of the natural world.The process of creation is long and painstaking with some pieces taking up to five months to complete, but Brown insists that this labour is an essential element in the meaning of the work. ‘I have chosen paper as a medium because it captures perfectly that mixture of delicacy and durability that for me characterizes the natural world’. He wants to communicate his fascination with the immense complexity and intricacy of natural forms, and states that his intention is to recreate that moment of awe and wonder we had as children when we looked through a microscope for the first time.

All images © Rogan Brown | Via: My Modern Met