Artistic Duos
Artistic collaborations have been a pivotal part of the art world. We are still under the impression from the dramatic perfomances of Marina Abramovic and artist Ulay, ‘the chair of the century’ by Charles and Ray Eames and gender-bending experiments of Lady Jaye and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
The Art Partners would like to spotlight couples of today that have decided to fuse and create their own practice, and to become one artist.
Mark Barrow & Sarah Parke
Portraits of artists Sarah Parke and Mark Barrow, courtesy of Architectural Digest
Since they began to work together in 2008, Parke and Barrow have shared a practice fusing textile production, computer coding and modernist design. Parke creates the base layer of woven pieces, on the top of which Barrow paints series of dots upon raised portions of the weave. Karen Rosenberg, reviewing a 2010 show in The New York Times, described the work as the offspring of “some wonderfully complicated DNA: Americana, modernist geometry, feminism and Neo-Impressionism, to name just a few strands.”
Mark Barrow and Sarah Parke, detail of 'Reweave 7', 2015.
Portrait of Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings, courtesy of The Art Desk
Emma Biggs is a mosaic artist with her own company Mosaic Workshop, while Matthew Collings is a renowned art critic and broadcaster, whose last documentary on BBC charts the rise of abstract art over the last 100 year. They began their collaboration (as Biggs & Collings) in 2001. Biggs chooses and mixes colours, while Collings applies them.
A team of two their abstract paintings, composed of interlocking triangles, are about colour, light and perception. Unique combination of dynamic repetition of pattern and colour together with intensive pictorial content in their artworks make them truly mesmerizing.
Biggs Collings, 'Eleven Stars', 2016
Portrait for Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, courtesy of Pace Gallery
The Kabakovs – husband and wife, they began working side by side in 1989 but only announced themselves as a joint partnership in the mid-1990s. Having known each other all Emilia’s life, the pair eventually married in 1992. Ilya was first a children’s book illustrator and then part of a conceptual group in Moscow, and Emilia originally planned to become a professional pianist, has worked as a curator and art dealer.
They make monumental “total installations” large enough for the viewer to enter. In 2017 they have a major retrospective at Tate "Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken Into The Future".
Creation of a utopian city resembling “The City of the Sun” at the Grand Palais in 2014. Image courtesy of artists
Mwangi Hutter, 'Points of a view', 2016
Ingrid Mwangi and Robert Hutter is Kenyan German duo that after working together for several years and marrying, decided to merge their names and biographies and became a single artist. They both received New Artistic Media degrees and since 2005, the two have worked side by side on numerous projects as a merged artistic entity.
The duo sees its work as a unit arising from two bodies, two minds, dual histories and the continuous merging of expression. Working in video, digital photography, installation and performance, they develop a body of work that focuses on human experience and changing societal realities.
Mwangi Hutter, 'Embracing the moon', 2016, courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim Gallery and the artist