Tenacity and Innocence

Even a thematic exhibition by some academic also found its deserving niche along side those numerous art galleries in Moganshan, Shanghai. At the scene, the participants were busy putting up their works. Within minutes into browsing their works, the heat mass collected inside the unventilated gallery became intolerable. I left. Only through this poster that I came to understand its theme - Tenacity and Innocence - fitting for those freshmen to exhibit their academic, testing their potentials first time ever for public review.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication
Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Women

Women is a group show by several young aspiring women artists. The poster together with exhibition write up and presentation concept hardly match anything displayed. During the opening, the rather large gallery was full of art objects without values on the floor, on the wall and in the air. Although the gallery appeared diverse and sprinkled with displays, Women mixed and again unmatched with each of the other artworks already present. The only appropriate and meaningful consistency is its title, Women or Us (wo-men as pronounced in Mandarin). With Zhang Ai-ling as the representative but deceased women writer of the last century prominently shown in the poster, the exhibition depicts the Us as women, upholding the women's roles in a group exhibition or in a society at large.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Slogan & Sexuality

The slogan shouting 50s through 70s era of those striving revolutionary figures mutually superimpose, in either way, with the prancing pop-eyed nude sex kitten in her comic strip neon hair color. Being shredded into several cascading sun beam segments, with building constructions rising tall as backdrop, the painting takes on a social dimension that critically examines the not too far into memories of recent revisionists and pragmatists quest for social reform, and now being overlapped with the ubiquitous wayward flimsy fantasy.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Beijing Youths

With ageless, definitive and symbolic Chinese red as backdrop, three Beijing youths in their plain t-shirts and sunglasses, posing like some cool dudes, are all ahead of the Tian’anmen structure in time. On the other hand, simulating a picture frame dotting with flowers all around, two young women with popping eyes full of tender desires seem to greatly contrast the militaristic and bear-like world out there in front of them.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Residential Permit

This is one of the art subject studies in series. Those gullible, innocent migrant workers continue to assert their demand for temporary residential permit to live or work within a city and make a better living. When thinking about feeding one fifth of mankind, and out of population control or migratory control, the subject study directly begets the utmost critical issues of equitable distribution of production versus consumption, needs versus wants, ideas versus ideals.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Swinging a Fatal Blow

In an all prepared moment to swing a fatal blow, a skin cut, topless man armed with a cleaver is rather ratty with his decisive but unknown intent. However, his toothy grin is apparently some act up cheeky moment trying to impress or appeal to different kind of viewers.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

A Woman with a Mask

A woman with a mask explicitly reveals the contemporary Chinese women unabashed in enhancing their beauty in order to appear socially well groomed but more than helping to boost cosmetics sales. Occasionally, the sight of those modern day women thronging the cosmetics counters during great sales, and ferociously embracing the insurgent cosmetic products, is already a clear perspective in those women joining the rank, and no sign of returning any time now, of all the pretty and modern women alike around the world.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

Booming and Blooming: An overview of various art shows during a weekend trip to various art galleries in Shanghai

Opening: Booming

Respectively at Moganshan and at The Bund on June 9th and 10th 2007, the weekend trip to various art galleries can be a leisure odyssey full of visual treasures. Towards the sumptuous and hearty end of the days, the trip perhaps only meant a cross sectional peek into the up and coming art scenes of Shanghai that could possibly be projected into the future art market of China. Riding the bandwagon of the current bullish economic market, the art market also seems to enjoy this unprecedented boom, and blooming. As an overview of Shanghai art market, if not China, truly, as the proverbial saying goes, bai hua qi fang or concurrent blossoming of thousand flowers does impeccably denote another bright and hopeful future of art in China.

Closing: Blooming

While the art scene is blooming with various forms of artistic creativities, Moganshan right by the Suzhou River has also judiciously flourished and matured into an art colony. Whereas, the Shanghai Art Gallery over at The Bund right by the Huangpu River continues to showcase the top end creative talents of China.

Reclusive and facing the Suzhou River, in those seemingly downtrodden and under-conditioned warehouses, and apparently demanding cheaper and affordable rentals, after seeing an artist intently executing several precise but laborious horizontal brush strokes assert the fact that sign of unquestionable quality in art China abound, and should be noteworthy and to celebrate in time to come.

Suzhou River and Huangpu River will continue to flow while various big and small barge boats continue to ply the rivers. Together, many Shanghainese will continue to live on by these rivers, and carry on with their daily lives like any other day before. These two days on weekend, the clear bluish sky seemed to signal signs of great expectation in art development of Shanghai.


Jeremy Tew
Art Explication

Shanghai, June 11th 2007

These Days: Remembering the Passing

February 13th is the day before the Valentine's Day. Whereas, the 7th Day of the First Lunar Calendar is believed to be the day when the first human being was born, or the birthday of humankind. Cyclically, these two days mentioned will coincide with each other. Another of the same lunar day that matches the Gregorian calendar day the same is up and coming for the year 2008. When this day coincides, it was the day when my dad had passed.

That was the morning when I rose rather early. I took to cleaning the house around and doing the rounds in the kitchenette. My dad also rose and came downstairs. He was very surprised and giggled with affection to see me up this early. I smiled and answered positively. And he went straight to the washroom to clean up for the morning. I took a look at him washing up; later, he went to the back yard to do something else.

Soon after, my mom was wailing and repeatedly calling for me from the living room while I was still in the kitchen. Sensing something not so right, I rushed to the living room. Appeared helpless and sad, my mom was standing over my dad and watching him. My dad was sitting on the couch silently and I knew my dad had passed.

On August 6th, 2007, my mom had also passed.

I shall remember these days.


Jeremy
January 15th 2008 腊八节

Here and there and everywhere in Shanghai during X'mas 2007.

No wonder they called it flyover....seeing is believing.

Photo taken at the Bund, Shanghai on the last second day of 2007.

A panoramic view scanning the context of my neighborhood from my 19th floor office.

On right, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Building and Pudong Development Bank Building next door as well as tall buildings located at horizon were all smouldered in the fog.

A view taken as I was walking from my neighborhood to work at the Shanghai Stock Exchange Building shown in this foggy early morning.

A shot taken from the window of my office floor, showing the early morning rush on ground while the River Pu in the horizon was lost in the fog.

A view toward my neighborhood from my 19th floor office. Two buildings left of the blue roofed building is where I now live.

Fog day on January 10th 2008

l, Lo Ching, the curator; ctr, me; r, Li Jinyuan, the exhibiting artist

From Genesis to Home Away From Home Pastoral Landscape

A quick preview of Li Jinyuan's exhibition - The Divine Quest - at the Sunbow Art Gallery sets free the mind to think solely on origin and tradition, time and history in temporal and panoramic perspective. Another gingerly thumbing through the exhibition catalog would further delve into Li's artworks in a very psychologically entrenched ways. His paintings exude either the paradox of time gone by or time forever craving for; they are but during the time of Genesis through the virginal pastoral landscape. The exhibition seems to continue to exert the traditional painting form cum literati mind set in idealizing for pristine living landscape; however, it is a paradise lost. It is the search for ideal, for heavenly state of being and for peace of mind.

The whirlwind coagulation or diffusion of ink darkness delineates Genesis, the beginning of time. Rather, it is the inquiry into the beginning of a simple notion when the very first ink drop splashed onto the blank painting canvas. The notion of divine inquiry sets in when the very first notion was formed. Why is it that we are here on Earth? For what purpose that we are born on Earth and not elsewhere? These are merely a few divine inquiries that shall presume neither a polemic stance nor an end to means.

As reading of Li's work continues, the pristine landscape and earthly delight soon formed. Together with absolute calm and aloof solitude, all else is peaceful. Untainted, unruffled, untouched, it sure looks like heaven and earth and as the way it should be. All in all, a very quiet beauty rumbles and creeps within Li's paintings that speak about the living tradition of Chinese ink painting.

Like his generations before and many generations to come, Li also tirelessly examines the state of mind, a universal appeal or topic. One after another, these paintings incrementally reveal the order and nature of the world we once lived in but lost. These are scenarios of Genesis that nobody would ever remember even in their deepest psyche - for it is only some living imagination of the mind, and for they are the undying generational quest to know the very first moment when the state of matter was formed. It is long gone, long gone for an uncountable number of light years, and could only be resurrected via ceremonially reprised presentation of Li's paintings alike.

The truth may still be out there; however, it is certainly not the ulterior quest at this moment of writing. As a painter and via his mastered painting medium, Li Jinyuan carries on to inquire into the very divine nature of truth as well as truth about nature. It is easy to say that he paints time while time drips away across the painting canvases. It can also be interpreted as Li's curiosity traversing into the uncharted territory close to heaven. Otherwise, he made it so clear that his paintings broke through into the universe of the mind. These are some of the never-ending inquiries so near and yet so far away from home, and home away from the home of heart.

p/s all the pictures of paintings are lifted out of the catalog The Divine Quest.

Jeremy Tew
Art Explication
Shanghai, January 1st 2008

Sun drenched winter morning on Sunday, Dec. 30th 2007