“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Monday April 21st — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Monday April 21st — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Monday April 21st — —

Landed

We are still amazed by the latest work of New York-based Australian artist Ian Strange for the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South Australia, within the “Dark Heart” theme. The pitch-black site specific public installation is the structural recreation of the artist’s own 1920’s suburban-style home in Australia. Positioned on the forecourt of the gallery, the amazing ‘Landed’ has seemingly fallen from the sky breaking the surface of the ground it sits on, heavily juxtaposing the neo-classical composition of the museum. At the same time the iconoclastic work materializes the familiar post-modern theme of isolation, heavily experienced in suburban picket-fence-dominated landscapes, which for one is a theme one finds in the work of people like David Lynch to which this work seems to refer to, next to the inspiration Strange found in The Wizard of Oz. We love both execution and concept of this beautiful work by Strange and applaud the gallery for its boldness in accepting a project of this kind.

In the words of “Dark Heart” catalogue author Ashley Crawford:

The suburbs are full of houses that are meant to be homes. But all too often, hidden behind these neat façades, there is a void; a world of soulless boredom at best, a hive of domestic violence – both psychological and physical – at worst. And they have spread like a fungal growth, coating the land, springing up massive malls and fast-food dumps as gross accoutrements, buboes of glass and cement.

Ian Strange who also goes by the name Kid Zoom is a street artist that has been endorsed as a “Rembrandt with a spray can.” Raised in Perth, Australia Ian Strange has been heralded as the next big thing in street art, exhibiting near-medical precision in his execution of both photo-realistic and distorted pop culture paintings. The work of the artist has the tuned characteristics of a fine art work, while pushing the envelope with subversive and often controversial subject matter. Whether Strange is “tagging” animals, working on extremely realistic portraiture or the near-insane reproduction of his childhood home in ‘Landed’: his precision and artistic craft are extraordinary.

‘Landed’ will be on display until the 11th of May, 2014.

For more information see here.