rainy season

 

The thespians over at HKELD are giving away an original limited edition print this month. Framed and ready to hang on that blank wall of yours.  7 days left to correctly answer the question.

Friday Spotlight: Monique Lai

"...does one not find an interest in the chic and the alive in the biographies of Mondrian and so forth? It is true that Barbara Rose likes to write about when the times were more sincere, but she writes about it where she writes about everything else, in Vogue."

          Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe


More photographs by Monique Lai here.

Thursday Spotlight: Yoav Horesh

More photographs by Yoav Horesh  here.

Wednesday Spotlight: Hemlock

"This is how it should be done. Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continua of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO [Body without Organs]."

         Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus 

If you're assuming that Hemlock's visual output is simply a reiteration of his writing,  you're missing out on the pleasure to be found in these collages. Here Hong Kong's political figures, along with some 60's starlet-types and a sprinkling of other vaguely familiar archetypes, operate more like raw material; an ensemble cast of reccurring figures whose physiognomies are lovingly pored over, probed, dismantled, mixed and matched, repeated stutter-like, and arrayed across trajectories of enigmatic impulses (desire, nostalgia, mirth). Ultimately these arrays, each with its own rhythmic cadence and…well…inscrutable internal coherence, seem less about political commentary than about probing rich psychodynamic territory.

Tuesday Spotlight: Christopher Doyle (杜可風)

How good is this guy? I'd say the 20th century was bracketed by two great colorists: Matisse, using paint, and Chris Doyle, using the medium of film. And he continues to break new ground.

Monday Spotlight: Marco Szeto

More work by Marco Szeto here.

Next week...

Monday through Friday next week,  I'll be using this space to spotlight five people producing good stuff right here in Hong Kong.  Check it out.

head

 

More iPad finger paintings  here.

print

More recent iPad finger paintings  here.

 

b i r t h d a y

Kwai Chung

 

ink

Northwest

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ipad sketch from a recent trip to the Northwest US. In addition to seeing some nice scenery, had time to finish a couple of books that had been sitting on my nightstand for over a year (Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, and Jack Goldstein and the Cal Arts Mafia). Also caught up on a few Hollywood flicks on the long flight  (Moneyball, J. Edgar, Prometheus).  

 Had a good time, but I'm  always relieved to get back to HK. Love that first meal at the cha chaan tang. Through a haze of jet lag, the sound of Canto, some congee with a few peanuts, the big plastic spoon, the familiar Hong Kong faces.

more ipad finger paintings

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Triple Elvis

 ipad sketches from 2011. click to enlarge


 The Megabodega show in NY is all wrapped up. Many thanks to curator Victoria Yee Howe for including Surfing Hong Kong.

Beginning July 14 the book will be available at Palace Bookshop, IFC (next to Palace Cinema).

 If you looked for Surfing Hong Kong at Kubrick Bookshop, Yau Ma Tei, and were told they don't carry it,  it's because the book was incorrectly entered into their computer system. That problem has been resolved and they have the book in stock. (Thanks to the tipster who brought this to my attention!)

NY opening

 Pointing Man is aiming a little too high.  On the right is Surfing Hong Kong with pale blue and silver cover.  (By the way, Elise Inthavixay, who I collaborated with on the look of the book, is now lead designer for the revitalization of the former Central Police Station on Hollywood Road!)

Megabodega at Family Business Gallery, curated by Victoria Howe.  More pics here

Surfing Hong Kong goes to New York!

  June 26 - July 6

  Family Business Gallery
  520 West 21st Street
  NYC

story on Family Business, Maurizio Cattelan, and Massimiliano Gioni here

Kwai Chung

Bali

  

2010

Surfing Hong Kong now in bookstores.

Available at Kubrick Bookshop, Yau Ma Tei.  I want to see LINES AROUND THE BLOCK beginning TOMORROW.

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Soul Surfing the Big Lychee!

  Surfing Hong Kong, 2012
book (offset lithograph)

           40 pages, 37 color photographs
printed in edition of 500

Surfing Hong Kong: 37 surf photos of questionable veracity. If they're not true, where were those mysto waves really shot? Cyberpunk fiction or documentary photographs, enjoy the ride.

Designer Elise Inthavixay crafted an understated, timeless look for the book. Check out that shimmering, Helvetica Bold, foil-stamped cover — totally bitchin! Full specs and order info here.

Also available at Kubrick Bookshop, Yau Ma Tei.
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Season's Greetings from HK

Shuffled through my flat file looking for something Christmassy, and I found this study made with a two color palette of thalo red rose and permanent green.

iPad Finger Painting, Stroke by Stroke

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Po Toi

 

Dragon Boat

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Kwai Chung

junk trip

City

Just discovered that I received a nice write-up in The Standard —15 months ago! I'm feeling inspired to post more frequently, and Google myself more often.

Gloomy Weather

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The top sketch shows Kowloon Bay and the old Kai Tak Airport runway.

Crepuscule

Study of Tsing Yi from 2008.

Morning, West Kowloon

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"Everything about Chinese opera is great except for the music."

--Dave Hickey

Sketches of a Chinese opera in Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park back in September.

Madam Cheng

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heads

Macau sketches

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Studies of boats and a trivia question

Which one of these artists changed his given name from 'Milton' ?

a) Jasper Johns
b) Jackson Pollock
c) Robert Rauschenberg
d) Richard Serra
e) Frank Stella

Studies of bathers and a trivia question

Which one of these artists changed his or her surname from Goldstein:

a) Elaine de Kooning
b) Max Ernst
c) Philip Guston
d) Blinky Palermo
e) Man Ray

Today's painting trivia question

Which pigment common to the painter's palette is taken orally as a treatment for radiation poisoning?

a) cadmium red
b) prussian blue
c) raw umber
d) pthalo green
e) zinc white


This one's Googleable, so I'll spare you the trouble and put the answer in the comments section.

Matisse and Hokusai on Reach Exceeding Grasp

The American actor Edward G. Robinson, who was an avid art collector, tells a story about visiting Matisse. Matisse, age 85, was living in an expensive old hotel in the South of France. He was dying of stomach cancer and confined to a wheelchair but still working, making his paper cutouts and small drawings. The hotel had carved wooden doors from the 17th or 18th century, and thumb-tacked to the doors were little drawings of hands. Robinson says to Matisse, "Are these early drawings?" Matisse replies, "No, no, I'm doing them now. I'll do a good one yet. Those damn things give me a lot of trouble, you know. I'll do it, I'll get it."


Hokusai on his deathbed, age 89, is reported to have said, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years...Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter."

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Terry Farrell and the Ching Ming Festival

Back in April, I took advantage of the Ching Ming holiday and went to Shaoguan for a three-day weekend. Madam Cheng and I took the ferry to Pan Yu, then hailed a cab for the 20-minute ride to the train station in Guangzhou.

Turns out the Guangzhou South Station had just opened a few weeks earlier, and the architect was Terry Farrell (who did the airport in Seoul that everyone's raving about). It was striking partly because I came across it unexpectedly, but there's no doubt it's a beautiful building. Check out those colossal Y-shaped columns—notice how elegantly they articulate the light, leaving a gap above to illuminate themselves.

Our first full day in Shauguan we hit the big regional attractions with a miserable, fly-by-night local tour company. The second day we sprung for a cab to take us to some of the more obscure places, the prime destination being fields of yellow flowers that had made a big impression on Madam Cheng in the tourist brochure.

We left the city behind, bouncing along pot-holed roads through a series of dreary villages. Our driver was a capable fellow with a seen-it-all-before mien, who used the courtesy-honk judiciously while driving for long stretches on the wrong side of the road. I marveled at his ability to resist reflexive swerving or breaking as a steady stream of "free range" dogs darted in front of the cab. Those strings of Ching Ming Festival firecrackers can make a small dog accelerate and corner like you wouldn't believe.

An hour and a half later he hydroplaned us to a stop in the center of a deserted one-lane road. We rolled down the windows and light rain blew in. Furrowed mud extended in all directions. The driver made a call on his cellphone as I gazed out at a shallow drainage ditch just large enough to dispose of the bodies of two gullible tourists. A man draped in a transparent plastic drop cloth appeared riding an undersized motorbike and conferred with the driver and Madam Cheng. Laughter all around; just missed it, the flowers have been returned to the oil (canola). Still time to hit the Ma Ba Man archeological site!

Later I'll post more pics of Terry Farrell's Guangzhou South Railway Station.

The Tai Po Lookout Tower

The Tai Po Lookout Tower was built in 1997 as part of a large park commemorating the hand-over of Hong Hong to The People's Republic of China. Signage tells us that the tower is built on the location where the British came ashore in 1898, and that the inhabitants of the New Territories put up a good fight. With its conical spiral climbing a tilted central spine, the Tai Po Lookout Tower bears more than passing resemblance to Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International (1919).

The Third International, also known as the Comintern, was the international wing of the Communist Party, and Tatlin's building was to be its headquarters. The 34-year-old revolutionary's fanciful proposal included sections that rotated at various speeds, radio broadcasting towers, giant projectors for beaming images onto the clouds, an auditorium for the masses, and so on. Alas, the salad days of the Russian avant-garde would soon be turning to gruel; within a decade the radical aesthetic of the Constructivists would be considered by Stalin to be elitist, and be replaced (by decree) with Soviet Social Realism.

All of which is to say that while the form of Tatlin's Tower was once the embodiment of revolutionary zeal, it's also now a form that reminds us of a more ominous episode. In any case, Tatlin's ghost roams the vicinity of the Tai Po Lookout Tower, whispering in visitors' ears, "It's so bourgeois to claim ownership of an idea—but this looks a lot like my idea."


 
Tai Po Lookout Tower, 1997


Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, 1919

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The Hot Name in Asian Art

It's not the grinning-head guy—read on.

Ed Ruscha's book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966), is a classic in the field of post-war art. In his trademark deadpan style, the buildings fronting Sunset Boulevard (from Laurel Canyon Boulevard to Carol Drive) are shown in a continuous panorama of collaged photos, the south side of the street running along the top of the page, the north side of the street upside down along the bottom. Roughly the size of a small paperback, Every Building on the Sunset Strip is in leporello format (i.e., accordion fold) and unfolds to around 27 feet long.

Ruscha's books from this period redefined the genre of the "artist's book" (prior to this it had been something visibly handmade) and mark the beginnings of what would later become known as "conceptual art." His matter-of-fact photo books of gas stations and parking lots suggested an attitude later common to an entire genre of photography (codified in the 1975 William Jenkins-curated show, "New Topographics"). The impact of Ruscha and Every Building on the Sunset Strip was felt even in the realm of architecture: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown cite his influence on Learning From Las Vegas, their 1972 book examining the vernacular architecture of Vegas, which is itself widely recognized as a watershed in architecture's transition from modernism to postmodernism. So over time, in a variety of ways, Ruscha's books have accumulated a great deal of art historical significance—in addition to being just beautiful, cool objects.

Those familiar with contemporary art are rolling their eyes, saying "Get to the point, Feldman." Well here you go. In 1954, twelve years before Ruscha's Every Building on the Sunset Strip, a Japanese named Yoshikazu Suzuki produced a startlingly similar work. Ginza Haccho is a book showing a continuous panorama of Ginza, in leporello format, one side of the street running along the top of the page, the other side of the street upside down along the bottom. Yoshikazu Suzuki seems not to have produced any other documented work, and shares the name with a popular anime character.

Is it a hoax? The work of some enterprising art student trying to make a fast buck off gullible Western collectors? Cultural warfare by Japanese nationalists inventing fictitious antecedents to usurp the stature of seminal American artists? Ruscha's 1982 pastel Japan is America might offer a wryly confessional clue as to his source. As Gide once quipped, "Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again."


Yoshikazu Suzuki, Ginza Haccho, 1954



Ed Ruscha, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966
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