On Saturday, February 12th, 2011,
Corey Helford Gallery hosted the opening reception of my latest solo show, "Contemptorary Art". Inspired by my love/hate relationship with Contemporary Art, the show featured 16 new paintings, a 1000% sculpture of Possessed, and an "interactive" portion of the show where the audience is invited to manipulate a template of the bear I created for the show.
MOST PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIM CHUEH
1000% POSSESSEDHere's the prototype of my 1000% Possessed. Produced by
Munky King and sculpted by Jedidia, the finished 1000% Possessed will be made of Steel Reinforced Fiberglass and limited to 15 pieces.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION TEMPLATE BEARHere's the walls Corey Helford set up for the Audience Participation portion of the show, featuring the "Bear Template" I created.
LABEL SERIESSeperated into 4 different series of paintings, this first series is the Label Series. The Label series is a series inspired by the typographic stylings of Barbara Kruger. There are three paintings in the series: "Lowbrow", "Pop Surreal", and "Contemptorary".
The complete name of each of these paintings is:
Label Series : Contemptorary (and Still the Loser)Label Series : Lowbrow (and Still the Loser)Label Series : Pop Surreal (and Still the Loser)The reason why the paintings say "(and Still the Loser)" is because the way most people see it, it doesn't matter what you call the work in this genre, the Contemporary Art world will never take it seriously.
COLORFIELD SERIESThe Colorfield series is inspired by the Color Theory exemplified by the works of Mark Rothko and other Colorfield artists. There are two paintings in this series. Those paintings are "Colorfield Series
: Red" and "Colorfield Series : Blue"
The idea behind these paintings is the exploration and study of color on the human psyche. The Colorfield series features a small bear sitting in a field of color and textures. The "Red" version obviously being a field of red, and the "Blue" painting, a field of blue.
What I hope to extract from these paintings is two totally differ interpretations of what the audience interprets from the colors, though the images are essentially identical. From the blue, feelings of depression of forlorn. And from the red, the sensation of brooding, or quite anger.
I guess the best idioms I could think of that exemplify what I'm trying to do are
"Seeing Red" and
"Feeling Blue".
COMMUNICATION SERIES
The Communication series features five paints. Based around the image of my bears head, it is as though I've run the bear head through a series of image filters, exploring the history of visual communication through my familiar character. The five genres of which I've explored are:
Original: The original version of the bear head is based on how I classically rendered my characters.
Halftone: With the development of mass communication, the halftone screen became an essential development in print communication. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is famous for employing such a filter in his work.
Renaissance: This is how I imagine an artist from that period would have rendered the head of my bear... Sort of.
Cubism/Modernism: This is how my bear would have been interpreted through cubist/modernist eyes
Pixel: With the advent of computer technology, Photoshop etc. The pixel is the latest incarnation in communication technology. Contemporary artist Chuck Close is one of the more famous artist who've employed the pixel into his very portraits.
TEMPLATE SERIES The idea behind the Template series is basically explores the idea of "it's not the glass that tells the story, but rather what's in the glass itself". I'm creating 6 paintings based on a template image of the shape of my bear
character. Each painting, despite being confined to the shape of my bear will explore widely different styles and emotions.
SHOW TIME
During the show, my cousins Richard, his sister Cathy, Cathy's husband Travis, and their twins stopped by.
Guests were invited to customize the bear template on tables in the back of the gallery:
Their finished templates were put on display on walls in the middle of the gallery.
Munky King's Lap Ngo joined the party
Munky King main-man and 1000% Possessed producer Patrick Lam in the house.
As the night went on, I found myself in love with this particular template bear by
"Mateo".
But to be honest, I truly love all of them.
After both sides of the Template Bear wall were filled, we started filling up the walls under the loft.
The cherry on top of was the appearance of this lovely yet mysterious tambourine wielding luchadoress. I have no idea who she is, but when you come to my show rocking a luchador mask and a tambourine... 'nuff said.
I would like to thank all my friends, family, and colleagues who showed up. Your support is truly appreciated. Thanks for making this a great night for me.
This March, I'll be contributing a painting to "INLE", a group show curated by Greg "Craola" Simkins. The idea behind the show is "over 100 artists interpret the understated hero of Richard Adam's Watership Down".
