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Lot Essay
'Cities need to dream. They were built up slowly on thousands of
small dreams. Somewhere, cities should still dream. In a world full of wonders and dangers, every moment is a marvelous, magical survival.
We should produce dream bombs while the world is threatened with
terrorist bombs. Dream bombs are planned for years in advance,
probably requiring as much energy, financial backing, organization and know-how as the terrorist kind. They might fail to happen, but when
they do, their vitality permeates the city.'
(Nadim Karam).
Nadim Karam's vision of playful figures invading the urban environment is epitomized in Lollipop Boy. The boy is walking, he's on the move, his head transformed into a giant helix which suggests he might just take off and fly. Furthermore - as his name suggests - he resembles a very delectable lollipop, in fact, an absolute incarnation of childish fantasy.
This sculpture could also be considered as a miniature Urban Toy, a concept that dates to the origins of Karam's creations of urban-scale giant toys for cities all over the world. Nadim Karam, both artist and architect, considers cities as being living organisms with buried dreams and memories that need to be discovered. Born in Africa, grew up in Lebanon and studied in Japan, Nadim Karam is a metropolitan citizen who started creating stories for cities with his urban toys. His unique installations mingle stories of history with culture and fantasy, and invigorate urban spaces by giving them magical tools for survival. His incubator atelier studio named 'Hapsitus' which he established in 1996 in Beirut, Lebanon, derives from the combination of two words; 'Happening' and 'Situation', which defines for him the invisible order of an 'urban happening'. 'Hapsitus' became a vehicle for his work, producing numerous manifestations where he blends architecture, art and design in cities or large scale public parks, like the large-scale commissions he produced for Dubai, Australia and Japan, among other places.
Karam's urban sculptures are anti-monuments; they are diffusers of energy, creating fantasy, triggering dreams and joy. They are elements that incite the viewer to stop, to ask and to react. In this world of globalization saturated with stereotypes, they are visual reminders of free thought. In this present lot, the emotions are whimsical, filling the entire body of the sculpture. This boy's head is a helix spreading around him like a rainbow that is filled with an intricate intermingling of lines, a poetic geometry.
small dreams. Somewhere, cities should still dream. In a world full of wonders and dangers, every moment is a marvelous, magical survival.
We should produce dream bombs while the world is threatened with
terrorist bombs. Dream bombs are planned for years in advance,
probably requiring as much energy, financial backing, organization and know-how as the terrorist kind. They might fail to happen, but when
they do, their vitality permeates the city.'
(Nadim Karam).
Nadim Karam's vision of playful figures invading the urban environment is epitomized in Lollipop Boy. The boy is walking, he's on the move, his head transformed into a giant helix which suggests he might just take off and fly. Furthermore - as his name suggests - he resembles a very delectable lollipop, in fact, an absolute incarnation of childish fantasy.
This sculpture could also be considered as a miniature Urban Toy, a concept that dates to the origins of Karam's creations of urban-scale giant toys for cities all over the world. Nadim Karam, both artist and architect, considers cities as being living organisms with buried dreams and memories that need to be discovered. Born in Africa, grew up in Lebanon and studied in Japan, Nadim Karam is a metropolitan citizen who started creating stories for cities with his urban toys. His unique installations mingle stories of history with culture and fantasy, and invigorate urban spaces by giving them magical tools for survival. His incubator atelier studio named 'Hapsitus' which he established in 1996 in Beirut, Lebanon, derives from the combination of two words; 'Happening' and 'Situation', which defines for him the invisible order of an 'urban happening'. 'Hapsitus' became a vehicle for his work, producing numerous manifestations where he blends architecture, art and design in cities or large scale public parks, like the large-scale commissions he produced for Dubai, Australia and Japan, among other places.
Karam's urban sculptures are anti-monuments; they are diffusers of energy, creating fantasy, triggering dreams and joy. They are elements that incite the viewer to stop, to ask and to react. In this world of globalization saturated with stereotypes, they are visual reminders of free thought. In this present lot, the emotions are whimsical, filling the entire body of the sculpture. This boy's head is a helix spreading around him like a rainbow that is filled with an intricate intermingling of lines, a poetic geometry.