visual art
Weng Chen: Chinese Digital and Watercolor Artist in Seattle
Mar 13th
At the March First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square, I discovered Seattle artist Weng Chen of Studio Wonn, who is originally from China. I really like her visual aesthetic, and her work is quite inexpensive.
"Night Market" - Giclée print on matte paper
Her work at her studio during First Thursday was primarily Giclée prints and watercolors. On display at her studio is an explanation of her Giclée creation process, which always starts with hand-drawing on paper.
Video: How Seattle Won Picasso
Dec 20th
Correction: Picasso in Seattle did not contain Musée Picasso’s complete works, only 150 of them.
I recently caught the tail end of “Picasso in Seattle”, a documentary by local PBS station KCTS 9. Before watching, I assumed that the exhibition was like the Pacific Science Center‘s Harry Potter: The Exhibition in that it was worth paying more than usual to go see but not unique to Seattle. I was wrong. Seattle is the first American city to show the Musée Picasso‘s complete works, which are travelling the world while the gallery undergoes renovations.
It seems that most of the documentary is a general biography of Picasso focusing on how his life, especially love life, influenced his art. However, the most fascinating part to me is on why Musée Picasso chose the Seattle Art Museum over other hosts, quoting the Musée Picasso’s director that she chose Seattle because it has a “new brand” as a city. It just so happens that KCTS 9 uses this segment as the documentary preview video on their site:
Watch the full episode. See more KCTS 9 Previews.
One of the most exciting aspects of watching this documentary is the obvious public relations participation by the Seattle Art Museum required to make the documentary’s production happen. I’ve admired the museum’s public relations efforts ever since its reopening and simultaneous re-branding driven by Pyramid Communications.
Contemporary China’s Generational Differences in “Aftershock (唐山大地震)”
Nov 8th
I recently saw “Aftershock (唐山大地震)” at Seattle’s Uptown Theater on Queen Anne, thanks to reading about it in MusicDish*China. The film is China’s highest grossing domestic movie of all time, the first commercial entertainment film made outside the United States for IMAX, and apparently the 83rd Academy Awards’ Chinese nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
“Aftershock” deserves its popularity and critical acclaim for several reasons, including its special effects, acting, dramatic narrative, and tastefully placed humor. One of the film’s most controversial aspects is, predictibly, that it takes the Chinese federal government propaganda standpoint on depicting the poorly handled tragedy and resulting history. I have very little problem with this, though, as it enabled the film’s expensive budget and wide distribution. Jeremiah Jenne’s post “Aftershock and the legacy of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake” on Granite Studio sums up my opinions of the movie pretty well.
As a Millennial who recently lived in China as a foreign national, one of the aspects of the film that touched me most was its realistic depiction of huge differences in priorities and lifestyles among Chinese generations since 1976 due to rapid political and economic changes tied to urbanization.
Take, for example, my friend my age who I spent Chinese New Year with this past year. His father’s parents are farmers in a village with basically no running water and electricity. They speak only the local language, so I had a very hard time communicating with them. My friend’s father is a wealthy, college-educated entrepreneur in the closest major city Kunming where he and his wife live an extravagant lifestyle and speak the same local language plus Mandarin. My friend spent four years in Australia, teaches English in Beijing where he buys real Apple products and Ray Ban sunglasses, and struggles to hide his homosexuality from his family even though he is out to most of his Beijing friends. “Aftershock” contains similarly wide generational differences within the family at the center of the story.
Have you seen “Aftershock”? What aspects of it did you like and dislike the most? I look forward to your comments.
For the World Cup, Puma’s Combination of Sports, Art, Public Relations, and China
Jun 11th
Back in February, I saw an exhibition at one of my favorite art organizations ever, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), that was not only aesthetically enjoyable but combined all three topics of this blog — art, public relations, and China — along with the additional theme of soccer (football). In connection with South Africa’s hosting the FIFA World Cup, PUMA commissioned artist Kehinde Wiley to paint portraits of soccer stars from throughout Africa. PUMA then made a short, promotional documentary about the paintings as well as soccer in Africa and heavily publicized the whole project both online and through an exhibition that traveled the world. Apparently PUMA also uses Kehinde Wiley’s art in their product design.
View more paintings and the video at the http://africa.puma.com section on Kehinde Wiley here.
This seems like a sponsorship partnership made in heaven for Wiley, UCCA, PUMA, and possibly also the players who are the painting subjects. Wiley got his work not only commissioned but heavily publicized and exhibited worldwide. Players got to be the subjects of paintings and a documentary viewed by people all over the world. UCCA got a free or cheaper-than-usual already curated exhibition, and PUMA gets to look like they care about art and Africa to visitors of high profile art institutions.
What made this project stand out to me when I was viewing it is that it seems like worldwide, especially in China, most people who love art are not so into sports and vice versa. This could be because both activities are pretty time intensive, either as a participant or follower. I think it’s smart of PUMA as a sports brand to reach out to art lovers. It may not be the first time a sports brand has done so, but it’s the first time I’ve personally witnessed it.
Is it Okay for Artists to Behave Poorly or Illegally?
Sep 30th
The past couple of weeks have revealed two controversies involving respected artists’ personal behavior: Kanye West drunkenly destroyed Taylor Swift’s Video Music Award acceptance speech, and Swedish authorities arrested Roman Polanski on a 31-year-old warrant for statutory rape.
Fans and celebrities alike have defended both artists – Polanski more than West – arguing that great artists are often eccentric, emotionally disturbed, or both, which can contribute to their works’ quality. Several of history’s most famous artists have had debilitating problems such as bipolar disorder and addictions, including Virginia Wolfe, Jackson Pollack, Brian Wilson, and Janis Joplin.
Experts have recognized both West and Polanski for making significant contributions to their chosen media, with West winning a dozen Grammy Awards and Polanski receiving several Oscar wins and nominations.
This creates a few questions worth pondering: Do artists deserve a lower standard of behavior than other people? If fans and industry experts disagree with their behavior but love their art, should they still support them with awards and high sales? Should talented artists and businesspeople still work with them? Can we excuse Polanski’s behavior because his traumatic life has inspired his films?
What do you think? I’ll enjoy reading your comments.
Bet You Haven’t Seen These, Yet – New Beijing International Movie Week
Mar 8th
The Third Annual New Beijing International Movie Week is actually three weeks long this year and continues through March 21, 2009. It features independent films, both long and short, from around the world, most of which premiered in 2008, in various popular venues around the city, such as nightclubs. All movies have subtitles in Chinese, English or both, depending on the language of the film. I’ve had the pleasure of going to the festival on two nights so far. Many of the films are so new and unknown that it’s hard to find information about them online.
This was my first time at White Rabbit, and so many people attended that night that the staff needed to bring in extra chairs. The movies on the bill:
ARITHMATIC LESSON (USA) - Short story of a Chinese American girl whose babysitter abuses her while her mother lies comatose.
AWKWARD SILENCE (Canada) - Short story of people who fall in love without speaking over the course of an elevator ride.
THE CAVE (USA) – Short claymation using Plato’s allegory of the cave as its base.
STAUBKASKADE (Germany) – Experimental short film by a graphic designer.
SES (Denmark) - Short story of a 14-year-old whose new classmate looks just like her dead twin brother. My favorite film of the night.
YO SOY OTRO (Columbia) - Feature-length thriller related to terrorism and identity crises. Obviously draws inspiration from Fight Club or at least the same inspiration sources as Fight Club.
Also my first time at The Boat, I was more impressed with the films that night than on Thursday, maybe because Saturday had a small entrance fee while Thursday did not. Movies on the bill:
LARRY AND ROZ (Italy) – Short animated film about the real-life love story of the filmmaker’s grandparents
ONE CUP OF COFFEE (Jamaica) - Promotional short documentary on free-trade coffee in Jamaica
REEL ZOMBIES (Canada) - A full-length mock documentary about filmmakers’ shooting a low-budget Zombie movie during an actual Zombie apocalypse.
SLEIGH RIDE (USA) - Relient K‘s music video for their rendition of the song.
TALES OF A YELLOW BIKE (Canada) - Promotional documentary on bicycle policies in cities around the world.
WARRIOR QUEEN (Ghana) – Beautiful short film on the Ashanti’s battle to keep their Golden Stool away from the British.
My favorite film of both nights? REEL ZOMBIES, even though I’m normally not into this kind of movie at all. Watch the trailor for it here:
Nudity and Exploding Cars in China and Seattle
Jan 8th
A couple Chinese artworks I saw on display at the Seattle Art Museum during the summer of 2007 struck me so much that not only did I recognize them when I read about them online here, I remember exactly where they are in the Seattle Art Museum and my reactions to them upon my first view.
Remember those firework footprints in the
Zhuanghuan is one of the most brilliant yet depressing artists I know, likely owing to when he grew up in
A Laundry Field, Golden Globe Nominee and Terrorism
Dec 26th
It’s exciting to see so much attention directed at Mumbai. India has the second largest population and film industry in the world, yet many Americans know little about it. For example, who in the U.S. studies any of the languages spoken in India, which combined have more speakers worldwide than Spanish?
I just finished watching Slumdog Millionaire, which is an amazing film. My brief review is that not everyone will like it because it has disturbing imagry, but this contrasted with its themes of beauty is one of the film’s points of brilliance.
A theme I looked out for while watching the film was brightly colored, gorgeous clothing up against the backdrop of brown and otherwise disgusting slums. What called my attention to this was the exhibition Mumbai: A Laundry Field, which I visited twice in Beijing. Korean artist Kimsooja depicts this striking both aesthetic and emotional contrast between Mumbai’s clothing and poverty.
The massive installation includes narrow hallways with clothing tacked to the walls to simulate slum alleys, and photographs of people sleeping on the street underneith beautiful blankets. What touched me most was a video of the dilapedated public trains, like subways above ground, with people hanging off the sides of them because the cars are so crowded. Trains also play a key role in Slumdog Millionaire.
Both Slumdog Millionaire and Mumbai: A Laundry Field were finished before the Mumbai terrorist attacks. I visited Mumbai: A Laundry Field twice, once before the attacks and once shortly after, and I watched Slumdog Millionaire weeks later. To say the least, tragedy’s impact on how I percieved these works of art and film brings up issues of art’s relationship to world events.
Not Your Average Fashion Show
Dec 16th
This past Sunday, I finally made it to the exhibition “Christian Dior and Chinese Artists” at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s 798. I had heard it was great but was skeptical. Was this exhibition going to be one big, classless advertisement for Dior? Fashion has an obvious connection to art made public by many museums, so how was this unique?
My answer: The exhibition is about the two-way relationship of Dior to Chinese culture and art. Chinese art, architecture and culture has influenced the brand since the 1940s. Additionally, several famous artists have used Dior as inspiration or subject matter; the exhibition includes two portraits painted from ash of Christian Dior as well as a sculpture inspired by a Dior dress displayed next to it.
The exhibition’s currating and therefore layout are brilliant. The exhibition’s base design is rooms and hallways of mirror walls with woodenand mirror floors, bamboo and grass. You cannot walk all the way around most of the dresses; instead the mirrors force you to see different views of the same dress several minutes apart from one another.
A couple direct quotes from my colleagues about this exhibition:
“People from all over the world are going to queue [line up] to see it.” – My supervisor Hortense Halle
“It’s the best exhibition I’ve ever seen in my life.” – My coworker Francois
798 Art District Highlights – November 29, 2008
Nov 30th
My new language partner and I took a short but sweet visit to 798 yesterday in which I saw a lot of art that was inspiring enough to blog about.
Probably the most respected gallery in 798, Long March Space, is in the middle of an exhibition titled “Impossible is Nothing“, named after the famous Adidas advertising slogan related to the Olympics. This exhibition is both respectable and avante guard, consisting of a life-size part of a space shuttle that people live in while in space and a small earth, both hanging from the gallery’s largest room’s ceiling in the dark. There’s also four security camera monitors, which brings to light that people in space spend all their time on camera.
The other exhibition I hadn’t seen yet at Long March Space was “The Starving of Sudan”, an installation and video of an earlier performing inside the installation. The performance’s purpose was to recreate a famous photograph in Darfur where a vulture waits for a child to die. Seeing Chinese art on this issue was a relief as many Chinese people are extremely apathetic about Darfur, and their government plays a large role in the conflict.
Artside Beijing, a Korean company’s relatively new Beijing gallery, usually shows the most famous artists in East Asia. The gallery is currently hosting a solo exhibition by Oh Sufan, world renowned for using Western oil painting techniques to paint “modern calligraphy” as the gallery calls it. My language partner and I had a fun time identifying the occasionally legible Chinese character.
Galleria Continua, Gallery TN and Tang Contemporary Art are located right next to each other and are three of my favorites in Beijing.
Yesterday was my second visit to Galleria Continua‘s “Mumbai: A Laundry Field,” and I appreciated it even more the second time. I now understand the artist was inspired by and wanted to portray the contrast of beautiful textiles with the dreary urban landscape in Mumbai.
I discovered a new favorite artist yesterday at Gallery TN, Ren Rong. Some of his work blends cultural subject matter in a way that makes it difficult to tell from far away that he is Chinese. He also plays a lot with Chairman Mao and The Forbidden City’s iconography.
Tang Contemporary Art opened its solo “Target” exhibition yesterday, the second exhibitoin in which I’ve seen this space take advantage of its high ceiling; the first was “International Kebab.” This exhibition features a huge sculpture of Mao sharp-shooting in the same dark room as a video with portrait dimensions. His “Two Soldiers” was an excellent mirror-image oil painting, mural-like in nature.
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