First Hong Kong solo for Korean sculptor artist Lee Jae-Hyo

HONG KONG KOREAN SCULPTURE ART EXHIBITIONS

Work by internationally renowned Korean sculptor, Lee Jae-Hyo, will soon be on show in Hong Kong for the first time. In a new exhibition, “From the Third Hand of the Creator”, to be held at Hong Kong’s Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery from 31 July until 20 August this year, the gallery will present thirty pieces of representative works from Lee Jae-Hyo, including work from his “Wood” and “Nail” series.

Lee Jae-Hyo

Born in Hapchen, South Korea, in 1965, Lee Jae-Hyo graduated from Hong-ik University with a Bachelor degree in Plastic Art. Working with wood, nails, steel and stone as his primary media, Lee focuses his attention on exploring nature’s structural construction. The works are made from a process consisting of dedicated design and complex composing, sculpturing, grinding and refining. The wood pieces are assembled into curves, with which various futurist forms in hyper-modernist style are drawn. Each piece is still embroidered with growth rings. His method has been applauded for exuding a strong personal character and opening up a distinctive direction within contemporary Korean art.

New York-based art writer Jonathan Goodman describes the artist’s work in Sculpture Magazine:

Allowing the materials to speak to him, he builds self-contained worlds that mysteriously communicate with their outer surroundings. One of his most striking images is a photograph of a boat-like structure placed in the midst of a stream whose banks are covered with trees. Clearly a manmade sculpture put out into nature, the work contrasts with and succumbs to its surroundings. In the photograph, self-sufficiency is enhanced by the object’s position in a beautiful scene; the poetics of the sculpture lean on an environment that frames its polished surfaces, conferring a further dignity on a form in keeping with its forested setting.

Lee’s works are created through the assembly of a large number of units of the ingredient, and therefore become the respective images of the individual units. In their overall structures and forms, minimalist geometric lines can be found, rich in hyper-modernist imagination.

Lee’s art is built upon a typical oriental spirit – in the pursuit of unity and a harmonious co-existence between him and the universe, Lee attempts to demonstrate how humanity can continue to develop civilization with grace, on the basis of a mutual respect between the man-made and natural worlds.

Lee Jae-Hyo

Lee Jae-Hyo has exhibited widely: in Korea, Japan, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. He has won many awards, including the Grand Prize of Osaka Triennial (1998), Young Artist of the Day, presented by the Ministry of Culture of Korea (1998) and the Prize of Excellence in the 2008 Olympic Landscape Sculpture Contest. His artwork is collected by a number of prominent Asian, European, American and Pacific museums, hotels and universities.

“From the Third Hand of the Creator” will be on show at Hong Kong’s Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery from 31 July until 20 August this year.

JAS/KN/KCE

Related Topics: Korean artists, sculpture, gallery shows

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• Debbie Han first Korean artist to be awarded first Sovereign Asian Art Prize – May 2010 – an in-depth guest post from art writer Kate Bryan
• Art about curators: Korean artist Yang Ah Ham’s No Nonsense solo show – April 2010 – a brief post explaining new work by an influential female Korean artist
• Three sculptors who influenced the Taiwanese art landscape: Yang Ying-feng, Ju Ming and Pu Hao-ming – February 2010 – a great introduction to the works and lives of three renowned Taiwanese master sculptors
• Korean Eye exhibition in Saatchi Gallery London extended due to popularity – August 2009 – explains the Korean Eye exhibition’s popularity – an event which will be repeated later this year
• 13 Korean artists in survey at Singapore Museum to March 2009 – IHT – December 2008 – names and explains a number of important Korean artists

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Not-so-underground artist showcased in basement gallery: Tsong Pu’s TFAM solo

TAIWAN ART ART MUSEUM SHOWS SOLO EXHIBITION

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) in Taipei, Taiwan is currently exhibiting the works of Taiwanese artist Tsong Pu. The exhibition, entitled “Art from the Underground: Tsong Pu Solo Exhibition“, displays over 100 works representative of Tsong Pu’s thirty year career, ranging from his earliest works from the 1970’s to his more recent installation pieces, drawings and paintings. It comes amid rumblings from the art community that the Taipei Fine Arts Museum is failing to represent local artists.

“My first exhibit was held in this space 20 years ago. It seems that I haven’t improved much over that time because 20 years later I’m still … underground.” Tsong Pu, as quoted in the Taipei Times.

You Are The Beautiful Flower, Mix Media, 1996:2010 (re-presented in TFAM)

Tsong Pu was born in Shanghai (China) in 1947. He attended Fu-Shing Commerce and Industry High School in Taipei, Taiwan, and went on to study at Las Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando de Madrio, Spain. He professes to choosing a school where he would be forced to draw realistically, a style that is in direct contrast with the abstract work he has created since leaving Spain and returning to Taiwan in 1981.

Tsong Pu, the artist. Photo taken in TFAM

Tsong Pu has had a keen interest in European and American abstract expressionism since he was quite young. His early influences included Western art magazines from Japan and the US; the knowledge he took from these separated him from his peers.

In 1984, Tsong was presented with an award in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum sponsored “Contemporary Art Trends in the R.O.C. Exhibition”, an award hailed as being “an index of progress for Taiwan’s contemporary art world.”

He has held numerous solo exhibitions since 1983 in Spain and in Taiwan, as well as participated in domestic and international group exhibitions all over Asia, in Spain, the US, the UK, and Australia.

Tsong Pu is most well known for a painting style he developed during the 1980s, in which he paints an abstract pattern based on a grid, occasionally with diagonal lines of white. This is a method often praised by art critics as it has the ability to promote an emotional response while being thoroughly mechanical.

Transition, Acrylic on canvas, 130x193.5 cm, 1999

Tsong Pu is often viewed as one of the most progressive artists working in Taiwan today. His 1983 solo exhibition, “A Meeting of Mind and Material”, broke with established rules of painting, the result of his desire to abstain from simply drawing realistically and seeking new ways to present his ideas. He has been praised for his ability to embrace new concepts and new media, as he composes his paintings using inspiration from his everyday surroundings.

Enticing Encounter II, Mix Media, 193x130 cm, 1983

Editors’ Note:

We have since published a three-part interview in which Tsong Pu discusses six of his artworks in depth. This is framed by some discussion of the Taiwanese contemporary art community, past and present.

Read Part I
Read Part II
Read Part III

MM/KN

Related Topics: Taiwanese artists, museum shows, painting

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• Is China shooting a cultural missile at Taiwanese art? Taipei Times examines – April 2010
• Taiwan’s “father of printmaking” Liao Shiou-ping wins national award – profile – March 2010
• The ones to watch: four young Taiwanese artists in Taipei Arts Awards – January 2010
• First of its kind in Asia – Taiwan’s Digital Art Center officially opens – July 2009

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Cause and Effect: London solo for Macau-Russian artist Konstantin Bessmertny

Bessmertny's Causarum Cognitio Philosophicus

Courtesy Rossi & Rossi

RUSSIAN ARTIST TALK EXHIBITION

A technical impresario who underwent rigorous formal training, Konstantin Bessmertny has risen to become one of Macau’s foremost artistic ambassadors.

Raised in Far Eastern Russia on the Chinese border, Bessmertny learned the traditions of European painting while studying under Russian dissidents exiled eastward by the Soviets. Later moving to Macau, a city of Chinese and Portuguese history, perpetually shadowed by the bustling Hong Kong, Bessmertny is a creature of boundaries between times, cultures and places. He represented the Chinese enclave at the Venice Biennale in 2007.

Konstantin Bessmertny, La Battaglia di Anghiari dell'Opera Perduta di Leonardo (Copy after Leonardo No. 2) 2009

Bessmertny’s works address the many absurdities of contemporary living and our understanding of history. The paintings are lush, thick with coded allusions to high and low culture. They gleefully portray challenges of basic, almost universally accepted understanding of zeitgeist and history.

Rossi & Rossi, in association with Amelia Johnson Contemporary, is holding an exhibition of much anticipated new paintings and sculpture by Bessmertny — Causarum Cognitio or Knowledge of Causes.

The exhibition is to be held from May 7 to June 3 at Rossi and Rossi www.rossirossi.com. An artist’s talk was held on May 8  with Pamela Kember, a director of the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong.  Kember is a curator and historian of art. She has lectured at the Hong Kong Arts School and the Academy of Visual Arts in Hong Kong. She has contributed to Asian Art News, World Sculpture News and Art Asia Pacific.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue 52 pages in length.

Konstantin Bessmertny

Courtesy Museu de Arte de Macau

Pamela Kember

Courtesy Chelsea College of Art & Design

Related posts:

• The Problem of Asia; Para/Site art exhibition explores Asian identity in Sydney – May 2010
• Two contemporary art museums planned for Moscow – Sep 2009
• Wu Guanzhong – a retrospective at Singapore art museum – New York Times review – May 2009

AD/KCE

Art about curators: Korean artist Yang Ah Ham’s No Nonsense solo show

“Out of Frame” video still

 Courtesy the Artsonje Centre

 KOREAN CONTEMPORARY ART

 

Netherlands-based Korean artist Yang Ah Ham turns her focus on the art world itself.

In her work “‘Chocolate Head” , a series of head sculptures of famous curators around the world, the art world becomes an unusual subject  in her multimedia solo show “Adjective Life in the Nonsense Factory” at Art Sonje Center in Korea in March – April 2010.

Her works which focus on the individual are defined, she says, by adjectives, rather than verbs or nouns.

As a companion piece to Ham’s melted chocolate sculptures, she has also produced a video called “Out of Frame” which captures performance art based around the chocolate heads. This series of works examines power and the tension it creates.

Another piece “Collected Anonymous 2006-2007,” features a collection of elastic hair bands that Ham found in the streets of Amsterdam. She brought them back to Korea and conducted DNA tests, even though there was little way of finding out whom the hair bands belonged to.

Read more: KoreaTimes.co.kr

Get info: Artsonje.org

See videos: InsaArtSpace.or.kr

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AD/KCE

Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s solo at Royal Academy – what did the critics call it? Performance art and Turkish toilet

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART SCULPTURE

Anish Kapoor’s sculpture fills London’s Royal Academy

British Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s mid-career retrospective at the Royal Academy in London, England, has just wrapped up. Two years in the making, the exhibition ran from 26 September to 11 December 2009.

It must have been at least a little daunting for the artist; he is the first living British sculptor to have a solo show occupying the entire Royal Academy gallery. Critics had lots to say. Most were positively awe-inspired. It seems that reviewers found the show at once weird, entertaining and thought-provoking.

“Kapoor’s work has always been on the edge of entertainment, even as it’s tempted to high and grand pretension,” writes Tom Lubbock for The Independent.

Among the exhibits, that filled five major galleries in the Royal Academy, there were more than a few that critics believed stood out.

Tall Tree and the Eye stood in the courtyard of the Academy. Made of 76 highly polished, 15 metre high steel spheres which reflected their surroundings, it was a newly commissioned sculpture. The Economist said, “this fine work of art, or giant-sized perceptual toy, lights up, and lightens up, its venerable surroundings.”

Shooting Into the Corner consisted of a cannon fired at 20 minute intervals, shooting red wax balls into an opposite gallery space at 30 mph.

“A crowd-pleaser and teaser, Shooting Into the Corner will be held as affectionately in popular cultural memory,” summarises Jackie Wullschlager of the Financial Times.

Unfortunately, “as this artist’s work gets bigger and more grandiose, it also gets emptier and more sterile,” she continues.

Laura Cumming, writing for Guardian.co.uk, notes, “It’s a painting in progress – and not just Pollock, but Manet’s The Execution of Emperor Maximilian. It’s a sculpture – Richard Serra’s molten lead wall spatters from the Sixties. It’s a performance and a period piece, too, invoking the history of art.”

The Economist had a high opinion of the installation entitled Snail: “Snail, another exhibit, has a fat, coiling fibreglass body which opens out into a lusciously vermilion mouth. It is terrific.”

Svayambahm was a huge truck-sized block of soft red wax trundling through all five galleries on train-style tracks, leaving a snail-like trail of red on the floor, walls and ceiling.

Adrian Searle, writing for Guardian.co.uk, says of Svayambahm, “the daftness of some of Kapoor’s art is a good counterbalance to the more ponderous pretensions the artist has always been prey to. In fact, it is the wrestling between these two tendencies that produces [this], his strongest work.”

Both Shooting Into the Corner and Svayambahm were considerably less appealing to The Economist than other exhibits: “A cannon blasts gobs of lurid red wax-plus-Vaseline; a wagon-sized contraption made up of similar stuff deposits bits of itself on floors and doors as it slowly trundles through four rooms. Both these works seem unfortunate departures from Kapoor’s admired elegance and refinement.”

Brian Sewell, in a review for The London Evening Standard, mentions that both these works have been exhibited elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps the only original piece in the exhibition was Greyman Cries, Shaman Dies, Billowing Smoke, Beauty Evoked. Unfortunately, this piece vividly reminded Sewell “of the floor of the public lavatory in Baskale, the highest town in eastern Turkey, after months of extreme water shortage.”

The Economist wrapped up it’s opinion of all the exhibits in this comment: “Are they, in the event, relevant to their setting? Not often. But some, such as the fine mirror sculptures, are certainly enhanced by it: seeing the gallery’s gilding and skylight reflected upside-down in these pieces adds to their enjoyment. Others are splendidly positioned…”

Not everyone had something good to say. Sewell, in his review for The London Evening Standard, described the exhibition as a “damp squib” and is of the opinion that “its two most sensational kinetic exhibits [Shooting Into the Corner and Svayambahm] are given to failing their essential functions.”

Richard Dorment, in his review for The Telegraph, says of the exhibition overall: “No other contemporary British artist has Kapoor’s range of imagination and no one else routinely works on this scale. Over the years, he’s become more of a public than a private artist – or at least one whose most effective works are intended not for private contemplation, but to inspire awe in large numbers of people.”

Dorment views Kapoor’s work as something closer to performance art than sculpture.

The exhibition was reported to be a combination of historical artistic reference and self-referential humour, part homage to 1960s artists like Richard Serra and part active, living sculpture. The artist has proven his ability to highlight both primitive and modernistic elements in his work and provoke these responses in the viewer.

“What I admire about him most…is the unwavering depth of the experiences he conjures up,” said Waldemar Januszczak, of the Times Online.

It seems Anish Kapoor has again demonstrated his exceptional ability to work with traditional materials yet blend these with aspects of performance art. He works on such a large scale at every opportunity and has a huge range of imagination. This exhibition managed to absorb the viewer, highlighting what separates Kapoor from his contemporaries.

Lucie Charkin, writing for FAD, had this to say: “On reflection, no pun intended, whilst some moments in the show seem a little too contrived it could be argued that in his clever use and misuse of the RA’s galleries Kapoor has allowed himself to edge a little closer towards his personal goal of inventing ‘a new space’ with his art.”

Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent for The London Evening Standard, reported “talks are in progress with major museums and galleries about buying some of the exhibition’s biggest pieces, including the tower of steel balls from the courtyard.”

The exhibition will move to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in March 2010.

KN/KCE

Related Posts:

• A common man uncommonly direct – Indian contemporary sculptor Subodh Gupta in conversation in Hong Kong – December 2009
• Newslink round up Art Basel 2009 – Indian, Japanese artists dominate coverage of Asians – June 2009
• Indian born sculptor Anish Kapoor in top 10 at Sothebys London Contemporary Day Sale – July 2008

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Bookmark this – Asia Art Archive Biennial calendar

RESEARCH RESOURCE

Finding it difficult to keep up with the burgeoning global bi/triennial scene? It is not surprising. In the hundred years since the first shows were set up in the 1890’s there were at the most 17 active biennials but today, following a spurt of activity in the 1990’s,  there are more than 60. The Hong Kong based nonprofit,  Asia Art Archive keeps an up to date calendar and a comprehensive overview of each show, two invaluable resources for selecting which shows to visit. 

Link to the Asia Art Archive calendar here.

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