Pandemic Chaekgeori

Whether casually chatting with friends, having a business meeting or being interviewed by the media, stationing yourselves in front of your bookcase seems to be the default way to communicate in these times.   Our books send a message, “Yes, I do read.” 

The books give clues to our tastes and personalities.  The seriousness of PBS NewsHour put Judy Woodruff showing off a red room of books to match her hair coloring.  One would think with her penchant for red dresses, we would find historian Lucy Worsley surrounded by red books — but she opts for a contrasting blue and grey wall of books without a red tome in sight.  Comedian Seth Myers manipulated old copies of his mother’s favorite book, The Thorn Birds.  And not at all funny, yet ironic, Betsy DeVos, the amoral and corrupt Secretary of “Education”, posed in front of a bookcase devoid of books.

The times we live in can certainly influence an artist’s work.  I am no exception.   While I have always lived surrounded by books, my inspiration came from a brief video posted by San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.   I discovered Chaekgeori — it’s a Korean still-life where the artist depicts books and objects on shelves.  My color-coded bookcases demanded to be painted.   Soon after, I started asking friends for photos of their bookcases. In some ways, each painting is as much a portrait as it is a still life.

All paintings are acrylic on paper, 9"x12".  These are the first ones, with more to follow.

Collected Letters at the Asian Art Museum

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary with events and exhibits.  The highlight so far has to be the new piece they acquired by the Chinese artist Liu Jianhua. The work is titled Collected Letters and is an installation of porcelain letters from the Latin alphabet as well as Chinese characters.  The letters are suspended in an alcove on the second floor loggia.  They are adjacent to cases of Chinese porcelain from various periods.  The loggia is one of the areas in the museum that most retains the feel of the public library that was the original purpose of the building.  The upper walls have literary quotes carved into the stonework.  Above Collected Letters there is a proverb from the King James Bible: “A soft answer turneth away wrath but grievous words stir up anger.”  On it’s own, Collected Letters is a great piece, but this particular placement in the museum might be the first time when the  Asian Art Museum has truly installed a work that bridges the gap between an early 20^th Century library and a museum dedicated to Asian art. 

Chinese 28 at the Asian Art Museum

Chinese 28 a new exhibit of 28 Chinese contemporary artists opened at this weekend in San Francisco at the Asian Art Museum.   The Asian has stayed true to its reputation and continues to show some of the best contemporary art (from anywhere) that gets shown in San Francisco.

Before even starting to look, we had a seat in He Xianyu’s installation The Man in the Chair.  Comfortable, high backed, wooden chairs fashioned from old, wooden aqueducts. 

In the first gallery you could smell Zhu Jinshi’s Black and White Summer Palace – Black before you saw it.   An epic, large, oil painting that has not finished drying (it was created in 2007).  I was impressed by nearly every piece in this room.

The highlight of the second gallery was Huang Wei’s installation of three pieces of series called Buying Everything on You – where as the name suggests, he approached strangers on the street and offered to buy everything, everything on them at that moment.  For each person there is a platform with all of the clothing they wore and items they carried carefully laid out.  The effect is like a creepy time capsule and I can only hope he continues. 

One of the open lobby spaces is dominated by Zhu Jinshi’s installation Boat.  Constructed from 8000 sheets of Chinese calligraphy paper, it’s quite magical and was extra special on a quiet afternoon when I got to have the boat to myself for a few minutes (as it should be). 

On the upper levels of the museum there are additional pieces integrated in with the permanent collection.  No show of contemporary, Chinese art would be complete without a contribution from art superstar Ai Weiwei.  Mr. Weiwei does not disappoint with his offering Ton of Tea.  A big, massive block of pure, conceptual bullshit, er I mean a block of pu’er tea.  It actually is pretty cool in that way that conceptual art can be sometimes.  I noticed a little damage at a bottom corner, and can only hope it is a sign of mice nibbling away at the tea in the middle of the night.  I’ll check back on my next visit and see how they’re doing.

The show is opened until August 16, 2015 and I’ll be heading back for a second and maybe a third look before the show closes.

Phantoms of Asia

I say it over and over, but the Asian Art Museum keeps proving me right – it is the best place to see modern art in San Francisco.  This summer’s Phantoms of Asia show is filled with some amazing contemporary work from Asian and Asian-American artists.  The show is not entirely a modern art show.  The museum has juxtaposed traditional and contemporary art.  Many of the pieces are hundreds and in some cases thousands of years old.  But I confess, I was there for the new work.  It steals the show. 

The show takes up the main floor special exhibition space and is also referenced with exhibits throughout the entire museum.  In the corner of the second floor, there is a room known as the Tateuchi Thematic Gallery.  There is always something good here and I check it out on every visit. 

For this exhibit you’ll find one end of the gallery filled with large paintings by the Taiwanese artist Lin Chuan-Chu. Rock V held me and kept pulling me back to look again and again.  Lin has managed to create a piece that is both abstract and at the same time a photo realistic painting of carved stone.  The other corner of the room is filled with the Japanese artist Aki Kondo’s epic piece Mountain Gods.  Seven panels wrap around the far corner of the room.  The piece is 5 feet tall and over 33 feet long (see above, left).  Kondo is a true painter’s painter with a somewhat muted palette that harkens back to Picasso and Dali.  Mountain Gods is a recent work (2011) and still has the smell of fresh oil paint.  The smell, which I love, surrounds you as you walk into the corner and explore the painting.  It adds a sensory experience to the work that will diminish over time.

If there is a “star” of the show, it would be the Tibetan-American artist Palden Weinreb  (see above center).  His work can be viewed on his website.  It’s nearly impossible for a digital image to do justice to his work, which is graphite on board under a layer of encaustic wax.  The show includes just one of his pieces, Envelop.  I looked at the piece close up and then backed up and viewed it from across the room.  I needed to move out of the way of a small, docent-lead tour.  Now, I wouldn’t interrupt a docent, and she was technically correct when she described how you could be “drawn into” the piece.  But truly, from across the room, Envelop does something much different.  You look at and you start to feel you are floating above it.  It’s like the sensation you have during a dream when you can start to fly.  I’ve never had a work art give me that sensation.

Phantoms of Asia is up until September 2.  Palden Weinreb is giving a gallery talk on June 28.  

The Lotus Has Landed

Choi Jeong Hwa’s kinetic sculpture, Breathing Flower

This week the Asian Art Museum is opening a new exhibit titled Phantoms of Asia.  As part of the show a sculpture titled Breathing Flower by Korean artists Choe Jeong Hwa has been installed across the street in the Civic Center Plaza.  There’s more about the piece on the museum blog.  It’s really fun.  My only criticism is I wish there was more.  Imagine about 50 of the flowers filling Civic Center.  

Is this the best place to see Modern Art in San Francisco?

I try to take advantage of all the opportunities the Bay Area has to see art. I believe as an artist it is always important to look at a lot of art. It’s not always about a matter of looking for inspiration (though it happens) — you just need to get out there and look.

Over the last 20 years nearly half of the really good, interesting and cutting edge, contemporary art that I have seen in the Bay Area was seen at one museum. It may surprise some for me to report that museum is the Asian Art Museum. I have seen plenty of good work at other museums and galleries, but the Asian has had more than it’s share. My general rule is, if it is a modern art show at the Asian, don’t miss it.

Yesterday I saw the big, hyped up Bali show. It’s quite good and there are some fun things (I want a fighting cricket cage and some chicken shadow puppets). The show did inspire my piece for the 2011 Project as well. Why though they feel the need to charge an extra $5 for this show, I don’t know. This is a bad trend in museums where they charge extra for every special show. The Asian is having trouble getting people in the door, and charging more is probably not the best way to improve attendance. Also, in spite of great contemporary shows, the Asian Art Museum has never played to that strength.

Currently you can wander upstairs and come upon a very strong, little show called Here/Not Here: Buddha Presence in Eight Recent Works. Information about the show is buried on their own website. You can go into the next room and realize that the traditional painting on silk is actually a pattern created with a blowtorch on steel mesh (the work is amazing).

There have been many modern shows there that I wish could have become permanent. In 2005 Sui Jianguo’s red dinosaur in a cage quite literally was a traffic stopper out in front on Larkin Street. At the same time there was his sleeping Mao installation inside. There Mao was surrounded by hundreds of little dinosaurs all configured into a map of Asia. A few years later this piece turned up at that “other” museum on Third Street. I am still shocked by how dusty it was.

The 2004 exhibition of the Thai artist Montien Boonma remains one of the best modern art shows of all time in San Francisco. Getting lost in the House of Hope is a moment that will stay with me. It was an installation of strands of fragrant, prayer beads that visitors could wander into. And the post-industrial Buddha heads you could stand under while light dappled in were marvelous. They really should have kept the young lead singer of the punk band The Hammered Grunts on the payroll to pose under the art. He looked like part of the installation in all his pierced, studded glory.

At times it seems the Asian Art Museum just doesn’t understand how good it does Modern Art — but I’ll keep visiting in spite of that.