COLOR CODED

Public space is often designed using color to assign function or use.

Frank Bruggeman is a Dutch artist who applies nature as his main material. This also means that which is not nature, our self-designed environment, in contrast is equally important. The varieties in the latter are equalized by using a typical kind of blue color. In this manner the sculptures, installations and design objects by Bruggeman usually consist of plants or organic material in combination with blue sprayed objects, quiet often tools or industrial furniture. They results in a magnified tension between nature and man-made object.

Frank Bruggeman, 'The Everywhere Tooltrolley' (2011)

Frank Bruggeman, 'Dutchscape Nomad #3' (2007)

Frank Bruggeman, 'Catalpa' (2007)

DIY - WILD WEST STYLE

The American Wild West: a country where the pioneer and maverick mind and DIY spirit survive to this day.

Being a Wild West maverick of course you want your own stage coach. Being a pioneer you want to go in latest style ... and do it yourself. Hence the Hummer 'CEO Stagecoach' designed by Jeremy Dean!

Jeremy Dean, 'CEO Stagecoach (live performance NY city)' (2010)

Jeremy Dean, 'CEO Stagecoach' (2010)

Jeremy Dean, 'CEO Stagecoach' (2010)

HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS

If there is one object of which you really need to read the handling instructions very carefully it is land mines. When you are making your dummy land mines out of porcelain that doesn't change very much. Whether it is charged with explosives or made out of fragile ceramics, you don't want to drop it.

Ulrik Holme Kristensen (Denmark/Netherlands) has created a few cases of such anti-personnel and anti-tank mines. The mines are kept safely in their boxes: you don't want the visitor feel like an elephant in a china shop!

Ulrik Holme Kristensen, 'Porcelain Minefield (detail)' (2007)

Ulrik Holme Kristensen, 'Porcelain Minefield' (2007)

Ulrik Holme Kristensen, 'Porcelain Minefield (detail)' (2007)

PACKING MATERIALS

The sheer banality of packing materials can result in extremely beautiful objects.
Every artist who has just finished packing his sculpture or painting for transport has once or twice looked back satisfied at the aesthetic result.

The German painter Jochen Mühlenbrink made a series of 'packaging' paintings. Other series deal with themes like 'trucks', 'asphalt' or 'fires'. Most of these are oil on canvas or panel but some are 3-dimensional box shapes and others are composed of several hinged panels.

Wrap it up, I'll take it!

Jochen Mühlenbrink, 'Aus der Serie Pack' (2010)

Jochen Mühlenbrink, '7EK1L' (2011)

Jochen Mühlenbrink, 'IKE a' (2011)

Jochen Mühlenbrink, 'Mahlerkoffer' (2012)

HAMMERTIME !

Are you one of those DIYers always looking for his tools? No wonder. As soon as you've turned your back they have a real 'hammertime'.

Shamus Clisset aka Fake Shamus doesn't need his toolbox. To start his DIY project he just needs his 3D computer modeling tool and a can of beer within reach.

Shamus can lean back satisfied when the job is done and finally rendered as C-print.
Time for another well deserved beer ...

Shamus Clisset, 'Hammertime' (2011)

FURNITURE CONVERSIONS

Furniture is there to be used. No question. But nobody can tell us how to use it. And small DIY-conversions do wonders.

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm made 'Performative Sculpures' for the Braem Pavilion in his current exhibition 'Wear Me Out' at Middelheim Park in Antwerp. The 'Performative Sculptures' are converted pieces of furniture, mostly cabinets, that have had their original function altered. They now function as chair or table if not undefined. In daily performances their new functions are demonstrated.

Erwin Wurm, 'Performative Sculptures' (2011)

NUCLEAR DIY

Last week Richard Handl from Ängelholm, Sweden was arrested for trying to cook up his own nuclear reaction on his kitchen stove. He posted reports on his blog Richard's Reactor.

In his blog Handl reassures us that he's not the first one trying to build a DIY nuclear reactor.

The result he was going for must have been something like Olaf Brzeski's installation 'Little Boy': a livingroom nuclear explosion.

Olaf Brzeski, 'Little Boy' (detail) (2006)

[Brzeski's work 'Dream - Spontaneous Combustion' (2008) can be seen in the exhibition The Power Of Fantasy in Bozar in Bruxelles at the moment]

However, homemade nuclear exlosions seem to be 'the thing' at the moment: