sea - #77

Fishy Stuff Improvised Aquarium. Here at Color Mechanics Headquarters in London, we came up with the idea of improvising our very own aquarium to go with the quarterly issue of Colors about the Sea. London is quite far from the coast, so we had an epiphany when we saw a set of cuddly toys shaped as fishes. We thought it would be cool to paint each of them differently giving them a sort of personality as well as creating different species with diverse colors and expressions. We then took them to our nearest next-best-thing from the sea: our local park, which houses a small lake.

 

 

Kronstadt is small town on the island in the middle of Finnish Bay. It was build as a fortress and naval base, and still functions as one, but with the crush of Soviet Union its significance dropped and it became free to enter. Before the dam ferries were the only way to reach Kotlin island, where the town of Kronstadt is. But as the anti-flood dam construction goes on, the last years of this ferry pass as dam provides for more convenient way to reach the town.

Sunda Kelapa Harbor, in Jakarta, was a hotspot back in the days when Dutch settlers were discovering spices of the south seas in the 17th century. It is now a key point for exotic wood world trade, which actively participates to the extent of deforestation of Borneo, main rain forest in south-east asia. At the bottom of this prosperous business stand both sailors and dockers.

"Look carefully. Your eyes will get used in the dark and you ‘ll see them. As the mice they ’ll begin to emerge from their hiding places", Sakis says and laughs. Indeed, behind the shadows and through the dense fog of the cold night appear one behind the other the little boats, laden with illegal nets, the famous crystals. The crystals are transparent nets with very small opening, causing irreparable damage to the already damaged bottom of the sea in Mesolongi town not far away from Athens, Greece. It is for this reason, that they have been banned by law.

 

‘A Fish in the Sky’ is a series of photos that I made in order to begin a subtle exploration of the soft harshness of Romania and my place within that. It as much about Romania’s dreams and missed connections as my own. The fall of communism twenty years ago and the entrance into the European Union almost three years ago have been full of promises, and more then ever, many people are disillusioned, lost at sea and disoriented. The backbone of the country is fragmented and worn down, much like the stoic breakwaters in my photos.

I've been working on "Taganoe's sea" for about four years. The purpose is to use only the line (pencil, marker, ballpoint pen), in a instinctive way: all that is felt by the eye is transferred to paper in a few minutes, with the following proportion errors, and without corrections. So I can use the line, the sign, as primary, direct expression, free from the prejudice, the influence of acdemic drawing. The whole work of Taganoe is oriented to the human figure.