Ranged Right: 2010

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Monday, November 22, 2010

Alex Varanese - Urban Cartography II: The Metro

Alex Varanese :

"Tortured artist, rogue scientist and international playboy"

"Spends nights and weekends trying to repair his time machine"

"Likes red more than you do"

Apart from being sarcastic and generally messing about, Alex Varanese is a very talented artist, and recently released a "spiritual sequel" to his earlier series, Urban Cartography, entitled Urban Cartography II: The Metro.

From Alex's blog:

"I spent a good portion of 2009 working on Urban Cartography, my second major series and to this day one of the most ambitious projects of my career ("career"? really?)."

"Looking back, however, I was dismayed to realize that despite the time it took to reach my destination, the journey was a lot more linear than I'd have liked, and rang just slightly hollow when I tapped my knuckles on some of its leaner segments. It was there, in that disjointed, sun-bleached urban wtfscape inspired by an autobiographically incoherent version of San Francisco's Mission District and filtered through the lens of a type-obsessed designer that I was connecting more clearly with whatever it is that inspires and motivates me than in most of my other work."

"Ironically, however, it was the sheer volume of labor required to produce the original pieces that prevented me from truly expressing the ideas they were meant to convey, stifling my sense of freedom just slightly and robbing of me the objectivity I needed to stretch the ingredients to their natural conclusion. "