Artist who makes sculptures with Nike shoes

Here’s a good pic of the whale he created out of deck chairs…

http://cybermuse.beaux-arts.ca/cybermuse/new/images/NGC_.40645.640.jpg

That is really, really cool. Nice to see someone doing something with a twist.

While there are many interesting things here on core77, I have to question the nature of work such as nike footware sculpture. Aside from Nike’s status in cultural degeneration, doesnt it seem ironic that people in Canada are viewing art made of product that young african-american’s are stabing each other over. This work is whit, craft, not art. Is this unlike old women who make constructions out of crap? This is just a new spin on what has been done. I hope that this man broadens his horizons, maybe he should leave canada if he wants to produce capitalist/critic art. What does he have to say about this, what is the motivation, what does it mean, what other work has he done. Why dont we solicit a response from him for this board?

You should really come down off your high horse, off the soap box, and out of the ivory tower, it’s nice down here on the ground where people actually do stuff.

Thank you, I thought this was about the sneakers, but it turned out to be a self help board, thansk to you…who does stuff…

OK…glad we cleared that up… I guess.

hahaha, i guess, anyway; with all the positive comments I felt obligated to voice my displeasure with this work. Its interesting and creative, but not great, I would like to see him do something more meaningful, perhaps interpretive.

What does he have to say about this, what is the motivation, what does it mean, what other work has he done. Why dont we solicit a response from him for this board?

There is the questions and the answers.

In my opinion, no matter what he is trying to tell, you are seeing what you want to see from his works. And he is the winner over you for that.

You sound like one of those people who can’t never understand Picasso.
Only they gather up in front of painting and say…“so this cost 4 milliion?” " I think I can do it better with my feet." :cry:

Posting this art was just for an eye candy.
Since I was cutting up my old shoes thesedays, this sculptures somehow touched me.

Since I will have a minor in art history when i graduate, and I grew up learnign that money was no object for art, because art is priceless, I would have to say that your observations are incorrect. In fact I think Picasso is great, and if saif 4million dollar painting moved me, I would buy it, if I had 4 million. I enjoyed this as eye candy, just wanted explore it beyond that. Do you have any fine arts background?

I would have to say that your observations are incorrect.

This tells that you are not an artist. I am sorry.

I grew up learnign that money was no object for art

Money is the object that buys art. Through out the history of contemporary art, artists were supported by those who had money- art dealers. If you ever worked in the gallery or even museums, you will know how deeply money is related to art and fame. There are lot of artists who are talented and still in the shadow. It is because NOT they are suck. It is because they are undiscovered by those who buy and trade, who will eventually give shows and publish his/her name on papers.
Takashi Murakami is probably the latest version of Picasso who understands our culture and use his art as iconic code of our time. He makes art that only sells because he knows this will gives him fame. Few years ago Luis Vuitton and Murakami made a whole new Luis Vuitton product line, which was big hit.
Same for Picasso during his own period if you ever read his biography.

Do you have any fine arts background?

Yes I have. I have BFA first honor from School of Visual Arts in NYC with four years of full tuition scholarship. I had also worked in a gallery in Chelsesa, NYC for about two years. My professors were Tim Rollins, Mary Heilmann, Jerry Saltz, Steve DeFrank, Jan Avgikos, Lynda Benglish, David Chow, Monroe Denton, Joel Fisher, Andrea Belag, Tobi Kan, Jutta Koether, Bill Komoski, Marilyn Lerner, Rene Pierre Allain, Barry Le Va, Melissa Meyer, John Miller, Lynn Umlauf and Jack Whitten. All of them are historically important in contemporary art scene. Does it tell my seriousness in Fine Arts?

I am in Design field because it is the closest to Fine Arts ( woops, someone can kill me for saying this-my old professors at SVA ) and at list I can resolve my urge to let creativity into some objects. If Fine Arists were not born rich or backed up by famouse dealers < the movie, Great Expectation tells the story >, we all become something else to feed ourselves. :wink:
Thank God, I happend to read design books while I was in Fine Arts. Now I don’t have to work as a gallery assistant or artists assistant who makes art for them.

How does distinguishing your assumptions about me as being incorrect make me not an artist? Interesting peice, but Im not sure what it has to do with the sneakers.

Few tips to understand what is art and how can we define such things?
How all this mess started in contemporary art?

Read, Marcel Duchamp. Read Conceptual Art. Read Minimalism. Read Post Modernism. Read Digital Art. Read about Jeff Koons, Damian Hurst, Takashi Murakami, Namjun Paik, Pipilotti Rist, Vanessa Beecroft, Chapman Brothers and The Sensation show. Your eyes will be opened much wider to understand what is defined as Fine Art now. You will also know where you will locate yourself. Conservative, Liberal or Inbetween. You will also notice more about Design if you understand Fine Art History. It all began as the giant root that grew into a huge trunk, which gave out all these branches of arts including Design and architecture that you studied.

That is my point exactly, and my frame of reference for contemporary art within the spectrum of terming “fine art”

Wow, Maybe its is eye candy, and if so does this make it less than “high art?”

If you look at the works of certain "outsider"s within the comtemoprary art scene you ywill find that the relevance of the meaning and context is soley (don’t pardon the pun)in the eye of the creator. these "outsiders, many former Graffitti artists, Graphic designers and skateboarders expound the theroy that its all about eye candy, and that their work is mirror at which one looks at mass public culture, obliquely; alternately praising it and ridiculing it at the same time; thereby dissemintaing its meaning from a grand overarching concept into piecemeal , staggered quotes and soundbites which highlight the hyperdiversity and hyperamiguity of Contemporary mass culture.

Its is Ironic that this artist diffuses a diferent meaning of footwear by mearly cutting up and reapplying styling descisions a premade, designed and manufactured artifact. It twists it from the lucid thought process of a design commodity to a valued contextual artifact by abrogating and negating its wearable and protective, humanistic function into a piece of optic desire which has no use save that of being gazed upon.

You critique, while duly understood and accepted as a critique, fails in the purpose of understanding of the work but also in the understanding of the greater context of the creators media usage and what message it is to cut a functional “Readymade” object up into pieces to collage it in to eyecandy. I’m not sure how much water your theroy holds that a Canadian can not understand the context of an object that certain people stab others for. Is it becasue he is Canadian ort because people stab others for stauts symbol? fortunately few are stabbed for footwear theses days. In fact would that not create and even greater meaning for the the work? By taking a desired object that was afunctioanl iconic status symbol and reverse engineer it into a useless staus symbol, would the artist be highlighting the malleability of taste and trend within Contemporary culture?

Don’t be so hasty to decry “art” as eye candy, for even Picasso was noted to create eye candy because it paid the bills.

wow, that sounds like a great analysis. imo that is what makes art bad and/or good is that one can read into a work however they wish and make intelligent inferences that may really have played no role in what the artist intented.

buuuurp! yeah sometimes I’m glad I stopped designing shoes…your vistas broaden and diversify and you appreciate footwear “fetishes” much more.

but the above is what rubs off from dating a MFA candidate for a few years,…having to defend ones opinions whilst subtley crushing someone else’s opinions without destroying their ego. I revel in it.

sorry about the spelling, it was 10 AM and I was drunk.

…uhm burn.

Relativ- you aren’t designing shoes anymore, what’s up? Email me.

damn. relativ…i guess there isnt much else todo in the great western northeast area of the midwest of the country but to drink til you can expound the greatness of art so visionary that i cant even appreciate it :slight_smile: glad to see you’re back on the boards…how goes it? missing cali?

ttyl

jigs

yea I miss the beach; but here, its alot like beantown, except much colder, with a better music scene and a wierder accent at the gateway to the tundra.

no I wasn’t drunk. I was being ironic and surly considering it was snowing like crazy, I was slaving away at Solidworks models of USB hubs and revelling the inane-ness of commodity design comparing it to branded developmental product design. (not to say its bad–its just different) I needed to flex my mental floss and raise the level of discourse on something before my head exploded.

it was cathartic.