Sunday, 20 January 2008

Skeleton3, the COP and the ISPO 2008









Check out this interesting project! Skeleton 3 is a unit of the three artists Joao Parrinha, Luis de Dios and Xandi Kreuzeder. They are ambitious surfers who have established several art projects. The Cleanoceanproject is pleased to be a part of it. But first we would like to give Skeleton 3 the opportunity to introduce themselves.
















Skeleton 3 stands for their very own style of art… for weathered dead material… for skeleton-like objects… and for the composition of these materials that brings them back to life. The idea to ‘Skeleton Sea’ was brought to life about six years ago during a surf trip to the Azores. Then, the Azores were still unknown territory for surfers. We only knew that there are a lot of good surf spots and a good swell. It became apparent though that we could reach the best spots only by hiking several hours on coastal paths. We organized two donkeys and packed them with our surf equipment and food for two weeks before we started to walk along the coastline. On our adventurous journey, we did not only discover the waves and point breaks we yearned for, not only deserted ruin villages where we could set ourselves up directly in front of the spot, not only waterfalls falling from the cliffs into the Sea… No, to our very amazement we also found loads of flotsam and jetsam at the stony beaches – treasures the ocean had spit out a long time ago.















Our artistic instinct was aroused. During the breaks in between surfing we began to salvage the precious objects: very old Chinese glass buoys wrapped in ropes, lots of brightly polished whale and fish bones, fishermen’s buoys of all kind, up to 1.5 metre thick rusty oil rig buoys, wooden and rusty metal parts of ship wrecks, porcelain pieces and a lot of other things.























That is how the idea was raised to come back and save these treasures from the Sea to use them in sculptures later on. The Azores project is still to be done as it occurred to be very expensive to salvage the stuff. Each year though, we realize other projects together collecting flotsam and jetsam and using it in our sculptures, installations and pictures.












So, what has the Cleanoceanproject to do with this? The three guys from Sleleton 3 are not only artists and surfers, they also care about the environment. They helped us several times cleaning the beaches on Fuerteventura - and the last time they found some interesting stuff. These pieces of art will be presented at the sports trade fair ISPO in Munich at the first ‘Skeleton Sea’ exhibition from January 27 to 30, 2008. Further exhibitions are at the planning stage.

For more information check out xandikreuzeder.de