Archive for the 'Art' Category

Exhibitionism

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Electric Pig
on June 30, 2008
in Art, Photography and Toys
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This weekend, Eri and I realised that about 3 separate exhibitions that we had meant to see for ages were all ending, and with an impending hangover on Sunday, Saturday was the only day we had free. So, five exhibitions in a day then...

First up was the double Moriyama Daido exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. The exhibition, in two parts was a retrospective of his work in one gallery and then large prints of his Hawaii series in the second. I found that his photos generally got more interesting the older they were. I found a lot of the exhibition a little confusing and realised that I don't really have any idea what made certain shots "good" or not, but a lot of the older ones, particularly the Light and Shadow series, were beautiful.

I wasn't as impressed by the Hawaii series. Some of them are quite nice, but on the whole I find Moriyama's style doesn't work as well outside Japan. I found some of the Buenos Aires ones a little dry for the same reason, although Eri said she liked the Buenos Aires ones most of all, and, being a lot more artistically inclined than me, she could well be right.

After Moriyama, we went down to the basement of the museum for the World Press Photo 2008 exhibition. I enjoyed this far more than the Moriyama. I prefer photojournalism to "art" photos, so this was always going to be far more suited to me. Some of the shots on display here were awe-inspiringly good. I think the photo below is probably the one I liked most; there is a very strange and ominous atmosphere to the position of the men in it that I really love. Click to see some of the other highlights.

After the photos were went to Omotesando for Eri's Blythe Once Upon A Wonder World Exhibition and Beauty Contest. Eri has come out recently as a bit of a Blythe fan, despite hating herself for doing so. Girls and women who like Blythe in Japan have a (deserved) reputation as being on the verge of the goth-loli cosplay kind of scene that Eri loathes, but nonetheless, she finds herself liking the doll itself. I can't really complain, considering my own interest in toys though. The Blythe exhibition was properly wierd. There were six areas where Blythe dolls had been dressed up in costumes to represent characters in Fairy Stories (Little Red Riding Hood etc), and then in the middle of the room were are hoardes of Blythes all in costumes designed by international fashion houses. Serious looking women were walking round with voting ballots choosing the costumes they liked best. There's a big gala event in July to crown the winner...which just kind of beggars belief. (Photo by Bubujojo)

Last was the yearly Medicom Exhibition in the Parco Art Gallery in Shibuya. I thought the gallery space itself was a little less nicely designed than in previous years, and there seemed less on display too. The highlights for me were the (much lauded) wooden Bearbricks, the new Star Wars figures, and the Mick Jagger doll. I didn't win a prize this year though, which somewhat ruined the event for me.

Beijing Day Three

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Electric Pig
on March 7, 2008
in Art and Travel
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After staying directly opposite Beijing Railway Station, waking up in our courtyard hotel in a quiet Hutong backstreet is pretty idyllic. The clouds from yesterday have gone and the room in dipped in sunlight. We set off early and wander down the street to see if the Nike exhibition is open. It isn't. Instead, we buy some breakfast from a little hole-in-the-wall and eat as we walk to the nearest subway entrance. We take the train and then a taxi to the 798 art district.

The Dashanzi Art District (know as 798 after the name of the factory that sits in its centre), is an area of Chaoyang in the north east of the city. It used to be an area of factories and military buildings, but now the whole area has been turned into art galleries and cafes. It's a little bit like areas in New York or London, but totally art related. There is graffiti all over the walls of the buildings. Plants and weeds push up through the cracks in the pavements. Old industrial cogs lie around the streets and huge pipes, now rusty, form a web above.

We wandered round for a while, taking photos of everything, people, walls, graffiti, statues, buildings, trees, and then found a cafe. Thinking it was about 11, we had a nice coffee and cheesecake and then realised it was actually 1.30. Strange lunch. After, we walked round some more. Stairways lead to strange design offices and tiny galleries. Fasionista girls sat looking bored waiting for customers. We found a bright shop where Eri bought some notepads. We saw a massive fist in the ground, the size of a car.

The biggest gallery is the 798 Space, in the old factory that gives the area its name. The building is pretty stunning - clearly designed practically, it is nonetheless pretty aesthetically amazing. Old Maoist slogans are still painted in massive characters on the walls. Glass windows in the floor show old industrial equipment. Old drills and lathes still stand around the space, like exhibits. The only exhibition on when we were there was some artist's (whose name, I annoyingly can't remember) stamps. They were politically pretty radical, mainly about the Chinese population living on their knees, depicting scenes like migrant workers forced to sell pirate DVDs on the streets of the capital to feed their children. The were really interesting, but you couldn't help notice the irony of the largest gallery in the whole area being used only to display a few sheets of stamps.

We left the area to go back to the centre of the city and try to find the Pyongyang Store. According to Lonely Planet, it was a store in the centre where you could buy stuff (t-shirts and the like), fresh from the Axis of Evil. Unfortunately, it had only been an exhibition and was long since finished. It's annoying when guide books make mistakes like this, confusing an exhibition for a store seems like a relatively easy distinction, but whatever. Back to our hotel's area to try out a restaurant for lunch (about 4.30pm) that we had seen the day before.

Not having a clue what we were ordering, we got far too much, and I was a little worried by what the Cow Balls was. Quite tasty though. Salty. Next Eri went for a massage and I went to buy myself some new sneakers! Yeah! It seems recently that wherever I go in Asia I can find sneakers in my size, just not in midget Japanland. Oh well. Got a nice pair of new Dunk for a little cheaper than they would have been in Japan (if they even had my size).

Evening and we went off to Nanluogu Xiang, a really cool little hutong street near our hotel and had a lovely coffee in a nice cafe that Eri's guide book recommended. A very nice family run place that did an excellent apple pie. Wandering down the alleyway, with little shops and bars, beautiful wooden lattice work in the windows and walls, the light from the shops is the only thing lighting the street outside. The end of the trip, back to the hotel to pack up and get to bed for our 4.30am start. Must come back to Beijing soon...

Desktop Boredom

Published
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Electric Pig
on February 18, 2008
in Art, Design and Photoshop
. 4 Comments

No lessons at work today. At my current school, they have a system where the schedule changes every week. I think it's due to this school being one of the biggest in the city and thereby having too many classes to fit them all into a regular schedule, so instead making a new one every week, according to the school events and whatnot seemed (to someone) to be a much better idea. Of course what this means in reality is that my schedule is never even considered until about lunchtime on Monday morning, with my first lessons generally taking place around Tuesday afternoon. Not that I am complaining - it makes for a very pleasant, relaxing start to the week, with ample opportunity to catch up on the few dusty corners of the internet I am yet to read and to (not) study, and, as today, to play about on Photoshop. Today, I made this desktop/picture/thing of Suzuki Emi. She is a model/actress who, despite (or perhaps, because of) being very pretty, is probably about one stuttering, synaptic fart away from total brain death.

A Tour of World Heritage Sites in Lego

Published
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Electric Pig
on February 11, 2008
in Art and Toys
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Eri and I took a lovely tour of some of the world's most famous places today, via the miracle of Lego. This exhibition at the Parco gallery in Shibuya is, predictably, wonderful. We managed to visit the Taj Mahal (amazing), St Basil's Cathedral (also very good), and even Machu Pichu (totally pointless - the ruins could have been anywhere without the mountains in the background). It was interesting to see the Palace of Westminster, and to realise I have no idea about what it looks like apart from the bit around Big Ben!　Perhaps the best thing though, was the piece by artist/writer/TV pervert pundit, Lily Franky, who did a version of the Leaning Tower at Pisa being attacked by Oden Kun and his friends. An inspirational exhibit overall and made me want to go out and start making Lego guns and penises again like the good-ol'days.

Hokusai

Published
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Electric Pig
on January 12, 2008
in Art
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Horrible weather today; cold, windy and lots of chubby rain. Instead of going to some temple as me and the Eri had planned, we decided to go to the Hokusai exhibition at the Edo Tokyo Museum. The exhibition centres on the relationship between the famous painter (probably responsible for the modern Japanese fetish of tentacle sex) and the German physician, Philipp Franz von Siebold, who was the resident doctor on the Dutch colony on the artificial island of Deshima, off the coast of Nagasaki, at the time, the only place where foreigners were allowed in Japan, during its closed-country period. Though the story of how their relationship seems rather unclear, von Siebold came into possession of some of Hokusai's paintings, which formed the basis of the exhibition, although many of Hokusai's most famous paintings were also included, like The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, and Red Fuji, both from his series of the 36 Views of Mount Fuji. The thing that was most interesting for me about these, and indeed all the most famous of his paintings, was how small they were. Having seen massive enlargements of thee paintings as posters in Athena and on TV, and having seen so many western paintings in galleries, I was expecting these to be of a similar size. It was a little strange to find out that both are really quite tiny, less than an A4 sheet of paper. The fact that they are so small makes the level of detail all the more impressive. One thing that did somewhat ruin some of them was that the ones that were owned by the national museum in France had massive "Owned By The National Museum of France" stamps all over them. What kind of idiot would put a bloody massive red stamp in the middle of a masterpiece? A mustachioed, beret-wearing, onion-selling one apparently. There were a lot of other really beautiful paintings that were less famous but no less impressive. I particularly liked the painting of Ama, (female divers), which looks like something from a nightmare, and Eri was a big fan of his 53 Stations of Tokaido, as there was (a little unbelievably) a Famicon (NES) game of it that she played as a kid - I think that that's probably the best reason I've ever heard for the appreciation of the works of a great master!

Under The Influence

Published
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Electric Pig
on January 9, 2008
in Art
. 2 Comments

I'm not a massive comics fan or anything, but I would really like to go and see this exhibition. Over 100 artists have all done versions of their favourite Stan Lee creations. I don't know why, but I find things like this, derivatives perhaps, rather than the originals, more interesting than the originals themselves. The same often goes for cover versions of songs over the originals. For me, working within the framework of the original often reveals more about the artists or musicians than their own creations do. I'd really like to see the whole exhibition of these.