Look, mommy a robot!! Orange and blue certainly works well and you certainly can’t do anything wrong with creating a cool looking robot like this one either. Made from paper mache by Matan Liberman.
Since a few years crowd-sourcing has become more and more powerful. It seems to be an easy way to fame, success and money but the downside is that nothing out of the ordinary will ever be honored and certainly not those artistic positions that are difficult and skeptical. I can also understand that some people are intimidated by having to learn the craft of molding and casting yet, in general it takes a lot longer to get a toy mass produced than taking care of the reproduction and distribution by hand. Fabiano Tadiotto states this goal very clearly and I wonder why because his quirky designs work quite well enough as a statement of their own. I think he even could be quite successful with these if he started producing them as resin toys.
Mother nature is always good for a surprise or two and if you keep your eyes open you will be amazed by all the lovely details and things you can see. A good example is this specimen titled ”fern” that Nadine Redlich found a few months ago. It seems to be unique but maybe she can get you more…
Superheroes can take quite a beating. That’s something every kid knows. Still, we see little of the consequences of all this bashing - at least when it comes to the healing process. “Flesh & blood” is a sculpture by Yuen Kee which changes all this. With all this grafitti on his cast leg this hero seems to have been sitting on his throne of concrete for some time already… I particularly dig the little details on the cast such as the phrase “No Pain No Gain”. Hehehe.
“Baby Uno” is the title for these three eerie sculptures by Ivan Munoz Lopez Negrete. They are made from newspaper and are about the size of a small child as far as I can tell. I enjoy the simple grey scale of these and the combination of weird animal heads with the body proportions of children.
…and depending on how long you read this blog you knew I was going to post these eventurally. Le Merde! Do I really have to say anything else? Created and cast by Le Merde in the mashed likeness of Yukinori Dehara, Le Merde and David Horvath or in short “LeDavHara”, these resin figures are just ace. Each of these figures was painted by one of the three artists. As I said, these are selling like mad and the one pictured above was my favorite and is now, rightfully, sold. And it is not my cash the went over the counter there. If you are solvent enough and as enticed as I am then hurry.
Just a few days ago Giant Robot had its great Biennale featuring the work of Yukinori Dehara, Le Merde and David Horvath. Here is a piece by Dehara of whom I am a big fan. Sculpted from paper clay and painted by hand by the master himself. There are still some figures up for sale and if I had the money I’d immediately purchase one of these beauties. Check them out at Giant Robot’s website but you need to be fast since they are selling like hot cakes.
One of the reasons to start this blog was my boredom with the western toy scene in the past few years. Yes, I have been excited about some vinyl toys and there is still the odd one that I buy (odd being the imperative word). Many toys nowadays are way too generic and it seems to me that everyone wants to release a platform toy without having the guts of producing something really individual. With that being said take a look a these simple yet wonderfully charming wooden toys called “Pearblock” and “Peardear” by Swiss smallstuffstudio. These do not even need any facial features to look good. Next to Noferin’s creations these are one of the better combinations of urban toy and wooden toy design I have seen in a while.
You probably will not be able to complete something like this in time for this years Halloween but if you start tomorrow you might be able to scare everyone with a wonderful “Kitchen Monster” like this one here by Cotton Monster. Or you can stay lazy and order one from her.
