Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
- Show support for democracy in Iran add green overlay to your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com/ #
- Try to take as many walks as you can and keep your love of nature, for that is the true way to learn to understand art more -Van Gogh #
- RT @TwoCoats: New obsession: Smithsonian’s Pollock and Krasner archive now online http://bit.ly/chJ7Y #
- RT @cmonstah @stevelambert “Exposure” doesn’t pay the rent. Say no to working for Google - for free. http://redirx.com/?sd3u #
- @TwoCoats looks like an awesome book! must be hard to be patient… in reply to TwoCoats #
- RT @metmuseum: Explore the influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh & Toulouse-Lautrec during Fri night’s FREE gallery talk http://is.gd/1dova #
- RIP Michael Jackson #
- mulling it over… #
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June 27, 2009 No Comments
Li Xubai 李虚白– Clear Rhythm of Brook and Mountain
It’s been a dark couple of months and try as I might I just haven’t been able to get my mind to focus on any art work. Instead of painting or drawing or going to exhibits I’ve been sitting on my ass watching Discovery Channel and fuminating on how much typesetting applications and forms for investment funds just plain sucks! Well the last few days I’ve been trying to drop kick my skull out of this funk by getting outside and here’s some nice landscape work by Li Xubai 李虚白 that’s showing now at Goedhuis Contemporary.
Li Xubai / Clear Rhythm of Brook and Mountain / 2008 / Ink and color on paper / 25 3/4 x 25 3/4 inches (65.5 x 65.5 cm) / Goedhuis Contemporary
From the gallery:
Li Xubai’s work exemplifies the interpretation of much of the best Chinese traditional painting in that it subtly incorporates very contemporary stylistic themes embodied in an ostensibly classical aesthetic. It is this openness to the contemporary world that is so elusively expressed in these lyrical landscapes of what appear to be a traditional pictorial style.
Ten years ago in the NY Times Holland Cotter had this to say about Li Xubai:
His stippled, daublike brush technique creates an illusion of tangible form through tonal modeling (the effect is a bit like digital graphics). Yet nothing feels reliably solid. Rock outcroppings have a fungal sponginess; waterfalls are bursts of white light; mountain ranges hang suspended in air. The notion of the painted landscape as a mirror of subjective states here takes on a literal, anatomical cast, with streams and fissures suggesting blood vessels, sinews and musculature. {Read More…}
Li Xubia @ Goedhuis Contemporary 42 East 76th Street thru July 31.
Tags: landscape, traditional chinese painting, holland cotter, li xubai, watercolorRelated posts
June 23, 2009 No Comments
Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
June 20, 2009 No Comments
Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
- suffering from a severe case of nopaintingitis #
- RT @RubinMuseum: I think I’ll have to stop by…lot’s of good stuff to see! http://bit.ly/RDH0e #
- @TheArtMan Like slogging through a viscous pit of putrid tar, unable to escape, on the verge of succumbing to the fumes in reply to TheArtMan #
- getting ready to hang my big watercolours in the NJ Show!!! http://bit.ly/2TyZ0E #
- Just pulled out Mountains and Rivers Without End to hang for the show… http://bit.ly/Q2sh1 #
- Just finished hanging the show. Looks great!!! http://twitpic.com/760p9 #
- 7 hours till the NJ Show! Get some awesome Indian food on the way! A little sneak peak from the hanging last night… http://bit.ly/PY0FU #
- Tonight: It’s not Old Jersey it New Jersey opening in Jersey City! See everyone in a few hours! http://bit.ly/Aa5HS #
- RT @TwoCoats: At Art Observed, a review roundup and images for “Abstract America” at Saatchi Gallery in London http://bit.ly/o0iWG #
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June 13, 2009 No Comments
It’s Not Old Jersey: “The New Jersey Show” of the Art Students League of New York
It’s Not Old Jersey: “The New Jersey Show” of the Art Students League of New York
Jersey City, N.J. –Works from more 30 New Jersey artists will be featured June 12-14 at the “The New Jersey Show,” at the 113 Design Co., 930 Newark Avenue, Loft #6 in Jersey City. Organized by the Exhibition Outreach program of the Art Students League of New York, the show includes traditional and contemporary work in all media and demonstrates the range of art-making happening both in Jersey and at the League.
Curated by the League’s John Baber, the show features works by Tim Anderson, Konstantine Angelopoulos*, Sherwin Banfield *, Marlene Bloom*, Elizabeth Bolden*, Dave Bruno, Sauman Choy*, Carole Dakake*, C.L. DeMedeiros*, Ricardo Devia*, Julieanne Dellert*, Christian Dobish, John Doyle*, George Ebbinghousen*, Lilian R. Engel, Mitsuko Finkelstein, Gordon Fraser*, Alex French*, Ed Giorgano*, Jean Graham*, Akihiro Ito, Jaine Jacobs*, Sharon Kendrick*, Joan Lesemann*, Tony Loftman*, John Mandile, Carole McDermott*, Laura Mae Noble, Berto Noso*, Satoshi Okada*, Adina Padden*, James Renzie Prater*, Louise A. Reid*, Cristian Ramirez, Ed Rochat*, Allon Schemool, Geoff Schmit, Brent Scowden*, Hanna Seiman*, Ella Sherman*, Margie Steinmann, Yoko Suetsugu, Tom Tacik*, Josh Torin*, Edward Vander Veld*, Matt White*, and Juan Gabriel Zorilla*.
(* Denotes New Jersey artists.)
Hours June 12-14 are: Friday reception: 6-10pm (free shuttle bus from the show to Journal Square PATH station); Saturday: 12-5 pm, and Sunday: 12-4 pm.
This exhibition is generously supported by the George A Ohl, Jr. Trust Foundation.
About the Art Students League
Founded in 1875 by artists, for artists, the Art Students League of New York provides affordable, studio-based art education of the highest quality to anyone with the interest in making art. Great artists have trained, taught, and exhibited at the League and enriched its community. Apprenticeships, classes, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and residencies uphold the League’s commitments to support “artists and students who intend to make art a profession” and to cultivate “a spirit of fraternity among art students.”
Google Map:
930 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07306
I’ll have four pieces in the show…sneek peak here
Tags: exhibition, art students league, jersey cityRelated posts
June 4, 2009 No Comments
Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
- RT @culturepundits: The Marathon from @bangonacan is this weekend - May 31! http://is.gd/HtMC #
- @agallerylondon Arshile Gorky’s Agony at MoMA http://bit.ly/14Hbek in reply to agallerylondon #
- Just a little friday morning typesetting, whoooppi!!!! #
- angels and demons had me looking at my italian renaissance art books for a few days. i always love looking at titian and michelangelo #
- RT @TwoCoats: Abstract painters swim upriver to Hydson this weekend http://bit.ly/2ox8I #
- i should stop being lazy and start walking down to galleries at lunch again… #
- off to inwood hill park! #
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May 30, 2009 No Comments
Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
- It’s Not Old Jersey: “The New Jersey Show” of the Art Students League of New York. http://bit.ly/5XaX6 #
- RT @AWASIA: Review of “China Urban” exhibit at Cooley Art Gallery, Reed College http://bit.ly/Bp8ob #
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May 23, 2009 No Comments
Thoughts, muses, and other nonesuch
- RT @ABrooklynArtist: You begin with the possibilities of the material. — Robert Rauschenberg #
- RT @AWASIA: Great pics of 798 arts district in Beijinghttp://bit.ly/gthed #
- Looking forward to this week! RT @AWASIA: Asian Contemporary Art Week in NYC has started!http://acaw.net/ACAW/acaw2009/ataglance.html #
- RT @AWASIA: Review of the contemporary art fair in Hong Konghttp://bit.ly/Og94R #
- RT @NewsHour: Art Beat: Weekly Poem: ‘Reasons to Consider Setting Ourselves on Fire’: *By Jynne Dilling Martin* http://twurl.nl/t8374m #
- Women in print via Joanne Mattera. http://bit.ly/odkZS #
- Yippie!!! Looks like fun!!! RT @cmonstah: Better than any summer motion picture: Martyrdom Monday on C-Mon!! http://tinyurl.com/oufoq9 #
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May 16, 2009 No Comments
Action = Performance for Ryoga Katsuma
Ryoga Katsuma / Ethan Cohen Fine Arts
“My way of painting is that first, I feel free to paint like a child, and then, I choose a favorite color and theme. The rebuilding of these ideas on canvas comes from infinite ideas that only innocent children can have. To have child’s spirit is a special skill, and also the painting technique that only some of the experienced adults can have is the source of my art works.” {Read More…}
SHABU SHABU: New Visions
A striking group exhibition in honor of ACAW featuring leading contemporary Asian artists. Includes works by Ushio Shinohara, Ryoga Katsuma, Huang Yan, Naoto Nakagawa, Noriko Shinohara, Vasan Sitthiket, Ali Kazim, Nguyen Mahn Hung, Tang Hui, Pan Xinglei and Hu Renyi. Don’t miss a knockout opening night performance by the young action painter, Ryoga Katsuma.
18 Jay St.
(Bet. Hudson and Greenwich St.) MAP
Tel: 212-625-1250
www.ecfa.com
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May 11, 2009 1 Comment
The Distant Reaches are Chaotic - Zhu Jinshi
Zhu Jinshi / The Distant Reaches Are Chaotic / 2007 / Oil on canvas / h: 39.5 x w: 47.2 in / h: 100.3 x w: 119.9 cm / M. Sutherland Fine Arts Ltd
Tags: asian art, kandinsky, chinese abstract art, chinese art, zhu jinshi, Stars GroupAs a factory worker in the 1970’s, Zhu Jinshi studied after-hours with an older artist, Li Zongjin, who had been trained in Western oil painting before the Anti-Rightist crackdown in the 1950’s. Zhu borrowed a book on Kandinsky and was transformed. After studying the text, Zhu realized that Western abstract art had ties to the two thousand year old intellectual and artistic traditions in China. From that point forward, Zhu has attempted to reconcile the two traditions in his artwork.
Zhu was part of the first influential avant-garde group of artists after the Cultural Revolution, the “Stars Group” (Xing Xing), who challenged both aesthetic convention and political authority. The Stars’ use of formerly banned Western styles from Post-Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism was an implicit criticism of the status quo. In 1985, Robert Rauschenberg exhibited a retrospective of his work in the National Gallery and traveled to Beijing to lecture and meet artists. Zhu recalls having a heated debate with Rauschenberg. Zhu attempted to explan that the theoretical bases of Abstract Expressionism, such as gesture and the expressive nature of the brush, were not new, and actually had been part of Chinese aesthetic theory for centuries.
Zhu and his wife, Qin Yufen, an installation and fiber artist, left for Berlin in 1986, a full three years before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Zhu stopped painting for a short time, instead immersing himself in the study of Joseph Beuys, the German performance artist and theorist who championed the power of universal human creativity. During his stay in Europe, Zhu was also greatly influenced by German New Expressionism. His paintings became thicker and more impasto, expressive abstracts. Zhu also collaborated with his wife on several installation projects, but always continued to develop his abstract painting. In 1994, he returned to Beijing and began traveling back and forth each year, as he does today.
Zhu uses various implements, from flat broad wallpaper brushes to wok spatulas, to apply paint in calligraphic, spontaneous strokes. Upon closer observation, one also sees the hectic strokes resembling Western action painting. The effect is one of luscious texture and strong gesture, yet with reference to specific environments, ranging from demolished old neighborhoods in Beijng to homage to Cezanne’s landscapes. In recent years, Zhu has preferred much larger scale canvases; some measuring over twenty feet by twelve feet. {Read More…}
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May 11, 2009 No Comments