Dec
01
Paris 28/11/2009 Galerie Magda Danysz
A life size statue giving the three fingered Serbian salute on a pedestal strewn with empty beer cans, while on one wall words in blinking lights proclaimed “No one like me”, pictures from the artist’s friends with the words “My friends are better artists than yours” were scrawled on the wall and photographs of glamorous looking people were presented with the statement, “My friends are better looking than yours”.
This installation about the ego of the artist presenting himself as a hero in a statue made of gold and the large format paintings and laser cut sculpture are all part of Serbian/French artist Vuk Vidor’s second stage of his American Quartet series.
His using of quickly identifiable elements, like the American comic book style and pop art, to define a new situation on the world’s political and power landscape is like a sugarcoating for a bitter reality.
Like kryptonite makes Superman helpless and weak, so are politics today making our world fragile and vulnerable. Vidor’s super-heroes are pathetic and deflated, dejected by the very system they fight to protect. Their conversation bubbles show no words anymore only silence and Captain America is a resurrected Atlas, no longer able to carry the weight of the American dream…
Apr
28
Surfing the net, not looking for anything in particulair .. STOP, what is this? .. Walton Ford, who is .. how is it possible I .. want that .. have to go to New York .. absolutely .. Taschen website .. Panacha Tantra ..
”I can’t afford one of his paintings (or even this book) but I can dream.”
Naturalist-gone-nuclear’s intricate, dazzling, and sometimes disturbing life-size watercolors. All painted with great technical skill. At first glance you think antiques until you notice some animals are engaged in ‘unnatural’ behavior. Walton Ford is Audubon on acid
Website: www.paulkasmingallery.com
Apr
17
Actually I didn’t know much about Chinese calligraphy techniques but since this work (HAN) caught my attention I did a little research. So I learned that to understand Chinese calligraphy first thing you have to know that in Chinese society script has a close connection with language and art.
There was a huge difference. In Western society we see the words and not the writing. But words have a sound, a movement, they even a texture and there was André Kneib who made this all visible to me.
Starting with a single Chinese character inspired by a feeling or experience, he infuses traditionally monochromatic characters with color, using lyrical abstraction coupled with calligraphy techniques
His characters come to life because of the varying pressure and movement of his brushstrokes, expressing emotions and physical engagement and capture the inner essence of the word.
Show: www.contrastsgalery.com
Mar
30
‘Super Flat artists create their own version of popular culture to draw attention to the dominance of media, entertainment and consumption,’ 村上 隆
Takashi Murakami, has made his final pit-stop over in Spain at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao after stops in Los Angeles, New York and Germany.With a complete selection of over 90 works in different media he has created a dizzying world filled with mood flowers, singing moss, magic mushrooms and morphing creatures and he didn’t stop at the museum. So imagine an entire city packaged with Murakami’s bright palette of pop, the flatness of traditional Japanese art and some Surrealist movement elements.
Now I’m only waiting for a jellyfish eyed plain to take me there.