13 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Menno Aden

Menno Aden is photographer who does room portraits!

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Okay, first of all I find these really neat to look at. The photographer apparently installed a camera on the ceilings of each of these rooms to take these symmetrical two-dimensional-looking photos. I love this because it flattens the rooms out and you can observe it as a whole. It kinda takes away from the room but also gives it more perspective.

But besides the way it looks, I love this because they are different people's actual living spaces. The artist also does portraits of other places such as connivence stores or classrooms, but I chose to focus on her Room Portrait Series. A person's room says so much about a person so seeing these portraits are really interesting to me. I'm also doing something (kinda sorta?) similar to this. Haha okay I guess this is kind of weird but I periodically take pictures of my room from the same exact spot every once in awhile. I've done this since I first moved in the house (which was maybe about a year ago) and it's so cool documenting how my room evolves. There are small details in every picture that show what was going on in my life at the time each picture was taken, like when my room was super messy, it is apparent that it was exam week and I didn't have time to clean my room, or when I had a lot of shopping bags scattered across my room because the family had finally made a trip to the malls at Atlanta. 

Rooms, regardless of how mundane they may seem, are basically a huge glimpse into a person's life.

And I love that concept. This photographer takes something that's not seen as special, and makes it extremely meaningful AND super pleasing to the eye. It gives you something to think about. I want to do something like that with my own art, whether its through photography or paintings. I love seeing simple things with a deeper meaning, which is partially why I chose the concentration that I did, because it allows me to take normal things, like people, and replicate them in a way that is more interesting than it seems at first glance.

Links:

• http://wisdomchokeyou.tk/post/132799442713/ryanpanos-room-portraits-menno-aden-through
• http://mennoaden.com/room_portraits.html

12 ADV ART & PORTFOLIO - Faig Ahmed

Faig Ahmed is an artist who creates rugs. He's also experienced in making art in other mediums such as painting, video, and installations, but right now he is focusing on his interest of Traditional Azerbaijani carpets. What he's doing is he is essentially taking his interest in this culture and replicating the rugs, but with a twist. He blends realism with abstraction as he disassembles the rug's traditional patterns into something more contemporary.
Have a look:

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I think it's super interesting because he not only accomplishes what he wants, which was to take something realistic and convert it into something more psychedelic, but he also did it with something he was interested in. Sometimes I feel like I'm limited because of what I'm exploring, like I can only either paint what I want to or paint something that goes with the concepts I'm exploring. But this guy took both and ultimately created an interesting union between contemporary art and ancient Azerbaijani root.

It also compares to my are because there's a lot of conceptual aspects in this and Ahmed uses both realism and abstraction in this pieces.

Links:

• http://wisdomchokeyou.tk/post/137025717293/faig-ahmed-creates-psychedelic-rugs-from-traditional