(Roughly) Daily

Liu Bolin is a young Shandong-based artist who exhibited primarily in China until last year’s solo shows at Paris’ Galerie Bertin Toublanc and the Eli Klein Gallery in New York.  His series “Camouflage” is “an exploration of human nature and animal instincts” which features Chinese citizens painted to blend into their surroundings. The subjects are covered head to toe in paint, camouflaging themselves in front of the Chinese flag, a billboard or other features of downtown Beijing…

source: Designboom

It is perhaps not altogether surprising to learn that Liu Bolin has had some trouble with Chinese authorities…  For more of the series, visit the gallery links above, or Designboom.

As we try to blend in, we might tip our flattened fedoras to Joseph Francis “Buster” Keaton IV, born on this date in 1895…  Keaton was surely right when he observed that “tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.”  But he was equally surely wrong when he protested that “no man can be a genius in slapshoes and a flat hat.”

Buster Keaton