Stages: Livestrong Benefit Art Show

by Ami Kealoha

Uniting a great cause and an all-star roster of artists, Lance Armstrong's Stages exhibit benefiting Livestrong debuted at Paris' Emmanuel Perrotin gallery last week. The show consists entirely of commissions from both lowbrow artists and blue chip veterans alike—Kaws, Dzine (pictured above with detail shots after the jump) and Christopher Wool (pictured below right, click image for detail), to name a few—who Armstrong and Nike CEO Mark Parker hand-picked and tasked with incorporating the color yellow and either touching on Armstrong or cancer in the work.

The upshot, while heavy with bicycle symbolism, runs the emotional gamut from Ed Ruscha's characteristically tongue-in-cheek "Vital To The Core" (above left) to current art darling and recent Yale grad Rosson Crow's lurid Texas bike show scene (below). We stopped by the opening, shared an air kiss with our friend and participating artist José Parlá and interviewed Eric White about his touchingly personal homage to his mom, "Foyer," which metaphorically interprets her experience battling oral cancer twice.

Inset with golden-hued bubbles that frame a forest setting, White's black-and-white image of '40s-era film actress Hedi Lamar posed in a cold marble interior touches on the transformative nature of cancer—physically, spiritually and otherwise. (Pictured below.) For the New York-based artist, participating in the show was a meaningful experience as well, "To be able to create a piece that's basically a tribute to my mom and to her struggle with it personally is incredible," he shared with CH. And how does he feel now that the show's opened? "Now I'm just thinking about Lance and hoping that he can do it."

Stages will travel to NYC after Paris (see details below) and rumor has it Miami will be next. Running concurrently in Colette's store windows, a companion exhibit of artist-designed bicycles that Armstrong has ridden in various races will be auctioned In New York to benefit the cause along with the artworks.

See more images, including work by Kaws, Shepard Fairey, Andreas Gursky, Yoshitomo Nara, Raymond Pettibon, Richard Prince and more after the jump.

Stages
Through 8 August 2009
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin
76 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris map
tel. +33 (0) 1 42 16 79 79

24Hour Magazine

by CH Contributor

by Laura Neilson

As a challenge to the notion that magazines are a slow and dying format, 24Hour Magazine is an awesomely triumphant endeavor. The entire magazine was conceptualized, produced and printed—all in the span of a single day.

With the goal of capturing a moment through teamwork and creative thought, co-creators Tuffer Harris and Sam Mulkay took a spontaneous idea and quickly formed a team of designers, photographers, writers and artists to come together with nothing but the following motto in place: "1 day. 1 magazine. Start to finish. Scratch to print."

On 27 June 2009 in a studio in Kortrijk, Belgium, not unlike a college all-nighter or a team cram-session, Harris and Mulkay's enthusiastic collective embarked on creating a magazine—story ideas, layout and design included—from scratch. To witness the project, viewers could tune in for updates via video and flickr feeds, blog posts and Twitter updates. The result is a 47-page, ad-free cross-pollination of fashion, design, music and lifestyle, complete with fashion photo spreads.

While most monthly magazines require several months of lead time, and many are folding in favor of timelier online publications, 24Hour Magazine is printed proof that magazines can be equally of-the-moment.

Click here to read the magazine online. To pre-order a hard copy, visit the 24Hour Magazine website.

Holger Schubert Maserati Garage

by CH Contributor

by Tamara Warren

A beautiful car deserves a beautiful garage, and Holger Schubert’s minimalist 1200-square-foot carport for Maserati's Design Driven competition is exactly that.

Overlooking western Los Angeles, Schubert's winning design has a setting more akin to an art gallery than a garage. Accessed by a separate driveway bridge, the sustainable structure allows the car to remain the focal point of the airy elevated garage.

The white walls are insulated with natural cotton fiber, hosting large windows that allow for maximum daylight while the twilight hours offer the perfect setting for the car’s image to reflect on the walls. Electric screens are used on exterior walls for climate control purposes along with 47 solar panels on the roof. Boasting a small kitchen, library and living area, when housing a Maserati the garage becomes the epitome of luxury.

Schubert’s garage will be featured in the October issue of Architectural Digest, along with Chris Altman’s conceptual design, in which limestone and a reflection pool are used to highlight the car’s beauty. All 125 entries are viewable at Design Driven.

thisMoment Social Networking Site

by Nathan Suberi

Encouraging more meaningful interaction than status updates, social networking site thisMoment allows you to create a timeline of your life—adding photos, videos and feelings in an easily navigable format. We recently had a chance to catch up with thisMoment partner Ankarino Lara, who told us more about the site.

Cool Hunting: What inspired you to look at life in terms of moments?

Ankarino Lara: In thinking about our lives, we saw our past, present, and future as this flow from which certain ideas, events, people and emotions rise above the blur. These things that make us laugh, smile, cry, shudder are the fundamental units of human experience, or a Moment. A Moment has context: there's a time and a place, often people, and always emotion and some visualization that makes up a Moment. So thisMoment was really born out of a need to share these Moments of life – stuff that can’t be conveyed in a single image post or a 140 character tweet. It demanded a rich, vibrant aesthetic, and seeks to draw more out of people through the Moment Making process.

There are already a ton of social networking websites out there. What does thisMoment offer to differentiate it from the herd?

We believe that thisMoment is a compliment to all the existing website and services that exist out there, as opposed to a competitor. People are already uploading images and videos to sites like Flickr and YouTube, and they’re already updating their status on Facebook, or tweeting about the latest thing that happened to them - but they really have nothing to show for all of it. thisMoment allows you to link up all of your media and communication services and then easily pull content and contacts into creating Moments. You can sync Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, YouTube, Twitter, and FriendFeed today, and we're adding more in the coming months. The idea is simple: let people pull all the stuff that they've already uploaded to the web to create a beautifully packaged and presented Moment, and then let them broadcast that out to their existing social graph.

So, for example, you can check out one of my latest moments that I created using our Facebook App. It's a moment with me taking my son, Kalyxtomar, swimming for the first time.

And it is able to have it's own manifestation on thisMoment.

And of course there's a version for the iPhone app as well.

So I've pulled images in from Flickr, uploaded a few videos, and then posted the URL to Twitter which in turn updated my Facebook status, which broadcasted the Moment to all my friends. That's the circle that we complete for people.

See the rest of the interview and more images after the jump.

Check out thisMoment to start your own lifeline.

Madera Design's Studio

by CH Contributor

by Julie Wolfson

Designer and artist Leila Fakouri seems to constantly percolate with ideas. After several years of successful events and projects at Madrone Lounge in San Francisco, Fakouri recently headed to Los Angeles, creating a whimsically magical space downtown to let her imagination run wild at her new company, Madera Design.

Hidden away on Central Avenue near the 10 freeway, entering Madera Design House feels like walking into a dreamland. Vintage and contemporary elements, saturated color, and unique objects fill very corner. Fakouri's transformations of figurines with monochromatic paint, light sculptures created from moss and restyled vintage furniture with photos embedded into the surface make for visually-electric and unusual decor.

Madera Design offers multimedia design for events, installations, commercial spaces, films, sets, and photo shoots. They also rent their downtown space for events. A framed wallpaper wall houses a large screen for films, a kitchen allows for food preparation, and there's enough eye-popping imagery for photos shoots galore. Madera Deisgn hosts art shows and multimedia performances as well, turning the space into an oasis of creativity in the industrial neighborhood. With the motto, "Living IN Art", Fakouri brings her dreams to life.

See more images after the jump.

The Architecture of Parking

by Doug Black

If architecture is, as Mies van der Rohe held, "the will of an epoch translated into space," then it's no surprise that a rabid proclivity towards parking structures marks the last century. Born out of an increasing reliance on cars, the design of parking garages range from the mundane to profound. Oftentimes, though, they're mistaken as purely utilitarian structures that have nothing to add to the architectural conversation. Simon Henley's 2007 book "The Architecture of Parking" (which was recently released in paperback) debunks this thinking by cataloging the most iconic and influential examples and detailing their unique contributions.

With the help of 568 images the book examines scores of different case studies, from canonical examples like Chicago's corncob-shaped Marina City towers to less-heralded car parks, like the one on Pydar Street in Truro, England (both pictured below). The book separates case studies into groupings marked by unique aesthetic influence, matter, elevation, light and obliquity.

In addition to these examples, extras include an introduction by the clearly car park-smitten author and photo essays by Sue Barr. Purchase "The Architecture of Parking" from Amazon or Thames & Hudson.

View more images after the jump.