2020

Andreas Wannerstedt

Swing House: A Three-Story Swing Suspended from the Ceiling of a Gutted Cincinnati Home by Mark deJong

From the outside, artist Mark deJong’s contemporary installation, Swing House, doesn’t particularly stand out from the other residences lining the street of Cincinnati’s Camp Washington neighborhood. The blue 19th-century building is narrowly built, and features charming architectural details that cap its windows and roof. The interior however, is remarkably different. All three levels of the home have been completely gutted to create an open floor plan void of any interior walls or floors, with a single swing positioned at the center of the space.

“Swing House is a piece of art in itself,” deJong tells Colossal. “All of my major decisions were based on the arc of the swing, which started by emptying out everything on the inside. The arc of the swing then dictated where the stairs to the basement went, as well as the placement of the bed and kitchen. While swinging, your feet miss those things with a considered clearance. You are able to swing way over both the bed and kitchen.”

The seat of the swing was formed from reddish pine salvaged from inside the home. Its natural-fiber rope attachments extend 30-feet into the air, and are secured into a metal beam from the home’s three-story ceiling. It is here that deJong painted a black and white hour glass shape, a nod to the motif of passing time represented in the pendulum-like swing.

The installation took three years to build, but had been a dream of deJong’s for nearly thirty. He originally thought of the idea shortly after finishing art school. “I stopped making art for 20 years, so this house was my leap back into the art world,” he explains. He has worked in construction for the past several decades, so this art-based house was a way for him to marry his formal training with his lifelong career. 

DeJong is currently renovating another house on the same street which will also be mostly gutted, except for as set of freestanding stairs which will serve as the main focus. Objects created from salvaged elements of the Swing House are currently on view at his solo exhibition of the same name, which runs through September 2, 2018 at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. Tours of the home will occur throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Lush Greenery Fills Pixelated Openings and a Vertical Landscape in Jean Nouvel’s Tower 25

Tower 25 is a 220-foot-tall structure by French architect Jean Nouvel that features a range of perforated square openings packed with a variety of lush greenery. The building opened in Nicosia, Cyprus in 2015 and includes a vertical landscape on the south facade that is 80% covered in verdant matter. This element works as a natural awning for the apartments and offices during the summer, and allows the plants to absorb the maximum amount of light in the winter. The top two floors of the building surround a courtyard inspired by Cypriot architecture, further incorporating a green landscape into the structure’s design. You can see more of Nouvel’s projects on his website.

A Paper Memo Pad That Excavates Objects as It Gets Used

 

New Domestic Objects Wrapped in Needlepoint Scenes by Ulla Stina Wikander

2018

Tatsuya Tanaka Continues Building Tiny Worlds in his Daily Miniature Calendar Photo Project

Interactive LED Sculpture Projects Visitors’ Faces 14-Feet-Tall in Columbus, OH

As We Are is a 14-foot interactive sculpture by artist Matthew Mohr. The head-shaped work slowly rotates through a database of faces, displaying a range of Columbus residents and its visitors on 24 horizontal bands of LED screens. The monitors wrap nearly 360 degrees around the piece, leaving a gap for a photo studio where guests can pose for pictures that will be featured on work’s screens.

The sculpture is currently installed in the Greater Columbus Convention Center, a public venue primed for eager visitors who wish to see their faces projected more than two times their height. Its appearance reflects a few other body-centric public sculptures, namely David Cerny’s banded replication of Franz Kafka’s head in Prague, and Chicago’s Crown Fountain by Jaume Plensa which also displays a rotating cast of faces across a series of LED screens.

“‘As We Are’ presents Columbus as a welcoming, diverse culture where visitors and residents can engage on multiple levels through an interactive experience with public art,” says Mohr in an artist statement about the interactive structure. “It is an open-ended, conceptual piece that explores how we represent ourselves individually and collectively, asking participants to consider their identity in social media and in public. It asks all viewers to contemplate portraits of people from different ethnicities, and gender identities.”

Mohr also explains that the scale and location of the sculpture brings monumental recognition to each featured face, allowing the individual to be memorialized, if only for a few seconds. You can see more projects by the artist and Columbus College of Art and Design professor on his website, and view a video documenting several participants’ interactions with the sculpture below.