Elliott Earls work exhibited at Graphic Design Now in Production at Walker Art Center.
October 22, 2011 - January 22, 2012
Elliott Earls with his posters for Cranbrook Academy of Art at the Walker Art Center opening.
"This major international exhibition explores how graphic design has broadened its reach dramatically over the past decade, expanding from a specialized profession to a widely deployed tool. With the rise of user-generated content and new creative software, along with innovations in publishing and distribution systems, people outside the field are mobilizing the techniques and processes of design to create and publish visual media. At the same time, designers are becoming producers: authors, publishers, instigators, and entrepreneurs employing their creative skills as makers of content and shapers of experiences. "
Read Elliott Earls Latest Essay on Design Observer
- Elliott Earls.
Make/Do, The curious problem of the relationship between Sanjaya Malakar, Marc Newson and Marcel Duchamp. Design Observer. 6.16.2011.
Elliott Earls at speaking at Speaking of Design in Ann Arbor Michigan. Tuesday June 7, 2011
Architects Manahan and Phuntsok win competition for Elliott Earls Lake Leelanau Studio
| Friday, April 1, 2011 7:59 AM |
Updates daily at full blog post |
|---|
Architects Andrew Manahan and Tenzin Phuntsok have been selected to design and build Elliott Earls Lake Leelanau studio. In October 2010, the Cranbrook Academy of Art Graduate Architecture Department held a competition to design and build a studio on northern Michigan's Lake Leelanau for Elliott Earls. The competition was initiated by Elliott Earls and led by Architect-in-Residence William Massie. The studio is currently being built inside the Cranbrook Architecture department and will be craned into position on the site in May.
Elliott Earls featured at Triennale Design Museum in Milan
| Monday, February 7, 2011 6:17 PM |
Updated: Thursday, March 31, 2011 |
|---|
What's in this blog post
In early June, I was asked to participate in an exhibition entitled Graphic Design Worlds at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan. On January 19th, 2011 I traveled with Cranbrook graduate students Nicole Killian and Wesley Taylor to Milan for the installation and the subsequent opening.
A Little Background on the Piece
In December 2008, I produced a piece entitled "Thoughts on Democracy" for the Wolfsonian Museum's Art Basel Miami Beach opening. My work for the Wolfsonian involved creating three major components; a performance piece during their V.I.P. opening, an installation and a poster design. For the show in Milan I decided to work on a considerable elaboration of one of the smaller components from Miami. This involved taking a minor element from my work in Miami and developing it into a full scale installation.
Installation view from Graphic Design Worlds, Triennale di Milano. Photo by Fabrizio Marchesi.
My piece for the exhibition in Milan is entitled Elegy for the Collapse of the Empire (Detroit, Craft and Disintegration). The piece is essentially comprised of a multifaceted star shaped platform skinned with a black and white American flag. On top of the star shaped platform is a Sears Craftsman® tool chest the drawers of which contain twenty porcelain busts. On top of the tool chest rests a larger bust fabricated from unfiltered beeswax, and horsehair. Video is simultaneously projected onto the objects from two ceiling sources, as five LCD displays at the base of the star play animations of the American and Chinese flag. All four walls of the room are covered with supergraphics.
Installation view from Graphic Design Worlds, Triennale di Milano. Photo by Fabrizio Marchesi.
Detroit Gets Punched in the Face
A drive down Woodward Avenue from the bucolic splendor of Cranbrook Academy of Art to downtown Detroit is powerful display of the massive social change taking place within late industrial culture. Over the course of the past two-hundred years, the industrial revolution brought with it both labor and environmental movements. In 1960 Detroit was the nations fifth largest city with a population of nearly 1.6 million. Over the course of the past forty years corporations in the west have outsourced manufacturing to countries with the lowest labor, environmental and human rights barriers. In this process Detroit got punched in the face. The stunning photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre deal with the effects of this issue directly and illustratively. Given the power and the ever growing nature of the body of work depicting the literal decay of Detroit, I was more interested in exploring the issue through the language of technology. For it is technology that has enabled our collapse, and it is technology that provides ethical "cover." In my view this piece drips with the aneseptically(ethically) clean langauge of tech, and displays the flow of both hard and intellectual capital from west to east.
Detail showing 3 of 4 walls as an unfolded elevation. |
Installation view from Graphic Design Worlds, Triennale di Milano. Photo by Fabrizio Marchesi.
Detail of the star shaped platform showing L.C.D. panel animations and projected video pattern. |
Detail: Short excerpt from the animations shown above. |
A Minor Tragedy During Install
As we arrived in Milan, I was confident that the installation would progress without complication. In late November I was unsure if I would be on site for the installation, so I drafted extremely comprehensive drawings for the museums' preparators. After the initial survey of the site, I was impressed by the staffs' attention to detail and how rigorously they had followed my instructions. However as I opened a large rotomolded shipping case, I was surprised to learn that the head had snapped off of the large unfiltered beeswax bust. This was hard to understand given the fact that the bust is shipped in a custom made case which secures the object within a protective foam shell and rotomolded plastic. Over the course of the next few days I worked with the crew to carefully reattach the head to the torso. Once the bust is returned to my studio in Detroit, I will either have to recast the object or spend considerable time attempting a thorough restoration.
Installation view from Graphic Design Worlds, Triennale di Milano. Photo by Fabrizio Marchesi.
Selected details |
Museum staff working with Elliott (In blue t-shirt) to repair the bust. |
Detail from painting component. |
Detail: During installation Elliott Earls initializes animations. |
Elliott Earls, Wes Taylor and Nicole Killian in Milan |
A three minute video of the install. |
 |
If you are interested in other work by Elliott Earls that maps terrain similar to the installation in Milan, you might take a look at Abraham-N-Isaac, or Night of Infinite Resignation. |
|---|
Read previous blog posts here