INTIMATE SURREAL INSIDES
Some artists consider inside spaces as canvasses for their creative vision, focused on designing and decorating the rooms. Others celebrate the beauty of inside spaces as they exist -- unchanged -- suspended in time in whatever state the artist captures. Here is a collection of photos and paintings with beautiful insides as their subjects.
Photo: Michael Eastman. “Candy Counter.” Vanishing America Portfolio.
One of our longtime favorite photographers, Michael Eastman, makes masterpieces out of the insides of buildings that have seen better days. Although their intended grandeur has slipped into loneliness and decline, their beauty remains, albeit changed.
Photo: Michael Eastman. “Library, French Quarter.” Vanishing America portfolio.
Eastman’s new solo exhibition at Barry Friedman Gallery in New York, on now until 01.11.14, presents photographs from his Vanishing America series.
Photo: Michael Eastman. “Memphis Doorway.” Vanishing America Portfolio.
Vanishing America includes haunting images of the insides of iconic buildings, such as Main Street cinemas, French Quarter houses, and Memphis hallways. Who knew empty rooms and peeling paint could be so stunning?
Painting: Jonas Wood. “Yellow Front Hall.”
The rooms depicted in Jonas Wood paintings seem naive. But not so fast -- they are really surreal.
Homespun, warm and cozy spaces, laid out in flat color and pattern, are impressions that have been intentionally amped with light sources, shadows, and angles that are askew. They are reminiscent of Hockney paintings.
Painting: Jonas Wood. “Ovitz’ Library”
Wood’s recent exhibition at the Anton Kern Gallery included “Ovitz Library,” a portrait of the inside of Michael Ovitz’s inner sanctum. It draws you in, as if you were this entertainment mogul’s personal friend, very matter-of-factly. But it also offers you a subtle jolt of alternative perspective as if you were in a carnival funhouse.
Painting: Jonas Wood. “Kitchen with Jade and Aloe Plants.”
As in all of Wood’s paintings, in “Kitchen with Jade and Aloe Plants” you might feel as if you know the people who live inside this close space. The cheerful bright devil-may-care decor and the casual mess on the floor reek with personality.
Painting: Mattew Lopas. “Detail from Miller House”
Hendrix College art professor Matthew Lopas paints the insides of rooms as panoramas. The effect is a different spin on funhouse mirror-type images, with a bit of Escher-like perspective thrown in for good measure.
Painting: Matthew Lopas. “Baker House” 2012
When you look at Lopas’ paintings, you aren’t standing outside the room looking in, you are in. The warped view might make you hold on to a nearby railing to steady yourself.
Painting: Matthew Lopas. “Black Swan”
Lopas plays with perspective, fitting three dimensions into the flat canvas by creating his own curvelinear logic. His rooms seem to breathe as if alive. Perhaps it is the breath of the observer that influences the experience.
“I go beyond these historic panoramas, however, by traveling at least 360 in the vertical, as well as the horizontal, directions. In essence I create ‘global panoramas,’” Lopas explained in a recent interview with Painting Perceptions.
Read more about Beautiful Insides, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including Beautiful Inside Stories, Beauty Inside Ancient Cores, and Beautiful Insides to Admire & Taste.
Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Insides. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 11.17.13.
Image: Courtesy of InterActiveMediaSW.
Also, check out our special competition: The Most Beautiful Sound in the World! We are thrilled about this effort, together with SoundCloud and The Sound Agency. And we can’t wait to hear what you’ve got!
