@shoshibuya Instagram page, The New York Times painting series
Added to the Museum of Data by Angelina Ding on Wednesday, September 29, 2021. Museum of Data Collection ID: 858.
Public description: Artist and designer Sho Shibuya’s The New York Times front page paintings are a series of artworks released exclusively on the artist’s Instagram page, @shoshibuya. Since April 2020, Sho Shibuya began revisioning the front pages of The New York Times newspaper spreads as abstract acrylic paintings. Some paintings are abstract color gradients depicting skies that Sho sees every day, symbolizing shared moments of peace and hope during the pandemic. Other times, Sho paints to communicate political and cultural events. Eight bullet holes accentuating a grey-blue gradient embody the eight victims shot dead by a white man in Atlanta, Georgia. An acrylic handprint of the three-finger salute symbolizes the resistance against the Myanmar coup. A page split down the center with gold and silver metallic foil collage visualizes famous music group Daft Punk’s split after twenty years. Released several times a week, these paintings complicate common memories of the daily news. By presenting major events as colors and shapes, Sho offers a more abstract, affective alternative to text, video, and images in making news and public memories. Still, Sho draws from select portions of The Times to keep in each piece. In some works, the painting occupies only one paragraph of the newspaper. Other times, Sho keeps only the headline or the logo. In other pieces, the newspaper layout seeps through transparent layers of the acrylic paint, leaving marks and contours on the color gradients. The newspaper medium strengthens the impact of Sho’s work. The folds of the newspaper, the crinkle of the paint-soaked newsprint, and the anchoring of The Times logo ground Sho’s work in existing mediums of memory-making.
Materials used: Original material made of newspaper, ink, acrylic paint; Instagram posts made of digital photograph, phone screen capture, Instagram UX and UI, python coding and Django web framework
Credit: Artist: Sho Shibuya // Publication: Instagram account // Medium used: The New York Times newspaper front page // This artwork’s medium and publishing strategy complicates questions of credit and ownership.
Copyright: None found.
Language: English
Size: Screen sized, adjustable/infinite
Creation date: 2020/04/10 00:00:00
Alternate titles: Sho Shibuya, Sunrises from a Small Window
Alternate identifiers: Instagram page, artwork, painting, newspaper spreads
