My Favourite! Their Favourite!

While still on the theme of HK Asian Art Exhibition, let's do the good stuff.  My good stuff and their good stuff.

You will recall that the piece that won last year was an old Remington typewriter with a roll of aluminum foil stuck in the doodad with a Chinglish message on the wall behind inviting you to type something!  Among all last year's amazing art this win was a true "Say wot?" moment.

However this year's big winner was:

 

The Ultimate Winner!

OK, so it's no old typewriter with a roll of aluminum foil stuck in the doodad, but it's definitely up there.  If you double-click you can see it's a drawing of a tiger-skin stuck onto silk in the manner of a Chinese wall scroll.  Though the standard of the art wasn't so high this year, it's still an odd choice for this year's winner.

What was especially strange was that last year's win was given on the grounds that the installation "invited interaction" ... and if that was their criteria for judging, on those same grounds it was this piece that should have won this year:

 

This amazing piece invited you you scribble on it and so everyone did.

But really, doesn't every piece of Art invite you to interact with it? 

Like, let me show you what I mean:

 Yawn interaction!

 Play interaction!

This was cute! I photographed this nice stranger as she walked past this fractured metal sculpture so she started play-posing for me, and then she snapped photos of me posing in front of it, then after we'd finished playing, we noticed other people lining up so they could play next.  So, really how isn't this shiny refractive surface not "an invitation to interact."

More play posing!

This likely lad was photographing his thumb 

as part of the sequence in this Iraqi installation.

Pointing too is interaction!

 

And even deliberately NOT looking at a painting

is interacting!

So last year's criteria was surely a piece of silliness. And Heaven only knows what the judges' criteria was this year so that this tiger-skin scroll was given first prize: "most inappropriate representation of an endangered species"?

But let's look at stuff I really liked; stuff I found clever and new and exciting:

The Nose Knows!

I thought this one was great. I've also noticed that everyone I know who's already snuck photos of this Exhibition all have it and all include it among their favourite pieces.

Say wot?

This piece was only really a still life of cloth and vase, but images were projected onto it. Wouldn't buy it myself, but I still thought it was cute ... in a creepy sort of way.

And here's another interactive piece that I didn't quite love - paintings with bits that came alive - but which I found so funny because of the way the viewers reacted. In fact, I was so cross that I missed a perfect shot that I lurked in front of it for a while, waiting to take another of the same. Wasn't long at all. Here's most representative shot:

 

You'll have to double-click 

to see the humour in this!

You may recall I said earlier in an earlier post that there were hardly any works from Mainland China, but here were the few.  Just look at how good the craftsmanship is in comparison with what's currently been done in the rest of the world:

These last two photos are paintings by

an artist who so impressed me,

I took a record of his name for 

purposes of finding out more.

And here's a Mainland painting that leapt out at me because, well, I thought "Ahhhh! He's read my script!" This is exactly the scene I wrote in "Gh/lost!" only without the thunderstorm, so it was like seeing an image out of my own head out there:

I was also impressed with the Iraqi sculptors, but I only took a few photos because my camera was saying "Your battery is low. Your battery is low."  (I can't help feeling if that bloody voice didn't tell me that, my battery would last a lot longer.)

"The Beard"

I knew it had to be an important message, 

so I asked the artist.

It's about the failure of Marxism 

in the Islamic Context.

That's Marx, then a famous Iraqi Marxist 

who turned terrorist

and then some abstract representation 

of Marxism in Islama-world.

And I loved the tiny miniature portraits by this Russian artist:

 About four inches by four inches in size.

And I loved the way these two paintings 'popped'!

And I can't say I loved this artist's sculptures but it was still pretty impressive in scale alone.

 

And The Steam-Punk Movement I've been finding exciting for many months, and there were a few representative pieces:

Other stuff that impressed me? 

Well, I couldn't help being impressed with the cheek of these lovely folk selling this book-bag and book.  Inside the door it was HK$450.00, but go through those doors and it was HK$150.00

And this sculpture below impressed me because I thought it was entirely revolting till I caught a whiff of the smell. Mmm, chocolate!  Yup, it was one of a whole series of art pieces made out of chocolate.  Hideous art, fabulous smell!

But my all time favourite art piece in this entire Exhibition would have to have been one by the artist who'd done a series of really bent - a la Botero - copies of famous portraits of Spanish explorers.  They were all shocking with their grim, dark combination of cute and creepy and it took me a long while of just staring at them before deciding that I really really liked them ...

... but it was only later, when I was thinking about everything I'd seen, that I realised the piece that remained most vividly in my head, and which I actually loved most in the entire Exhibition  was THIS ONE

My favourite of them all!