Author Archives: Phil Buehler

Borodynka, Ukraine / Cyclorama Installation in Times Square

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For a rally in Times Square for the second anniversary of the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, I installed a walk-in photograph, or cyclorama, of a bombed-out apartment block in Borodyanka, Ukraine.

Before dawn on March 6, 2022, Russian warplanes targeted this apartment block with 500-lb bombs. Forty civilians sheltering in basements were killed after sections collapsed on them. Much of the town was also left in ruins. 

The image was created from over 30 high-resolution images and can be viewed at resolution at: https://kuula.co/share/5J4fq

Irpin Ukraine: Please Don’t Forget Us

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A 60-foot-long photograph of a civilian car cemetery in Ukraine

I recently visited Ukraine and I would love you to see the installation of one of several works I will be making from my visit. Please come on this Saturday to see the 60-foot-long photograph of the car cemetery in Irpin, full of the bullet and shrapnel-ridden cars destroyed as residences fled the city.

This is the first of two public art installations I’ve planned. The second will be a large walk-in cyclorama of a bombed apartment block in Borodyanka.

On March 6th 2022, Russians shelled the road that hundreds of civilians were using to escape the fighting in Irpin. Men, women and children were killed while fleeing in an attack that was called a likely war crime by the Human Rights Watch. Parts of the city were occupied by Russian forces until they were forced out at the end of that March. They left behind over 250 civilians dead, a quarter of the 62,000 residents homeless, and 70% of infrastructure damaged. 

This is a vulnerable moment for Ukraine, with the stopgap spending bill set to expire on November 17th, and support for aid waning among Republicans in Congress.

This installation is up-close and visceral. It serves a witness to just some of the horror and destruction Ukraine has experienced, a memorial in life-sized detail.  It was stitched together from over 30 high-resolution images and can be viewed in high resolution at: pwbuehler.prodibi.com/a/jvlqx2okwlexyzv

“Wall of Liars and Deniers” in the Guardian

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The more than 300 Republican politicians, right-wing pundits and others like Rudy Guiliani and Mike “My Pillow” Lindell who spread the “Big Lie” that Trump won the 2020 Presidential election.

You can see it at 12 Grattan Street, Bushwick Brooklyn, next to Pine Box Rock Shop.

Story here.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/08/the-wall-of-liars-and-deniers-trump-fake-election-rhetoric

Spring/Break Art Show, Sept 7-12, New York

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Spencer Tunick and I brought together our art practices as well as 125 intrepid spirits to create a series of panoramic photographs for Spring/Break Art Show. The settings were a field, an orchard, a forest and the middle of a river. One of the panoramas was turned into a cyclorama, or walk in photograph that is 8 feet tall and 25 feet long, wrapping around you inside an 8′ diameter cylindrical frame covered with mirrors.

You can see a short, 7-minute video created by Rusty Tagliarini / Antiquity Echoes documenting the day at https://youtu.be/ELspnucxvRI.

More information about Spring/Break Art Show at SpringBreakArtShow.com.

Installation at Spring/Break Art Show
Behind the scenes – drone footage creating the first panorama

“Book of Ours” featured in artnet

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See 10 of the Exhilarating Installations at the Spring/Break Art Show, From a Shrine to Giantesses to One Absurdly Big Ham

“Medievalists have been comparing the smart phone to the Medieval book of hours for years,” curator Sarah Celentano, a medievalist and former staffer at New York’s City Reliquary told Artnet News. “They are about the same size, people use them in public, and they are luxury items.”

Phil Buehler has run with that comparison, surreptitiously snapping photographs of New Yorkers engrossed in their phones and turning the images into stained glass-style images displayed on a smart TV mounted in a wooden frame shaped like an arched church window. Right now, only the video files are for sale, for $1,500 each, but the right offer could potentially buy you the whole installation.

The meditative display, beneath a vaulted “ceiling” of blue lights, is paired with dispatches from QAnon printed in Gothic script that Celentano selected for their biblical cadence. “Smart phones give us access to limitless information, not just prayers,” she said, “but we are still prone to radicalization.”