At Kadenze, we believe that a complete education should never be confined to the classroom. An education in the arts and creative technologies is one that takes place on the continuum of daily life. Whether you are a writer, a painter, a musician, or a technologist, the world is full of art to learn from and be inspired by.
As we gear up for an exciting New Year, we thought we’d take one last moment to acknowledge 10 wonderful artists who inspired us to keep exploring, changing, and growing throughout 2015. From a local company that created an immersive opera on the streets and freeways of Los Angeles, to a man who built a forest of guitars and finches in New York City, 2015 was full of great artists and inspiring works of art.
Hotel Modern – “The Great War”
Founded in 1997, this Dutch theatre ensemble uses scale models created with household materials, large screen live-feed video projections, and live foley performers to create sometimes whimsical and sometimes poignant theatrical events. Hotel Modern’s work has spanned a full gamut of subject matter—from a comedy using 350 dried shrimp to play the roles of people, to a horrifying and intimate depiction of Auschwitz.
In 2015, we saw Hotel Modern’s seminal piece, “The Great War.” This multi-media performance combined the group’s signature aesthetic with spoken narration pulled from real World War 1 letters to capture a soldier’s perspective of “The War to End All Wars.”
Learn more @ http://www.hotelmodern.nl/
Yang Fudong – “The Light That I Feel”
Yang Fudong is a Chinese artist and filmmaker whose “filmic landscapes” attempt to “tell a narrative by using not people speaking so much, but how the wind tells a narrative, or how trees tell a narrative” (Yang Fudong). Often involving multiple video projections, these plotless meditations somehow combine to create experiences that are both cohesive and fragmented.
In 2014–15, Fudong exhibited a piece at Salt in Norway titled, “The Light That I Feel”. Filmed in 2014, the film uses local actors and locations to create a site-specific piece for the beach. Visitors at the installation’s opening enjoyed the film on 5 monitors which were periodically arranged within the Salt’s permanent Arctic Pyramid exhibit.
Learn more @ http://www.yangfudong.com/
The Industry – “Hopscotch”
The Industry is a Los Angeles-based experimental Opera company that creates enthralling site-specific and immersive experiences for audiences and spectators alike. Gaining critical attention in 2014 for their interdisciplinary opera in Grand Central Station, “Invisible Cities,” the company has continued to push the boundaries of traditional operatic forms and performance spaces ever since.
In 2015, The Industry took to the streets of Los Angeles with an epic site-specific experience titled, “Hopscotch.” This mobile event took place across 24 moving cars which zig-zagged across city streets and freeways while performers interacted with audiences at pre-determined locations and across video feeds.
Learn more @ https://theindustryla.org/
Yayoi Kusama – “The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away”
Yayoi Kasuma is a Japanese artist whose work often deals with color, patterns, psychedelic expressions, and repetitions. Considered a precursor to the Pop Art movement of the 1950’s and 60’s, she is also widely considered to be one of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In 2015, we saw Kusama’s “The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away” at the Broad museum in Los Angeles. Combining mirrors and LED lights, this installation creates a 360-degree landscape installation that is designed to seem endless. Allowing only one occupant at a time, this work conjures both the profound and intimate all at once.
Learn more @ http://www.yayoi-kusama.jp/e/information/
Cloud Eye Control – “Half Life”
Cloud Eye Control is a collaborative performance group comprised of three members: Chi-wang Yang, Miwa Matreyek, and Anna Oxygen. They combine music, live performance, and animation to create wonderful and whimsical multimedia based theatrical events at both a national and international level.
In 2015, Cloud Eye Control debuted their newest work titled, “Half Life.” Inspired by the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, this lush and visceral work employs CEC’s signature aesthetics to create an experience that is like viewing a live action animated film that happens to be built in real-time before your eyes.
Learn more @ http://cloudeyecontrol.com/
9800
While 9800 does not represent a single artist (or even a group of artists), this large-scale installation featured at 9800 S. Sepulveda in Los Angeles was temporarily home to the work of over 100 southern California artists. Featured installations ranged from an indoor hallway of street lamps to a rooftop installation that used sound data from the surrounding neighbourhoods to create an ever-shifting sonic landscape.
Learn more @ http://www.aqnb.com/2015/10/29/9800-opening-9800-sepulveda-oct-29/
Mitchell Syrop – “Mitchell Syrop at Croy Nielson”
Often dealing with the interplay (and tension) between text and imagery, Mitchell Syrop exhibits a wry sense of humor in his visual artwork. Over the course of his career, Mitchell has interrogated both languages as a concept for visual artwork and as it has been employed by industries such as advertising.
In 2015, we got the chance to see a collection his work that was featured at the Croy Nielson gallery in Berlin, Germany. Stemming from his Torn Series, these short visual works often featured lush stock style landscapes which Syrop juxtaposed against torn out and clichéd motivational and advertising slogans. The result is often funny and sometimes more than a little troubling.
Learn more @ http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/tag/mitchell-syrop/
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot – “From Here to Ear”
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is an installation artist from southern France whose work has been featured all over the world. He creates physical dreamscapes that are all at once intoxicating and inviting, as well as ethereal and familiar. His works range from an installation of 13 vacuums with harmonicas attached to them to “Sound Generated Foam.”
In 2015, we visited his ongoing exhibition at New York’s famed Peabody Essex Museum, “From Here to Ear.” This work consists of 10 guitars and basses as well as a menageríe of living finches. While the finches bring a level of spontaneity to the electronic world of the guitars, the final result is a musical and zoological experience that is neither fully organic nor fully designed.
Learn more @ http://www.artnews.com/2015/04/30/french-pavilion-artist-celeste-boursier-mougenot-teaches-the-world-to-sing/
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle – “The Kentifrican Museum of Culture”
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is a Los Angeles based artists who has created works in practically every existing medium. Her long-term projects are just as far reaching, covering a range of subjects from identity and femininity to myth making and diaspora.
In 2015, we experienced the Kentifrican Museum of Culture. A far cry from a traditional museum experience, this “Diasporic Museum” is not one that you visit, but one that visits you. It has been designed to not only subvert traditional museum models, but also the conventions of high art culture in general. It is made up of artistic works, music, food, and educational workshops. The end result is a full sensory experience that helps visitors/participants create their own culture.
Learn more @ http://kentifrica.org/
Mariano Pensotti – “Cineastas”
Mariano Pensotti is an Argentinian based theatre artist whose works often involve simultaneity and the interplay and tension between cinema and the stage.
In 2015, we got to see the U.S. tour of Pensotti’s “Cineastas”. This love letter to cinema explored three disconnected stories surrounding filmmakers and the projects which consume their lives. As the separate protagonists work towards the completion of their masterpieces, it is inevitable that life begins to influence art just as art begins to influence life. The result is an experience that is complicated, poetic, challenging, and heartbreaking
Learn more @ http://marianopensotti.com/cineastaseng.html
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