Han Zi Reinvented @ CSU Fullerton Art Gallery

Posted on 8:58 PM by James | 0 comments

Han Zi Reinvented: The Rhythm of Chinese Script currently on view in the main gallery at California State University Fullerton features works by seven contemporary Chinese artists who deals with the interpretation of the Chinese characters. The works range from photographic images of the body to painting and sculptures that evokes the calligraphic qualities of the characters, along with videos and computer program. The computer program in question is of the work by Xu Bing, who is most known for his hybridization of Chinese-English characters. The body figures prominently in the works of three of the artists. Chih-Cheng Chang and Bovey Lee presents the body in twists and contortions the is reminiscent of the Chinese character, while Morris Wang’s sculptures presents the characters as abstract structure that form the body.

From the curators Chih-Zer Yee and Danielle Susalla’s notes:
Revered as one of the highest forms of Chinese art, calligraphy embodies the sophistication and formal abstraction of Han Zi. In China, students learn Han Zi in a structured, square-word calligraphy format. The paper, ink, brush, and ink stone are essential tools known together as the “Four treasures of the Study.” The order of the brush strokes and the thickness of line are extremely important qualities. Each character is composed of spontaneous, yet definitive and unforgiving, brush strokes that together form words and symbols.

... [The artists] intergrate formal Eastern and Western training coupled with the history of their culture to reconstruct their identities. This collection reflects the energy, strength, and beauty of their hybrid existence and reaches out to a huge demographic of Asian Americans who are challenged with the same feelings of displacement.
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Banksy In Los Angeles

Posted on 7:22 PM by James | 0 comments

For a couple of weeks, the buzz had been that the British graffiti artist Banksy was going to put together a warehouse show in Los Angeles. This weekend the whole of L.A. had the chance to view the new works of this enfant terrible extraordinaire. The number of people that showed up for the event (especially on Saturday when I went) shouldn’t have been too surprising considering Banksy’s reputation. The entire show was solid, with interesting works abound. If there was any room for criticisms of the show, it was probably the blatant cruelty to the “elephant in the room,” to quote Banksy’s invitation. For me, the gesture was pure self-indulgence. Why did Banksy felt the need to subject the animal to close quarter, with a large amount of people—all this with pink wallpaper design painted right on the elephant? During my time there I saw the elephant keeper taking the animal outside for a walk and probably fresh air. There simply was no need for such action.

But again, it was a pretty good show. And while I do like the paintings on show, I still find Banksy’s interventionist gestures to be a bit more interesting. Also on view were videos documenting them, with the recent punking of Paris Hilton and the Guantanamo Bay prisoner blow-up doll at the Happiest Place on Earth.












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The Graphics of Rez

Posted on 7:17 PM by James | 0 comments









Few video games can tout the fact that they were ahead of their time like Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Rez. While critically acclaimed, it never reached the kind of sales number it deserved stateside.

Unlike the trend in video game development toward photorealistic graphics--a trend in computer graphics in general, one that Lev Manovich astutely observed in The Language of New Media as being Soviet-style Social Realism--the graphics of Rez is a combination of the throwback to vector-based games and abstract 3d elements.

The video game community in general wants the latest and greatest in computer graphics. With each generation of graphic cards or console machines, the selling point for these products tends to be how many more polygons the cards or machines can process comparing to the previous generation. But as we all know, the ultimate in photorealistic graphic does not an aesthetically innovative visual make.

This is not to say that the graphics of Rez is all that innovative. As I have said before, Rez combines the old and the traditional. What make Rez more interesting than every other Half Life or Doom is how it visualizes the bits & bytes world of virtual reality better than any games that try to achieve any levels of photorealism. The visuals of the game is indeed the "grahic vibration" that Mizuguchi was going after. Knowing that the entire experience of Rez is modelled after Wassily Kandinsky's notion of synaesthesia, and that it is the club culture that Mizuguchi was trying to emulate, one can finally understands the graphics to be eyecandy in the best of that sense.

As computer games try to push out polygons in increasing numbers, will there be another game that will risk it all with its visuals like Rez? (There was a game that came pretty close--Belisa's Isabelle. That game also never actuallly became popular, but its attempt at abstraction is a treat indeed.) The hunger by gamers for realism parallels with what the majority of the general art-viewing public thinks makes good art: the level of realism in an artwork equates good art, even one that is made by the hands of a very great artist. But art history shows that realism is not the only criteria for what make a piece of art "good." Perhaps one day, there will be some game producers somewhere who will be more interested in making games with a varied approach to graphics. We need more games that will follow the Picasso Effect than they do Social Realism. It will definitely make our visits to these virtual worlds a bit more diverse and interesting.

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The Sketches Of Frank Gehry

Posted on 6:36 PM by James | 0 comments


Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The joke told by the musician Bob Geldof in the documentary goes something like this: If you see an architect at a party, punch him! Architects have a social contract to produce buildings that are not only functional, but also ones that are aesthetically pleasing as well. But the truth is that the latter are hard to come by. But of course you wouldn’t really want to punch Frank Gehry.

The documentary, made by the director Sydney Pollack, looks at the working methods and the resulting products from the mind of Frank Gehry, the architect responsible for the iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, among many other buildings around the world. Pollack admits to not knowing much about architecture, and the documentary serves as his education into the subject. Having Gehry as your teacher isn’t such a bad deal.

Pollack did a good job trying to balance his subject matter with interviews with Gehry, artist-friends like Ed Ruscha and Dennis Hopper, his critics, and even his therapist, who provided insights into Gehry that serve as bookends to sections within the documentary.

Gehry’s working method is much closer to that of an artist’s. Pollack’s inclusion of footage of Gehry morphing and forming his architectural models comes as a revelation into the architect’s process. A self-described computer illiterate, Gehry was one of the very first to utilize computer in the dictation of his forms. After being unable to correctly describe his buildings in drawings, he asked his assistants if there wasn’t a better, and a more accurate way, to describe what he was sketching.

The movie was put in limited release when it was in theaters so I missed it. Catching this on DVD is a real treat. As the director Alexander Payne comments in the Special Feature, this documentary will be one where people will come to for a long time, as long as there are interests in Gehry’s architecture. Not bad for being Pollack’s first documentary.

Photo from chriseckel’s Flickr pool


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