03 October 2010

Max Bill - Endless Ribbon

Searching for concrete art on Google I've stumbled into another concrete-related blog here on blogspot.com.

artconcrete.blogspot.com is also collecting concrete related art and I found Max Bill's sculpture there.

Concrete art was closely related to constructivism, an earlier movement that tried to reflect the industrial world by constructing art or sculpture through processes similar to what industry might have used. "Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials," said a 1923 manifesto. You can understand how constructivism influenced concrete art in the avoidance of meaning and symbolism.

Will follow Art Concrete in the future - hope they'll carry on with interesting findings from the world of concrete art.

01 October 2010

Anish Kapoor - Concrete Piping Machine

Anish Kapoor is a celebrity and there's no need to introduce him. He has several works exhibited around London and wins ever growing number of prizes each year.

However I didn't know that last September he had an exhibition at the Royal Academy.

He created a machine (well, it's a pipe, connected to a computer) that creates formed material. The result is this endless spaghetti (let's consider it a spaghetti for now) which covered the whole floor of the gallery.

Royal Academy went further than calling it spaghetti:
[...] "using a computer programme similar to those employed by architects, a technician translates them into instructions that guide the machine. The process is simple: liquid concrete is shovelled into a hopper, from where it travels along a plastic pipe to be extruded in long, intestinal coils or short, turd-like lengths that accumulate to make up different forms; so far there are pyramids, nests, boats, triangles, ovals, lattices, spirals, beds, cubes and cylinders. The texture of some is dry and crumbly, while others appear liquid; some are dark grey, others spotted with white blobs of the polystyrene added to lessen the weight."








Sources:
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ra-magazine/autumn-2009/features/
http://nialldebuitlear.com/blog/?p=623
http://barnmotskogen.blogspot.com/2009/11/anish-kapoor-royal-academy-of-arts_18.html 
http://www.anishkapoor.com/