hey, its me again…who else can it be?
actually, instead of a criticism, i would like to think of it as a reflection of this art exhibition that i went to last year when i was in shanghai for the global class room programme. I tried pretty hard to recall the name, but, sorry, was a bit forgetful.
Anyway, those were not the main point, this art exhibition is very unique as it is mainly studios of the artistes and with high suspicion, art dealers and managers. And all these were actually transformed from warehouses, some looked really dirty outside, but it was really cool on the inside,
lets show you a picture of the who area, i went to check on the net, and the closest i got was the street 50 moganshan ..
[shoutout : maybe, yun yun will know the name]
anyways, i went to really quite a number of studios, and what i got was some really interesting art, especially a couple that i really really liked, china’s contemporary artists like yue min jun, zhang xiao gang, or fang li jun.
lets show one of the art work that i saw from zhang xiao gang at the gallery
this piece was from his ‘bloodline’ series that features people. Instead of extraordinary similarity with real life, i feel that for this piece, the special characteristics of the people and the colours used were especially unique. In a way that the people seem to be near monochrome, they are all the same kind or blend of colours as the blue greyish back ground, make them look stony, all most lifeless. yet one will notice that out of the whole picture, the girl’s red scarf stands out the most among the grey hue. And with the characters’ little expression, looking at this piece of work make me feel some kind of moody and gloomy feeling that the painter seem to be trying to express. And i noticed that for this whole series of work, they focus on the time of the ‘great leap forward’or the ‘cultural revolution’, where life seemed to be almost colourless and dull as depicted in the painting.
To me, this piece of art seem to be trying to express the feeling of doom, boredom, sadness, despair at that time of history, where life seem to be all about fighting for recongnisation by the ‘leaders’, as what the red scarf symbolises, some kind of expression of excellence that the ‘farmers turned politician’. in this series of works, it seems to be a painted piece of photo, ie, the characters are all staring out as if staring at a camera. to think that if this was a real photo, instead of real colour, what the artiste is highlighting out here is another thing, the inner feelings.
another piece was um…nameless, cos i forgot…
this two pieces, i find them very interesting. The picture meaning seemed to come alive with only two basic colours, orangey and brownish black. I shall just talk about the first one. When i first saw this piece, i was facinated by how well he depicted the body action and relating them to a certain space, as if they are really being confined. the muslces and flesh were almost real, and yet they look unreal. Real, in terms of the shades and tones, unreal in terms of how a real man could turn out like that. Out of the dark background, the people really stand out with such bright alarming colours, and yet they blend well with the back ground.
This picture chose to use very warm colour tones, earthly even, and yet they express some kind of abnormality that looks cold. That is what i feel was extraordinary about the skills. And not knowing the artise or the tittle, i feel that this piece was actually showing and reflecting some of the motions in real life, where people are being forced to be confined with a imaginery space, without place to breathe, binding to the rules of society, and at the same time, fighting for survival, fighting for bigger space, by trying to push some body out or hogging the biggest space avaliable.
and below are some other works of art that i find really cool
