Car crash, crashed cars: art works revisited

A couple of months back I posted about car crash as a subject and object in some artists's works, and surprisingly people seem to be fascinated by car crash, death and chaos (keyword searches on Google told me). Well here is some more, gruesome and graphic images by New York-based Danish photographer Peter Funch and one of the latest photo series from German artist Ricarda Roggan, who's better known for her still-life arrangements and installation of furniture piles.

By moving the spotlight from the human physical beings to the wrecked cars, both artists make these objects represent a human failing or a human emotion, as if they are dying victims rather than just vehicles. In Roggan's photographs a falling-off bumper looks like a frowning mouth, while smashed headlamps suggest downcast eyes. The spectre of abandonment, isolation and death is present – not only because there has been an accident, but because these cars are obviously not bound for the repair shop: they will remain permanently obsolete.

Funch however, approaches the scene with a very different perspective. He captures the moment of clashing forces, the fragility of human bodies and the crash's aftermath perfectly with his journalistic and forensic style, with great precision and careful observation. His latest project Babel Tales is far less bloody and worth a look too.

Ricarda Roggan, Garage (2008)

Peter Funch CRASH (2009)

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He Sen: the lost generation

Beijing-based artist He Sen has been painting girls smoking, drinking and dazing for a good 10 years now. He has quietly become a powerful force among contemporary Chinese painters. His ultra-realisitc and photographic oil paintings of women, often in seductive underwear and poses, are sharp and blurry at the same time, with starkly contrasting colours, greyed-out background and vivid details which paint a bleak and pessimistic picture of the youth culture in China. 

Without contextualising the images it's easy to dismiss He's work as simply the "objetification" of women, possibly border-line "erotic". But the message here is more complicated than that. These women are beautiful, yet their bodies are deadly grey, their faces often blank and lacking intensity compared to their clothing and pose, shadows often dance into the background and the only one or two details that stand out are the lips, the drinks and the cigarette smoke.  After much fame and fortune, He has moved on in recent years to ink and pen and re-invented classic Chinese paintings of flowers and trees, but to the Western world these nearly naked sad girls still look far more interesting.  

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Monkey King in contemporary Chinese Art

Ever heard of the Chinese legend Monkey King? Think of Spider Man, but way cooler. Monkey King Sun Wukong can ride clouds, clone himself with his monkey hair, spot demons and witches with his Fiery Golden Eyes, even when they dress up as innocent pretty girls ready to seduce. He's also a shapeshifter, able to transform into 72 objects and animals. He hates the authority and was put under a big rock and spell by the gods for sabotaging the Heavenly Kingdom, until the Journey to the West novel made him a bodyguard of Buddhist monk Tripitaka, who was commissioned, in real life, in the 7th Century to trek to India to retrieve Buddihist sultras. Alone with the Monkey King, there was Pigsy, Sandy and the monk's white horse, whom later revealed himself to be a dragon prince.


The traditional realisation of Monkey King is often in the form of opera, film and staged play, but contemporary Chinese artists have found new ways to re-interpret the classic Monkey - in a space suit with a big six-pack.

Check out the carefully handcafted toy figures by Cacooca, an enterprise based in Beijing that creates funky designs of Pandas in print and figures.

Contemporary Chinese Artist Wang Mian (not the one from the 14th century) has also produced a series of mini-sculptures featuring the Monkey King and his fellow disciples. All in somewhat a futuristic and sci-fi fiction inspired style. Wang's work has been exhibited in China and Switzerland.

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Lissy Elle: beauty in Wonderland

There are plenty of fashion shoots, magazine covers of girls mixed with leaves, water, flowers, trees, whatever you like, to create a dreamy and romantic atmosphere, that sort of photos you'd associate with teenage girly fantasies. And amongst the best of this kind, Lissy Elle, the Canadian photographer, people's Flickr princess has produced some stunning looking work in recent months, following her much praised series of floating bodies in the air called "Get Back In Your Book"

Check out her Facebook page for the latest rejects that didn't make it on Flickr, and her Tumblr for Qs & As

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Timothy Archbald: Man and Machine

Men have this natural psychological horror when it comes to machines, from Isaac Asimov to the Terminator, we fantasise and terrorise ourselves with robot baddies. This series of photographs by Timothy Archbald seeks to disintegrate the myth around the robotic and showcase the quirky workspace in the home of the founder of Hanson Robotics, Evan Hanson in Richardson, Texas. Enjoy more of Archbald's works here

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