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Modular Screen by Moorhead & Moorhead. Click on image to enlarge. Get it here. . Opening Lyrics to “At Long Last Love”
Is it an earthquake or simply a shock? No, it’s just that the world’s first webstore for customizable, reconfigurable, modular art and design has now gone live. Lyrics by Cole Porter. Sung by Frank Sinatra. And others. . 
Jason Green, “Recurrent 2″, hand-cast and glazed terra cotta units, wall-mounted, 6 1/2 x19 x 2 in. (2008). Click on images to enlarge and play slideshow. On Thursday, March 3rd, we will be opening our booth at the Verge Art Fair in Dumbo, Brooklyn. This is rather a significant undertaking for us, as it represents the first time we’ve participated in an organized collective art-related event. Perhaps more significantly, we’re bringing together five contemporary artists whose work investigates the theme nearest and dearest to our heart which, of course, is modularity. Now, we’ve come across other recent shows with the term modular in their title or description, but honestly, we were consistently hard pressed to recognize just how the concept related to the work being shown. So perhaps our brief showing at Verge is the first time this particular aesthetic preoccupation is being examined among multiple artists from the post-Minimalist generation since, well, since the heady days of modular machinations when people like Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and Donald Judd were doing their seminal work. A lot has changed since then, of course, including the way in which the post-Minimalist modulartists approach their chosen theme. It’s our intention to discuss these changes in a series of subsequent posts. For now, we’d simply like to present images of a few pieces in the upcoming show by each of the participating artists, all of whom we’ll profile in greater depth in the later pieces. Show Information: Location: 1 Main Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn
ABOVE: Susan Weinthaler, “FIX”, wood, paint, epoxy, magnets on steel. 48 x 48 in. (2011). Each colored wood unit has a magnet mounted on its back side, which allows it to be moved to any position on the steel “canvas”. The images above show the same work, but with the pieces re-arranged into different patterns.
ABOVE: Moshé Elimelech: “Cubic Construction #25″, twenty-five hand-painted wood cubes in velvet case with brushed aluminum frame, 25 in. sq., 4 in. d. (2010). Another example of interactive, customizable module art: both images are of the same piece. The cubes are removed by hand from their case and rotated to display one of six variously painted faces. We previously discussed Elimelech’s work here.
ABOVE: Donald Rattner, Studio for A.R.T. and Architecture, “Tapestry NO-2-1 in Red and Black”, wool felt modules, 48 1/2 x 58 1/2 in. (2010). This modular tapestry is assembled by connecting individual felt modules together by means of interlocking slots and tabs. Hanger pieces permit the piece to be hung on a wall-mounted rod.
ABOVE: Trevor Elliott, “Untitled Number 29″, reclaimed wood and magnets, 12 x 34 x 3/4 in. (2011). Magnets are particularly amenable to interactive modular art because of their connective (and dis-connective) qualities. Elliott has used them for innovative product design as well, such as his GrowFrame modular picture frames. .
See you there!
The Morgan Bracelet by Klik Klik. Klik – er, click on any image to enlarge. It’s struck us, as we continue to populate our gallery of customizable art and design with new pieces, that quite a few of our designs work on the basis of magnetics. Were we not so busy serving our customers this might have occurred to us this earlier, since magnetics are an almost perfect mechanism for achieving customization. They create just enough of a connective force that pieces will hold together even under stress and motion, until finally releasing when a breaking point has been reached simply by pulling on them. They can be embedded in other materials or left exposed, cast in almost any shape (including ones that allow for movement), do not require specialized skills to connect, do not require adhesives or other secondary materials to assemble, are a natural, sustainable and non-energy consuming material, never lose their attractive force, and are not terribly expensive. In short, they’re a customizers dream come true.
Magnetude by the Starut Group. A modular magnetic toy. Not surprisingly, magnetics are particularly prevalent in things involving play – for children and adults. Kids take to them naturally because they’re so low-tech and physically undemanding at the same time they allow for total free play. With children prudence requires that the pieces be of a sufficient size that they not be swallowed along with their oat squares, so many toys implant the magnetics in a larger envelope. Magnetude is a good example of a play object that implants magnetics inside a traditional form of toy, in this case the wood block. The designer also had the smarts to make the blocks quite large and colored, which means they can be used at a relatively early age.
Above, top: Stix + Stones, a reconfigurable choker necklace by Brendan Perhacs. Below: a Klik Klik bracelet: magnets in motion. A similar emphasis on play is prevalent in a second major category for magnetics: jewelry. Since it’s expected that adults will refrain from treating magnets as digestives, designers can use the magnets in their inherently metallic form and at the small scale needed for this genre. Shapes tend to be either cylindrical or spherical, since rounded surfaces allow for rotation and movement among the pieces. Necklaces, bracelets and rings lend themselves well to magnetics. One of our favorites is Stix+Stones, a choker necklace formed from the two aforementioned shapes. Another is Klik Klik, which has developed a reconfigurable jewelry system, with a cubic component added to the standard formal repertory. Klik Klik has really studied the creative possibilities at length, their website showing quite a few stunning configurations crafted from their pieces.
Have a ball with Bucky Balls. Adult magnetic products are not restricted to jewelry; some of them position themselves as intended for the kind of purely formal play that we typically associate with children. Bucky Balls are one of the best known in this category. They concept is as simple as it gets – take a collection of spherical magnets and configure them however the imagination dictates. One distinguishing feature of Bucky Balls, besides the alliterative roll-off-the-tongue name, is that the magnets come in several different finishes other than the standard chrome plate.
Perhaps the most intriguing area where magnetics are being used is in the field of fine art. An artist we admire, Susan Weinthaler, has been exploring the theme of artistic interactivity in a series of magnetic wall sculptures which she calls BITS. Her work is very closely aligned with the aesthetic philosophy of A.R.T. | Module R, as is clear from her own description of the series: Each individual BIT is unique. They magnetically adhere to large steel canvases attached to the wall. By combining a large number of BITS together into a collection a work of art emerges that is not intended to be static. My work is indeed meant to be rearranged, therefore redefined. Constructed and deconstructed. This simple mounting system makes for infinitely variable compositions that take on a life force of their own as they migrate around the steel canvas manipulated by the hands of others. Life is not rigid, why should art be? I am completely taken with the idea of the potentially infinite and am creating an art form that is capable of it.
Susan Weinthaler, BITS: CURRENT (2010), hand-finished magnets on steel plate. Private collection. Hey, Susan – in the spirit of the upcoming Valentine’s Day, we love it!
Climb every LEGO, ford every stream…and you’ll probably find a square somewhere. Bodo blocks by Seletti. (Click on images to view slideshow.) If there’s one shape that embodies the essence of modular design, it would have to be the cube, and its two-dimensional progenitor, the square. What’s that, you say? You beg to differ? You think the hexagon deserves this coveted designation? Because the hexagon appears in nature in such forms as the honeycomb and snowflake, while a true square is nary to be found among living creatures and organisms? Well, we must admit, your argument does have a certain weight to it, as there is a line of thought that regards Nature as a kind of Supreme Artist by virtue of the boundless creativity evident in the natural world. Take Frank Lloyd Wright, for example: he used the hexagon quite a bit in his architectural designs as a way to connect his work to nature and validate it as a result. One of his disciples, Tony Smith, picked up on this thread and incorporated the shape in his great sculptural portfolio. The list of smart and talented people who’ve used the six-sided shape as a generator of form in their work goes on and on (unlike this post).
The Vitruvian Man by Leonardo after Vitruvius after somebody else long ago. The square and cube? Well, as we’ve admitted, we’re hard put to find parallel examples of their visible manifestation in the organic world. But we’d be wrong if we thought that they were simply absent. In fact, they’re there, but in a more immanent, below-the-surface kind of way. Perhaps the most famous representation of this notion is the Vitruvian Man as depicted by Leonardo, who based his drawing on a passage from the only text on architecture to have survived from antiquity. In this image we see the human figure embedded in the outline of the square, thus reconciling natural and geometric form. This iconic image positions the square as a modular figure equally rooted in nature as the hex, and therefore ripe for use in the creative arts. Josef Albers, Michael Graves, Sol LeWitt and yes, Tony Smith and Frank Lloyd Wright again, all utilized the square to drive or define their designs.
Top: Eames House Blocks by House Industries. Bottom row left: Twist Lamp. Middle: Rotational Paintings by Studio for A.R.T. and Architecture. Right: BuzziFloor by BuzziSpace. But here’s why we think the square tops the hex when it comes to modular design: the square is just a lot more artistically friendly than the hex. Its simpler, purer geometry makes it more fluid, flexible and versatile when it comes to combining multiple units. Having only right angles between sides means we’re not forced into accommodating sharply angled or ragged edges at the perimeter, nor are we necessarily dealing with irrational numbers when dimensioning among modular clusters. With its centralized forms and repetitive dimensions the square is a potentially very restful figure, whereas the hexagon seems to defy resolute closure and stasis by virtue of its open faces. And the square generates a perfect three-dimensional volume in the form of a cube, whereas the hex cannot.
Top row left: Cella by Naef. Middle: Modulon by Naef. Right: Modular Candlesticks by Shlomi Schillinger. Second row: Nolastar wallscreen. Third row: Optics Cubes by Kartell. Bottom row, left: WayBasics storage cubes. Middle: BuzziCubes 3D by BuzziSpace. Right: Modular hanging sculpture by Studio for A.R.T. and Architecture. Not surprisingly then, among the designs and artwork we’ve gathered at our popup gallery the square and cube are the most popular forms to be found. Some of the pieces even define themselves according to their geometric identity by incorporating the terms into their names (Kubes, for example). Examples run the gamut from children’s blocks to artwork, from wall screens to storage bins. The concept behind the Vitruvian Man clearly lives on millennia after it was first articulated. In fact, with so many attractive, contemporary designs deriving their beauty from these singular shapes, perhaps it’s time to stand the world on its head and declare that if you want your work to be hip, be square.
Top: Modular picture frames by GrowFrame. Center row, left: Cuboro marble run. Middle: Kube storage bins by P’kolino. Right: Travel Menorah by Laura Cowen. Bottom: PaperForms wall paneling by MIO.
Part 1Full disclosure: this is not an essay about the people who pose for artists, as intriguing and largely neglected a subject as that might be. Rather what we want to write about is the economic model by which contemporary visual artists operate. Wait! Get your hand off that mouse or trackpad – you’re not clicking out of here so easily. This really is an important discussion which is absolutely intertwined with fundamental questions surrounding contemporary art…you know, like, what makes it contemporary? So stick around, it might just be illuminating. Let’s start by looking at the contemporary artist in terms of his/her production model, since economics are closely related to production. How do visual artists generally make their work? Surveying the kind of art generally exhibited in galleries, which is the preferred venue for artists producing quality work, we can safely say that the vast majority of pieces are made largely by hand. Of course, we find an extensive use of various types of machines as well, be they mechanical printing devices, chemical processes such as are used for engraving and etching, and power tools for the production of sculptural objects. Despite the intercession of these non-manual techniques, however, we can still characterize the overall production process used for such work as being essentially manual, because they all require the human hand to operate.
That, in turn, means there must be a degree of variability in the execution of each piece. For example, if a sculptor uses hand-held power tools to carve one block of stone into a figure, and then tries to repeat exactly the same design in a second, the two will be different in small or large degrees, depending on how well the artist can match the ‘choreography’ of the first version. But they will never be exactly the same. Beyond its purely aesthetic qualities, it is the quality of uniqueness that endows the work of hand-made art with much of its perceived monetary value. That is simply a function of supply and demand economics, and in particular, of the Scarcity Principle. This principle states that the the rarer an object is, the greater its value if there is demand for it. That value will then increase further as demand grows and especially if it exceeds supply. The perfect storm for artists and gallerists – in the positive sense of the term – is for an artist’s reputation to grow, as that will increase demand for what is inevitably a limited supply of product (sorry, that’s what it is). Because as we all know, a human being can only work so many hours in a day and will only live so long; by its nature supply is going to be limited and finite as long as the artist is expected to be personally involved in the physical production of his/her work.
Whether the artist is highly successful or barely known does not ultimately affect the economic model under which they operate; it’s still very much a question of supply and demand as to how their work is valued. This poses several problems from a market standpoint. Generally speaking, the more successful an artist is, the higher the price for their work, which means fewer and fewer people can afford it. The less successful an artist is, the lower the price, which is positive in terms of affordability but means that the emerging artist is increasingly unlikely to be able to earn a living from it (not to mention the challenges to the gallerist trying to sell it). Several responses to this problem have been devised over the years. Mechanical processes such as photography and printmaking offered an opportunity to produce artwork in unlimited qualities. In the 1960s the concept of the art multiple was taken up by a number of artists and dealers as a way to make art more democratic and affordable. Keith Haring opened his first Pop Shop in 1986, where he sold gear like t-shirts, bags and posters embellished with his signature line drawings. Even the exalted Gagosian Gallery has entered ‘democratic space’ in opening up a retail store on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But the fact is that none of these developments has truly solved the problem of the market. In fact, the polarities of the market seem to have never been greater. At the upper tier the prices for the most coveted artists continues into the stratosphere (only partly halted by the recent global slowdown), while the ‘bottom’ of the market is more and more served by websites that sell open edition work by the yard, ranging from the not so good to the pretty okay. For quality artists caught in the middle, the financial challenges of sustaining their calling remain significant, while the buying public with real interest in acquiring compelling contemporary art that is not restricted to the usual suspects of photography and prints is left with relatively few choices. That most art galleries are mom-and-pop businesses and therefore limited to certain geographic areas only exacerbates their difficulty in accessing art other than through the internet outlets. Naturally, we think there is a potential solution, or why would we be going on like this?
Over the past few years there has arisen a wholly new mechanism for the physical production of objects. We have nicknamed this novel set of production capabilities the New Industrialism. It can be considered new because for the first time in history industrial manufacturing equipment has been married to the computer. Laser and water cutting, CNC milling machines, rotational molding and many other techniques have been developed out of this synthesis of the digital and the analog. The New Industrialism also encompasses what we might call new design and production strategies; these would include mass customization, crowdsourcing, open innovation, on demand and short run production, and various other ways of working that were not viable in the pre-Digital Age. In Part 2 of this thinkpiece, we will expound on the ways that artists can utilize the tremendous creative possibilities born out of the New Industrialism and in doing so rethink the economic and production models that have guided them for centuries. References
Elimelech’s cubes are approximately 3 inches square on each face, which makes them perfectly scaled to the human hand. Los Angeles artist Moshé Elimelech makes cubist art — only not the kind you’re probably thinking of. Elimelech’s pieces are constructed of a series of cubes nested in a gridded container mounted on a wall. Each cube is rendered on all six sides with a variety of solid colors and bold geometric figures. The cubes can be removed from their cells and rotated to present any face to the viewer. By manipulating the choice of visible surfaces the artist or co-creator can generate a nearly infinite number of graphic compositions, either deliberately or by chance rotations. Elimelech’s work reminds us how rare it is for artists to invite the viewer to actually touch the art they’ve made. We’re usually warned by signs or sternly faced museum guards not to do any such thing, which is understandable since most pieces are not constructed with that possibility in mind (not to mention the need to protect them against theft). On the other hand, that persistent distancing between us and the art makes our experience of it too uniformly passive for an interactive and energetic culture such as ours. It also reinforces the perception of the art object as something endowed with a sacred aura to be venerated, rather than as an agent of material beauty and sensuous delight to be enjoyed. Exhibiting steadily since the 1980s, Elimelech shows primarily in California galleries, and has work represented in several museum design stores as well.
“Cubic Constructions” by Moshé Elimelech. Though they may look like independent and distinct works, the various compositions in each image derive from a single assortment of cubes. It’s often surprising how such a broad range of formal diversity can be generated from a finite set of modular components. From the artist’s website: Videos showing the interactive process of Elimelech’s “Cubic Constructions”: Artist’s website: |
 
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