Take a look at Cheval Noir [Black Horse] – artist Aya Kato’s portfolio site, especially if you’re familiar with her work. I was just reminded of her by Ashbet and noticed a significant change in her work’s direction. Aya Kato made herself a name with eye-drowning elaborate technicolor illustrations, influenced in equal parts by Ukiyo-e and Art Nouveau. More than half of her 2008 work borders on minimal, with subdued colors and more negative space. After years of churning out ornate psychedelic panels it’s an understandable step for the young artist. It’ll be curious to see whether she’ll push herself even further in this direction.

Spider, 2008

Aya Kato has been featured in countless magazines and her designs adorn everything from chocolate boxes to T-shirts to Hitachi adverts. At such a young age she’s had international success, and I’m eager to see whether her new work’s look will catch on commercially. Compare the image above, created in 2008, to Akazukin, from three years ago, below. Patterns and transformation are featured in both, but the similarities end there. Personally, as much as I love the clean and minimal, I miss the vivid landscapes and superabundance of Aya’s older work.

Akazukin, 2005

• Aya Kato T-shirts
• Tori Amos music video based on Aya Kato’s work
• Murakami on Coilhouse
• Yana Moskaluk on Coilhouse

More from Aya Kato below the jump.

Wayne Martin Belger builds pinhole cameras – this much can be said with certainty. The rest becomes as rain-blurred and effervescent as the images his unique apparatuses produce. Pinhole cameras are still popular among hobbyists and are occasionally hailed as the purest photographic tool. With no lenses between the tool and the subject, the scene, the light and the depth of field are captured in smoky stills – as if snapped by the mind’s eye. Experiencing these images for the first time is more like viewing impressions, memories.

As you can see above, WMB’s cameras are beyond mere tools, more than means to an end. While many artists long for the process more than the product, Belger has redefined process-love completely. His projects sometimes plant their seeds through the items he collects, other times through ideas, upon the birth of which collecting begins. The camera he used to photograph AIDS victims is built with a vial of AIDS-infected blood, the one with which he captured the secret life of deer is crowned with antlers, expectant mothers were shot with a camera within which an infant’s heart sits still. He’s used bees, human skulls, religious relics, and more. Each device built by Belger contains its sacred object, each otherworldly photo series is just part of a ritual and carries with it the spirit of the camera, the concept, the execution itself.

Belger and his exquisite cameras can be seen next at Device Gallery on September 13, at a special reception from 6 to 9 pm.

• Pinhole cameras on Wikipedia
• Belger on Double Exposure
• Belger on Pop Photo
• Official WMB website
• Sarah Moon’s dreamlike photos on Coilhouse

Things have been a bit slow around here – comrade Nadya is off gallivanting around the Nevada desert and comrade Mer’s traipsing about New York, where I was all weekend. Do pardon our regrouping and accept this small offering of oh my god it’s a wearable motorcycle.

It really is. Jake Loniak, a student at Art Center College of Design, presents this wonderful invention. Basically an electric, lithium battery-run exoskeleton with three wheels, Deus Ex Machina would be run by a computer which would translate and respond to the rider’s body with the motorcycle’s own thirty six pneumatic muscles. This SciFi dream-machine is envisioned by Loniak as a sport bike, and, as fate would have it, doesn’t exist beyond his concept as of yet. He’s confident in real world potential of Deus Ex Machina, anyhow: “I believe a working prototype could be made, but it would take a great deal of time and engineering. This isn’t fantasy – it’s a green vehicle, and all of the numbers are based in the real world”. How sweet it could be, Jake. Come on, technologically-inclined billionaires of the world, make it so!

While waiting for a physical prototype, we can torture ourselves with this realistically rendered video of Deus Ex machine in action. Thanks for the pain, Jerem.

One of of Recife’s new fonts, “Hand-Made.”

Brazilian font designer and collage artist Eduardo Recife, famous for freely giving away some of the most beautiful fonts ever made, has just released a new version of Misprinted Type. The completely-redesigned site features 7 new fonts, 4 new drawings, 17 new collage illustrations and new original art in the web store.

Recife’s legendary font “Nars”

I’ve been following Recife’s site ever since version 2.0. His fonts are probably what got me interested in typography in the first place. I have to say that while some may consider Recife’s grunge-antique collage aesthetic “played out,” I don’t care. Looking at his work, I feel like it comes from a very genuine place. His style still gets to me every time – no matter how many shitty emo bands use it. Here’s to more Recife fonts in the years to come!

• Misprinted Type 4.0
• Misprinted Type 3.0
• Misprinted Type 2.0

Coilhouse Magazine, Issue 01 is finally here!

Get ready for 96 glossy, full-color pages of art, photography, music, fashion and literature. In this issue, the stark android beauty created by Andy Julia for our cover is counterbalanced inside by his elegant portfolio of vintage-style nudes. Our biggest feature in Issue 01 is an exclusive 10-page showcase and interview with the incredible taxidermy sculptress Jessica Joslin. Also in Issue 01, Coilhouse travels to Ljubljana, Slovenia (literally! we actually went!) to interview Laibach, while singer Jarboe tells war tales from her career post-Swans. Photographer Eugenio Recuenco contributes a lush 10-page portfolio and interview, while Clayton James Cubitt delivers a poignant, visceral spread (again, literally) on the topic of genital origami. Renowned science fiction author Samuel R. Delany shares an exclusive excerpt from his forthcoming novel, “From the Valley of the Nest of Spiders,” while our first installment of “All Yesterday’s Parties” digs up forgotten party photos from eras long gone, starting with London’s Slimelight circa ’95. Fans of WZW and Z!ST will love Zo’s fashion pictorial, in which she reconstructs a Galliano outfit on a budget. Pop-surrealist Travis Louie gives us a glimpse of his inner monster, and cult painter Saturno Butto has some medical fun at the expense of Catholics everywhere. All this, and much more – including supervillain how-to’s, Coilhouse paper dolls, interviews, fashion and art await. Get it now!

Readers of the blog, we have another treat just for you: the fact that the version of the magazine that you are buying here today will not be available in stores. Coilhouse will be in stores this fall, but it won’t be the unique version that’s available here. On this site, and on this site only, you can get the uncensored edition. This version includes a powerful piece that was too risqué for stores to accept without problems due to the graphic (and in our opinion, beautiful) images involved. Only 1000 copies of this very limited version exist – a mere fraction of the entire print run. And that version is only available here, on this site. When we run out, we’ll start selling the censored version that will also be available in stores – so get the limited edition copy that we call the “true version of the magazine” while we still have them!

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The image above could be the first poster for Joseph Kahn‘s film adaptation of William Gibson’s landmark cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. Word of a Neuromancer movie has been buzzing around for nearly a decade, but seeing a visual representation does make it a all bit more real.

Khan is currently known for his directorial debut, Torque, and a music video for the Britney Spears song “Toxic”. Mildly put, his repertoire doesn’t exactly thrill most Neuromancer fans. This, combined with the general sentiment that Neuromancer simply can not be translated into film, has the director under a lot of pressure. Since so little is known about the film production, rumor mills have been churning out all sorts of gems. There is the prospect of Hayden Christensen playing anti-hero hacker Case, a post claims this protagonist’s name would be changed to “Cage”, there’s the fact that Gibson himself is saying close to nothing about the film. There is even concept art out there!

What we’re not seeing, however, is a full cast list, nor any real confirmation that the film is actually happening [official website? IMDB page updates?]. Regardless, I hope that Kahn will stick to his guns and make a great movie, some necessary departure from the original withstanding. I’ll suppress my instinctual cynicism until there’s any real information to be had. While we wait, I’m desperately curious to hear your ideal Neuromancer cast nominations! The IMDB forums offer some interesting choices, here.

Jacques Barzun, as illustrated by Jean-Claude Floch

“Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.”

“Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made.”

-Jacques Barzun

Last November, historian and cultural critic Jacques Barzun turned 100. In his time, he’s written 37 books on a wide range of topics (38 is in the works), led a prestigious university and received a warehouse full of accolades. He is one of the world’s last living links to the intellectual life of the Belle Époque and the Roaring ’20s (he began teaching when Calvin Coolidge was in office). The word eminent is usually attached to any description of him, no matter who’s writing. It seems to fit.

He thinks the current time is decadent. Not just any decadence, but the sort that ends eras. But it’s not in the signs the usual staid wielder of that word might see: sex, uppity women, kids on the lawn. No, Barzun’s decadence is the end of motion, it is when scholarship becomes “the pretentious garbled in the unintelligible” and “the feeling of being hemmed in by rules matched that of being hemmed in by people.” Above all Barzun’s decadence is a failure of nerve: an unwillingness to face the future and what it demands of us.

For these observations and others, he has been often dismissed as a relic, a snobbish champion of the dead white male tradition. Even among his admirers, he might well go down in history simply as the guy who said that thing about baseball.

But it’s worth taking a look around, at the constant stream of imitative art, at politicians with heads firmly planted in the same tired sand — and at philosophies that serve mainly as elaborate excuses for doing nothing.

So, when Barzun sees things finally running down, with the grand ideas that have driven our culture since the Renaissance crumbling, it’s time to consider something else: he may be a curmudgeon, he may be old-fashioned, he may even be out of touch. He may also be right.

What’s Natalie Shau been up to? Last we checked, the Lithuanian-based digital artist was creating sepia images based on Greek mythology. More recently, she’s completed a sumptuous new set of illustrations for French jewelry designer Lydia Courteille. On Courteille’s site, Shau’s dreamy Ray Caesar-esque illustrations serve to introduce each of the seven ranges: My Secret Garden, Vanities, Bestiary, Esoterism, Cameos & Glyptics, Cassandra’s and Cabinet of Curiosities.

The prices for Courteille’s diamond-encrusted bijoux range in the average of $10,000. Why use real diamonds? Gross! Nevertheless, there are a couple of baubles on Courteille’s site that I covet, and I include them here for your viewing pleasure.

It’s the feeling that you don’t necessarily fit within your own time. You’re drawn to the past in ways you can’t quite understand… Jared Joslin

Two of Jared Joslin’s recent oil paintings, The Panther and the Zebra and Moonlit Starlet

My admiration for the visionary Joslin posse knows no bounds. If there were any way for me to make the reception for Jared’s solo exhibition in Beverly Hills tomorrow night (August 14th), I’d be there with bells on (as well as a pair of schmancy silk stockings with seams up the back, and possibly one of those vintage, beaded cloche hats). Alas, in a strange twist of fate, I’ll be in the Joslin’s own city of Chicago, no doubt weeping disconsolately into a plastic cup of draft beer in the corner of some rock club. So glamorous.

Metropolis by Jared Joslin (2008)

I urge our readers in Southern California to attend the reception in my stead. Don’t miss the opportunity to bask in the breathtaking elegance, mystery and nostalgia of Jared’s recent work, a collection of oil paintings entitled Shadow of the Silver Moon. Quoting the press release:

In the Shadow of the Silver Moon, a spectrum of intriguing characters spring to life. There is a Dietrich-esque emcee, striking her silver-tipped cane against the parquet floor. An alluring chanteuse beckons with her sparkling eyes and an elaborately costumed fan dancer strikes an elegant, sinuous pose.

Performers and patrons are caught in the swirl of the evening, yet remain lost in their own private reveries. Under the Shadow of the Silver Moon, while the band is playing, mysteries hidden behind the eyes linger in the air, like fireflies in the night.

The exhibition runs through September 13, 2008 at the Yarger/Strauss Fine Art.

First, headlines screaming about giant flying inflatable turds descending on innocent children… and now, word that Werner Herzog and David Lynch are joining forces to make a slasher film?! Comrades, this is either the beginning of the end, or The Best Day Ever. Let’s dance!

Herzog + Sophocles + Lynch = EPIC WIN

The two reigning iconoclasts of modern cinema announced at Cannes that they’ll be teaming up to make a digitally shot, guerilla-style murder drama called My Son sometime early next year. Based on a true story, My Son will tell the grisly tale of a “San Diego man who acts out a Sophocles play in his mind and kills his mother with a sword” with the narrative jumping between the murder scene and direct accounts from the matricidal maniac.

Lynch has also announced plans to collaborate with Jodorowsky on an NC-17 “metaphysical gangster movie” starring Nick Nolte, and featuring Marilyn Manson as a 300-year old pope.

What next? Matthew Barney and the Mekas Brothers unite to reinterpret the Ramayana starring Soupy Sales as Hanuman? A pristine print of Welles’ original cut of The Magnificent Ambersons is found under a rock in a Brazilian rain forest? Jerry Lewis finally consents to release The Day the Clown Cried? GIT ‘ER DONE, COSMOS.