‘Woman Smoking at The Window’ by UK photographer Diana Sosnowska is a carefully staged photographic self-portrait taken in the artist’s former apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the eve of the pandemic’s spread throughout the UK in 2020.

Inspired by midcentury fashion and aesthetics, the photographer references the paintings of Edward Hopper and pays tribute to his 1961 work ‘A Woman in the Sun’. Like Hopper’s piece, the central figure gazes outside the frame while gently illuminated by the muted light of the otherwise bleak grey horizons, both literal and metaphoric.

This dull but yellow light casts an ineffable aura around the subject, only compounded by her averted posture. The melancholy mood which permeates the composition is further emphasised by a restrained palette of soft yet nostalgic tones. The viewer is placed in the middle ground, occupying the void between artist and subject, a voyeuristic role assigned to us by the photographer and cued by her oft symbolic use of windows. Sosnowska invites the viewer to collect her carefully staged details and weave them together to form a narrative. Available to purchase online here

The characters UK photographer Diana Sosnowska embodies in her photographic self-portraits aren’t randomly pulled from the ether. Her heroines are meticulously constructed from disparate sources.

They can be infused with the pathos of one of Euripedes’ heroines or drawn from an episode of the Twilight Zone, but always fabricated in a midcentury aesthetic from whence she draws so much inspiration.

Staged in a lake-side cottage in Florida, ‘At the table’ consciously references artist Edward Hopper’s 1914 painting ‘Soir Bleu’. Similarly to Hoper’s piece, ‘At the Table’ has a central theme of melancholic detachment represented in the central figure’s aversion to the viewer’s glare. We see Sosnowska using her familiar stylistic trope of a window in the frame to highlight the viewer’s voyeurism, a subtle reminder that we’re looking in but are also detached and removed from the subject. By placing this disconnect between us and the subject, the photographer creates the space for the viewer to invent their own narrative.

Available to purchase exclusively online here.

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‘Casa La Tigre’ is the latest instalment by The Cool Hunter’s favourite digital artist Massimo Colonna. In this newest work, a continuation on the theme of that penultimate symbol of wealth and status, the luxury pool, Colonna has created an Escher-esque tropical fantasy replete with stairs ascending and descending to everywhere, and nowhere.

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The Amalfi coast print has been delicately captured in this photo by UK photographer Chris Ngu with warm golden pink morning light gently illuminating the small picturesque city clinging onto its steep rocky platform.

This stretch of sun-kissed coast in Italy’s Campania region has understandably enchanted visitors for centuries with its sublime natural beauty enhanced with the artistic and architectural legacy of the local Amalfi settlements.

Usually depicted in the technicolor brilliance of full sun and big blue sky backdrops, the photographer, in this instance, presents us with an understated version of this iconic community, a town at the beginning of its morning ritual. Approaching by boat, we’re viewing this maritime city how it should be encountered for the first time, by sea.

Printed on metallic paper and onto 6mm Acrylic/Perspex. Available here

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The architectural concept of ‘Brutalism’ has been making somewhat of a comeback in recent times as interest in this structural style and the ideology that underpinned it increases.

Its dramatic fall from fashionable grace from the early 80’s on, however, led it to become the most reviled structural aesthetic in any urban landscape with few lamenting its demolition and demise.

The word ‘Brutalist’ itself interestingly does not derive from its forbidding appearance but rather from the words ‘Béton brut’‘ meaning ‘raw concrete’, and its rise in 1950s post-war Europe stems from the most unimpeachably high-minded principles of social utopianism and as such was the style employed to construct shared institutions like libraries, government buildings, theatres, schools, and affordable housing projects.

It epitomised a forward-looking confidence in the future and in some ways was the logical conclusion of the modernist ideal which sought to eliminate unnecessary adornment and celebrate the materials of construction themselves; concrete, steel, and glass. But the style fell from favour for several reasons, its austere nature, and its association with totalitarianism, with crime, social deprivation and urban decay and finally because often they simply didn’t age well with crumbling buildings becoming discoloured and damaged. 

In this series, digital artist Massimo Colonna (Italy) revisits the pool motif from his earlier works and pays homage to the principles of this movement and unabashedly celebrates concrete for its aesthetic value. The austerity of the cool gray concrete in these works is tempered by the form of his construction, smoothed edges, and the considered proportions and texture applied to the surfaces. The artificial here is perfectly balanced by the presence of water, of sky and greenery and creates something inviting, a space or an ideal we want to exist in as we learn to appreciate this movement anew and the lofty principles it represents.   

PRINTS AVAILABLE HERE

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For those not familiar with our store or past pop-up spaces, imagine a retail-gallery hybrid, a place where you might not necessarily need to buy anything from but need to immerse yourself in for the sensory experience anyway. What started as an experiment in 2014 off the back of one of our featured events has now been a fixture in the Melbourne retail scene for 4 years with a commitment to keep going so long as it remains interesting to both our customers and ourselves.

Meticulously curated by The Cool Hunter team, everything in-store is for sale; art, lights, books, gourmet foods, fashion accessories and so on. Guided by the principle of needing to keep everything fresh and exclusive, we strive to change our selection regularly so that visiting our store is an interesting experience every time and stocked with goods that can’t be found anywhere else.

We get it, as shopping has become more and more monotonous, with mind-numbing sameness across airports, high streets, shopping centres and brands, there seems little point in getting excited about walking into any store. So we know we’ve set the bar high.

But we also know that the sameness is the result of brands, stores and managers choosing to be followers rather than leaders. It is so much easier to produce and sell products in the same colours, styles, and materials as everybody else. They all go to the same trade shows, same fashion shows, same predictable sources – so is it any wonder that the result is dull and boring?

Our approach is different, sometimes risky, and far more time-consuming but we’re trying to un-bore ourselves here, too. We hope that as a result, we will be able to offer our guests a worthwhile experience in return.

The Cool Hunter Store
Shop 3, 274 Conventry St
South Melbourne

Hours
Monday to Friday – 10:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday – 10:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday – 11:00am – 4:00pm

shop.thecoolhunter.net
[email protected]
P: 1300 739 661

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In this ‘Villa Series’ commissioned exclusively for The Cool Hunter, digital artist Massimo Colonna draws inspiration from the architectural styles of the Italian peninsular through the ages as he reimagines his successful ‘Pool Series’ from early 2019. ‘The Villa’ collection of digital pieces again features the pool as the ultimate symbol of luxury, wealth and status, however this time they are auxiliary embellishments set against the impressive backdrop of grand architectural follies.

These imagined structures, with their repeated colonnades, arches, and statuary niches, reference the architectural motifs of the classical and renaissance eras but do so with a distinctly modern interpretation in their simplicity of form, symmetry and colour palette. Softly illuminated and set in a serene landscape of gently rolling green and fallow fields, each piece strives to achieve the Palladian-like ideal of calm self-assuredness with their harmonious proportions.

Prints available exclusively from our online store 

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This series of glass fruit explores a familiar ornament of another era and reimagines it in a new form.

Through the skilled process of glass casting, the artist pays homage to the blown glass fruit makers, and their collectors, from the 1960’s.

The light playful approach to everyday fruit is contrasted with the heaviness of the crystal glass, a unique material that catches and reflects light onto the surrounding surfaces. These objects are intended to provoke the senses and occupy a space where time, unlike real fruit, maybe kinder to them.

These objects are intended to provoke the senses and occupy a space where time may be kinder to them. Each fruit is cast in crystal glass using a lost wax process that involves divesting the form from layers of brittle plastic and silica. 

Glass fruit exclusively available via TCH Store.  Translucent banana, pear, mandarin, and lemon likenesses in cobalt, lime, citrine, pink. A new class of collectibles.

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‘Stillness’, by Berlin-based photographer Monty Kaplan (Argentina) is a solemn and contemplative piece which instills in the viewer a sense of calmness and serenity. Devoid of any solid objects serving as the central focus, light itself becomes the subject of the viewer’s gaze.

The composition is harmoniously divided between two rectangular fields of sea and sky, both only partially illuminated by daybreak, and partitioned by the dawn rays reflecting off the distant water’s surface.

Ripples catching the soft light on an otherwise still sea highlight the inky blue-blacks of the water below creating a rich and textured surface, while the complexity of the clouds above is captured in the muted colour scheme of the low-light of the early morning sun. Tonally, the two halves complement each other and serve to amplify the element which brings both forth out of invisible darkness, light itself.

Stillness print available exclusively via TCH Store

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The wave rises like the sheathed dorsal fin of some unseen Jurassic creature emphasizing the terrifying power of what can be one of the most inhospitable of environments.

Yet for all its terror there’s a certain cold serenity, an awe for the minimal perfection of nature.

In this image we observe the moment before the sea crashes back into itself, we witness the wave as we would perceive an iceberg, we see only the tip, knowing the colossal ocean forces remain hidden beneath the dark sea surface.

The Break Print available here: 

Below, more original artworks – exclusively to TCH Store

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