On My Mind | SHOWstudio

curated by tony helal

a photographic series that spotlights artists and image-makers on SHOWstudio, selected and written by tony helal [idea locus]

Margaret Lansink
Arthur Fechoz
Luca Baioni
Olivier Pin-Fat
Gabriel O’Shea
Nils Gabrielsson

Margaret Lansink

idea locus for SHOWstudio

February 12, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

Introducing #OnMyMind, a monthly curation of the artists and image-makers we're loving at SHOWstudio. This month, @ideapdf has chosen Dutch photographer @margaretlansink. In this series titled 'Borders of Nothingness –– On the Mend', Lansink’s black and white artworks explore the relationship between her daughter's decision to break contact with her. Over time, Lansink and her daughter reconnected to investigate whether their time apart could be mended. Using the Japanese practice Kintsugi –– which is an art of repairing broken pottery –– the gold leaf represents the hope that the bond is stronger than ever. At first glance at her images you really get the feel that this isn't an ordinary college. It's an image that has been put together securely with love and care. Which at the same time has a metaphor that adversity often builds something stronger and more beautiful.

Arthur Fechoz

idea locus for SHOWstudio

March 13, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

#OnMyMind is a new series that spotlights the work of artists and image-makers we admire and think you should know about. Today, @ideapdf has chosen the visual artist @arthurfechoz. In this set of images, Fechoz explores the notions of identity, temporality, disappearance and memory through distorted and manipulative photographic techniques. His work is rooted in archival material including some from his lost parental grandparents which has enabled him to find meaning and elevate his lost perception of the past. Often juxtaposed by historical sites, nature and cityscapes to emerge as a product of collective imagination. His imagery is soaked with emotion through mixed media that swallows you an unreal abstract world, open to interpretation.

Luca Baioni

idea locus for SHOWstudio

April 11, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

Visual artist @iergonboi is the latest addition to feature as part of our #OnMyMind series. In this curation of images @ideapdf has selected 6 artworks to showcase the various strands that make up Luca Baioni’s ethereal works. Baioni describes his experimental photographic practice as being rigorous in discipline, from concept to completion. He aims to communicate fragments of reality that interact with reality itself.

“I tear the world into pieces and deconstruct, rebuild, dismantle its fragments, without ever losing faith that what I produce is already in the world, though in another form, as a potential. I unfold the powers hidden in the world. I consider my work as unfolded potentials. I do not create ex nihilo, out of nothing. In the real world, I create discontinuities with the pieces of reality deployed.”

His imagery has a consistent and recognisable emotional tone, presented through blurry, distorted, fragmented and exaggerated forms, juxtaposed and merged with violent slashes of reds, yellows and greens that seek to expose the silence and hidden truths of the world, taken to their extreme. There is no doubt that artists should reflect our times, but sometimes destroying what already exists allows the viewer to see things in a different light.

Olivier Pin-Fat

idea locus for SHOWstudio

May 29, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

In our latest instalment of #OnMyMind –– a monthly curation of artists we admire –– @ideapdf has selected the unbound book ‘IN)ABSENTIA’ by @olivier_pinfat to uncover the engrossing mystery behind Pin-Fat’s ethereal work. One night in Bangkok in 1995, a man walked around stubbing cigarettes out on his body before he ‘crashed’. On one tab of acid, Pin-Fat photographed the ‘crashed man’. Holding his camera that he recalls felt like marshmallows, Pin-Fat used one roll of film that was left untouched for 25 years, until 2020.

Olivier Pin-Fat is an artist dedicated to analogue photography; his approach is visceral and experimental. ‘IN)ABSENTIA’ imbues the essence of forgotten memory, aiming to retract, reinterpret and manipulate the past through a brutally honest exploration of the notions of time and perception, manipulating images to erode and disappear, just like his memory of that night - a spaced-out photographer photographing a spaced-out stranger. Each frame has been hand-printed in a darkroom with various analogue printing techniques in homage to the faded experience of the psychedelic drugs; the black and white medium is interrupted with bursts of a fauvist colour palette.

‘For me this work was never about ‘good photography’ or ‘good painting’, it was more about complete demolition than anything else. This is an anti-edit. It is anti-art. It is an anti-book. It is anti-photography. It’s about memory & reinterpretation. I wanted to somehow...create this man as if he had literally fallen from outer space and landed in the pavement indenting it by 2 feet - or paint him in a way (again brutally and crudely, naively even) that appeared as if he was hovering 2 feet above the pavement like a hologram.’ he writes in an artist’s statement which you can read over on SHOWstudio.

View Olivier Pin-Fat's artist's statement here.

Gabriel O'Shea

idea locus for SHOWstudio

November 6, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

Introducing a deathly poetic atmosphere created by the multidisciplinary artist @gabrieloshea. Personal experiences will influence your view on O’Shea’s work. Where some see violence, some can see liberation. Intense reflections against the deepest shadows explore the artist's unique take on the meaning behind death and pain.

“My works are my emotions, questions, thoughts and themes of interest and are portrayed with melancholy, mystery and silence. I generate a deep connection with the viewers’ memories, sentiment or inquisitiveness.”

Today, @ideapdf spotlights the Mexican-based artist Gabriel O’Shea as part of SHOWstudio's #OnMyMind series. Inspired by the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi (侘寂), an appreciation of imperfection, O’Shea's creative practices are limitless. Through assorted media, O’Shea’s work demonstrates brutal thoughts that explore the depths of his being, portraying deep emotion in sharp contradiction. The human figure as a shell, safe yet vulnerable, hands that rise from the depths of darkness, an interconnected harmony. Or are they tied together in agony? Living flesh and bones in contrasting decay. A dead bird served on a plate. These images convey the spectrum of violence and peace, pain and ease. How do they make you feel?

Nils Gabrielsson

idea locus for SHOWstudio

December 11, 2021 | @SHOWstudio Instagram

The art of photography can pause time to redefine our inevitable, faded memories. It alters these abstract scenarios to reconsider what once was. Cherished, euphoric moments get stripped away for naked honest revelations. Denials from dark truths are embraced with an open mind that is unaffected by foggy snapshots from our emotional pasts. At least that is what is felt looking at the work of @nilssonofgabriel, this month's artist to spotlight on SHOWstudio's #OnMyMind series curated by @idealocus.

Abstract bodyscapes get speckled, splotched and scarred. Layered, printed cyanotypes on Japanese paper are scanned in high resolution to provide a detailed view that narrates 'imperfections.'

‘If cinema is the art of ghosts, is photography the art of [freezing] them? I think it is. It's the art that allows us to stare at them, as long as we want. We capture a ghost and put it on a "tissue,” like a Sindone. Once caught, the boundaries between the ghost and the tissue disappear - paper, chemicals, impression - we created a limbo where there's no time, not anymore.’

art direction

tony helal

graphic design

edward brown