Yan Pei Ming

Born in Shanghai in 1960, Yan Pei Ming is a Chinese contemporary painter who is famous for his epic sized portraits of Mao Zedong.









His portraits work have a old worn out effect, which would go well with the theme of faded memories. creating large-scale, monochrome portraits. His works have dynamic and passionate actions, his brush strokes are rough and strong, it shows how he was raised up during the Cultural Revolution when youths were sent to the farmlands to be taught about the conditions of their rural country and how they must be strong to help China prosper.
When looking up close at his work, you can see how messy it is but from a distance, the portraits look from clean and normal portrait like. This is to show that you shouldn't judge anyone because no one is truly perfect, once you get close to them you can see all their flaws and mess just like in the portraits.

(Obama, 2008)

Reference:

1. http://ropac.net/uploads/images/artist/artistb6393b7b78cff3cf1b7d826f7805b905.png

2. Yan Pei-Ming, Obama, 2008 Photo: André Morin © Yan Pei-Ming, ADAGP, Paris, 2009

Minjae Lee (Greno)

(pinterest.com)


Minjae Lee is a South Korean self-taught artist. His common medium are pencils and colour markers.

Finding inspiration from people, nature and emotions he is able to create works that depict the beauty of nature, fragility of emotions and brashness of human beings.

He blends in strong contrasting colours that creates aggressive scenes with the fine pencil lines forming a mixture of beauty and passion. His works' juxtaposition of beauty, fragility, brash and aggression actually

Despite the bright colours the character he creates shows dark and mysterious personality, creating a sense of drama in its juxtaposition.


("Indian" , Paper and Mixed Media.)
As you can see, he used bright colours in such delicate patterns. The women face looks aloof and mysterious, the are surrounding her face has the most dark colours making the atmosphere feel very dark. Her hand is of a different complexion meaning it could be someone else's hand that is touching her face. The hand has multiple thumbs and fingers showing overlapping in the limb, this shows her being trapped and stopped by more than one person, they're trying to reach her mouth to stop her from speaking, not letting her have a voice in a situation/event.










("Faith", Mixed media on paper 2012)

I think the way he named this piece is interesting, "Faith" could just be the name for the person drawn on the paper or it could be a representation of "Faith", something that some people believe. I think it is a representation because the patterns surrounding their head resembles closely to a halo. The body is coloured in dark colours, only the hand that reaches towards the face has vibrant colours. The vivid coloured hand could be to represent the many number of people who believe in Faith and are reaching out towards it. 

(http://www.grenomj.com/#!2012/zoom/c23dm/image_21oc)

Gonkar Gyatso

Gonkar Gyatso is a Tibetan-British artist who was born in 1961 in Lhasa, Tibet. Gyatso attained a B.F.A in Chinese Brush Painting at the Minzu University of China in Beijing. He also studied Thangka, which is traditional Tibetan scroll painting in Dharamsla. Gyatso moved to London during the 90’s with a scholarship to the Central St. Martins College in London. He attained his MA in Fine Art. [2] [3]

                                                                                                             [1]
Interview with Gonkar Gyatso, January 23rd 2014 [4]
HK: What led you to work with imagery of Buddha?
GG: The shape is how I deliver my own vision of the harmonious coexistence of a lot of different things. For instance, when you look at the outline of one work it is [the form of] a reclining Buddha, but when you look inside there are 10 or 20,000 stickers in one piece. And these stickers come from different places, represent different meanings, and I try to put them all together—it’s kind of like Hong Kong, really. But they’re all living quite happily together, very harmoniously. It’s also related to the Buddhist idea of tolerance—you have to be open, you have to be kind, and tolerant of anything.

“With a long interest in material and pop culture, Gyatso often combines references to traditional Tibetan life with references to the global mass-media culture that is constantly interacting with, and shaping, our current perspectives of cultural identity. By confronting the undeniable bond between his homeland’s religion and politics Gyatso throws into question what is considered traditional, whilst addressing the many new cultural hybrid identities to which globalisation has given rise.” [5]

A lot of Gonkar Gyatso's works feature Buddha since Buddhism is very influential in traditional Tibetan lifestyle and right now, my main focus of culture is on my miniature Buddha statue. So I think this artist will be a good source for ideas and techniques. I admire the way he is able to blend two contrasting ideas into one harmonious piece with subtle or vivid references to religion, politics and pop-culture. His interest in the fusion of tradition and modernisation is often depicted in his work and also in how his work is presented. He uses mixed media collage frequently to represent his idea on the concept of pop-culture seeping into the traditional Tibetan life.  His work can also represent the decay of traditional values as the influence of modern ideology increases and how tradition will soon be nothing more than f a d e d  m e m o r i e s . . .

Gonkar Gyatso
Shangri La, 2014
Mixed media collage on Aluminum backed honeycomb panel
76 x 76 cm (29 9/10 x 29 9/10 in.)

In this piece, the Tibetan mandala has been consumed by a flame with a group of people surrounding it with cameras and many other mobile technologies (planes, jets, helicopters, etc)This represents the religion been used as a commercial subject, the camera at the top right corner shows that the whole culture is been recorded for the purpose of educational entertainment/ documentary on religion.
Or this artwork could represent the Cultural Revolution when China tried to oppress the Buddhism influence. The black drawing like the helicopters and jets represent China trying to oppress the Buddhism, which is represented by the mandala. The flame could represent either the fall of Buddhism or the everlasting passion of the Buddhism which the oppressors could not put out.

Gonkar Gyatso, Untitled (silver base), 2012, mixed media collage, and pencil on resin sculpture,
(16 x 18 x 12in)                                                                  
Image courtesy the artist and Pearl Lam Galleries.

Gyatso used one of Buddha’s famous pose, removed their head and applied logos and stickers on to the body. This could represent how the teachings or the identity of Buddhism is slowly lost in the modern world and especially with the new-born generations. The collage itself was not named to further hint the loss of culture in the artist’s perception.









Bibliography:

[1] Photo of Gonkar Gyatso - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/arts/international/tibetan-artists-like-gonkar-gyatso-are-rising-to-the-fore-in-contemporary-art.html?_r=0

[2] Biography - http://www.gonkargyatso.co.uk/about-the-artist/artist's-bio

[3] Biography - http://hk-magazine.com/city-living/article/gonkar-gyatso

[4] Interview - http://hk-magazine.com/city-living/article/gonkar-gyatso

[5] Press Release - http://artradarjournal.com/2014/09/26/pop-phraseology-in-hong-kong-tibetan-artist-gonkar-gyatso-interview/

[6] Shangri La - http://www.pearllam.com/artist/gonkar-gyatso/

[7] Untitled work - http://artradarjournal.com/2014/09/26/pop-phraseology-in-hong-kong-tibetan-artist-gonkar-gyatso-interview/

Gallery trip - New Birmingham Gallery

This was made by an apprentice, it is a miniature suit of a Japanese Samurai armour. In late 19th century, western craftsmen used these as inspiration for their won designs.

 

Shivani Chitroda, Rangoli, 2015. A traditional Indian pattern created by using coloured sands, rice, flour or follower petals.

Gallery trip - IKON Museum, Birmingham

                    

We also went to the IKON museum in Birmingham. The first floor was Fiona Banner's Exhibition calles "Scroll Down And Keep Scrolling".

The first piece was THE MAN poster collage she made using poster of only two colours; red and blue. I didn't feel like it would relate very well to my theme but the bright contrasting colours she used were very good because when different lighting is used the poster's colour would change as well, to blue or red.

 

I liked how she used light for this piece rather than relying on paint or other common mediums. I think it would relate to one of the areas within my theme, Diwali, the festival of lights where I use actual neon parts, wires and transformers. But that seems more like a pipe dream, I can just try to Photoshop light to spell out "Diwali" or take a photo of (Firework) sparklers spelling it out.

Arsewoman in Wonderland is a screen-print of numerous sentences upside down. It is meant to show how people's speeches start to become incoherent and the listeners begin to lose interest in the speaker. I could try to use the same pattern in my work where I make a screen print of a prayer text or words associated with culture/religion, put it upside down and remove some parts of the sentence to make it look like the speaker has forgotten some parts of the tradition and they try to cover it up, things change without them noticing it to show the gradual loss of culture/religion.                              

The Ikon lift was fitted with audio sound to go along with the ascendand descend of the lift. If you go up the audio was crescendo and if you go down it was the opposite.

A scroll that went through 3 floors, it had a collection of photos and paintings by various artists. It was like a big album, the photos were probably from past exhibitions.