Cool Hunting

Reed Barrow: Monument to an Amaranth
Another experiment in reinventing the screen, New York-based sculptor Reed Barrow's LED chandelier, dubbed "Monument to an Amaranth," functions as a 360 degree display, playing a 12-minute video loop of abstract imagery. The teched-out fixture is a departure from Reed's other recent work, which tends toward absurd cultural interpretations (like a life-size werewolf sleeping in the web of a phosphorescent dream-catcher). Monument also has...

Urs Fischer: You
This weekend Ami and I got to check out You, Urs Fischer's installation at Gavin Brown's Enterprise. (Click images for detail.) The piece is an eight-foot deep crater measuring about 38x30 feet dug within the pristine white walls of the gallery. According to New York Magazine the pit took a ten days to build and cost about $250,000 using a jackhammer to remove the...

Giles Round at ICA
Native Londoner Giles Round creates sculptures and assemblages that resemble the confounding models of a minimalist stage set designer and his work is currently being shown at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Rectilinear frames evoke the woodwork of Donald Judd, twisting in space to create volumes into which he introduces monochromatic panels, lights and typographic studies. Like other minimalist artists before him, Round appropriates...

Playing the Building
In conjunction with Creative Time, Playing the Building is an installation by David Byrne that transformed a 9,000 square foot abandoned room in Lower Manhattan's Battery Maritime Building into an instrument for the summer. An antique pump organ controls devices that create sounds using the building's infrastructure, including heating pipes, metal beams and pillars. For a special event last month, curator Mark Beasley invited...

Kittiwat Unarrom: Bread Body Parts
Since 2006 Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom (whose family also runs a bakery) has used dough as his medium to sculpt gruesome renditions of hand, feet, heads, torsos and other body parts. The results are unnervingly realistic with eyes, lips and other details constructed out of cashews, raisins and the like. A lack of hair and blood-like glazes make the work all the more creepy....

Lucas Isawa: Koinobori
By combining traditional Japanese Carp-shaped wind socks with paper lanterns, artist Lucas Isawa has turned his floating and illuminated school of fish into a breathtakingly peaceful spectacle. Building on koinobori (wind socks decorated with colorful Carp and flown in Japan on Children's Day), Isawa uses bamboo to first construct the skeleton shell of his highly-detailed fish and then fills in the gaps with silk...