Kumi Yamashita: Shadow Art
Though there are many skilled artists who work with light and shadows, such as British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster or Dutch artist Diet Wiegman, Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita is the only one whose complete artwork is comprised of both the material she uses and the immaterial she creates. Solid objects like carved wood or aluminum numbers are hit by a single light source to reveal an inner being, a person patiently waiting to be revealed on the other side. Yamashita is also skilled at creating portraits using a single, unbroken piece of thread or by utilizing unexpected materials like a credit card or a shoe. A master of light and dark, this New York-based artist has exhibited all over the world, no doubt casting her magical spell on everyone who comes across her work.
Cornelia Konrads: Land Art
As far as contemporary land artists go, there seems to be one who stands out from all the rest. German-based Cornelia Konrads creates gravity-defying works using natural materials surrounding her like rocks and branches. Whether she’s suspending a pile of stones in front of a cave in Korea or creating a passageway of floating branches in Germany, Konrads can conjure up magic all around her. Amongst a series of work she calls Piles, Konrads created Pile of Wishes, a conical accumulation of stones that lift up, break free from the group and fly high in the
air.
Marco Battaglini: Multiple Overlapping Realities
Probably the uniqueness of the Italian artist Marco Battaglini is to conceptualize the possible coexistence of the ideals of classical beauty with the anti-aesthetic, the combination of the divine and refined with the vulgar, through a composition that can complement different realities in an eternal instant.
His research of multidimensionality leads him to overlap different temporal, spatial and cultural realities, where everything seems to make sense…
This is ultimately the Battaglini’s purpose: remove barriers that distort the perception of reality.
Felice Varini: Anamorphic Illusions
Swiss artist Felice Varini disrupts environments with his anamorphic art. His large geometric perspective paintings take up huge architectural spaces like sides of buildings, walls and streets challenging the viewer to find the exact spot to stand in order to see his works snap into place. Most recently, Varini took over the historic Gran Palais in Paris, where he added an orange polka dot pattern to its classical facade. Created by a combination of stencils and projectors, the monumental work was entitled Dynamo.
Daniel Arsham: Architecture Installations
Cleveland-born contemporary artist Daniel Arsham creates works that blur the line between art, architecture and performance. Though he’s best known for Snarkitecture, a collaborative practice between Arsham and architect Alex Mustonen where they take existing architecture and «make it perform the unexpected,» Arsham is a cutting-edge artist in and of himself who isn’t afraid to work in different dimensions. His 3D sculptures are particularly provocative in that he uses unexpected materials, like shattered glass, or creates mysterious figures that appear wrapped underneath a wall’s surface.
Bruce Munro: Light Art
Bruce Munro is an installation artist that’s crazy about light. Though he’s skilled at creating sparkling chandeliers, it’s his large-scale installations that set him apart from the rest. For the last 29 years, he’s been illuminating the world, overtaking gardens or creating fields that illuminate at night. For his latest exhibit, at the Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Nashville, Tennessee, Munro presents Light, the 2012 show he first debuted at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania that drew nearly 300,000 visitors. At Cheekwood, Munro presents seven large-scale outdoor installations including one that consists of 40 monumental towers made from over 10,000 recycled water bottles that change colors to the sound of music. This exhibition will be at the Cheekwood location from now untill November 10, 2013.
Young-Deok Seo: Bicycle Chain Sculptures
Though Korean artist Young-Deok Seo mainly works with one material, what he can do with it is highly impressive. He creates figurative sculptures using miles and miles of old bicycle chains. The Seoul-based artist takes the cold, hard metal material and transforms it into shapes of the human face or rather their complex emotions. Woven stitch by stitch, Seo’s sculptures wrap bodies with fragments of chains until they appear like skin. Though they are smooth on the surface, they are empty inside.
Yayoi Kusama: Polka Dot Installations
The eccentric Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama started painting using polka dots when she was just ten and has since made a name for herself using the fun pattern. Though she works in a wide variety of mediums, Kusama is currently known for her pop art installations or for her partnership with French fashion house Louis Vuitton. Now considered the most important living Japanese artist, Kusama also holds the record for the most expensive work sold by a living female artist, auctioned for $5.1 million dollars by Christie’s.
Revolutionizing art 