> read it here

“I’ve been working for years on the use of language and painting words on walls, then I realized I had never focused on silence. Language is only complete when words are mixed with silence. I was watching some videos of political demonstrations without audio, and my eye was caught by the fact that the most aesthetically relevant thing joining the people and the messages was the movement of smoke in the air. So I decided to experiment with using smoke in plain nature. I wanted to juxtapose the beauty of a medium traditionally devoted to create chaos with the romantic beauty of landscapes. They complete each other in a perfect way confirming that beauty is found in clashing visions.”

> read the full interview here on Hugo Create
> see more of Shapes

Read more about it in our previous post or visit the official site.

UPDATE: photos here

Exactitudes is a long-term photo project by photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek. Since 2004 they have systematically documented social groups and their appearance. Each of their series is strictly structured and shows twelve similar persons, visually reminding of the works of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Some of the groups belong to subcultures, others don’t, yet they all share a characteristical dress code and usually the same poses.

Exactitudes exhibited widely in international galleries and museums.

The exhibition opens on Feb 3rd and runs until March 18th.

> see the video interview with Ari Versluis for the exhibition here

More information is following.

> some information about the exhibition here

> for now check the Facebook event

UPDATE: More information here

Insight in the background and production process of one of the most spectacular exhibitions of 2010, Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern. Follow Ai Weiwei to the city of Jingdezhen in northern Jiangxi, China, famed for its production of Imperial porcelain, where all of the sunflower seeds have been individually hand-sculpted and hand-painted.

> official site
> visitor questions answered by Ai Weiwei

Additionally, you can see Sunflower Seeds at Mary Boone Gallery right now. The exhibition opened on January 7 and is on view until February 4. Below are a few installation shots. The installation is made out of millions (five tons) of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds. Each actual-size seed is unique and intricately hand-formed and like those shown at Tate Modern painted in Jingdezhen.

The sunflower, following the sun, is a well-known metaphor for The People during China’s Cultural Revolution. The seeds provided nourishment at all levels of society, and the ubiquitous discarded husks provided evidence of an individual’s existence. Ai Weiwei created a deceptively unified field with a large number of individual seeds. Sunflower Seeds comments on social, political and economical issues relevant to contemporary China such as the role of the individual in relationship to the collective.

(photos by twi-ny.com)