Sadly, my living room is a far cry from an architectural space large enough to house one of these monumental, beautifully painted murals by Taipei/Paris based artist Michael Lin. His work is inspired by traditional Taiwanese textile patterns, but he hugely exaggerates the scale, truly transforming the spaces they’ve been placed into. Since my living room clearly won’t work out as a site for one of these murals, here’s quick list of where you can find a few of them: Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Cafe, New York; the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco; the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; the Atrium, Stadhuis City Hall, Den Haag… Jealous yet? Yep, me too.

{The Vancouver Art Gallery has a Michael Lin show, titled A Modest Veil, opening on January 23rd, 2010. He will be creating a mural that covers the entire Georgia Street façade. And if that’s not enough for you, in his exploration of ‘veiling’ the gallery, he’ll also be wrapping the publications on the shelves of the VAG store in custom designed paper… hey – now that could fit into my house!}

I want to be a curator at ACE Gallery. Want to know why? Well, how about locations in New York, LA and Beverly Hills, not to mention over one hundred amazing artists in their roster. I’ve shown the work of four of those amazing artists here because there was no way I could only pick one… how was I supposed to make a decision between fake-fur covered rockets and benches with loop-dee-loos in the middle of them? See, it was an impossible task.

{The work show above: 1) Gary Lang 2) Jeppe Hein 3) Jeff Colson 4) Sylvie Fleury}

The anal type-A organizer in me is having small heart palpitations at the moment. Tightly stacked installations organized by theme, dimension and colour… are you kidding me? It’s perfection. And there’s more where this came from. IKEA? No, although you’ve got the right country. Swedish artist Michael Johansson has meticulously and compactly organized all sorts of things like suitcases, gardening tools, books, computer equipment, camping gear etc etc… I think I might be in love.

What category am I supposed to put this under? Painting? Well, yes, he’s covered in paint. Installation? Kinda. Street art? I guess so. I should probably just start a new category called ‘Slightly Mind Blowing’. All of these pieces are from a series called Hiding in the City by Chinese artist Liu Bolin, also known as The Invisible Man. I’m sure you can see why… if you look really hard.

This is Sophie. She was created by Xavier Veilhan and, in all of her yellow glory, she spans two floors at Le Germain in Paris. Her head is breaking through into the VIP lounge, and her bottom is in the restaurant… boy, have I been there.

{Permission from the artist is required to show these images. I emailed and asked for permission. I waited patiently. I didn’t hear back. I posted them. Don’t be mad Xavier, Sophie is just too good… I had to show her.}

Carylann Loeppky was one of my favourite artists during this weekend’s culture crawl. As I walked through her open door the first thing that made me totally jealous was her studio space at 1000 Parker Street, a mecca for artists. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, I was faced with her huge white wall of tiny colourful paintings. They were all lovely on their own, each a mixture of sweet and ghostly, but what I really loved was the visual effect of them hanging in one large grouping. I wonder how much it would cost to get ’em all so that I could have this wall in my house?

This is proof that great art is all around us, you just have to look for it… and try not to squish it with your shoe. London street artist Slinkachu has a series called Little People in which tiny ‘little hand-painted people are left in London to fend for themselves’. So cool. I wonder if anyone ever finds them or if they just go unnoticed? That’s it, I’m going to check every pop can I pass from now on.

Real. Real. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake. Fake.

A real clothesline and real clothes pegs… but all of that clean laundry is just an illusion by a very talented painter named Beth Pederson. Yep, all of the clothes are oil paint on cut mylar. Amazing.

{I found this one on Eric Cator‘s blog, paintblog.ca ~ Thanks Eric!}