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July 10, 2009

Nic Hess, Urban China, Your Bright Future and Brush Fires

So, I just got back from a trip down to L.A.  I went specifically to visit the Getty Library to do some research on the Gutai Group but as luck would have it, a brush fire broke out near the Getty and it was evacuated and closed for the 2 days that I was there.  


All was not lost, here are some notable art exhibitions that I was able to see.

Hammer Gallery
Nic Hess
Urban China: Informal Cities

There was a visually delightful installation by Nic Hess, a swiss artist, who creates Tape Drawings which combines the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpting, collage and installation art.


Another exhibition that was rather interesting which I was unable to photograph was - Urban China: Informal Cities
here is the Museum's blurb:
Urban China: Informal Cities is an exhibition that explores the dynamic and innovative content of Urban China, the only magazine published in China devoted to issues of urbanism. The magazine’s global, cross-disciplinary network of correspondents and collaborators merge rigorous methods of data collection and analysis of rapidly developing cities in China with witty graphic representations of their findings. This installation will include a built environment of reclaimed construction materials; a massive wall graphic combining photographs, found images, numerical data, and maps; a Flash-based, user-navigable database of photographs; and a selected collection of past issues of Urban China magazine.


At LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum): Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists From Korea
The artists included were: Bahc Yiso, Choi Jeong-Hwa, Gim Hongso, Jeon Joonho, Kim Beom, Kim Sooja, Koo Jeong-A, Minouk Lim, Jooyeon Park, Do Ho Suh, Haegue Yang.

I was unable to take photographs except for the exterior installation "Happy Happy" by Choi Jeong-Hwa.


My favorites in the exhibition were the following - (photos and videos taken from the internet) 

Jeon Jooho 
Digital animation "The White House".  

The animation depicts a small figure standing outside of The White House on the back of a $20 bill.  The figure slowly moves across the bill painting over the windows of The White House, rendering it into a bunker/fortress.  


Do Ho Suh 
"Fallen Star 1/5"

A beautiful collision of a traditional Korean house into the NY apartment building where Suh first lived when he came to the U.S.  Suh has been one of my favorite artists ever since I saw his silk and nylon textile replicas of his childhood home in Korea.  Now, Suh has changed his material but the work is no less powerful and poetic.


"Home Within Home"

This piece was absolutely breathtaking.  It was the NY house with the Korean house inside of it (the same houses in the Fallen Star piece) all in white.  Yes, one is reminded of Rachel Whiteread...but not exactly.


"Staircase"

This was not in the show but it is so beautiful that I'm including it here.



Kim Sooja  
"A Needle Woman"

Six Channel Video Projection
Filmed in six locations: Chad, Nepal, Israel, Brasil, Cuba, Yemen.
Kim Sooja taped herself standing still with her back facing the camera amidst a flow of people who either reacted to her or ignored her.  The people who pass by provide the interest in the video. Some play to the camera with a variety of facial expressions and actions while others simply provide a rhythm and flow to the counter direction of the piece.

 

 

There were other notable discoveries from the LA trip which I will post in the coming days.

Filed under  //   Asian Artists   LA Art  

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June 29, 2009

Gutai Group

My previous post on Atsuko Tanaka was very timely. The Gutai Group is currently on show at the Venice Biennale running through November 2009.
http://www.azito-art.com/topics/announcement/venice-biennale-photo-report.html
 
The Gutai Manifesto:
http://www.ashiya-web.or.jp/museum/10us/103education/nyumon_us/manifest_us.htm

Filed under  //   Asian Artists  

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June 27, 2009

Atsuko Tanaka 1932-2005

I was thumbing through my notebook today while I was sitting in a shady spot in the park contemplating my work, my life and where it all goes from here; while my dog enjoys the dogginess of her life. Through my notes, I was reminded of an artists that I discovered two years ago at Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany: Atsuko Tanaka. I was moved by the similarity of our work - materially, conceptually and in spirit. As I researched more, I discovered how early her works were, predating what we have attributed to western conceptual artists of the 1960's. (Not a single art teacher had ever made any mention of her or the Gutai group). It sadden me to know that she had passed away in 2005 and that I would never be able to meet her. But the solace is that I can continue to study the legacy of her work.
 
Atsuko Tanaka was a member of the Gutai group (gutai = concrete), which was founded in 1954 by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan, ending in 1972. The Gutai group combined diverse artists who all had undergone traumatic experiences during World War II. The artists, and among them specifically Tanaka, prefigured the Western post-war avant-garde movements with their radical conceptual approach. They radically expanded the notion of painting and sculpture into space and performative actions, a development that artists in Europe and the US discoverd much later in the late fities and early sixties.
 
"electric dress", 1957
(color picture taken at Documenta 2007)

   
Click here to download:
Atsuko_Tanaka_1932-2005.zip (121 KB)

Work, 1955 (yellow cotton)
Simply pinning the cotton directly to the wall, Atsuko Tanaka wanted to illustrate a new definition for the concept of a painting. Every piece of cotton shows one or two cuts of less than ten centimeters. To close them, Tanaka applied pieces of the same fabric or a few millimeters of glue alongside of the fabric's edge. This can be interpreted as an attempt to sharpen the awareness for boundaries; the fabric's edge itself symbolizing the dividing line between "thing" and "world".

Filed under  //   Asian Artists   Atsuko Tanaka   Gutai group  

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