My Land

October 24, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above:  Le Villaret, Lozère, 1993

There can be no better way to study a compendium of compelling photography than with the accompaniment of a glass of fine wine – something that the historic estate of Château Palmer in the Margaux appellation of Bordeaux, France, is counting on this month as it shows the work of one of the country’s most celebrated photographers and documentarians: the Pulitzer Prize-winning Raymond Depardon. 

Depardon was born on a farm in Garet, near Villefranche-sur-Saône, in 1942. He left the area to become a photographer in Paris at the age of 16. Six years later, he was sent to Saigon to cover the war there as a photojournalist, then to the Middle East and to South America. Depardon eventually set up photographic agency Gamma in 1967, through which he was assigned to the most troubled parts of the world. 

From 1975 to 1977, he travelled through Chad, for which he received his Pulitzer; following that period, he left Gamma and joined Magnum Photos. However, despite his global adventures, he felt a nagging sense of having abandoned his native France. Depardon set out on an intensely personal adventure as he captured a variety of subjects in France and photographed the rural landscape; a series of books, films and documentaries on the subject followed. 

With a total of 49 directing credits under his belt, Depardon has won three César Awards and a host of other accolades. Still active in the arts today, he continues to make films and was even commissioned in 2012 to take the official portrait of French President François Hollande. 

Wake-Up Call

October 10, 2018 / by Michael Liu

Image above:  Mandy Barker, Hong Kong Soup, Bird’s Nest, 2015

After the hottest summer on record, climate change is now a global reality that cannot be ignored. Increasingly, people are asking what changes can be made to protect the environment and minimise our impact, both on an individual and a societal level. This month, the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester, England has programmed two solo exhibitions by artists that demonstrate the pressing need for these questions – and explore what can be done. 

In Hong Kong Soup: 1826, the award-winning British photographer Mandy Barker demonstrates, with ironic beauty, the extent of plastic in our oceans, while in Bulaubulau, Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai presents alternative solutions that draw on the sustainable practices of indigenous communities in Taiwan for her first solo show in the UK. Tsai uses installation, film, photography, ink drawings and a new video commission that document eco-living in three such communities. 

The exhibition particularly examines the increasing impact of climate change on communities who are impacted by typhoons, landslides, flooding, pollution and other environmental damage. Through her work, Tsai seeks to highlight the injustices inflicted on these communities, often caused by the neglect of policymakers; in light of this, Tsai celebrates the communities’ resilience and successes in implementing sustainable economic and educational systems, as well as preserving spiritual practices and traditional knowledge.

Concerned about the unsettling truth of waste pollution in the world’s oceans and beaches, Barker, recipient of the 2018 National Geographic Society Grant for Research and Exploration, collected and photographed waste debris (from 2012 to 2015) from more than 30 Hong Kong beaches. This debris, widely referred to as “soup”, escapes recycling or landfills and ends up in the sea, some of which is then washed up on beaches. Barker’s manipulation of the images to give a highly aesthetic look contradicts the subject matter, encouraging viewers to pause and reflect. The photographs are accompanied by a video documenting the project and highlighting the key environmental issues involved. 

Hail the Blackstocrats

September 26, 2018 / by Zhang Yen

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock of late, you might have noticed there’s been a meteoric rise of black influence on the global commercial art world – and it’s only getting faster and further-reaching. Last year’s Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Britain shined a light on the vital contribution of black artists to a dramatic period in American art and history, opening with 1963 at the height of the civil rights movement and its dreams of integration. In its wake emerged more militant calls for black power: a rallying cry for American pride, autonomy and solidarity, drawing inspiration from newly independent African nations. It was a landmark show, but more retrospective than futuristic. It’s no small irony, and one little promoted, that of all American artists, the highest price paid for any was not Warhol, but his black protégé, Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose Untitled (1982), a painting of a skull, sold for US$110.5 million to 42-year-old Japanese collector Yusaka Maezawa in 2017. 

Contrast this with contemporary Britain, where black work is art’s new mantra. Afrofuturism, Afropolitan and even Afrotrash work is entering the galleries, the language and the lexicon as writers like Zadie Smith pen pieces for Vogue about the new cultural trope. Then there’s curator and writer Bolanle Tajudeen, who runs Black Blossoms, a collective celebrating and giving a platform to the work of young black hipster artists, with its exhibitions since 2015 including Dionne Ward, Sarina Mantle, Camilla Daniels, Sharon Foster and Dorcas Magbadelo. Unfortunately, Tajudeen’s storage cupboard was raided in March this year; 20 pieces of work in preparation for an upcoming exhibition were stolen. 

Undeterred, she and Tate Britain will put black art at the forefront again this year, starting from October with Art in the Age of Black Girl Magic, a course investigating the paucity of black women in the art world. With good reason, too – forecasters in 2016 said African art’s value had risen by 200% since 2012. While the current art culture doesn’t want to label “Chinese artists” or “Korean artists”, so too is the case with “black artists”, except that their very blackness has often rendered them invisible in art’s ivory-towered world. 

Yet now, the value of black creativity and the works of its artists are absolutely on the money. Kerry James Marshall’s Past Times (1997) sold for US$21.1 million on May 16 via Sotheby’s in New York to rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. The nine-by-13-foot painting, which depicts African-Americans engaging in leisure and recreational activities, had been expected to fetch between US$8 million and US$12 million; the price paid was four times higher than the artist’s previous record. To put that in even greater perspective, Past Times had been purchased in 1997 by the Illinois-based Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority for US$25,000. One of Marshall’s latest works, Rush More, shows the faces of eminent black women carved into trees, with Gwendolyn Brooks and Oprah Winfrey among them. The commercial rush for that work can’t be long in coming, either. 

Then there’s Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. She may be Nigerian-born, UK-educated and Brooklyn-based, but the artist feels she’s “not any one of them. I’m all of them and it is just what it is.” Thus, while her collage-y, large-scale, narrative-based and multidimensional drawings bespeak aspects of her upbringing to date, ultimately she feels the world she’s “creating on paper is a representation of all of ‘us’. It cannot be told for us and it certainly cannot be told through the lens of being so-called ‘authentically African’,” she explains. Instead, Amanze sees her work as contributing to the global conversation of drawing and of contemporary art by African artists, particularly those who are female. “We need more of these voices,” she says. Amanze’s work is currently on show outside the Hayward Gallery in London’s Southbank Centre, where she was commissioned to create a special mural over the summer period. 

Ironically, more than Amanze being black or black-African, time spent observing her work positions the protagonist somewhere between nowhere and everywhere. She’s an architectural, geometric, shamanistic geomancer, whose works feels like moodboards to a post-internet, post-global, pre-futurist world. With titles for her works including A Slice Through the World and Where Do We Stand?, it may take the rest of the planet some time to catch up with Amanze’s message, yet her drawings sample old-school print and new-school digitalia with breathless technique. She’s like a latter-day Leonardo, creating drawings on iBrushes for Instagram where no frame exists, so infinite is the message. 

And don’t forget Toyin Ojih Odutola, also Nigerian-born, Alabama-raised and New York-based, whose most recent exhibition of Nigeria’s beau monde (a sort of sampling/mash-up of Marshall and Amanze) graced the Whitney Museum of American Art in a form of African utopia last year. Ojih Odutola takes on black aristocrats and princelings, barons and baronesses with country estates and accessorial African It-girls by their side. It’s Afrogram for the turbo-charged spending set, yet oddly nostalgic – more Victori-Afrogram. This newly wealthy, energised and globally cultivated set are coming; make way for the blackstocrats. Singer and performance artist Solange (Beyoncé’s younger sister) even occasionally models and collaborates with Ojih Odutola. 

This new art and creative elite has its tentacles everywhere. It’s in Kehinde Wiley’s regal depictions of Barack Obama and Michael Jackson. And it’s in the ruling hip-hoppification of luxury brands and products which has blinged, blanged and blunged the bottom lines of every artisanal-yet-global player, from Louis Vuitton to Chanel. If you think that’s a “yes we Kim and Kanye” or a Pharrell too far, you ain’t seen nothing yet. To wit, it’s also in Wakanda, the nation-state of great wealth and advanced technology in the blockbuster movie Black Panther, and the rise of technology from Silicon Valley in California to Silicon Savannah in Africa. From slavery to freedom and now with dreams transcending liberty and wealth, it’s the Afro-garde, the Afroternative, Afronauts and Afrotech. 

Kitsch Clinic

September 26, 2018 / by Michael Liu

Image above: Kathryn Andrews, 8 Ball, 2018

Kathryn Andrews makes art that feels familiar and evokes instant likeability, yet resists categorisation. It’s easy to say what it appropriates and repurposes, but harder to determine what it means. Her style mashes up the contradiction of pop art with minimalism, marrying the two to create an optically and conceptually rich, sometimes spoofy and over-the-top combinationss.

The titles of her works offer up some clues: Coming to America (Filet-O-Fish); Bozo: The World’s Most Famous Clown; and surely her biggest triumph: Black Bars: Dejeuner No. 16 (Girl With Chinese Take-Out, Gummy Worm, Towel, Lotion and Macaroons). Yet, in Andrews-ian style, two black bars cover most of the visual elements the title describes. 

Andrews has created a new body of work showing at Simon Lee Gallery in Hong Kong for the Los Angeles-based artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia. She has conjured up a series of wall-based sculptures including 8 Ball (pictured below), and one-floor based work, all of which bear the signature Andrews hallmarks. There’s Kapoor-ian and Koons-ian high-production values – art as luxury products – with the latter’s penchant for banal and kitsch seduction, evident in Andrews’ iconography of Hollywood props, clown suits and balloons. Like Koons, Andrews also uses mirrored surfaces that reflect a viewer’s presence, calling into question how we perceive art.  Her exaggerated playfulness can smack of Wonka-esque hypersurreality and each work can feel like a pictorial golden ticket into her obsessive factory of entertainment-based American art.

Gilt-Edged

September 12, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: Oscar Chan Yik-long, Cupid, 2015

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it – let’s do it, let’s fall in love. Ah, love. If human beings were as smart as they’d like to think they are, why are we still so catastrophically stupid and unruly in matters of unrequited love? This premise – the agony and ecstasy of a state at once epic and epidemic, euphoric and miserable – has been taken up by the Para Site gallery for a group show, Crush, in which 18 of the dark avant-garde of Hong Kong’s art elite, curated by Qu Chang, take on the even darker side of love in its numerous declensions and destructions.  

Contemporary living has fuelled love’s obsessions in multiple forms and the exhibition addresses the gamut of their sins – the stars and celebrities who are constantly followed by groups of crazed fans; the feverish nationalistic slogans that avidly call for unconditional patriotic love; the hopeful romantics on omnipresent dating apps; the packaging of retail products festooned with symbols of love and success; and the often-neglected emotional labour that underlies all relationships. The flow and exchange of emotions in everyday life are often regulated by the prevailing institutions of contemporary society. Owing to their ubiquity, the conflicting feelings associated with unrequited love become the rather tender avenue through which these institutions can be investigated.

Ultimately, Crush proposes a shift of focus towards the pain inflicted by love, and “outlaw emotions” that have hitherto been neglected or deliberately shunned. Echoing the words of anthropologist Eleanor Wilkinson, it proposes a rethinking of the ambivalence, incoherence, and unruliness of love: how can love be both joyful and painful, enduring and transient, expansive and territorial? Maybe not one for a first date.

Gilt-Edged

August 15, 2018 / by Zhang Yen

Image above: Gustav Klimt, Serpents Aquatiques II (Les Amies) (1904–07)

“Whoever wants to know something about me,” Austrian painter Gustav Klimt once said, “ought to look carefully at my pictures and try to see in them what I am and what I want to do.” And what a lot that was. Klimt lived in a late 19th-and early-20th-century Vienna that was intensely bohemian, awash with wild decadence and artistic experimentation – an avant-garde collective of artists and intellectuals that comprised architect Otto Wagner, composers Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg and the psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. 

From such heady cultural company emerged Klimt. Born in 1862 in Vienna to a father who was a gilder, Klimt grew up with the lustre of gold and silver around him, and was highly entrepreneurial. By the age of 14, he enrolled in Vienna’s School of Applied Arts, where he studied fresco painting. His trademark was copying iconic paintings like Isabelle d’Este by Titian. Klimt sold portraits he painted from photographs and made technical drawings for an ear specialist - hence, his interest in, and mastery of the human form. 

Klimt founded a workshop that executed mural paintings for museums and theatres in the historical tradition of the Vienna School, and in 1897, became the founding member and president of the Viennese Secession, a breakaway art movement, in the spirit of art nouveau. He was given many fresco commissions; simultaneously, he drew and painted almost exclusively erotic themes celebrating the seductiveness of women, which began with Judith I and Detail de la Frise Beethoven in 1901, and continued with Danae, The Kiss, and most famously Adele Bloch-Bauer I, all created in 1907. 

Adele Bloch-Bauer was the Viennese wife of sugar baron Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and the only woman whose portrait Klimt painted twice. American showbiz icon Oprah Winfrey owned the second portrait and sold it to a Chinese collector in 2016 for US$150 million. She had previously bought the painting from Christie’s in 2006 for US$87.9 million. The painting was one of five Klimt canvases seized by the Nazis from Bloch-Bauer’s husband during World War II, and became the subject of a 2015 film Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren. But it’s not Klimt’s most expensive work; that accolade goes to 1904 canvas Water Serpents II (pictured), which was sold privately by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev in November 2015 for US$170 million, also to an Asian buyer. 

Klimt’s work blazed a disparate art trail; 6th-century Byzantine mosaics from Ravenna he found of “unprecedented splendour”, and they influenced his Woman In Gold canvas along with others; there was also Victorian repression and its palette, along with its opposite, a new-found freedom of expression and sexual liberation in his subject matter through lush, symbolic canvases. Klimt’s female subjects were seen as depicting a new counter-conventional woman. From decorative to theatrical to portrait, his work evolved as his stature and financial independence grew, emboldening him more. The eccentric artist wore a caftan when he painted and kept a pet cat. He was no slacker in the bedroom, either - Klimt sired 14 children and was never married. 

As such, Klimt was a divisive force. Admirers saw in his friezes magnificent stylised illustrations of the duality of Eros and Thanatos, of Love and Death. Detractors saw only pornography and misogyny, the latter a more recent reaction to Klimt’s work.  

Stylistically, something pioneering happens with a Klimt canvas, whereby the anatomy of the models becomes ornamentation, and the ornamentation becomes anatomy; like a more fashion-motivated Matisse. During Klimt’s golden period, the clothing on the models become tapestries of abstract shapes rendered in rich golds, reds, blues and greens. And even when Klimt painted with no human figures, his flowerscapes or landscapes were filled with organic forms, as though fields of flora had become flowing trains of costume. 

In this way, Klimt foreshadowed just about everything in 20th-century art. He was both art nouveau and art deco, pre-cubism, pre-Bauhaus and even pre-Russian constructivism. He was the sensorially advanced aristocrat of art, a technician with a wild mind and disciplined eye, whose voluptuous irradiations lit the luxurious way ahead for all the art that followed.  

See this intoxication of colour at Atelier des Lumières in Paris, which presents an immersive exhibition devoted to the leading figures of the Viennese art scene, of which Klimt was the icon. To mark the 100th anniversary of the painter’s death and that of his mentee, Egon Schiele, their works will be brought to life to the sound of music on the former foundry’s vast projection surface in the City of Light’s 11th arrondisement on Rue Saint-Maur. 

Smile Player One

August 1, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: Star Wars-inspired cosplay photos by @gameboyphoto

The high quality of digital cameras today on our ever-advancing smartphones means that we can all take clear, well-lit shots with ease and instantly view them – just ask Kanye West, who took the cover shot for his latest album Ye on an iPhone on the way to the record’s unveiling party. 

For some, though, especially those of an artistic bent, the results can be way too clean and perfect. In response, recent years have seen renewed interest in older, grimier forms of photography such as Polaroid and Lomography. 

But you don’t have to go analogue to put the artefacts back in art. In 1998, the folks at Nintendo brought out a hardware accessory that added a whole new dimension to the decade-old Game Boy console. This was the Game Boy Camera, which slotted into the top of the iconic grey brick, enabling gaming enthusiasts to take 256x224-pixel, four-gradient photos – which is as basic as it sounds, though quite an achievement for the time.

As you’d expect, the images produced are low-fidelity, blotchy, black-and-white and pixellated. But the best of them, whether by fluke or through clever manipulation of the contrast and brightness settings, are entirely unique, with a grungy aesthetic and instant street cred – perfect for posters, cover art, T-shirts and so on.

Back in the day, there was a major obstacle to using or (especially) editing these images – they could only be rendered onto paper with the Game Boy Printer. Now, however, they can be digitised thanks to a device called the BitBoy, an SD card reader that lets you upload the photos; it tricks the camera into sending the data to what it thinks is a printer, and the photos then appear on the card as bitmap files. 

The scope of the Game Boy Camera experience is continually expanding. One enthusiast has already created a 3D-printed lens adapter to mount a chunky Canon EF Lens, and we can expect more such innovations courtesy of the creative online fan community.

Wearable Wonders

July 4, 2018 / by China Daily Lifestyle Premium

Image above: Mask by Man Ray (1974)

The Big Pictorial

June 20, 2018 / by Zhang Yen

Currently showing at Hauser & Wirth in the H Queen’s building in Hong Kong is an exhibition of works by American artist Philip Guston, one of the great luminaries of 20th-century art. His career spanned a half-century, from 1930 to his death in 1980. 

Guston was widely recognised as a pioneer of abstract expressionism before an unexpected return to figuration in the late 1960s and, with it, the development of his highly original artistic language of pictorial symbols. His paintings – particularly the liberated and instinctual forms of his last works – continue to exert a powerful influence on younger generations of contemporary painters. The first solo presentation of the artist’s work in the Asia-Pacific region since a travelling exhibition in Australia in 1985, this show traces the evolution of Guston’s forms, shedding light on the most prolific three decades of his long career.

Curated by the artist’s daughter, Musa Mayer, the exhibition consists of almost 50 paintings and drawings from 1950 to 1979, surveying Guston’s major developments. On view through July 28, the works span the artist’s much lauded abstract paintings and chart his transition into pioneering figuration. Structured loosely by chronology, the exhibition begins on the 16th floor with abstract paintings and a section that denotes the breakthrough into his distinctive late-period figurative style. 

Summer Squash

June 20, 2018 / by Sonia Altshuler

If you like your art a little more interactive than canvases sitting in a frame and sculptures on a plinth, The Squash is for you. Created for the annual Tate Britain Commission, which invites contemporary British artists to create new artwork in response to the grand space of the Duveen Galleries, this year’s immersive installation combines performance and sculpture by 2016 Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton. 

The artist, in tandem with her good friend, Loewe creative director and designer Jonathan Anderson, has created seven somewhat surreal, spiffy and spoofy costumes to be worn by the cast. Hamilton has transformed the heart of Tate Britain into an elaborate stage for the continuous six-month performance of a single character, dressed in a colourful squash-like costume. 

More than 7,000 white floor tiles have been laid across the Duveens and encase a series of large sculptures that serve as podiums for a number of works of art from Tate’s collection, chosen by Hamilton for their organic forms and colours. The tiles create an immersive new environment within the neoclassical galleries. 

Each day, the show focuses on a single character, dressed in one of seven colourful Loewe costumes inspired by the colours and shapes of squashes and pumpkins. The clothes also feature voluminous sleeves, bold patterns and legume-style headwear. Each performer selects a costume that reflects their presentation of that day’s characters as they move around the space. 

The organic texture of the costumes was created using hand-painted leather and printed silk crépon, while 1970s clothing references have shaped some of the silhouettes. (And note the somewhat surprising retro-reference to the sea monsters from the BBC’s long-running TV series Doctor Who.)

Hamilton was inspired by the work of early 20th-century French writer and dramatist Antonin Artaud and his call for the “physical knowledge of images”. With The Squash, she hopes to examine the concept of a bodily response to an idea or an image. 

Renowned for her bold, often humorous works that incorporate references from art, design, fashion and popular culture, Hamilton has exhibited widely with large-scale, site-specific installations. These include her Turner Prize-nominated Lichen! Libido! Chastity! at the SculptureCenter in New York (which was restaged at Tate Britain in 2016) and Anthea Hamilton Reimagines Kettle’s Yard at The Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire, England. 

Anderson is the perfect partner for Hamilton. The young designer founded JW Anderson in 2008 after graduating from the London College of Fashion, then became Loewe’s creative director in 2013. Anderson’s work often explores gender fluidity. He recently curated an exhibition based around such themes for Disobedient Bodies at The Hepworth Wakefield. For that show, he also included sculptures by Henry Moore, Sarah Lucas and Barbara Hepworth to show how artists depict form through their work. He also created an installation of oversized jumpers that visitors could put on to transform their own bodies into abstract forms. 

Anderson said at the time: “This is a rare and exciting opportunity for me to bring together pieces of art and fashion that have long inspired my own creative work and to see what happens when these objects rub up against each other.” Of Hamilton’s exhibit at Tate Britain, he says: “I want this to be a space in which to explore ideas of gender and identity that have been an ongoing part of my creative practice.” 

For his latest autumn/winter 2018 collection, Anderson also collaborated with an artist. The designer’s idea of going back to basics was reflected in the show’s set, which saw an otherwise simple space decorated by a centrepiece of sculptures by Martin Belou. The craft-focused installation, titled Les Hors d’Oeuvres, featured pieces spun from plaster and live fungus.

Have some fun at the Duveen Galleries at Tate Britain as you spot the brilliant combination of high and Loewe culture.