Final piece process

Gonkar Gyatso

Shangri La, 2014

Mixed media collage on Aluminium backed honeycomb panel

76 x 76 cm (29 9/10 x 29 9/10 in.)

  My first piece was done on A4 sized canvas. The piece was influenced by Gyatso Gonkar, the materials I used were pencils (H, HB and 2B), marker pens, technical drawing pens (0.3) and Acrylic paint. The artist's works often use variety of materials and most of his works are considered mixed media, so I decided to apply the same style for this piece.

I drew the lotus from a bird's eye view using HB and 3B on paper. This was a rough sketch of the lotus, it is going to be outlined and coloured later on.
On the actual A4 canvas for the piece, I painted it blue with acrylic paint. I mixed the blue paint with water to dilute the colour and make it more translucent.

The image on the left is the plan I made for this piece on Photoshop. The Buddha statue would be at the centre of the canvas and the gray-scale is image is the lotus in bird's eye view, I changed the lotus because both image had strong colour and I wanted the statue to stand out the most.

After I sketched the lotus, I outlined the lotus using a red marker. On areas where there is shadow, I used the colourless blender marker to make the red marker colour spread to the area, the blender diluted the colour so it would not look too strong.

After outlining the lotus, I used acrylic paint again. I blended red, white and yellow together (red with little bit of yellow and white) in to create a light red/dark peach colour. I started off with translucent light red colour formed by mixing the paint with water for the base layer. After I finished the base, I applied the same shade of colour but with less dilution so the colour in areas where there is shadow are more opaque.

Start of the Buddha's silhouette part. I drew out the body of the statue and boxes where I will write down the scripture.

My original plan was to write the message up to the face of the Buddha as well but I changed this and painted the head in a darker tone to make the statue feel familiar yet foreign, create a distance for the audience and the artwork as if the well-known figure is being forgotten. For the corners of the canvas, I made four acetate lotus using the sellotape method, I used sellotape instead because with the sellotape I can scrub the print more and make the lotus look more faint and worn out to create an aging effect.

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/

Giorgio de Chirico

 

The Prodigal Son. 1922. Oil on canvas. Museo d'Arte Contemporanea

(Museum of Contemporary Arts), Milan (Italy). [p]

The artwork was created by Giorgio de Chirico (mostly known as De Chirico), he was born on 10th of July in 1888 in Volos, Greece. He died on 20th November in 1978, aged 90 in Rome of Italy. [1] He established the Metaphysical Art movement, which played a vital role in inspiring surreal art.                                           

He studied Art in Athens under the guidance of Georgios Roilos and Georgio Jakobides. In 1906, he moved to Germany and entered the Academy of Fine Art in Munich, where he read writings from philosophers such as Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer. [2] In 1910, he moved to Florence and painted “The enigma of an autumn afternoon”, after the revelation he had in Piazza Santa Croce on his journey to Paris. The painting is the first in the series of “Metaphysical Town Square”. He was interested in, according to him, the “metaphysical aspect” of Turin. [2]     

Ariadne, circa 1913, made with oil and graphite on canvas (135.3 × 180.3 cm). [a]

This artwork shows a statue of Ariadne sleeping in the foreground in a public square. In accordance to Greek Mythology, Ariadne was abandoned by her Lover Theseus as she slept in the Island of Naxos. She became a symbol of isolation and loneliness for De Chirico during his Metaphysical period. [a]

Metaphysical is to "to express the depressing emptiness and frightening coldness of a world estranged from man and to reveal a kind of secret, magical meaning in the arrangement of unrelated objects." [b] During his Metaphysical period his medium was mainly oil, later years he starts to explore more and uses etching, engraving and lithograph for his artworks. [n]

Reference:

[p]: http://www.abcgallery.com/C/chirico/chirico15.html

[1]: Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.120

[2]: Memoirs of Giorgio de Chirico, Da Capo Press; New edition

[a]: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/486740?=&imgno=0&tabname=object-information

[b]: Apollonio, U. Pittura metafisica. Venice, 1950.

[n]: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search?ft=DE+CHIRICO