alain vonck.

Parisian graphic designer Alain Vonck seems puzzled by the internet (then again, who isn't). But like any good thinker, he knows that the path to most answers usually begins with a question.

"What remains from the early days of the World Wide Web?" he ponders with his project Ruins.

On the revival of GIF culture, he probes: "Why this sudden interest in designing, posting and sharing these files on internet and social networks?" (spoiler - connections are drawn between GIFs and silent films in his project Fat Boy Get Down)
 
And later, on the topic of the virtual pile-up of personal data, he solicits: "Personal data are omnipresent on the web, but at the same time invisible... How come these data have such an impact, such perennial value for our physical and virtual identities?

Lofty queries indeed, but his worthy excavations of the internet's geo(il)logical strata may help to unscramble thing a bit. Or at least make complex thought look a little more scrumptious.
 

Peruse more from Alain Vonck here.

mark lazenby.

What I love about collage is that it is - in essence - nothing "new". Rooted firmly in the recycled, the reconstituted, the collage artist makes preexisting forms into something fresh. Collage is a medium which must first address what is at hand before proceeding. It adheres to the sort of bricolage technique a clever cook utilizes upon opening her hodgepodge cupboard. How to marry unlike items into seamless dishes that delight...! surprise...! tantalize...!

The idiosyncrasy of unexpected combinations is the cheap thrill of most collage, and a fine line separates those who do it well from those who do it wonderfully. Mark Lazenby does it wonderfully. I've long been a fan of his retro-suffused creations that reek of charm and cryptic, comical narrative. This enormously talented individual deserves a few moments of your attention. 

Knock about his website here.

steve miller.

Like those curious images that cruise by on the screen of an airport luggage scanner (only better), Steve Miller's x-ray photographs are a bit of the ordinary made extraordinary. These are a few images from Miller's most recent show - Fashion Animal - held at Galleria Tempo in Rio de Janiero. By juxtaposing x-ray imagery of local Amazonian wildlife with high fashion handbags and shoes, Miller attempts to marry themes of "consumption" and "exoticism" between the animate and the inanimate.

Steve Miller's website here.

jessica trafford: circles.

Heredity and preservation through successive generations are the concepts that inhabit Jessica Trafford’s Circles. This twelve-set of spheres was created from crops of photographs taken by the artist’s blood relatives. Preserved as daguerreotypes, the circles capture a questionable sentimentality - highlighting the similarities of familial vision while acknowledging an ultimate ambiguity. Like looking at a family photo album through binoculars.

There’s a certain moody nostalgia brooding through this and most of her other work, and I like it. 

Check out her website here.