artist/engineer & website: Theo Jansen –  http://www.strandbeest.com

stainless steel

artist & website: Jeff Koons –  http://www.jeffkoons.com

awesome photo by: Librado Romero/The New York Times

Shown at last years Burning Man Festival.

artist & website: Mike Ross and team – http://bigrigjig.com/

Blown and hot sculpted glass

artist & website: Kimberly Haugh –  http://www.prismcontemporary.com/Artists/HaughK/HaughKinventory.html

Stoneware with oxides, glaze and underglaze

artist & website: Steve Hansen – http://www.functionart.com/AM/Artists/HansenS/HansenS.html

On a formal level, “Ghost Writer” can be seen as a three-dimensional Pointillist structure. Conceptually, the artwork is a “portrait” of imagination and learning, a metaphor for the creative process.

Over 3,000 varied cast metal forms are precisely located on 900 descending cables. Each element is a sculpture in itself; en masse they articulate a large head within an abstract spiral form.

The head is comprised of 1,500 silver letters, some of which align to spell various out words.

artist & website: Chris Taylor, Denise Ting, Chris Nardone, Peter Andruchow, Phil Chapnik – http://www.handsart.net/ghostwriter.html

polyvinyl, polyurethane foam and polyester resin. glass eyes, horns – 120 x 80 x 50cm

artist & website: Carsten Höller – http://www.airdeparis.com/holler.htm

North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC.

artist & website: Patrick Dougherty – http://www.stickwork.net/

This will be the first of a new series of posts, though I do not yet know what I will call them.  When I created this site, I wanted to deliver art in a sterile, gallery like environment and I did not want to let my opinion shape the mind of users about the work in one way or another.  I have strayed from this concept occasionally, but these new posts will be more opinion based and will hopefully spark some interesting conversation.

So, the first topic is the new series is the BMW Kinetic Sculpture created by Art+Com. Now art for commercial purposes is nothing new, but art created by agencies or creative businesses for customers for advertisement seems to be growing in popularity.  I think this “kinetic sculpture” has some real potential, but falls a little short.  I really enjoy some of the motion, but the static words displayed on the wall seem forced and unnecessary.

The second thing that bothers me, and my major issue with this piece, is the way it is tagged as being created by a creative agency.  In my opinion art should be attached to the individual artist or artists involved.  I know that sometimes anonymous art can be powerful, but that is not the case here.  In this case Art+Com gets all of the “credit” while we have to search to find the names of those who actually did the work.

So the reason for featuring this is to pose this question:
Can art be created by agency or creative group? And, is the term sculpture being used too loosely here?

See the BMW Kinetic Sculpture here or the youtube video (less quality and worse music) below: