Hrag Vartanian

I like the work of Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya (wiki). He is known for redrawing pages of corporate newspapers that are printed in lieu of the “real” printed page. His artistic rendering have appeared in the Turkish daily Radikal and the New York Times but now his art has popped up on the cover of the Louisville’s Courier-Journal (image posted below).

Ozkaya says the work is intended to make people “look at your experience in a new way.” I don’t know if it achieves exactly that but it does force you to refocus your attention on the artistry of the graphic design, though I wish he’d manipulate things a little (perhaps omitting a word, adding annotations to images) so that it becomes more critical and less illustrative.

The rendered front page of Louisville’s Courier-Journal

I also really like the idea of the dead wood media commissioning artists to transform the newspaper into a work of art. Why haven’t book artists been commissioned to do stuff like this on a regular basis? Remember how people used to save every copy of Life Magazine or National Geographic because they were beautiful and had a “one of a kind” feel even though they weren’t? Well, maybe people would save a copy of the New York Times or the Boston Globe if it was designed or crafted by Amy Sillman, Sarah Morris or Nancy Spero. Just a thought.

Read the whole story & watch a nice little video about the process here.

(Item via HuffPost)

Coincidentally, I reviewed Özkaya’s piece at Performa.