Artist who "paints" portraits on glass by hitting it with a hammer

(simonbergerart.com)

61 points by cs7023 days ago

5 comments

ortusdux2 days ago
Reminds me of the artist that shipped glass cubes via FedEx, letting the box throwers make the art for him.<a href="https://museemagazine.com/features/2018/10/15/walead-beshty-the-end-game" rel="nofollow">https://museemagazine.com/features/2018/10/15/walead-beshty-...</a>
- drsalt4 minutes ago
 sorry, this isn't "art" because it actually conveys information. art has to be useless.
kdheiwns39 minutes ago
I've noticed that 2D artists/non-sculptors who engage in strange mediums or techniques generally only make realistic closeup portraits of people. I saw the headline, thought "neat, but I bet he just makes normal expressionless faces." Opened the page and it seems like that's the vast majority of his work. As an artist myself, I'm always like ehhhhh when I see this. Feels a bit like the kind of stuff you see for sale in tourist areas.The technique is cool though.
- rhplus3 minutes ago
 Perhaps they find more acceptance due to the effects of pareidolia, where the viewer is more inclined to say, “Oh yeah, I see it - that’s a face!”<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia</a>
- d--b4 minutes ago
 yeah it’s definitely a genre in itself.It’s like there are 2 axes: - cool technique and - cool picture. The second is way more important than the first, which is way painters are still on top of the 2D art world.Some people can do both though. And i’d say even in these cases the art world tend to dismiss the weird technique as gimmicky.
simonhamp1 hour ago
Fascinating! Thanks for sharing
rustystump1 hour ago
While interesting, it doesnt feel like it belongs here. Maybe it is the volume these days but more and more the articles are turning into reddit posts.
- hn_throwaway_991 hour ago
 This is Hacker News. I can't think of a better way of someone "hacking" something (i.e. using cracked glass in a novel way) to create something new, unexpected, and incredible.I think this is probably the best idiomatic example of the type of story that I think belongs on HN that I've seen in quite some time.
- maplethorpe39 minutes ago
 I agree. This artist, while technically interesting, has nothing to do with AI, and so has no place on the front page.
- cwillu41 minutes ago
 “Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.”--<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>> While interesting […]“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting” --also hnguidelines
- bravoetch1 hour ago
 HN waiting for the artist to announce on X that he's remaking all his works in rust.
- efilife1 hour ago
 I think it's a welcome breath of fresh air considering how much AI slop is on HN lately
antirez2 days ago
Happy for him but this has no real artistic meaning compared to doing it in any other way. Odd to see things like that on HN.
- cs7022 days ago
 Hi, I submitted the OP because I found it cool and interesting, esp after seeing the clip of the artist creating a piece using only a hammer.My only motivation for submitting the OP was thinking that others here would find it cool and interesting too.That falls within the HN guidelines, don't you think?
- AStrangeMorrow2 days ago
 I disagree quite a bit. For me the medium, the technique, the process is all part of the art. Yet I still think the end result is also critical. But coming up with create ways to produce art matters.And I am confused about the “doing it any other way”? I don’t really see other ways to achieve the same result. Say painting and photography will both produce end results that are quite different. The skills are very different. The end material is also quite different. The same way stained glass is quite different from painting
 - hresvelgr1 hour ago
 I might agree with you as a knee jerk, but I believe "the medium is the message"[1] and I don't think there's anything particularly meaningful or evocative about shattered glass as opposed to any other planar medium.[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message</a>
 - jameshart1 hour ago
 There is no meaning in converting a conventionally destructive, random, chaotic act into a directed, aesthetic, meaningful one?The fact he has a portrait of Kamala Harris called “glass ceiling breaker” and one of the victims of the Beirut explosion called #weareunbreakable suggests that you don’t need to dig particularly deep to find meaningful subtext in the choice of material and technique.If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.
 - hresvelgr1 hour ago
 > If anything it’s maybe a bit on-the-nose.This is what I was driving at. I should have been more specific to say not particularly meaningful or evocative to me. From the previews I've seen it's all based around shattering and breaking. Where I will give credit, there's one: "Transformation" where natural light is reflected at the shattered glass to portray a face which I find to be fascinating. The rest feel kitschy, it's not quite to my tastes.
- bstsb2 days ago
 while i’m definitely a newcomer in HN terms, i love seeing things like this on the front page. it’s certainly interesting
 - antirez2 days ago
 I love that HN has a diverse set of topics, I didn't mean that. I mean: here usually the artistic and literature stuff appearing are more interesting. This looks like the average Facebook art content with many upvotes.
 - cs7022 days ago
 Ah, I understand what you meant now.Without judging the artistic merit of these pieces, I submitted the OP only because the idea and process of "painting" on glass with a hammer struck me as cool and interesting (pun intended). In any case, artistic merit is always in the eye of the beholder.
 - AStrangeMorrow2 days ago
 Same here. As much as I enjoy a lot of the technical stuff, I never click on 80% if it because it is often “thing that already exist but in lisp/rust/etc, new tool similar to X to free/one extra feature/lightweight”. So unless it is a strong interest of mine, my area of expertise, or something that makes me curious it is a skip.Stuff like that though always makes me curious