The Oakes Twins
Curated by Lawrence Weschler
@
CUE Art Foundation
511 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
Sept 10th – Oct 29th, 2011
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 6pm
Closed on Sunday and Monday
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Image Copyright © 2011 J. Paul Getty Trust, photo: Steve Saldivar
The Getty Center, Los Angeles
Artists-at-Work: Ryan and Trevor Oakes
December 6 – 24, 2011
Daily, 10:00-4:00 p.m.
Central Garden (under the bougainvillea umbrellas)
Drop by as twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes create a perspective drawing from the Getty Museum and gardens using an innovative concave easel, invented as part of their ongoing exploration of human vision and the experience of space and depth.
This is a free, drop-in program.
Learn more on the Getty Museum’s blog
View progress images
Palazzo Strozzi Museum, Florence, Italy
Trevor and Ryan Oakes in residence at the museum, June 2011
Oakes Twins at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy, 2011
Throughout the month of June 2011, Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance and the home of Filippo Brunelleschi, the father of perspective, have hosted the twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes, two brilliant young American artists (they are 26 years old) who have followed similar lines of inquiry as the Florentine architect, and developed through continuous research and experimentation on human vision and perception of visual space, a new art form that explores the act of looking, in particular the use of both eyes simultaneously, and the interpretation of the three-dimensionality. During their stay in Florence Trevor and Ryan Oakes have explored the city and identify buildings, landscapes and views that could be a source of inspiration for their work. Palazzo Strozzi, its courtyard and its people, has been one of the places where they have further developed their revolutionary drawing technique.
INCREDIBLE 3D DRAWING MACHINE from David Battistella on Vimeo.
Weschler’s Wonder Cabinet
Day-long forum hosted by Occidental College, LA
April 24, 2010
Ricky Jay, Walter Murch, David Wilson
and myriad others to headline event
Ed Ruscha
Ricky Jay
Lena Herzog
Walter Murch
David Wilson
Ryan + Trevor Oakes
Boris Hars-Tschachotin
Lauren Redniss
Ken Libbrecht
Matt Shlian
Jessica Yu
Guitar Boy (Nancy Agabian and Ann Perich)
Weschler will present an ostentatiously interdisciplinary cavalcade of artists, performers, and scientists, who, by way of music, film and Powerpoint, will celebrate the odd, the marvelous, and the drop-jawed amazing.
“One of the things I’ve long been interested in is the notion of returning to a time when the sciences were at the heart of the humanities, when there was a marvelous, polymorphous, promiscuous interaction between scientists, artists, wizards and inventors,” says Weschler. “The division between arts and sciences is only 300 years old at most. Before that, people like Michelangelo and Leonardo were as much scientists as artists. There was no distinction between the different interests they were pursuing.”
“With the rise of the Internet and social media we may be returning to an era in which scientists and artists, historians and digital innovators have all kinds of things to say to each other,” he says. “The Wonder Cabinet aims to facilitate that conversation.”
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New York-based artist Trevor Oakes shows audience members a concave illustration he and his identical twin brother, Ryan, created using a device to depict accurate and detailed re-presentations of visual space.
Hundreds of people filled Occidental’s Thorne Hall April 24 to explore the kinetic qualities of paper, how planetary orbits relate to the music of the spheres, why pickpockets and horned ladies were 18th century celebrities, and the role the nose plays in shaping visual perception at Lawrence Weschler’s day-long Wonder Cabinet.
O’Hare International Airport
Oakes sculpture on permanent display
July, 2009
An extended drawing of Anish Kapoor’s landmark sculpture Cloud Gate in Millennium Park is on display at O’Hare International Airport, in Terminal 2 just past security, north of the current Explore Chicago exhibit. Created by identical twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes, the piece, entitled “Have No Narrow Perspective,” was originally installed in Millennium Park in May.
Map to Oakes Sculpture in O'Hare International Airport
CHICAGO – The City of Chicago is proud to host new artwork, an extended drawing of Anish Kapoor’s landmark sculpture Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. Created by identical twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes, the piece, entitled “Have No Narrow Perspective,” was originally installed in Millennium Park in May. It is now on display at O’Hare International Airport, in Terminal 2 just past security, north of the current Explore Chicago exhibit.
The Oakes twins have collaborated on various visual explorations since the age of three. Now in their 20’s, they have developed a remarkable new method for tracing the world before them onto a curved surface, completely freehand and by eye alone. This method has been described by Columbia University’s perceptual historian Jonathan Crary as one of the most original breakthroughs in the rendering of visual space since the Renaissance.
Last summer the Oakes twins utilized that concave drawing method on the Cloud Gate sculpture and produced an enlarged version, engraved onto a six-by-six foot metal armature, with the explanation of their technique inscribed in the base.
“We are pleased to host this sculpture as the latest addition to our art and exhibits program,” said Rosemarie S. Andolino. “Thanks to our collaborative work with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, we can fulfill Mayor Daley’s vision to introduce Chicago’s rich, diverse and expansive culture to visitors from around the world.”
Official Vernissage of a new public sculpture
Ryan and Trevor Oakes
In Millennium Park next to Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture
Thursday May 14, 2009
Have No Narrow Perspectives, 2008-09, etched stainless steel and enamel, 8.5' x 6' x 4', Millennium Park, Chicago
Having collaborated on various visual explorations since the age of three, identical twin artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes (now in their late twenties) have developed a remarkable new method for tracing the world before them onto a curved surface, completely freehand and by eye alone. This method has been described, by no less an authority than Columbia University’s perceptual historian Jonathan Crary, as one of the most original breakthroughs in the rendering of visual space since the Renaissance. Last summer the Oakes Brothers were prominently seen deploying that method across an extended drawing of Anish Kapoor’s landmark sculpture Cloud Gate. They subsequently took that concave drawing and produced an enlarged version, engraved onto a six-by-six foot metal armature, which they are currently displaying right there along side “the Bean” in Millennium Park.
On Thursday May 14th, from 5 – 8pm, Millennium Park, and the Department of Cultural Affairs in association with the Chicago Humanities Festival (which originally occasioned the Twin’s presence in Chicago, along with the Spertus Institute), will host the Oakes Twins as they officially present their first public sculpture on site there by the Bean. They will be joined, among others, by Lawrence Weschler, the artistic director of the Chicago Humanities Festival, whose essay about the Twins and their method is featured in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review
(see http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2009/spring/weschler-double-vision)
This sculpture is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts
Double | Vision
The Field Museum, Chicago
Ground-breaking artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes in residence at The Field Museum
December 21 – March 29, 2009
Oakes Brothers concave easel - the Twins will be in residence at the Field Museum during March, 2009
See artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes in action at The Field! The Oakes brothers have devised a radically new way of drawing that allows the artist to “trace” reality. Their discoveries have been called “some of the most original breakthroughs in the rendering of visual space since the Renaissance.”
The Oakes brothers will be on-site to create an intricate drawing of Stanley Field Hall, the Museum’s great main hall. Learn about their revolutionary techniques in recording human optical perception, and watch their artwork take shape.
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Oakes Spherical Drawing of Stanly Field Hall
Artists and twin brothers Ryan and Trevor Oakes created this view of Stanley Field Hall using a revolutionary drawing technique they invented together.
Their technique relies on human vision being formed by two eyes merging two images in the brain. Using a special easel with a concave surface, plus a headset to keep the artist’s head exactly in place, Trevor Oakes simultaneously viewed the paper in the foreground with one eye and the hall in the background with the other. This action formed a “ghost image” of the hall over the paper. The hall was then traced onto strips of paper inside the easel resulting in the drawing you see now.
To see a large sculpture based on a drawing the Oakes brothers created in Chicago’s Millennium Park, visit terminal 2 of O’Hare Airport.
Chicago Humanities Festival
Lecture hosted by the Spertus Museum
Seminal Notions: The Idea and Practice of Perspective
November 21, 2009
Surely one of the singular achievements of Renaissance and post-Renaissance Western art and technology was the conquest, articulation, and deployment of notions of visual perspective. How has perspective continued to evolve?
Panelists Jonathan Crary, Ryan Oakes, and Trevor Oakes discuss the idea of perspective and the multiple ways of viewing the physical world. They explain perspective in artworks, both recent and historical, as well as a new way of drawing. Lawrence Weschler moderates.
Double | Vision
Spertus Museum, Chicago
October 29 – December 14, 2008
In conjunction with the Chicago Humanities Festival, Spertus hosted an exhibition by New York-based artists and identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes, who invented a method to render, by hand, an accurate camera-obscura style tracing of the world onto a curved surface. The exhibition highlighted drawings, made this summer for this project, of Chicago points of interest. These included the award-winning new Spertus building, Anish Kapoor’sCloud Gate (pictured right) and the Frank Gehry-designed Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, vistas of the Chicago River, historic Michigan Avenue architecture, and more.
Double Vision was displayed in the Spertus Museum during the Chicago Humanities Festival and was the exclusive showcase for not only the Chicago drawings but also a series of early sculptures about light and vision that lead up to the conception of this revolutionary idea.
Ryan and Trevor Oakes graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2004. Their work is characterized by an in-depth investigation of light, vision, and the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina.
Trevor Oakes drawing New York City on the inner surface of a sphere from the top of the Chrylser Building.
The Institute For Figuring
Announces a world premier event
At Machine Project
Seeing Anew
A lecture by Trevor and Ryan Oakes
Sunday, June 24 @ 7pm
Machine Project 1200 D North Alvarado
Los Angeles, CA 90026
It is hard to believe there is anything new to be discovered about perspective drawing. But in 2004 twin artists Trevor and Ryan Oakes made a startling discovery about how to render perspectival images on the inner surface on a sphere. Their discovery is all the more intriguing in the light of recent controversy surrounding David Hockney’s thesis about the use of spherical lenses in the making of perspective drawings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
In their first public talk the Oakes will discuss their perspectival research and demonstrate their unique spherical rendering technique using a specially designed stand and an innovative concept of “concave paper”. The lecture will include an historical account of other optical tools used to depict three-dimensional space – including the concave mirror-lens, the camera obscura, and the camera lucida. These prior techniques all involved optical equipment that in some sense controlled or bent the flow of light; the Oakes’ method uses only pen and paper – but here it is the paper rather than the light that is bent.
Trevor and Ryan Oakes are visual artists in New York City. Their work is characterized by an in-depth investigation of light, vision, and the interplay between the visual cortex and the human retina . Ryan and Trevor graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in 2004.