PLASTIK 19

How far would you go for fame? We spend our childhood years collecting cutouts of our favorite stars, thinking that "someday, I'm going to be there too." They lived on the walls of our bedrooms for as long as it took us to realize that we shall never be like them. In Hollywood, there is always a story of a small-town girl who waited at a diner or that one who crossed the border from Mexico on a small boat to pursue her dream- the dream. Our girl is different. She whores her way up to the fame game. Nothing can stop her. At night, she lives in the bedrooms of her favorite stars, and in the day, a figure of James Dean beams through the light and haunts her like a ghost. Here, your dreams are either shattered or manufactured. There is nothing "holy" about Hollywood. It's a town based on the art of make-belief. And we will always believe. To the child in us who still
collects cutouts. 

Liu bolin

Feature

While scores of people around the world have tagged walls with an “I was here” slogan, Chinese artist Liu Bolin has continuously made a point of not being there. By painstakingly disguising himself in the colors of his surroundings, the 40-year old simply vanishes, as he becomes one with a wall of magazines, a grocery store or a shop selling panda dolls. 
Liu Bolin is china’s invisible man, known around the world as the “human chameleon.”

OLGA RODIONOVA & ELLEN VON UNWERTH

interview

Following the overwhelming success of the book of Olga, russia’s answer to Greece’s very own Aphrodite, Olga Rodionova, has teamed up with german Photographer Ellen Von Unwerth for yet another journey into the realm of beauty and desire

LINDER STERLING

Feature

As punk rockers cut up clothes and called for radical change, inder sterling’s collages of cut-up images challenged die-hard archetypes of sex, sexuality and the female body as
a lustful object.

KASIA DOMANSKA

Interview

Polish-born Kasia Domanska’s hyperrealist images depict a colorful world of bright blue skies, flowers and bikinis. Plastik talked to the New York-based artist about fact and fiction, beauty and the things that move her. Arnout van Albada’s studio is his kitchen. Quite literally at times, for the Dutch artist loves his food and loves to paint food, anything from raw vegetables and Spanish hams to sardines and cream cakes. In the history of art, food is a well known symbol of the “vanity of vanities” the simple truth that all creation must perish. However, more than rubbing our noses in deeper meanings, Van Albada aims to convey the monumental beauty of such a simple food item as fennel or a pudding. And he does so with such a photographic eye for detail, that it really makes you want to have a bite … 

YUE MINJUN 

Feature

When confronted with the madness of the world, what else to do but smile? Is laughter not said to be the best medicine?