DUCT TAPE PARANOIA

This is a room covered in red duct tape (it also looks a bit like electrical tape) The artist who i found on http://www.deviantart.com goes by the name of *dogeatdog5 - and after a bit of hunting around, i find that it is a photographer called Chris Knight.

I really love this piece, it takes tape to the realm of the third dimension. OK, so covering stuff is not new, but the impact is still really strong. Covering the room from top to bottom in vibrant red tape is a picture of stillness, like time has frozen into a red jelly mould.


This piece above looks like it is a life size installation and below, a photo of this installation reduced in size and placed inside a frame which is also covered in the same tape. This is really cool.


I love that you can still see all the joins and air bubbles within the tape, the imperfection means that it would only be stickytape that could achieve this effect. I would definitely hang this one on my wall! In fact, i see a rainy sunday afternoon project covering my old white frames in tape coming on right now.

I hope to talk to Chris more about this work and feature it on my stickytape artists section of the site, so stay tuned.

DUCT-TAPE CARPETS BY BERTJAN POT

BERTJAN POT is a legendary dutch designer and in typical excellent dutch design style, he has created these thought invoking and thoroughly cool duct tape carpets. They are pretty visually amazing but also conceptually abstract. The kind of thing that no normal person would ever think of doing, and thats why i love this carpet SO much. And why i love dutch designers.


These pieces encapsulate everything I LOVE about TAPE. Quirkiness, abstract-ivity (is that a word?) and crafty kookiness.


Bertjan Pot created these pieces for Tent London (which is part of London design week) in 2007.


He says " The duct-tape is really molten into the textile so it won’t come off when using it as a carpet". Great point. I was wondering about that.


I really love that the duct tape used on this piece is cut into small strips, not disguising or attempting to transform the tape into anything else. Furthermore, the tape is stuck onto the carpet so it is still performing its main task which is to stick.


It is, arguably one of the best uses of duct tape i can imagine. Damien Hirst, go shove your dots.


If anyone has an old rug like this lying around, please bring it around to my place and you can use my multitude of duct tapes to create this for me for and give it to me for christmas.

In the mean time you can check out Bertjan Pot's other amazing pieces: www.bertjanpot.nl

MARK KHAISMAN TAPE ART

Mark Khaisman's work has been all over the media lately - in London in the metro, the free newspaper that millions of people see every day. I say good on him, his work is really amazing. But i have to say i quite like his abstract, more rough and ready tape art much better than the portraits and realistic looking pieces that have been getting the most press lately.


The interesting thing to note is that before Khaisman got into using his signature brown packing tape, his work was quite different. Some of his pattern works (see website - http://www.khaismanstudio.com) is actually amazing and alot more abstract.



Maybe its the over-exposure that has made me a bit bored with this work. Don't get me wrong, i think its amazing and very original but i have also come across some other tape artists doing interesting and visually strong things that haven't had half as much publicity.


This piece was done in 2007 - i do like it, but i would like to see him using some different types of tape! Mark, if you read this, would you like to do an interview with me for my stickytape blog?


This is some of Khaisman's other work labelled "patternworks". I really like them - they are quite distressing and morbid, but also decorative and beautiful at the same time. I am not sure of the whole story behind it but it is sort of like taking something really horrible and groteque and with a bit of photoshop (or depending on when these were done - manual manipulation) creating patterns which by their very nature become decorative and 'beautiful'.


Maybe i am far off in my artistic interpretation of his work. The pattern generated above on the right side of the image reminds me of wallpaper... imagine having wallpaper in your house which you didn't realise was generated visually from the patterning of a murdered man. HAHA. I'm feeling like a bit of a sicko tonight. Saw my ex today which was both amazing and also depressing at the same time. I keep thinking - what did i do wrong. Well i know what i did wrong, but i think - where did it all go wrong. WHY??????? That is why these pieces above appeal to me. Intellectually i know that there is obviously good that has come out of this 8 year relationship, its just that right now i can't help but to think - what a waste of an amazing partnership. At least i think i'm starting to slip into the denial phase, i really can't wait for the angry and sad stages... yessss bring it on.