THE ART OF MOTION NOW

FABIAN OEFNER

Photographs capture a fleeting moment, a single motion that can never be recreated.

We begin our week of Beautiful Motion with a look at Swiss photographer and artist Fabian Oefner, who combines science and art, to create breathtakingly beautiful artworks that capture motion beautifully.

Oefner’s work captures the forces of motion that we encounter every day, but rarely stop to consider.

Oefner’s “Paint Series” plays with paint in motion, as it is splashed and pulled by gravity, turning colors into swirls and lacy spins.

In “Liquid Jewels,” Oefner adds balloons to the mix, covering them with paint before popping them.

Paint in motion is also the theme of “Black Hole,” in which a metallic rod connected to a drill is covered in paint, and then switched on to spin. Delicate drips of paint spin into a hurricane-like formation, which Oefner captures beautifully on camera. 

In “Millefeori,” Oefner mixed watercolors and magnetic ferro-fluid. As they repelled each other, black channels formed by the ferrofluid, then filled with a rainbow of paint. 

Oefner’s most recent work, “Field of Sound,” incorporates a mesmerizing combination of sound and motion. A hidden mechanism captures sound waves and transforms them into peaceful, swaying motion through thousands of illuminated stems.

“Dancing Colors” is another sound and motion series. Oefner topped a speaker is topped with a layer of tin foil covered with tiny crystals. The vibrations of the sound waves emitted by the speakers cause the crystals to bounce, creating gorgeous moving forms.

“Iridient” showcases the precise moment when an iridescent bubble begins to pop.

In “Grain of Scent,” tiny individual droplets of a liquid mixed with spray paint hang in the air, freezing their airborne motion for a fraction of a second, forming a scent sculpture.

In “Nebula,” Oefner recreates the appearance of photographs taken by the Hubble Telescope with a desk lamp.

Check out Oefner’s work in motion in his video. He turns motion into art, keeping us transfixed and moving us at the same time.

Read more about Beautiful Motion, as it relates to  Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact.

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IMAGE CREDITS:

1. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Black Hole Series.
2. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Black Hole Series.
3. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Liquid Jewel Series.
4. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Black Hole Series.
5. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Millefiori.
6. Video: by Fabian Oefner. Field of Sound.
7. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Dancing Colors.
8. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Iridient.
9. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Marbleous.
10. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Nebula.
11. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Ferrari – State of the Art.
12. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Grain of Scent.
13. Image: Courtesy of BeautifulNow. BN App.
14. Image: by Fabian Oefner. Dancing Colors.