Yang Jiecang
August 15th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
This a limited edition by Chinese artist Yang Jiecang, published by the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in 2008. It is hand-painted porcelain and produced as an edition of 250. The work references Yang’s ‘Underground Flowers’ project, an installation of 3,000 porcelain bone fragments housed in wooden shelves reminiscent of a Natural History Museum archive.
The series is a central example of Yang’s attempt to meld traditional Chinese artistic methods with foreign and / or contemporary forms (in this case the European Momento Mori, perhaps).
I really want one.
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To purchase, or learn more, visit the Ullens Center online store.
Dagmara Genda
August 13th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Dagmara Genda will have an exhibition opening next weekend at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, as the winner of their most recent Open Call competition.
Genda’s work is a mix of site specific all work and intricate drawing. Genda’s works on paper are beautifully rendered, organically growing and twisting phantasms. One really needs to zoom in to see just how much is going on in them. Often they are full of contrasting imagery: buildings and hair, birds and communists, all amid flowery ornamental motifs. There is an energy and level of detail that reminds me of Manabu Ikeda (whose work I loved so much in the recent Bye Bye Kitty exhibition).
Unlike Ikeda, Genda’s works have no sense of gravity. There is no real sense of up or down, of backwards or forwards, of in or out. The compositions seem to twist their way in and out of existence, and we are not sure if we are seeing something be born or torn apart.
The upcoming show at 3rd Ward, called Building Disaster, will open August 19th.
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All artworks are copyright Dagmara Genda, and were borrowed from the artist’s website. More information on the upcoming exhibition can be found here.
Hou Chung-Ming
August 9th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Gallery Ver in Bangkok has just closed its exhibition of Taiwanese artist Hou Chung-Ming’s third installment of his “Asian Fathers Interview Project.” In each of these happenings, the artist will interview locals about their fathers. He will present them with a series of questions about their relationship with their father, memories of and experiences with the father. He will sketch ideas and make notes while each interview occurs. Afterwards a portrait of the father figure will be created, and the artist will then interview the person about their reaction to the depiction.
This sort of location-centered and evidence finding sort of relational aesthetics has become quiet popular. The theme of the interviews seems a little thin: was your father important to you? One would have to argue that a father figure is important and leaves an impact, whether it is for good or ill. Even the total absence of a father figure leaves a significant impact on a person. The visual creations that stem from the interview are a little more interesting, in that they are more symbolic than documentary. The overall effect is stronger than if this was just a video project, for example.
The drawing portraits above seem to have been made on children’s flash cards, or pages from an early language book. These add color and context to the drawings, but one has to wonder about the effect of children’s books on a symbol of the father. One continues to have experiences, both good and bad, with one’s father well into adulthood.
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All images are copyright Hou Chung-Ming, and were borrowed from the Gallery VER website.
Tatsuo Miyajima
August 9th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing recently opened an exhibition of Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima. I have long been a fan of Miyajima’s work and installations. While the artist confines himself to working exclusively with small LED number panels, he has been able to display them in vastly different and beautiful ways.
The LEDs hold universal meanings to the artist and his work, but are also used to touch on larger subjects with each installation. The artist only uses 1 through 9, and 9 through 1, because of the powerful void that 0 represents. There are Zen Buddhist undertones to the work, as numbers come into and leave existence, turning on and off, working alone and together. Sometimes they work in sync and sometimes together. Sometimes they are installed on walls or columns, and sometimes they drift down rivers, or ride the backs of small robots. In all of these situations, the numbers are representing as much as they are acting, as a symbol of the cycle of life, and as totems for our personal experiences in Life.
UCCA’s show is titled “Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust”, which adroitly continues this theme. It contains three large works. MEGA DEATH presents us with a room filled with blue LEDs that twink on and off, representing the estimated number of victims of the 20th Century’s wars, violet struggles and pogroms. The number (which is 167,000,000) transforms from abstract calculation to human loss when all 2,400 LEDs go blank at once, leaving the viewers standing in the dark, standing in Zero. HOTO is a colorful tower that houses the LEDs in a reflective material. The individuality and colors of the numbers is met with the viewer’s own reflection, and the distorted reflections of other viewers, adding a dazzling worldliness to each viewers sense of self. Floating Time displays numbers floating and flying through (what appear to be) LCD screens set in Simon Says colors. Here again ideas of transience and collective anonymity entice the viewer into quiet and sublime meditation.
The exhibition is open through October 8th.
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All artworks are copyright Tatsuo Miyajima. All images were borrowed from the UCCA website. The artist’s personal website can be found here.
Golden Slumbers
July 28th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
An upcoming documentary film project on the golden era of Cambodian film, which was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge.
John Silva: A Token of Our Friendship
July 26th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Silverlens Gallery in Manila is hosting an exhibition of photographs from the collection of local historian John Silva. The collection revolves around old photographs, postcards and ephemera which portray male friendship and closeness. Most of the depicted men are young, and handsome, dressed to the nines in the high fashion of the 1930s, or in military uniforms, while some are less posed and in more common attire. Some of these men are lovers and dandies, some are just friends seeking to preserve a moment. It is not readily apparent which of these men are lovers, and which are (perhaps) business partners, or brothers, or a combination of affections. Part of the fun is in deciding for one’s self.
Silva spent a number of years collecting these works, and a book of the collection has also been produced. The original photos are quite small, and in varying degrees of repair. For the exhibition, selected images have been transformed into duratran lightboxes, which introduces a very modern edge and feel to what would otherwise been a very nostalgic and distant viewing experience.
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For more information on the exhibition and project visit the Silverlens Gallery website. John Silva also has a blog, which can be found here.
Lyonel Feininger
July 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
The Whitney Museum’s long-awaited (on my part) retrospective of Lyonel Feininger has opened. Feininger has always been one of my favorite artists, and I have always felt that he has been long overlooked by the artworld. It is understandable, given the time he was active, and who his friends and compatriots were (Ernst Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Josef Albers and Paul Klee, to name just a few). However, Feininger holds one of those positions in art history that I most respond to: that of being the bridge (lowercase, in this case). In the same way that Edouard Manet represented the shift from the old guard to the vanguard, Feininger fills that post and has therefore been out-shown by those whom he helped pave the way for.
Lyonel Feininger started as an illustrator and newspaper cartoonist, and so those familiar with my tastes will recognize my love of this flat style. He was ground-breaking in this field, practically inventing the modern form of cartoons with Windsor McCay. For those eager to see more of this work than what the Whitney displayed see The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger, published by Fantagraphics and edited by Bill Blackbeard. An American of German decent, the artist moved back to Germany early in his career. He would become a founding member of Dei Brucke (The Bridge), the nucleus of the German Expressionist movement (again, a longtime love of mine). His national status complicated, and spared, his life in WWI, which enabled him to become a founding teacher of The Bauhaus (yes, another favorite group). Time and again, Feininger is there as new paradigms are formed, teaching the younger generations and showing them what was possible, as he himself grows and learns. By the time the Nazis came to power, Feininger followed the flow of history back to the U.S., where he continued to work and hone his style.
I most respond to Feininger’s early work: the comic strips, the creepy paintings with long figures walking down twisting city streets as trains rush along elevated bridges in the background. These works are odd, colorful, deceptively naive looking, and have a great energy to them. His linear style was a natural fit for Dei Brucke, with their focus on woodcuts and flat but explosive emotion. Over time the works become subdued, the picture plane and emotions broken down through an almost cubist lens. These works are more peaceful, but they are also darker, as he focuses on a world and memories that are being slowly burned and torn away by the Nazis regime.
It is an interesting coincidence that just before this exhibition opened MoMA held its review of the German Expressionist movement, and just after the Whitney show opened Feininger’s son and champion, T. Lux, passed away. I hope that the show will be well attended, and that Lyonel Feininger receives more of the attention that he so strongly deserves.
Andrew Hem
July 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Andrew Hem has a solo show opening at LaBasse Projects in Culver City, CA. Of Cambodian decent, his family fled the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge regime, and he grew up in the States.
In addition to painting, Hem is a graphic designer, and as often happens with designers a flatness and elongation appears in his figures. I myself happen to be a fan of this effect, and of artists who cross-over in general. In addition, Hem has worked on a number of murals, which naturally increases this effect. Over the last several years his paintings have really developed, moving away from illustrative conceits to more complex compositions. The narratives have deepened, and in this new show the artist has said that he is focusing more on the emotional loneliness and conflicts that arose from his family’s diaspora.
A little gem, though, are the small sculptures and images of notebook sketches that the artist has posted on his website. I recommend taking a moment to view them, because they really show another side of Hem’s work and personality. When viewed all together he has a direct connection to the work of Lyonel Feininger, whose work I also love.
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All images are copyright Andrew Hem, and were borrowed from his website. For images and information on the new exhibition visit the site of LeBasse Projects.
Tears of the Black Tiger
June 8th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
This film is screening at Asia Society this Friday, June 10th. I wish I was able to attend. An example of the “Pad Thai Western” genre, it has highly stylized coloring effects, and looks to be really fun. It was directed by Wisit Sasanatieng.
