Cool Hunting

Lucas Isawa: Koinobori
By combining traditional Japanese Carp-shaped wind socks with paper lanterns, artist Lucas Isawa has turned his floating and illuminated school of fish into a breathtakingly peaceful spectacle. Building on koinobori (wind socks decorated with colorful Carp and flown in Japan on Children's Day), Isawa uses bamboo to first construct the skeleton shell of his highly-detailed fish and then fills in the gaps with silk...

Paola Pivi at the Kunsthalle Basel
Alaska-based Milanese born Paola Pivi is having her first solo exhibition, "It just keeps getting better", in Switzerland at the Kunsthalle Basel. Our favorite work from the exhibit is the interactive sculpture "E, 2001" (pictured), a cylindrical structure supporting thousands of steel needles that move in reaction to the presence of a human body. The structure is able to detect a visitor utilizing photocells....

Giles Round at ICA
Native Londoner Giles Round creates sculptures and assemblages that resemble the confounding models of a minimalist stage set designer and his work is currently being shown at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Rectilinear frames evoke the woodwork of Donald Judd, twisting in space to create volumes into which he introduces monochromatic panels, lights and typographic studies. Like other minimalist artists before him, Round appropriates...

Kittiwat Unarrom: Bread Body Parts
Since 2006 Thai artist Kittiwat Unarrom (whose family also runs a bakery) has used dough as his medium to sculpt gruesome renditions of hand, feet, heads, torsos and other body parts. The results are unnervingly realistic with eyes, lips and other details constructed out of cashews, raisins and the like. A lack of hair and blood-like glazes make the work all the more creepy....

David Ryan
I first fell for David Ryan's work after seeing a couple of small pieces in Mark Moore's booth at Scope New York last year. Now Ryan is back with a solo show in his signature style at Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica. (Click images for detail.) Ryan creates his very sculptural paintings by intricately stacking together brightly-painted pieces of MDF (medium-density fibreboard). I...

The Cloud: MIT Mobile Experience Lab
Located in downtown Firenze, the MIT Mobile Experience Lab put their brilliant minds together to create The Cloud, a large interactive sculpture. Consisting of 15,371 individual fibers and 65km of fiber optics, The Cloud senses human movement and tactile engagement provoking a variety of responses, including changes in light, animation and sound. We don't have anyone on the ground yet to go check it...