Presenting ROOMS 16: SUPERLUMINAL

“This is how it all begins: from blinding darkness enters light; soft, beautiful, expanding, violent, maddening, defiant”

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ROOMS 16 is all about light, offering an explosion of colour, yet meditating the significance of contrast, of darkness. The darkness behind the light, which serves as a technical tool, an inception of creativity. Together with the artists who make up this issue we seek to illuminate what happens when we stop thinking of light and darkness as binaries, but rather as parts of the same force. The force that drives us to create, destroy and recreate. As featured photographer Ryan Harding points out, one must accept the necessity of scrapping things in order to reinvent. To improve. To excel.

Following this year’s Art Basel – Miami Beach, ROOMS 16 muses the creative processes and emotional influences of three Miami-based artists as Autumn Casey, Farley Aguilar and Bhakti Baxter consider the impact of the Sun City on their work. While the works of contemporary artists often exist by an illusion of lighting and composition, the illusion is accepted as an ancient and indispensable artistic extrication. Further, a focus on light in composition is evident in Pawel Nolbert’s works as he discusses the effect colour has on perception and visual impact. We also talk “lighting” with award-winning photographer Jamie-James Medina, whose diverse portfolio includes dramatic and characterful portraits of Mercury-prize nominee FKA Twigs. 

ROOMS 16 explores the realms of digital artistic expression, introducing the work of two extraordinary digital artists, Robert Bell and Andreas Nicolas Fischer. Their compositions are eruptions of light and yet contain within them sinister elements 

adding to the intensity of the visual experience. Featured also is onedotzero, a company responsible for creating astonishing digital sensory arts events, and Eduardo Gomes, who uses 3D computer graphics to implement and demonstrate visual artwork.

Without borders or boundaries, Alex Chinneck creates large-scale surrealist illusions. He describes the making of playful public art, the obligation for cultural experiences to be valuable and also the advantage of controlling your art, beginning to end. With The Fashtons, we ponder photo-realism in visual projects for music and fashion and the consonance brought by two separate, yet intertwined and transmittable, artistic modes of expression.

ROOMS 16 cogitates the blurring of liminal spaces, the creation of complex art. The result is art, which breaks boundaries. Art as light and darkness, simultaneously. Art, which is faster than light itself. Art, which is superluminal.

ROOMS 16: The Fashtons The Cover Artists Uncovered

Photos by Alexandra Uhart

It’s that time of the year to join the festive reflections on togetherness. We here wouldn’t of course, resist revisiting the values of family when it’s novel and tantalising. 

For ROOMS 16, we are welcomed to tap into the creative unity of The Fashtons – formed by husband-and-wife artists Ben Ashton and Fiona Garden. Ben being a figurative painter and installation artist, Fiona a music and fashion photographer: each is as adept in their own fields as in their collaboration. 

I will always be drawn to the play of light on bone. The architecture of a face or body, as it stands, in light, whether made up or bare, discovered or intended, is what inspires me. It’s a constant wonder that in that interplay between light and shadow, I can capture the essence of a person – it’s an endless marvel.—Fiona Garden

 I feel with every self-portrait I produce, I am constantly reminded of my own mortality and as a result I have become fixated upon the idea of legacy. I have plundered the history of painting, initially to teach myself to paint but after that I would always turn to the security of history to make my next decision.—Ben Ashton

For now, you can only read the eloquent and revealing exchange with Ben and Fiona in ROOMS 16, our hand-selected gift to you. And Merry Christmas for that matter.

ROOMS 16, out now

ArtEZ Institute of the Arts

Shaping New Talent

ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands trains students for professions in which art, knowledge and creativity play a central role. For more than 3000 students, ArtEZ offers a related selection of Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programmes in visual art, architecture, fashion, design, music, theatre, creative writing, dance and art education. At the same time, ArtEZ is a specialised knowledge institute where lecturers combine theory and practice. 

Meet our talents
The online ArtEZ finals magazine provides an impression of the graduation work of the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts’ Class of 2014: dancers, choreographers, visual artists, designers, musicians, musical therapists, art teachers, actors, and architects. 
We would love to see you around for the ArtEZ finals 2015 in June and July to visit the Fashion show, the Art & Design exhibitions in Arnhem, Enschede and Zwolle and all the concerts and dance and theatre performances. 

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finals2014magazine.artez.nl

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