OVERVIEW
The Red Bull Art of Can is a nationwide hunt for creativity and is open to everyone, from fulltime artists to simply those with a creative flare. Build, sculpt, weld, glue, hammer, bend, fold, print, tape and paint, whatever!
Be bold! Send a message! Make a Statement. Your primary material must be a Red Bull can but you will need to add plenty of imagination and creativity. Make a sculpture, a picture, a 3-D model, a mobile, a video or piece of modern art but make it beautiful, colorful, clever, amusing or outrageous.
Judges will select the top winners from the exhibition.
HISTORY
The 2009 Washington, D.C. exhibition marks the eighth Red Bull Art of Can to take place in the US. Other successful exhibitions have been held throughout the world from Europe to New Zealand since 1997. In fact Austria, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, United Kingdom and South Africa have all inspired artists to create masterpieces made from Red Bull cans.
Art of Can offers a platform through which any person regardless of age is invited to take part. Artists, students, grandparents and all of those in-between are invited to submit their works of art. Art of Can is a true expression of the imagination with little or no restrictions placed on the budding artists.
The 2008 Red Bull Art of Can exhibition was held at The Galleria in Houston Texas this past July. The exhibition was open to all artists who could create an original piece of artwork inspired by or created with Red Bull cans.
View the Washington, D.C. exhibit
CANADIAN FLAVOUR
Canadian Allan Hirsch (Coquitlam, BC) is the artist of "Parts to a Whole".
Allan Hirsch says that he gained new appreciation of materials – or at least of one particular material – in creating his entry for the Washington exhibition. “Aluminum has so many different characteristics in play in this can, from the rigidity of the base to the paper-like flexibility of the main body; it’s an amazing material,” he states. With a bachelor’s degree from Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design (now Emily Carr University), Hirsch makes his living in the field of industrial design, and while he’s created some intriguing pieces in the past (e.g., vacuum-formed bent wood furniture for children), the 29-year-old had never tackled Red Bull Art of Can. He comments, “It looked like fun – reworking, taking apart, redefining the can.”
After some 30 hours pondering the project, Hirsch, who lives in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam, deconstructed the can and reconfigured it as an abstraction of the logo. He describes the finished product as “random shapes that do not have any meaning until viewed at the right angle,” and explains, “Each segment represents the many different types of sport Red Bull is rooted in; from the fringe to the mainstream.” Hirsch spent 10 days shaping “Parts to a Whole,” using little more than a utility knife and scissors.
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