Gallery O

04/03/2023

An object in the hand, a photo of a memory, a small thought passing us by in our daily routine, all have significance to the story of us. Recently I came across an unusual small museum, along the lines of our little museum of miniatures but expansively devoted to one man’s love of objects, memories, a love story and the making of his personal museum.

Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Museum of Innocence’ is located in the city of Istanbul, hidden in the winding streets and devoted to his collection of story boxes. Like the assemblages of American artist, Joseph Cornell, Pamuk has created a walk-through interpretive museum making cabinets of wonder containing bits and pieces from his memories and his novel into a personal story book.

Pamuk is an author, a collector of objects, an artist, an aspiring architect, and professor of humanities at Columbia University in New York. He has also won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. I came across his work recently and ordered the book about his museum entitled “The Innocence of Objects”

Here is a short introduction to Orhan Pamuk’s wonderful museum…

Inside the unusual museum of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk.

01/04/2023

Microsculpture: The Insect Portraits of Levon Biss is a groundbreaking project that presents insect specimens from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History like never before. British photographer Levon Biss’ images reveal an unexpected and often breathtaking beauty that brings to life the many intricate adaptations of an insect’s form — what entomologists call their microsculpture.

Displayed as large-scale photographic prints up to 9 feet high, the Microsculpture project reveals the hidden structure and beauty of insects. Each beautifully lit image was created from around 8,000 individual photographs taken under strobe lights, capturing the microscopic forms of insects in striking, high-resolution detail. Examine extremely fine pigmented scales, velvet-like surface textures, saw-sharp mandibles, swirling patterns and some of the most vibrant, iridescent colors seen in nature.

Microsculpture- The insect photography of Levon Biss. A groundbreaking photographic exhibition of Science and Art. A special exhibition from 27th May until…

11/29/2022

The miniature sculptures of French artist, Charles Malherbe
…. Www.CharlesMalherbe.com

Malherbe's sculptures are isolated reefs on which a kind of architectural patchwork would have agglomerated, improbable refuges marked by the passage of time and the multiple changes of the communities that inhabit them. Others are like observation stations, relics of recently collapsed civilizations.
A bit as if we had asked the filmmaker Miyasaki to shoot the next episode of Mad-Max.
They are the basis of an open narrative whose bricks would be population density, collapse, resilience, the choice and routing of energy sources...
His technique is more akin to photographic work that dwells on detail, miniaturization being less a performance than a subterfuge. He uses multiple materials (stone, wood, metal, sheet metal, cardboard, plastic) for the most realistic rendering possible.
Charles Malherbe draws his inspiration from various influences: Michael Wolf and the Bechers for photography and architecture, Ian MC Que and Simon Stalenhag for illustration, and Hiroyuki Hamada for sculpture, among others.
Special dedication to Broken Fingaz, Saner, Neuzz, Mr. CHAT, Miss. Tic, Beastman & Phibs, Muretz... brilliant street artists whose borrowing of certain images allows their compositions to be anchored in contemporary history. This is a real tribute.

Born in 1969 in Le Mans, Charles Malherbe studied at the Beaux-Arts in Nantes, before emigrating in 2001 to the south of France.
He devoted himself, at first, to the creation of humorous scenes in small windows. It then evolves towards other themes from which it draws inspiration from archeology and ethnological stories. He was able to adapt different techniques and renderings in his own way (signed patina, Mayan fabrics, African hues).
From 2011, he began a creative "almost break" and no longer exhibited, paternity and restoration projects required, until 2017 when he returned to his studio for good.
If his new series "Collapse" has accents of anticipation, it is nevertheless the continuity of other series which were oriented rather towards the past.

07/19/2022

Stephan Dam's wonderkammer vials filled with handmade wonders....

Held in tall, transparent jars are recreations of tiny jellyfish with wispy tentacles, plankton, and other delicate sea creatures by Danish artist Steffen Dam (previously). He sculpts the miniature organisms in glass and displays the exquisite creations in wooden boxes or medicine cases that evoke t

05/07/2022

One of my all-time favorite automata artists. I first saw the works of Paul Spooner at the famed Cabaret Mechanical Theater many years back at Covington Gardens in London. I loved his sense of humor, his mechanical skills and the absurdist automata topics. Here's Paul explaining his creative process....

Meet Paul Spooner, one of the featured artists at the Exploratorium's Curious Contraptions exhibition.Curious Contraptions explores small, surreal worlds thr...

01/18/2022

The tiny worlds of Japanese miniaturist, Tatsuya Tanaka…

Miniature Calendar is an incredible ongoing project by Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka, that features beautiful miniature dioramas of everyday life using

03/24/2021

Here’s some works by artist and Bonsai master, Dave Creek and his miniature tree houses...

Artist Dave Creek sadly passed away earlier this year, but he'll be remembered for his incredible bonsai tree houses.