Author Archives: jolanta
Zhang Yu-Tai
Speckled textures of different paints grace the canvases of Zhang’s works. All carrying a heaviness in their surface and texture, these paintings place a strong emphasis on the materiality of the medium. Ornamented with swift, clean strokes as well as their thick leftovers, Zhang’s paintings’ have a varied application, arbitrary in nature, giving his pieces […]
Convergent Constructs
Illustrating what he calls the “cultural contrast,” Hu Zhi-Ying brings together traditional Chinese art with the eclectic styles of the West. He combines traditional Chinese symbolism and landscape with the elements of the various styles of Western art all coming together to create something more than art—something equal to the real world. Using Chinese varnish, […]
The Wizard of Clay
Filling Chace Center to the brim, the largest gallery at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art in the City of Providence, Inner City comprised an astonishing array of architectural-scale models and tiny figurines fashioned entirely out of clay. All the little male people—the sculptor’s version of Everyman—strikingly similar in their facial and […]
Meeting Marina
Within the cavernous, pristine interior of the atrium at the Museum of Modern Art, one witnesses an act of both extreme simplicity and unrelenting fervor. Marina Abramović sits at a long wooden table, donning a gown of thick midnight blue fabric; her countenance bears signs of intensity and sheer exhaustion, dually wavering between moments of […]
Man If Est O
Art should be in the streets surprising people, not necessarily in galleries or museums. Art should be part of everyone’s daily journey into work. Art should make us laugh and catch people unaware. Art should show us something that we can all understand. Art should make us think effortlessly. Art should question its own what-ness. […]
Liberty of a Satirist
My work is about how artificially identities are constructed, and how it is possible to undermine the myths of social conventions such as the political borders, languages, religions, and last but not least, art. The tool used is just to take to the extreme the logic contained on them. I put into dialogue drawings, photographs, […]
A New Radical
To me, performance art is not only a medium or material to create with, but also a reflection of an artist who keeps his independent spirit and creativity. In 2001, China’s Department of Culture Supervision released an article that states, “Violent or pornographic performance art is prohibited in public.” However, what is pornographic or violent […]
Match Point
Because of greed, human beings always want the best interest for themselves, and not for others. Unfortunately, this seems to be regarded as the drive for human progress. The world today cannot bear any more of humans’ greed. People are exhausted by their own never-ending desire and caught up in this vicious circle. If things […]
Redeemable Reminiscences
The Ishihara Color Test is the most common clinical test for red-green color vision deficiencies in humans. It comprises 38 plates, each containing a circle of dots randomized in color and size, which form a number that is visible to people with normal color vision. However, the number in the dots is invisible, or difficult […]
Courage and Convictions
Creating large-scale, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors, Hungarian artist Karl Stengel, courageously goes beyond the given and familiar, pioneering new techniques and materials in order to expand his own vision. While Stengel’s paintings have the swirling energy of many abstract works, they also suggest something quite different: […]
