Friday, June 14, 2013

Scaling issues in art (Art Basel)

Crossing Basel today, was a pretty great experience, it is Art Basel.It is the big meeting of all artists and art lover. Part of the experience is a so called Parcours that leads through through the old military barrack, a place that is currently re-used as ateliers for artists. It was an amazing afternoon, discovering wonderful places, including a shop with home made ice cream or Ethiopian coffee. But is was mainly full of art.

One piece of art particularly attracted my attention : it tries to represent scaling issues. It is named "avalanche".

Avalanche at high scale

"The work Avalanche #2 by Evariste Richer is a floor piece consisting of 60 000 dice. The dice form an enlarged and pixelated image of an avalanche. The six nuances of grey correspond in this way to the six sides of a dice. A mimesis of a snow avalanche emerges from the ground through the methodic and fragile assembly of 60 000 dice.  
Spatial patterns in Avalanche

Avalanche (#2) addresses, through the shape of the dice, the contiguous relationship between the arbitrary game and the unpredictable course of a natural phenomenon. Through this work, the artist addresses the same landscape at different scales: from the overall perspective (a grisaille image through vibrant pointillism) to the detail (black dots on white background)."
Taken from here

Avalanche at low scale

Another piece that made me smile, are the shopping caddies full of plants reminding us of where our food comes from. It is not part of Art Basel, it is just there as part of a restaurant... some food for thoughts for people who have a break there...

just decoration?
some plant shopping?
Food for thoughts?

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