Menu
The New Contemporary Art Magazine

Elaine Duigenan’s Twist-Tie Creations Mimic Nature

London-based artist Elaine Duigenan’s painstaking process to create the body of work “Blossfeldt’s Apprentice” required two key elements: twist ties and a camera. The project is named for German artist Karl Blossfeldt, whose renderings of plant-life in the 1920s inspired this series by Duigenan. Blossfeldt famously said, “the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.”

London-based artist Elaine Duigenan’s painstaking process to create the body of work “Blossfeldt’s Apprentice” required two key elements: twist ties and a camera. The project is named for German artist Karl Blossfeldt, whose renderings of plant-life in the 1920s inspired this series by Duigenan. Blossfeldt famously said, “the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.”



Duigenan seems to agree, her meticulous creations mimicking flora while maintaining an almost alien quality, due to the materials. The black backdrop offers a stunning view at the works’ detail and the specific texture. Still, the stems seem, at first, somehow organic in nature. Represented by Klompching Gallery in New York, Duigenan’s artist statement describes both the simplicity and complexity of her current series and other work: “Elaine’s work takes a close look at objects. Things are never quite what they seem and her work is pared down to find singular beauty. Pale specimens glow in inky black spaces and appear to hang by a thread. There is strength and fragility, perfection and imperfection.”



Her work is part of collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and the collection of Frazier King.

Meta
Share
Facebook
Reddit
Pinterest
Email
Related Articles
Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto thinks of himself not only as a technically skilled photographer, but as a conceptual artist as well. Since his first series titled "Dioramas" in the 1970s, his works embody the mystifying fakeness that has drawn fans to natural history museum dioramas and wax museums for years. In 1999, the Deutsche Guggenheim commissioned Sugimoto to produce a similar series, "Portraits", focusing on Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London, where he photographed the most realistic wax mannequins of historical figures against a black background.
German photographer Bartholot appreciates the unexplained. Bartholot is not looking to copy a kind of reality or life; his photos celebrate artificiality and design. His digital images merge his own sense of fashion with surrealism and usually start with a single thought or mood. They have been described as a combination of sculpture and photography, also reflecting his interest in colors and textures. For his latest collaboration with the Spanish creative studio Serial Cut, he created a series of photographs of draped unmasked characters.
Iranian artist Negar Farajiani uses her own self-portrait in a series of puzzles, where she distorts, hides, and reveals her physical appearance and identity. To make the puzzles, Faraijani cuts identical jigsaw pieces from dry mounted photographs. She then reassembles the pieces to create new, slightly chaotic and impractical compositions.
Though she is known for her work in fashion photography, the fine art photography of the Madrid-based Rocio Montoya offers a interesting new look at her skills in portraiture. Montoya's subjects, generally young women, are captured in moments that range from intense euphoric emotion to still, deadpan gazes. In some images, the faces of the subjects are obscured, adding a sense of aloofness and mystery. Her works are predominately in black and white, but Montoya uses a range of effects such as double exposure to make the images more vivid. Through her techniques, Montoya brings a new vision into the images she captures.

Subscribe to the Hi-Fructose Mailing List