Experience Life in London Colorfully via Shanghai

Shanghai’s Fiu Gallery welcomes visitors to experience life in London – roughly 5,700 miles away. Contemporary British artist Peter Judson’s Wonder Around East London exhibition stays true to his playful, colorful, energetic style. Daily objects are transformed into “visual energy” that Judson uses to innovate and explore further, extending lightness, liveliness, and joy to visitors.

In Wonder Around East London, Judson hopes the audience can shift their focus from the functionality of the objects to the beauty of the artwork itself. “There are two things I want to express, and I also want the show to work on two levels. Firstly, to create an aesthetically punchy and interactive experience that can be enjoyed by all. Secondly, I wanted the show to act as a catalyst to a way of thinking,” shared Judson. “Observation is so profoundly linked with conscious and subconscious assumptions. I wanted to use color, abstraction, reduction, and scale as a way to break these assumptions and try to force the audience to view the world around us in a new context.”

The ultimate takeaway is quite simple: “I would love it if anyone leaving the show were to walk home and begin to see the city they live in in a new way. To spot some minute detail they may have normally not noticed and appreciate it regardless of context. To see the object in isolation and maybe find a new appreciation for the world that we live in.”

To learn more about Wonder Around East London, visit peterjudson.com.

OBJECT Is an Umbrella for Anna Bera’s Utility Objects

When creating the OBJECT collection, Polish artist and maker Anna Bera was searching. Searching for a place where an object suddenly appears without justification, but whose existence is indisputable. The series was on display during the 19th edition of Collect in London as part of the Collect Open exhibition, the international fair’s platform for pioneering, thought-provoking craft installations by individual artists.

At Collect Open, Bera debuted the latest addition to OBJECT: a 2.6-meter tall sculpture, hand-carved from sycamore wood with a mirror made of polished steel. Its design, like the rest of the collection’s utility objects – the form of which does not reveal the functionality – plays with form. OBJECT is full of sculptures that may perform the function of mirrors, but then again may not. You may view it as something else entirely. This curiosity of function doesn’t make the pieces any less legitimate, even if all they do is simply exist.

To learn more about Object, visit craftscouncil.org.uk.

Photos by Emilia Oksentowicz.

Felipe Pantone’s Kosmos Exhibition Explores Balance in Kinetic Art

Stop by CONTROL Gallery in Los Angeles before March 18, 2023 to see Felipe Pantone’s exploration of the space found between polarities: Kosmos. This marks the Argentinian-Spanish visual artist’s first exhibition in the city. “Given the history of art in Southern California, it’s only natural that Felipe’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles not only puts light and space at the forefront, but genuinely breathes fresh life into movement via his distinctly modern approaches,” shared Gallery Director Aurora Fisher.

Kosmos marks the debut of Pantone’s SUBTRACTIVE VARIABILITY KOSMOS series, featuring a collection of works that produce continuous motion for extended periods of time. With a monicker borrowed from the Greek word for order, the work in the collection creates balance from polar opposites where two extremes can exist at the same place and time.

“I kept thinking about how all forms are perfectly related to all other forms, in the sense that I can be happy or sad, things can be positive or negative, and yet everything is in perfect balance,” said Pantone. “That led me to be inspired by Calder, then George Rickey, and other artists that worked around the idea of perfect equilibrium. Kosmos is my exploration of that thought process.”

Pantone’s work pushes to expand the boundaries of kinetic art, and this collection lives somewhere at the intersection of technology and fine art. Each manipulatable artwork and painting pays homage to the digital age we live in while furthering the artist’s explorative body of transcendental art.

To learn more about Kosmos, visit control.gallery.