Book Exhibition turned Art Exhibition! (書展成畫展)

Life always springs surprises upon us when you least expect it. That's exactly what happened at this year's HK Book Exhibition. When I was looking for some travel books for my coming trip to Xinjiang at the booth of that province, I was astounded at the originality of some of the works there on display. The paintings were a cross between a painting and calligraphy in Chinese ink. I never saw such work before. They were done by an old but very energetic artist from Inner Mongolia. He told me that it was the very first time that any artist's work is being sold directly by any Chinese state authorities.  The price tag of the largest calligraphic work there being sold is HK$300,000 whilst each small painting cost about HK6,000 and each single character calligraphic work $500. The artist is called 常浣成. But he prefers to call himself 浣成, omitting his surname. I stopped at his booth and stayed there almost an hour, admiring his calligraphic-painting, talking to him and watching him create some work on the spot.

 

This is a horse drawn carriage.

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Take me to the mardi gras (in his study) 2015: oil on canvas by Takeo Hanazawa (b. 1977) Japanese painter and installation artist, a painting with obvious Freudian implications.

Consume (消化) 2014 in stainless steel and titanium by Gao Weigang (高偉剛) (b. 1976)  a Chinese artist from Heilongjiang associated with Ay Wei-wei, working in painting, sculpture, installation and performance art is constantly experimenting his artistic language, pushing the boundaries of painting into both sculpture and installation,rupturing our conventional perspective on specific topics and bringing the spectators into the space of his work, emphasizing more the meaning and concepts behind his artistic creations than craftsmanship. He won the "Arts Future Award" in Art HK 2011. This is what he says about this metallic structure: " In Hong Kong, one of the world's most famous ports, the container is a popular mode of transportation but is often ignored. The main structure of "Consume" is altered from a container but is in sharp contrast to it. The bridge-like structure has an arched back, the raised medium section is made of stainless steel and titanium and has been polished gold. Almost everything in our daily life were stored in containers and are delivered to us via the container from different parts of the world and are then repacked with new goods and sent to the next stop, thus each stop is a starting point in an endless cycle. Goods and commodities with the associated message run into our desires and are then inter-packed, exchanged or despatched. Like our thoughts and our lives, they engage in an endless round of exchanges of rampant moods and objects , mostly useless and meaningless. Do we really need to consume so much garbage? "

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Untitled 1970: oil on canvas by Chung Sang Hwa (b. 1932) a Korean artist who first trained in his own country and then moved first to Paris, then Kobe, Japan and returned to  Korea in 1992 and has since been working in Seoul. He uses the concepts of grid and covering of the paint on his canvas and folds, sculpts, scalps, and then literally rearranges the zinc-based paint that he uses in multiple layers, a technique that he perfected after years of experimentation to encourage reflection on oriental tradition of painting.  A critic, Lóránd Hegyi. says, “The closer the viewers’ interest in the plastic visual details of the painting’s sensual surface, in the painter’s subtle interventions, and in the pictorial and physical methods he uses to structure his work, the closer they also come to another meditative and emotional domain of the artistic process, in other words poetry, the genuinely poetic strategy of the artwork,”

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Untitled 2002: computer print on canvas mounted on panel by Jorge Pardo (b. 1963) , a sculptor born in Cuba and working in Mexico.

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Untitled 1983: Silkscreen on canvas by John Stezaker (b. 1949) a British conceptual artist who likes to do collage with pre-existing images like postcards, film stills and publicity photographs.

This is Intifada (meaning literally "shaking off" in Arabic but is now translated as rebellion/resistance), 2014, an uprooted olive tree, one of 3 such shackled to an open aluminum cube 3 meters square being constantly made to shake by a motor, causing its leaves to fall to the ground. A piece of installation art by Sioban Hapaska from Ireland. To him, the olive tree is a symbol of abundance, endurance, peace and goodwill and is supposed to symbolize Nature's struggle to be free of human control.

Baisers #2 2011 nickel-plated bronze by Ghada Amer (b.1963) an Egyptian painter and sculptor educated in France and now working in America, whose work explores issues of gender and sexuality

Kavakos and Pace: a Duo made in Heaven (卡華高斯與佩斯: 天作的二重奏)

If it's possible to claim that there's a contemporary artist who is made for the violin, I don't think any one would have any serious objections if I were to say that it would be the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos (b. 1967). Since he won the Sibelius Competition in 1985 and  the Paganini and Naumberg Competitions in 1988, he has performed with such world famous orchestras as The Vienna Philharmonic, the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw, the London Symphony Orchestra and Gewanhausorchester Leipzig and numerous other orchestras in Germany, France, Hungary, France, Italy and America etc. and has also won various awards for his recording of Mendelssohn's and Sibelius Violin Concertos. Last year, he came to Hong Kong (see http://elzorro927.blogspot.hk/2014/03/from-hell-to-heaven-peyroux-kavakos-pace.html) with his Italian partner Enrico Pace, an excellent pianist who won the Franz Liszt Piano Competition in 1979 and since performed with the Royal Concertgebouw, the Munich Philharmonic, the Netherlands Philharmonic, the Hungarian National Philharmonic, the Brussels Philharmonic, the Bamberger Symphoniker etc. and toured the world as soloist. They got a rapturous reception. Perhaps for that reason, they returned to the Cultural Centre last night to dazzle us with their perfect co-playing of various numbers by Schubert, Beethoven, Korngold and Richard Strauss.

Their first offer of the evening was a very romantic piece: Franz Schubert (1797-1828)'s Sonata for violin and piano in A, Op. 165 D574 popularly known as the Grand Duo in Allegro moderato, Scherzo: Presto-Trio, Andantino, Allegro vivace, written by the composer in 1817, a year after his 3 sonatinos, a work in which he boldly explored tonal areas he never previously ventured into. There is in this work a very vivid dialogue between the soft violin and the vigorous the piano, full of abrupt changes of speed,rhythms and major and minor keys.

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The singer  L as Fiordiligi: mixed media on newsprint on original cardboard 1923 by Paul Klée (1879-1940)

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For the ordinary folk of China, India and other less developed countries, the motor cycle has become not only a cheap, fast, flexible and efficient mode of transport in rural areas and sometimes even in the cities. Often, one sees on the internet photos of the most incredible feats by some of their citizens in loading them well above their normal carrying capacities. Here's an example. By copper plating them, they become more than mere street spectacles but objects thought worthy of being displayed as "works of art", a trend which Marcel Duchamp initiated in 1917 when he shocked every one by displaying a urinal on a museum wall as "art", something continued in 1962 by Andy Warhol when, tongue in cheek, he drew giant Campbell soup can label and exhibited it as an "art object".  

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Door handle on/in a box of sand/earth: door to Nature/Earth?

14107: drawer finger hole on a boulder

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Ghosts in the night? 

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Chariot of the Gods 2009 by Hew Locke (b. 1959) inspired by the artist's visits to the Museum of Mankind in London which once housed the exhibits of British Museum's Department of Ethnography of artifacts from the Americas, Africa, the Pacific and tribal Asia and Europe until 1997, when the program was ended. The artwork incorporates the artist's sketches of such museum exhibits as Benin bronzes, Buddhist masks, Inca mummies, Mexican serpents and the famous Easter Island Moai figure called Hoa Hakananai'a into a Western heraldic "coat of arms" motif, to signify Western domination of other peoples.

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Untitled (Krieg/Böse) 1991 in oil and metallic spray paint on canvas by Swiss painter working on sculpture, paper, photographs, installations, prints and ephemera Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997)

His Untitled (from series White Rubber Paintings) 1991 in latex, acrylic, pigment on canvas

An untitled work 1991in oil and metallic spray paint on canvas by the same artist

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Portrait of Yves Marie Hervé 1980 by David Hockney: acrylic on canvas

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Trash Laughter 2008: oil on canvas by Tang Dixin (唐狄鑫) (b. 1982)

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Art Central was organized by those who previously organized Art HK, now replaced by Art Basel, whether in competition or complementary to the latter, I have no idea. Art Basel 2015 follows close at the heels of Art Central (just concluded on 16th March) at the Convention Centre.

The entrance to Hall 1 of the Art Basel HK 2015, full of huge cartoons above and a painted floor picture below in the shape of various spirals filled with what looks like scales or coins at the end of which appears a human figure painted gold with a pine cone for his head and a box in his hands. Here we find people busily taking photos under the huge hung posters.

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There are many sculptures in wood or other materials.

This one is "Forget" in cast copper and chemical stain

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Miguel Chevalier's Fractal Flowers 2008 in lambda print and diasec with frame in wood

More fractal flowers, same artist

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Cercando nella Notte Persa (Looking for the lost night 2014) : inkjet print on cotton paper by Giovanni Ozzola

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There are all sorts of exhibits: paintings, collages, gouaches, sculptures, exploitation of optical illusions, light shows, installation art etc with all kinds of conceivable and inconceivable materials, some employing traditional techniques, others using more innovative methods of creation.

A rather peaceful and serene work, " Adolescent Holding a Flower" (抱花少年) 2009

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For a number of years, there's been a plastic art event which every art lover in Hong Kong and in the Asia Pacific area would look forward to, "Art HK", which has been taken over 2 years ago by Art Basel. Starting this year, there's another big art event called "Art Central", held the Central harbor front, with participation from 75 international galleries from more than 20 countries. It's housed in a huge temporary pavillion covering some 10,000 square meters. Out of curiosity, I paid a short visit to the exhibition this afternoon. There's some interesting finds.

This looks like a block of wood.

But it isn't