Cool Hunting
Growing up in a remote town of 800 people on Cape Breton Island in eastern Canada, the first thing I would do each morning was to check if I had developed super-powers. As I got older, in an attempt to be more like Peter Parker, I began to explore both photography and science so that one day I too could be bitten by a radio-active spider.
I now work as a family doctor in Vancouver, British Columbia. In medical school, I would organize art exhibitions on medical themes, write about photography for medical journals across North America, and use my student loan money to buy the photographs that I fell in love with. My heart still always skips a beat (literally) when I see a really great picture.
When I’m not reorganizing the photographs on my walls or sitting on the beach with my French bulldog Beckett, I still spend most of my free time in search of beautiful pictures, and have recently decided to organize my findings on my own blog called Squint.
Casey Ruble's first solo show in New York depicts one of the prettiest battle scenes I've ever seen. Each of her colorful and delicate paintings depicts a superficial struggle between warriors, but just below the surface, a deeper struggle between colors, Eastern and Western influences, as well as between abstraction and pictorialism, plays out. Her visually dense images manage to find harmony between conflicting...
In the world of contemporary photography where bigger is often better and color rules, sometimes it’s nice to see work that defies all of these conventions, but still manages to make an impact. The current show on view at Yancey Richardson Gallery by Masao Yamamoto, entitled Kawa–Flow, is a great example of this. In his intentionally stained and worn photographs, Yamamoto explores the notion...
The other day, while on one of my regular gallery tours in Vancouver, I stopped by Atelier Gallery during the installation of their most recent show, a series of collages by Canadian-born, Barcelona-based artist Michael Swaney. I was immediately taken with one of the images leaning up against the wall waiting to be hung. The staff were kind enough to let me browse through...
I recently picked up a copy of issue No.3 of Corduroy Magazine and ended up reading it from cover to cover in one sitting. Named after the idea that a corduroy jacket never goes out of style, the magazine features profiles on up-and-coming and well-known artists, musicians and actors, as well as entire sections devoted to art and fashion. Although this may seem like...
Known for his images of colorful and humor-filled worlds, legendary British photographer Martin Parr recently released a luscious two-volume set entitled "Parrworld: Objects and Postcards." While Parr has been widely recognized for his vast collection of photography books, these particular volumes depict him as an obsessive collector of postcards and themed objects—all presented with the typical Parr sense of humor. The first volume features...
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...
Perhaps his paintings are not for the faint of heart, but if you're like me and like art with a sinister edge, take a look at the work of French artist Guillaume Bresson. Bresson's sombre paintings are like choreographed scenes of urban violence. Painted in a dark and monochrome palette, his subjects lurk in the shadows of dimly lit parking garages or they riot...
My search for the perfect swimsuit has been an ongoing project for the better part of the last 10 years, so I was pretty excited to happen upon the newly opened Parke & Ronen boutique during my last visit to Los Angeles. Despite the fact that Parke & Ronen (made up of the creative team of Parke Lutter and Ronen Jehezkel) design a complete...
