CONTEMPORARY ART

Splatter series from Hua Tunan

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Chinese Art has been pushing its way through Europe and America lately and many movements and talents are starting to emerge from it. One of this very skilled and inspiring artists is Chen Yingjie (aka: Hua Tunan) who lives in the coastal city of Foshan, China.

With a background of classical Chinese painting and illustration, Hua Tunan has diverged into a remarkable and unique street art style. His art is a perfect example where two radically different styles – Classic Chinese painting v. Western Graffiti are married to give eye watering results. Hua Tunan would use ink painting, drum rhythms and a variety of cultural symbols.

Pictures of the ‘splatter’ portraits series are shown below. Look closer and what might appear as a splash to you actually reveal a face or shapes. The color palette is another remarkable thing in Hua Tunan art. Thumbs up all round.

Hua Tunan's Splatter series

Hua Tunan's Splatter seriesHua Tunan's Splatter series

Hua Tunan's Splatter seriesHua Tunan's Splatter series

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This is how elephants are treated in Mathura during winter

Elephants in Mathura gets wrapped up in jumpers | Art-PieWe all know that Winter can be a cold one.

Some of you may also know that there are nice people out there, so nice that after having been notified about a possible freeze overnight, a few good people in Mathura (India) made jumbo jackets and woollen jumpers for elephants in the region.

This is how elephants are treated in Mathura during winter.

The Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center helps

The Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center is actually supporting this and has committed itself to help the women in surrounding villages make these jackets and jumpers to counter attack the freezing winter and its possible damages to the elephants.

Elephants in Mathura gets wrapped up in jumpers | Art-Pie

Here is what Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO of theThe Wildlife SOS Elephant Conservation and Care Center says about the project –

It is important to keep our elephants protected from the bitter cold during this extreme winter, as they are weak and vulnerable having suffered so much abuse, making them susceptible to ailments such as pneumonia. The cold also aggravates their arthritis which is a common issue that our rescued elephants have to deal with.

We included below some of the colourful garments. We think they are awesome!

Elephants in Mathura gets wrapped up in jumpers | Art-Pie Elephants in Mathura gets wrapped up in jumpers | Art-Pie Elephants in Mathura gets wrapped up in jumpers | Art-Pie

First seen on The Independent

CONTEMPORARY ART

The unnamable

When Context Take The Game | Art-Pie“Where now? Who Now? When now?

Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call them that. Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn’t far. Perhaps that is how it began. You think you are simply resting, the better to act when the time comes, or for no reason, and you soon find yourself powerless ever to do anything again. No matter how it happened. It, say it, not knowing what. Perhaps I simply assented at last to an old thing. But I did nothing. I seem to speak, it is not I, about me, it is not about me. These few general remarks to begin with. What am I to do, what shall I do, what should I do, in my situation, how proceed? By aporia pure and simple? Or by affirmations and negations invalidated as uttered, or sooner or later?
Generally speaking. There must be other shifts. Otherwise it would be quite hopeless. But it is quite hopeless. I should mentions before going any further, any further on, that I say aporia without knowing what it means. Can one be ephectic otherwise than unawares? I don’t know. With the yesses and the noes it is different, they will come back to me as I go along and how, like a bird, to shit on them all without exception. The fact would seem to be, if in my situation one may speak of facts, not only that I shall have to speak of things of which I cannot speak, but also, which is even more interesting, but also that I, which is if possible even more interesting, that I shall have to, I forget, no matter. And at the same time I am obliged to speak. I shall never be silent. Never.”
Opening paragraph to The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

Contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou asks if we can name a truth, anticipating and forcing into knowledge all the elements contained in that truth, risking a totality of knowledge related to it; a problem, for example, in politics where this turns to totalitarianism. He says, “The construction of a truth is made by a choice within the indiscernible…But the potency of a truth depends on the hypothetical forcing…The problem is to know whether such a potency of anticipation [hypothetical forcing] is total…My answer is there is always, in any situation, a real point that resists this potency.

I call this point the unnameable of the situation. It is what, within the situation, never has a name in the eyes of truth. A term that consequently remains unforceable. This term fixes the limit of the potency of a truth. The unnambeable is what is excluded from having a proper name, and what is alone in such exclusion. The unnameable is then the proper of the proper, so singular in its singularity that it does not even tolerate having a proper name. The unnameable is the point where the situation in its most intimate being is submitted to thought; in the pure presence that no knowledge can circumscribe. The unnameable is something like the inexpressible real of everything a truth authorizes to be said.”
Alain Badiou from Infinite Thought

The unnameable is something I have personal experience with. The secret and the truth. I’ve held both of these things, safeguarding, I thought, others and myself. Both secret and truth can be destructive if kept silent. But it has been my experience that once spoken, the unnameable is an agent of transformation; it comes in facing what’s real.

Read more of my interview, When Context Takes The Game, conducted by Becky Huff Hunter for This ‘Me’ of Mine.

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Beckett, Samuel, Three Novels Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Grove Press, New York, The Unnamable, originally published under the title L’Innommable, copyright © 1953 by Les Editions de Minuit. Translation copyright © 1958 by the Estate of Samuel Beckett, pp. 285-6.

Badiou, Alain, Infinite Thought, Continuum International Publishing Group, London, New York. Trans and ed by Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens, 2005 – 2011. “Philosophy and Truth”, pp. 43 to 51, originally titled “The ethic of truths: construction and potency” quote p.49.

CONTEMPORARY ART, PRODUCT DESIGN

Clerkenwell design week – Sarah Wiestner's installation

The Clerkenwell design week is back again from tomorrow, the 24th May, and will result in an exciting buzz where art meets design and vice versa. Not less than 60 showrooms and a pile of events (over 150 events) such pop up exhibitions, installations, talks, performances, music and workshops, the area is where to be for the next couple of days.

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Sarah Wiestner

One of the exhibitions that got me excited at this year’s Clerkenwell design week, is Sarah Wiestner’s axcrylics mirrors, MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard) and LEDs lights installation or make over of the infamous House of Detention known to be haunted. The prison was demolished in 1890, but an entire underground section survived and lay undisturbed until the bombs of the Blitz saw it reopened as an air-raid shelter. After World War II it was again largely forgotten until, in 1993, it became a museum.

How Sarah plays with mirrors and make the space transparent is often deceived or shaken by the encounter of a dead end paths. Many openings were sealed off last century. The LEDs lights give back the light to this place once in a the complete dark. I have not been yet but can already sense a very interesting and exciting mix of elements and feelings.

Read more
> The website and blog of Sarah Wiestner (some awesome stuff) – http://maisdsarahwiestner.blogspot.com
> Cklerkenwell design week – http://www.clerkenwelldesignweek.com
> The House of Detention – http://www.london-ghost-tour.com/houseofdetention.htm

CONTEMPORARY ART, PREVIEW

Hayley Lock at Transition gallery

Launched at Ickworth House in Suffolk in July 2011 (Now that would be) Telling is a collaborative project between the artist Hayley Lock, curator Catherine Hemelryk and writers Jessica Hart, Lucinda Hawksley, Ben Moor, Hallie Rubenhold and Liz Williams.

Lock and the writers have created a series of site-specific works in English stately homes. Part myth and part encrypted biography, these works reveal/conceal parallel histories of the residents of these remarkable homes.

For Transition Gallery Lock is showing a series of works originally made for a grand home proudly situated in rural Bedfordshire. These portraits of the real and imagined lovers of the Lady of the House use mirrors and light to form a multiple of 28 and include a new portrait of the Lady herself. Lock meshes a range of sumptuous materials including velvets, brocades gilt and fringing into the portraits referencing the imagined interiors of Caddington Hall the family house. Elsewhere the digitally enhanced landscapes play out their stories of love, romance and deceit in an uncanny space where truth and fiction, history and scandal collide.

Words from Transition gallery

14 Jan – 5 Feb 2012
Fri–Sun 12-6pm

CONTEMPORARY ART

Body painting by Choo San

I am sure that some of you will think that these pictures below have been retouched or altered with some software such as Photoshop and I would not blame you for believeing this since these acrylic body paint looks rather real and… creepy some might say.

Meet the artist, Chooo-San, who is a big fan of body painting

From the artist:
“But I guess I was a little sick of everyone making pictures with their computers and wanted to see how far I can go without those technologies such as Photoshop. My works are all done with acrylic paints. They are all painted on skin directly and I don’t use computers or anything to change the picture afterwards.”

[via]

Choo San - body painting | Art-PieChoo San - body painting | Art-Pie

Choo San - body painting | Art-PieChoo San - body painting | Art-Pie

DIGITAL ART

A 97 year old, nearly blind man who works wonders with MS Paint

His name is Hal Lasko, his nickname Grandpa. What he did for living is something we will probably never see again – he was a graphic artist back when everything was done by hand. He then had to retired and his caring family had the genius idea to introduce him to the computer and especially to Microsoft Paint.

Since then Grandpa spends ten hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings. Some would call his work pointillism, others 8-Bit art but it might be a bit of both.

Anyway, another inspiration that is Hal Lasko, The Pixel Painter. We have included below a video interview of the artist plus a few examples of his works.

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

Hal Lasko | Art-Pie

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Da Mental Vaporz at SCOPE fair in Miami

Tuesday the 1st of December saw the opening of the much anticipated SCOPE, the international fair for contemporary art in Miami, Florida right on sunny South Beach.

SCOPE celebrates its 15th anniversary edition with 120 international exhibitors from 22 countries and 57 cities. MYA makes its debut appearance at the fair with an exhibition of pure French talent from our 400 sq. foot stand, located at #B21.

The exhibition features new paintings from Da Mental Vaporz artists BOM.K, BRUSK, BLO, JAW, KAN and collaborative works that include SOWAT, LEK, DRAN and GRIS1.

DMV was first formed in 1999 in the Parisian suburbs and over a 15 year period, the collective grew to its present day form: a surprising combination of styles, individualities and creativities which still manages to maintain a creative unity. Celebrated for their huge murals representing childlike characters, monsters and dislocated dolls, the collective combine the perfect marriage of cynicism and innocence.

WHAT – MYA Gallery // Stand #B21 at SCOPE art fair
WHERE – MIAMI
WHEN – Until the 6/12/2015

REVIEWS

Nick Gentry at Whisper gallery

We are big fan of artists using what they can find around them to help them making art or in Nick Gentry’s case, using floppy disks to be his support for his art as well as being integral part of his end product – mainly portraits.

Nick Gentry uses wood panels layered with floppy disks which he might paint or not, but one sure thing is that they are fully integrated in his pieces. Using the round bit of the floppy disk as the eyes  is a recurrent occurrence in his art. Nick Gentry portraits all these imaginative or not, I do not know, characters which behind that scruffy brush stroke comes to live.

The show at Whisper gallery is now over

STREET ART ENCOUNTERS