If you're a creative mind stuck in a rut and temporarily unable to come up with new and exciting work, try and do an exercise - break out of your comfort zone and do something impulsively by playing around with unexpected associations, materials and dimensions as well.
Inspirations can come from different artists and sources: think for example about Laure Prouvost's "Airplane teapot chandelier" (2019).
The suspended Murano glass work (made at Berengo Studio) combining a plane and a teapot is the surreal physical manifestation of a recurring dream of Prouvost's grandma (a protagonist of different installations by this artist). In the dream the artist's grandmother hung naked by a rope from the side of an airplane while in flight.
Prouvost will be part of the exhibition "The Act of Breathing" organised by Horst, in Belgium, coinciding with the three-day Horst Arts & Music festival (29th April to 1st May 2022; after the festival weekend, the exhibition will reopen from 12th May to 31st July).
This event will also feature artists Pascale Marthine Tayou and Kris Lemsalu. The former is known for his monumental works in which he employs unexpected materials such as plastic bags or giant pencils. For this occasion Tayou will create new work for the exterior surfaces of the buildings of the ASIAT, a former military base in Vilvoorde.
Kris Lemsalu employs a mix of unusual materials in her surreal works: in her installation "Holy Hell O", three life-size mannequins in colourful bodysuits are frozen in a mid-air arch as they dive into a tub (that seems to be wearing a patchwork quilt-like skirt) sprouting a porcelain head-like configuration at its centre and multiple hands, and gurgling with what looks like yellow mud.
Last but not least, try also experimenting without working with pre-prepared sketches, a practice favoured by Milan-based crochet artist Aldo Lanzini for his masks.
Lanzini freely and swiftly moves from one stitch to the next and one yarn to the other, incorporating different high-contrast colours, shapes and silhouettes in his headpieces, forming strange protuberances borrowed from the animal or insect realms or soft tentacles and woollen hairs that call to mind benevolent monsters.
The soft sculptural masks are part of Lanzini's "The Eyes Are There Where They See, The Things Are There Where They Are Seen" (since 2008) and they are included in the exhibition "Look! Revelations on Art and Fashion" at Marta Herford Museum for Art, Architecture, Design (Goebenstraße 2–10, Herford, Germany; until 6th March), an exploration of fashion as a delicate balance between social norms and individual self-expression, questioning the role of the industry in the super fast global system we're living in and among social media.
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