WHAT IF YOU KNEW YOURSELF WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER?
Chino Otsuka, a photographer and visual artist based in London, explores the impermanence of time and memory in a poignant photo series titled “Imagine Finding Me”. The artist relocated to London from Tokyo when she was 10 years old, and her memories of her experiences gave her the idea of “mental time travel” and “becoming a tourist of your own history” that inspires her art.
Her photo series features images of her present self beside her past self in various places she has visited. These double-portraits provoke questions like “What if you bump into yourself somewhere on the stairs?” “
“The digital process becomes a tool, almost like a time machine, as I’m embarking on the journey to where I once belonged and at the same time becoming a tourist in my own history,” says Otsuka of her project.
Her photo series features images of her present self beside her past self in various places she has visited. These double-portraits provoke questions like “What if you bump into yourself somewhere on the stairs?” “
“The digital process becomes a tool, almost like a time machine, as I’m embarking on the journey to where I once belonged and at the same time becoming a tourist in my own history,” says Otsuka of her project.
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SNOW PAINTINGS
As if Gstaad, Switzerland didn't already sound like a fictional snow paradise, artist Olaf Breuning is giving us even more reason to marvel at the winter wonderland's unbelievably picturesque landscapes. This contemporary artist transformed an entire mountain into a massive canvas. The abstract installation -- a type of performance dubbed "Snow Drawing" -- is part of an ongoing, site-specific event called Elevation 1049. The outdoor exhibition (of sorts) brings together a group of exclusively Swiss artists charged with turning Gstaad's slopes into a giant open-air gallery. With elevation as a recurring theme throughout the artworks, the Alpine creations stand at the boundary line between earth and sky, decorating the contours of mountains, valleys and everything in between. Breuning's painting-like work brought a swath of vibrant colors to the powder white mountainside, with the help of food color, sleds and a beautiful mess of unconventional brushstrokes.
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3D OBJECTS to 2D FORM
Many artists devote hefty amounts of time and energy to recreating three dimensional objects in a two-dimensional picture plane. Cynthia Greig does just the opposite. To create her optical illusions, Greig paints the borderline-extinct objects with ordinary household paint, in effect erasing them before time does. She then draws directly onto the objects' edges with charcoal, producing ghostly representations of the things that seem more like nostalgic sketches than glazed-over statuettes. Aside from giving the collection of rejected objects an artistic afterlife, Greig's artworks challenge us to readdress our own visual perception. Greig's images, not quite mechanical but not quite handmade, ask viewers to look closer before verifying what exactly it is that they're looking at. Take a closer look yourself with the images below. Of course, a cup of coffee and a purse aren't exactly on their way out of usage, but grouped with oversized fans and picture frames, you can't help but think of a future where something takes their place.
