Planting a seven meter high plane tree on the roof of a twelve-storey residential high-rise in Gießen, Germany. The projects‘ title Treehouse represents this romantic idea of living in unison with nature. Treehouse here stands for a retreat from »down earth«.
Baumhaus, Installation, Baum auf Hochhaus, 2014
Pflanzung einer sieben Meter hohen Platane auf dem Dach eines zwölfstöckigen Wohnhochhauses in Gießen. All images © Wiebke Grösch / Frank Metzger.
Brooklyn-based artist Daniel Kukla photographed the interiors of animal enclosure at 15 different zoos across the US and Europe. He says in his Artist Statement: »We, as humans, go to great lengths to satisfy our desire for a connection with the natural world, especially in our interactions with wild and exotic animals. Zoos are the primary site for this relationship, but they often obscure the conflicts inherent in maintaining and displaying captive wild animals.«
All images © Daniel Kukla.
It has been a while. I know. Late, but no less spectacular. In 2009, Brooklyn street artis Swoon and some of her friends cruised on homemade rafts made from New York City garbage from Koper, Slovenia to Venice, Italy. Called the Swimming Cities of Serenissima, the boats looked like something out of the 1990s post-apocalyptic movies ‚Tank Girl‘ and ‚Waterworld‘ sprinkled with a bit of swamp water. Not only the craft themselves was made from re-used material, (including modified Mercedes car engines), but the team also picked up more flotsam and jetsam on their crossing, which they installed in a »cabinet of wonders«. It looks like a lot of fun and performance appears to be really good. (via Global Yodel).
All images © Tod Seelie.
American artist Barry Underwood utilizes LED lights, luminescent material, and other photographic effects to create fleeting abstract landscapes that are influenced by both accidental and incidental light. Here is Underwood’s Artist Statement: »My artwork examines community and land-use in rural, suburban and urban sites. I created this series of installations by researching local agricultural, industrial, and recreational land-use. Curiosity about ecological and social history of specific places drives my work. By revealing the beauty and potential of an ordinary landscape an everyday scene is transformed into a memorable, visual experience. Each photograph image is a dialogue – the result of my direct encounter with nature and history. Inspired by land art, landscape photography and painting, as well as cinema, my images are both surreal and familiar.«
All images © Barry Underwood.
Urban Interventions by Tony Spyra
The Weight of Life, Kraków, Poland, 2013
Physalia, Ostend, Belgium, 2013
Abandoned Shipwreck, Vienna, Austria, 2012
Career, 425 x 101,65 x 118,75cm, 2014, Picture: Hannes Katherl
All images © Tony Spyra.
Alyse Endur’s book Prison Landscapes is a compilation of prison inmates presenting themselves in front of visiting room backdrops. »Such backdrops, often painted by talented inmates, are used within the prisons as portrait studios. As inmates and their visitors pose for photos in front of these idealized landscapes they pretend, for a brief moment, that they are someplace else. The photographs are given to these visitors as gifts to take home and remember the faces of their loved ones while they are incarcerated«, she writes.
State Correctional Institution, Houtzdale, Pennsylvania
Woodbourne Correctional Facility, Woodbourne, New York.
Federal Correctional Institution II, Butner, North Carolina.
