As of this past Tuesday, a collection of 120 photographs of New York’s Lower East Side taken by Sol LeWitt in 1979 has been installed on the side of the Mondrian SoHo. It is a permanent installation, so you can take a stroll there anytime. The hotel partnered with the Paula Cooper Gallery on the project.

From the press release:

Sol LeWitt made photographs throughout his career, beginning in the 1960s
with serial works of images inspired by Edwaerd Muybridge.  Photography was
a means by which LeWitt incorporated narrative into his art, in a seeming
contradiction to the objective, conceptual rigor that define Lewitt’s wall
drawings and structures from the same period.  Beginning in the mid-1970s,
he published a series of books of photographic essays such as Brick Walls
(1975), Photo Grids (1977), and On the Walls of the Lower East Side, which
culminated in Autobiography (1980). The publications reproduce images that
are absent of people, sequenced in related groupings and arranged into grids
of uniformly sized reproductions that function like modular units with no
overt hierarchy.

On the Walls of the Lower East Side consists of 666 photographs in total,
depicting the decayed landscape of the neighborhood in lower Manhattan where
LeWitt then had his home and studio. (The door of his loft at 117 Hester
Street is included.) Graffiti covered walls were abundant in the area, and
LeWitt shoots mostly images of political scrawls, torn posters and
splattered paint in a straight-forward, almost deadpan, style that is in
essence social documentary.

Sol Lewitt believed that walls were public and large and that books were
small and private; that they each provide the same information through
extremely different formats. Sol Lewitt wrote, “When one sees a wall, it is
the impact of the whole that is understood at once-emotionally more than
intellectually. It is only by reading the wall that the viewer understands
it fully.” The installation of LeWitt¹s On the Walls of the Lower East Side
at Mondrian SoHo provides an opportunity for this work to be seen in the
context of the community that inspired it.

More images after the fold.

A controversial mural/installation went up in Miami this past week. Directed at the Occupy Wall Street Movement, watch the artist Above create his latest work. Video after the jump.

Artist Olaf Mooij’s “Braincar” mobile sculpture is something out of a futuristic sci-fi flick. “Braincar” uses an old used car and features a large brain dominating the entire back end of the vehicle. The sculpture captures and stores images and video from its everyday travel, and the footage is then remixed and projected from within the brain, visible to all those passing.

Mooij’s previous works often explore the inner workings of motor vehicles and how they may connect with the human psyche.

More images and video after the jump.

Bright, a German tradeshow with a focus on streetwear and action sports, always succeeds in offering some fascinating art installations. Included this year was a full installation from Cockzine – quite bold – work from Andrew Pommier and exhibition from the Stuttgart skateboard Museum highlighting music in skate. Additionally, demonstrations on skate board art and Berlin’s street art scene were on hand to entertain attendees.

Photography by Peter Williams for Curated.

All the art from Bright can be found after the jump.

“SKATE 1.0 is a sound and light installation by Electroland. It is installed at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles as part of the COME IN! 2: SURF.SKATE.BIKE exhibition. The opening is July 7, 2011. The exhibition dates are from June 14-July 24, 2011.”

Izumi Kato attempts to reappraise human existence by placing humans in the middle of natural scenes. His work follows a belief that the souls and physical bodies of modern man reveals a primitive scenery within, and is continually working to push that scenery out into the world. As such, Kato’s sculptures and paintings “run wild” creating full environments in their full scale installations.

Izumi Kato “The View from Afar” is on view at Comme des Garçons Paris through September 11, 2011.

Installation views follow.

Erratic: Visual Impact in Current Design releases in August from Gestalten.

Movement, tension, balance, and surprise are being increasingly explored in today’s visual culture. More and more cutting-edge design, photography, and art depicts subjects that initially appear to be stable or to be symmetrical. But upon closer examination, each image tells a story. Or, more aptly, it triggers a story in the viewer’s mind that shows the inevitable events that will develop out of the portrayed circumstances.

Erratic documents recent, often playful creative investigations that reveal a range of narrative qualities inherent in single images. At the same, the featured work makes clear that even conditions of alleged stability or balance can come to an abrupt end at any time.

Page views after the jump.

I love this installation. On view through May 27, 2012 in the Vradenburg Café at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.

Lee Boroson is a Brooklyn-based textile artist.

Employing discarded materials, Anton Unai reinvents the urban landscape and resurrects the lives of the modern masses. Both rough and delicate, his work defies traditional aesthetic boundaries through multifaceted installation – referencing everything from Basquiat’s hand typography and poetry to Sir Howard Hodgkin’s abstract pairing. There is also a fair amount of sculpture thrown in for good measure.

Circleculture Gallery in Berlin will host Unai’s latest installation, Do what you can, with what you have, where you are, from July 7, 2011. The exhibition will run through July 31, 2011.

Circleculture
Gipsstrasse 11
10119 Berlin Germany

View a short interview with the artist and some of his photography after the jump.

Yesterday, etnies celebrated its 25 year anniversary in Paris, birthplace of the brand. Pierre-André Senizergues, former pro skateboarder and owner of etnies, hand-picked three creative minds from the brand’s history – Gil Le Bon Delapointe, Mike Manzoori and Yogi Proctor – to create compelling installations demonstrating what living, moving and thinking (and skating) may look like in the future. The artists’ pieces are on display at La Gaîté Lyrique Public Domaine ’s skateboard culture exhibition from today through August 7.

More on the exhibition here. More looks at the etnies installation after the jump.