by Jon Lackman | 3 April 2009 | Asia, Books
In the March/April ’09 ArtAsiaPacific, Don J. Cohn reviews three recent books:
… Melissa Chiu, museum director at Asia Society in New York, and the author/editor of several catalogs for exhibitions of Chinese contemporary art (herein Chicona, AAP’s, not Chiu’s, neologism), has written a brief, intimidatingly titled book that offers an elementary “paint by the numbers” introduction … According to Chiu’s Chinese Contemporary Art: 7 Things You Should Know, the 7 things you should know are: 1. Chicona began decades ago; 2. Chicona “is more diverse than you might think”; 3. Museums and galleries in China and abroad have promoted Chicona since the 1990s; Government censorship influences Chinese artists; 5. The Chinese artist diaspora has returned home; 6. Chicona museums in China are on the rise; 7. The world is collecting Chicona. And here, courtesy of ArtAsiaPacific, are 7 things you don’t want to know about Chicona: 1. Much Chicona is overpriced by any standards; 2. Chinese culture tolerates emulation, appropriation and imitation in the arts to a degree unacceptable in the West; 3. It is unacknowledged that most Chicona is indebted to 20th-century Western art (Duchamp, Kaprow, Cage, Paik, Acconci, Beuys, Nauman); 4. Some major Chinese artists are burnt out and copy themselves to meet market demand; 5. Chicona (by artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, Zhu Yu, Liu Jin) incorporating human fetal corpses and cruelty to animals does not demonstrate freedom of expression in China but rather a barbaric and unscrupulous legal system; 6. China’s arts infrastructure remains immature, arbitrary, bureaucratic, venal; 7. Much of Chicona is 21st-century chinoiserie, valued by buyer and seller alike as an “exotic” Asian culture imitating a “higher” Western civilization. These critical issues, skirted entirely in 7 Things and highly diluted somewhere in the prolixity of [Karen Smith’s] Nine Lives, are discussed in Richard Vine’s New China, New Art, a superb, controlled, survey of a vast, writhing subject … the finest introduction to Chinese avant-garde art since the 1970s.
Check this out: http://www.thenewgrandtour.com – we’re also doing this show below in HK.
JOSE PARLA: READING THROUGH SEEING, NEW WORKS
Ooi Botos Gallery is pleased to announce Reading through Seeing, an exhibition by contemporary artist Jose Parla, on view 14 May through 11 July 2009. This will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong and will showcase new paintings, works on paper, photographs and ceramic works.
The exhibition will take place during Art HK 09 and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by scholars Alexandra Chang of New York University — Asia Pacific Center and critical theorist and art historian Michael Betancourt.
Jose Parla’s new works are inspired by his recent travels in France, Japan and the United Kingdom. Parla’s unique and playful inscriptions and diary-like gestures with his trademark hand–writing recall his personal observations of how the idiosyncratic behavior of anonymous individuals on those distant streets distinctly impact each geographical environment.
The complexity of José Parla’s mixed media paintings is based on the layering of images and paraphernalia collected from his daily encounters at home and his adventures abroad, interpreted through his dynamic gestural process. Interleaved through each work is Parla’s calligraphic script, which infuses each piece with vibrancy, energy and meaning.
Memories, thoughts, ideas, quotes, phrases, conversations and observations scrawled in Parla’s instantly recognizable, flowing script reflect his characteristic fusion of writing and painting, word and image. His brushwork depicts walls in the city, or in rural areas outside of urban centers, while his mélange of imagery and words hint at stories within stories, an evocation of the places that have deeply affected him.
The story-telling nature of Jose Parla’s work is mesmerizing. At first glance, his paintings are reminiscent of an abandoned street alley, but as one’s eyes linger, one realizes the density and complexity of overflowing imagery. Parla’s innate gift of capturing both the chaos and the tranquility of the city has moved countless viewers.
About Jose Parla
Jose Parla is a New-York based artist whose paintings reflect the way in which cities function as palimpsests. Born in Miami, Parla traveled in the Caribbean, South America, Asia and Europe in the 1990s before settling permanently in New York.
His work has been collected and exhibited by Agnes B. Galerie Du Jour in Paris and Takashi Murakami’s Kai Kai Ki Ki gallery in Tokyo. Major recent exhibitions include, The New Grand Tour showing in Hong Kong and Beijing (2007-08), Adaptation / Translation at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms in London (2008), and Layered Days with Cristina Grajales’ Soho gallery in New York City (2008).
About Ooi Botos Gallery
Ooi Botos is Hong Kong’s leading avant-garde gallery specializing in photography, digital media, video and installation. In fact, the Jose Parla exhibition marks a departure from Ooi Botos’ customary program, with Parla being the only painter represented by the gallery. Ooi Botos is dedicated to exposing the public to art forms rarely seen in Hong Kong to raise the level of discourse about art in Asia.
Ooi Botos is located at 5 Gresson Street, Wanchai, Hong Kong.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Friday 11.30 A.M. – 3 P.M. and 6 P.M. – 8 P.M., Saturday 11 A.M. – 6 P.M.
Tel. +852 2527 9733
http://www.joseparla.com
http://www.ooibotos.com