Art Central / Art Basel Hong Kong 2016

March madness returned to Hong Kong reportedly in the coldest March weather since 1978 and there was a steady downpour as  made my way from the IFC towards the large Art Central marquee on Hong Kong's harbour front. Work commitments meant that I had to tackle both Art Central and Art Basel Hong Kong in the same day!

As I arrived at Art Central, the rain had obviously made a dent in the audience figures but also made viewing the artwork a little more convenient. The outdoor food court area was a wash-out but in the exhibition hall there were some notable pieces of work to see. As I toured around the gallery booths, I had talk to artist Claire Lee at the Mur Nomade booth and later I met Professor Chan Yuk Keung of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who was also visiting.

A bite to eat replenished my energy before walking across to the Convention and Exhibition Centre to  take in this year's Art Basel HK. Approaching the escalators from the vehicle drop-off level, I passed a huge queue of people lining up in the hope of purchasing a day ticket.
This year the 'hot' material was cardboard. It was everywhere, stacked up on trollies, squashed into bails, made into artificial rocks, whatever you could think off.
I managed to keep moving forward despite flagging spirits and I was rewarded by a few treasures that appeared before me as though to rescue me from exhaustion.

After 5 hours I reached the end and before leaving the Centre I collected a bright green Frieze bag full of magazines and journals from the various stands in the lobby area. I also bumped into Art writer John Batten, on his way in for one of the panel sessions set aside for conversations / discussions.

Below is a sample of the gems I discovered during my day, artist name listed:

Ian McKeever

Jannis Kounellis

Max Ernst

Constantin Brancusi

David Nash

Alberto Burri

Isaac Julien

Issac Julien

Richard Long

M+ - The Sigg Collection

Before the completion of the long-overdue M+ Museum of Visual Culture, to be constructed on Hong Kong's West Kowloon area of reclamation, there have been several events and activities organised to keep alive the promise of M+ until the time when procrastination and indescribable bureaucracy finally gives way and this city of 7 million at last has a venue that does justice to a city of its size.

The latest event is the public display of work donated by Swiss collector Dr. Uli Sigg back in 2012. This work will form the nucleus of the M+ collection and it certainly serves that purpose.

Over 80 pieces of contemporary Chinese art made between 1974 and 2011 appear to comprise a valid representation of the most successful contemporary art made in China during those years. Many of the most renowned artists in Chinese contemporary art have work in the collection and I found it a very worthwhile and enjoyable show.

The line up included Ai Wei Wei, Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, Wang Keping and Zhang Xiaogang,  but my particular favourites were: Huang Yong Ping's 'Six Small Turntables' of 1988, Lin Yilin's 'Safely manoeuvring across Lin He Road' of 1995, Song Dong's 'Breathing - Houhai (Back Sea) - Tiananmen Square' of 1996,  Zhang Huan's 'Family Tree' of 2000 and Lu Ring's 'Untitled' of 2000 (countless numbers of tiny squares hand-drawn on an extremely long roll of paper).

This collection sets M+ off to a good start. What Hong Kong really needs is a world-class collection of contemporary art, a stimulating calendar of international exhibitions and a forum for local Hong Kong artists to promote themselves. The first two are very desirable but the last one is a definate necessity!

Zhang Huan - Family Tree, 2000

Song Dong - Breathing - Houhai (Back Sea) - Tiananmen Square', 1996 

Huang Yong Ping - Six Small Turntables, 1988

Lu Ring - Untitled, 2000

Event Horizon - Anthony Gormley in Hong Kong

After a year's delay Antony Gormley's city-wide installation 'Event Horizon' finally appeared on the Hong Kong skyline.
A year ago, a suicide in the city frightened sponsors away but finally Hong Kong joined world cities such as London, New York, Sao Paolo, and Rio de Janeiro in integrating Gormley's work into the local environment.
The project was initiated in 2007 when it was first recognised that over half of the world's population were living in cities and was first installed in London.
Antony Gormley's sculptures (cast from his own body) stare out across the cities in which they have been installed, surveying the cityscape, trying to understand how they fit into this chaotic, man-made jungle.
The installation is due to be dismantled on May 18th but the memory (for me at least) will last much longer.

Giuseppe Penone at Gagosian Hong Kong

The exhibition ‘Leaves of Stone’ opened at the Gagosian HK in January 2016 presenting art that was as poetic as the exhibition title suggested.

In Foglie di pietra, several freestanding pieces comprised trees cast in bronze, their branches entwined, embracing stone architectural fragments that had been carved into decorative, classical acanthus leaves.

Another series, Indistinti confine, featured marble trees, their limbs removed and replaced with bronze knots. Sharp, rusting spikes appeared to pierce the trees in specific places, from where the rust seemed to bleed down and into the marble trunks.

A large drawing took up one entire wall comprised of thorns, thousands of them arranged as though to describe a pair of lips – Spine d’acacia.

Riflesso del bronzo - a highly polished wall-mounted bronze mirror reminds us that mirrors in antiquity presented to the viewer a warm, almost sun-drenched reflection. The mirror was accompanied by its ‘reflection’, a casting that was then itself cast and so on until there were the 8 versions we can see in the exhibition.

Through handcrafted stone and marble Penone comments on the millennia-old relationship between mankind and nature and between past and present cultures and throughout his work he achieves a poetry that takes on physical form.

Kent Foran - Photographer

I was recently looking at the work of photographer Kent Foran and felt provoked to put a mention here in the hope that others would also appreciate his work.

Kent works at the Hong Kong Design Institute in the English Language Department but away from the HKDI campus Kent is prolific photographer. 

People often discuss the relative merits of photographers and what may be the reason for the success of their work. For me it is quite simple. It has nothing to do with the equipment being used or how expensive the camera. It is not even due to the education of the individual, although it can steer someone in the general, correct direction. For me it is quite simply having an eye for an image. We may call it the 'Decisive moment' as Cartier-Bresson did, or describe how someone is good at composition. The fact remains that when an artist creates a work, many elements come together to form a powerful resolution, an equilibrium of qualities that is difficult to describe in detail. In fact to do so would be similar to dissecting a beautiful and noble animal in order to understand what makes it so. 

Kent, for me, has a terrific 'eye'. His work speaks for itself, so please visit his website and  you see what I mean.

http://www.kentforan.com

Leonardo Drew at Pearl Lam Gallery, Hong Kong.

As I  entered the Pedder Building in Central on my way to visit the exhibition 1,000 islands at the Simon Lee gallery I saw a sign advertising another gallery opening, this time upstairs at the Pearl Lam Gallery. The exhibition was the first display of work by Leonardo Drew in Asia and was a wonderful surprise for me.
For the last few months I had been enjoying videos of his work on Youtube.com and poring over images on internet search engines, thoroughly enjoying Leonardo's work. So, completely out of the blue I was able to see them up close and finally appreciate what it is that he does.

Apparently inspired by a city dump that surrounded his childhood home, Leonardo Drew carefully and systematically constructs chaos from material that he 'ages' and 'distresses' in order to instil his works with an atmosphere of haphazard juxtaposition that overlies careful and considered logic.

As a sculptor myself I could sense the enjoyment that he takes in the transformational process that creates the work. From the way that one component section leads onto the next (citing Mondrian as a reference), or how one material leads us into the neighbouring material, it's possible to follow his train of thought and the way the work has lead the creator in it's urge to be born. The works are organic in form and it is as if the works have grown naturally, with Leonardo providing the help and assistance that the work demanded.

A wonderful exhibition.

Number 18C

Number 18C - Detail

Number 19C

Number 20C

Number 11C

Number 11C - Detail

Number 21C

Number 21C - Detail

Number 18C - Detail

Number 9C - Detail

Number 9C - Detail

Number 9C - Detail

Nam June Paik: The Late Style - Gagosian Hong Kong

It is a well-known fact that one of the most important and rewarding aspects of sensual pleasure is the anticipation. In full knowledge of this on the evening I arrived at the Gagosian Gallery in Central to see the first exhibition in Hong Kong of the work of Nam June Paik, I deliberately delayed entering the exhibition space by accepting a glass of champagne and calmly reading the press releases in the reception area. After around 15 minutes and suitably primed I then decided it was time to see the work.

I first became aware of Paik’s work in 1977/78 during the foundation course I attended at Jacob Kramer College of Art in the UK (now renamed Leeds College of Art) but I hadn’t had the opportunity of experiencing much of his work since that time so this was a genuine pleasure for me.

As it states in the gallery’s press release Paik’s work represents a ‘lifelong exploration of the role of technology in culture’ and Gagosian’s exhibition of Paik’s work illustrated this perfectly.  Sometimes playful or comical, sometimes critical, displaying a subjective personal view one minute and then becoming almost cynically objective the next Paik explores mankind’s experience of life that has today become inseparable from communicative media and the technology that allows the universal spread of information, whether useful or not.

There were so many highlights in the show but if I had to select one for comment it would have to be Golden Buddha, 2005. A gilded bronze Buddha sits serenely on a white platform as if intently watching a colour television set that broadcasts the image of the Buddha’s own head by means of the Closed-circuit video camera positioned directly above the TV screen. The video camera focuses tightly on the Buddha’s face. It feels too close. We can see nothing on the screen apart from the face of the Buddha, is it a fragment of a Buddha?, is it whole Buddha?, the location is a mystery, the context is totally lost.

Is this Paik’s commentary on the way the media distorts reality, or on the way it selects which parts of the real story it will relay to the viewer? When we appreciate another culture, we attempt to be respectful, we are careful not to offend by misreading culturally embedded symbols and yet in this piece of work by Paik, the camera doesn’t record what the gallery viewer sees, it ignores the entirety of the scene and selects only the face to zoom in on.

Is this Paik’s intention? Maybe it is, maybe not.  As an artist myself I feel the most important function of an artwork is to throw out these questions. For me this is one of, and probably the main function of a work of art: to ask questions. I came away from this exhibition thinking about these subjects, all provoked by Paik’s work. Unfortunately Paik may have left us but his work is still very much alive and it continues to ask questions of us all.

Golden Buddha, 2005

Bakelite Robot, 2002

359 Canal Street, 1991

Chinese Memory, 2005