TAKE A BREAK - ART OF CHANGE

Press Release:

This is the first major exhibition to focus solely on contemporary installation and performance art from China. It presents large-scale installations and extraordinary live art by some of China’s most innovative artists, in works dating from the 1980s to the present day. Art of Change traces each artist’s development, showing important early works alongside recent creations and new commissions. Change, and the acceptance that everything is subject to change, is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophy. The exhibition features works that deal with transformation, instability and impermanence, looking at how these themes are conveyed through action or materials.

Each of the artists presents works that change their appearance over time or which are volatile or unpredictable in some way. A person ‘magically floats’ above the floor, sculptures are wilfully tossed up and down, and visitors can listen to the sound of 1000 live silkworms. The exhibition itself changes as performances are enacted with various works during the course of each day.

Artists in the exhibition include Chen Zhen, Yingmei Duan, Gu Dexin, Liang Shaoji, Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Wang Jianwei, Xu Zhen and MadeIn Company. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Rosenthal, Chief Curator, Hayward Gallery.

TAKE A BREAK - MEL BOCHNER

I like the text and colour in his signature works and wondering how can I get take it further...

Review on Art Wednesday:

Bochner! The father of conceptual art?  We wondered as we walked in the Whitechapel Gallery where we could distinguish through the doors of Gallery 1 Mel Bochner’s dominating painting Blah, Blah, Blah made just a year ago.  how The artist used oil on velvet for this centrepiece to the exhibition, which predisposed us for the excitement and the conceptual intricacies involved. In this artistic encounter with the US artist’s work we immediately understand the pivotal importance language and colour has. Bohner uses various rationalising systems as that of measurements, numbers and definitions, to express his understandings and findings of his studies of our illogical and transitional human being.

Bochner’s work is strongly rooted to the artistic turbulence of the 60’s where modern art deprived paintings their presupposed supremacy and where language becomes constituent to it. In his own words:

‘What I wanted to understand was the nature of the conventions. Conventions give us boundaries of experience. If you examine the conventions you may find where the holes are, where a leakage exists between ‘is’ and ‘is not’.’ [1]

While walking up the stairs to Gallery 9 we came across numerous 48-inch lines, in the art work 48” Descending a Staircase (2012). We were perplexed by this almost Dadaist  approach to systems of belief where Bochner here as well as in various other works plays with the enigma of humanly defined information which though factual are of no real aid in understanding the world.

We were truly amazed by the magnitute of Bochner’s work which so beautifully addresses modern social issues where the ‘abuses of power begin with the abuse of language.’[2]. In a series of paintings Bochner writes on colour oozing canvases which were our personal favourite. In Amazing! (2011) one reads a series of words all acting as a thesaurus page of the title - awesome, groovy and gnarly -amongst others.

We found ever so stunning the sensory experience as well as the concepts, which Bochner draws upon through this selection of his works, dating nearly 50 years back. The exhibition both evokes thinking and mesmerises the viewer through Bochner’s abstractions where the means through which those are expressed act as their tangible vessel but also affect out perception of them. We surely felt privileged to catch this sought after exhibition before it tours around Europe.

TAKE A BREAK - KEVIN SINNOTT

I like the title - a bit of wind got up.

TAKE A BREAK - HARLAND MILLER

I like his usage of texts - aphorisms or snappy phrases; as well as his appropriation of other medium such as book covers.  

Press release from White Cube:

Miller's practice has developed in tandem with his love for books – both as sculptural objects in their own right and as the carriers of humour, irony and emotion. For over a decade, Miller has been painting fictional covers for imaginary Penguin paperbacks, based on the original colour block covers that were used to denote genre. His new series of paintings adopt the marbled paper covers used on the old-fashioned Penguin poetry editions and are made using luxurious metallic paints on heavy, smooth walnut panels. These paintings appear like facsimiles of an original object, since the wear and tear of each book is clearly discernible, but their titles have been replaced with philosophical aphorisms or snappy turns of phrase. Tonally reduced, in black and gold with the odd accent of brilliant red, their process of making combines an element of pure chance (Miller mixes the paint with a flow medium to make it more slippery) and deliberate intent. The paintings are made on the floor, in the manner of a Pollock drip painting and indexical traces of the artists' movement as well as drips, smudges and accidental colour bleeding all contribute to the final image. Although purely abstract, trompe l'oeil figuration begins to emerge from the 'marbling' where clusters of colours appear like clouds, as in the work In Dreams begin Monsters where celestial sunsets morph into different galaxies or other natural phenomena.

MAJOR PROJECT - WORKSHOP, THE PRINT SPACE

The best day this year?  Technically.  We had a printing workshop today at The Print Space.  A lot of first times. 

Digital C type (indeed quite different colour gamma from Giclee)

Different kind of papers:

Digital C-type:

Fuji Crystal Archive Matt or Gloss

Kodak Metallic (super for B&W)

Fuji Flex

Giclee:

Hahnemuhle Photorag (like a water colour fibre)

Hahnemuhle Pearl

Hahnemuhel German Etching (very analogy)

Canson Baryta

Canson Aquarella Rag

Harman Warmtone

A systematic intro on mounting substrates:

Card/Foam Board/Foamex/MDF/Aluminium/Dibond/Acrylic Reverse

Also fixings on the back like: split batons, metal frame, etc

Framing:

Window/Box/Shadow Edge Frame/etc

(London Picture Frame is part of the same group! We walked there too.)

Soft Proof:

RGB, 8bit (Image>Mode)

Sizing (resample)

Print profiles to download, then drop to Libray>Colour Syn>Profile

Proof Setup to choose paper (perceptive &  Relative) to check (tick black compensation) preview

Retouch (curves) or (select certain colour to retouch)

Change Profile (to paper’s or Adobe)

& calibration of screen too beforehand

STATE OF THE NATION - SMILING

My work was shortlisted in Westphoto’s State of the Nation to be exhibited in P3 in December.  

MAJOR PROJECT - TRANSIT/CONCEPTUALISING

There is the fourth dimension in today’s China - the speed - the rate of development and change.  The speed does not merely transform China. It is becomes China.  It is not only a phenomenon itself, it is also the relationship of everything in nature, society, culture and politics.  The reality, and the only reality today in China lies in the speed of the transit.  

On this planet, the watershed velocity speed is 11.2 kilometers per second.  Within this speed, our perception to everything is normal as everything is of this velocity speed.   Is the annual rate of double digit economic development in China the watershed speed or beyond?  I would like to find out.  I would like to see this speed of  transit.  I need to be of a similar speed, therefore, I jumped into a car and asked the driver to run as fast as possible wherever, through high street, by residential blocks, on motorways, across rural areas...  

After hours of traveling in this fast car, I don’t feel the speed any more, I locked myself in the world of speed and transit physically and mentally.  I can hear the noise of the engine and the sound of the wind.  I can feel the bumping of the car, but not the sense of speed any more.  Speed becomes part of me and transforms to an entrance, through which I penetrate into an unknown reality where everything is blurred and distorted.  I continuously press the shutter.  In every fraction of a second, everything in China blurred. 

My camera is my vessel  missioned to carry my perception to enter this fast changing world.  I continuously shoot whatever passing me.

Speed becomes part of the visual form, the splash of lights, the distorted scenes, the blurred images and the substance of my perception. 

This dimension has been continuously covered by the speed and the change as a result of the speed of development in China.  The old place and values become oblivion covered by the new, modern and the speed.   Actually there is no speed, just the traces of the continuation of the speed and the traces is wiped off every second by another round of new development of speed.   

These images are not about the speed of the transit in China but the elegy of the speed of  “then” because in reality the speed does not stop.  I know I could never have the chance to go back to the past.

MAJOR PROJECT - TRANSIT/SHOOTING + THINKING

Unlike Made in China, I don’t have much to regret of the first shooting.  However, I think after edit, I might have some feel what to shoot more, and then will be more selective in choosing subjects.  Anyway, this test shoot is actually good enough - the first is the best, I like this feel, it does not come to me often!

MAJOR PROJECT - TRANSIT/SHOOTING MORE

In the daylight, f22, 1’s, ISO100, seems work fine.  It is very rewarding that you just sit still, look around, there are lots of different things around you, most of the times, I don’t have an idea what to shoot, but instuitively, I just click, click, and click.  It is a fast, compact, but with lots of visual information in a very short time, as the car is fast running, through city, tunnel, suburban, and rural areas.  I easily shot more than 100 frames, and I am never this prolific.  I finished the first shooting.

I browsed my fruits on a computer.  I am fairly happy.  However there is a major problem.  There are two speckles on the image.  Guess I need to clean the camera.  I am amazed the images are of such a variety of things...

MAJOR PROJECT - TRANSIT/SHOOTING

I reduced the aperture, down dialed the ISO, and make the speed longer.  The car is running fast into a tunnel.  I shot, I kept shooting...  The car is bumping, which gives the image a chance element, rather than blurring in a linear way, the blurring is random, kind of.  I also come to learn to play around with my hands to make it more moving, I mean the camera.  There is a threshold - not blur too much but not to be clear too much either.  In the tunnel, f9.5, 1’s, ISO100, worked.