Pameran "Earth Hour@Zinc" merupakan salah satu respon baik bagi kelompok seniman pelbagai aliran dalam menzahirkan 'intrinsic' dalaman mereka terhadap 'earth hour' yang disambut seluruh dunia.dari sudut kritisnya usaha melalui konsep memadamkan lampu selama sejam bukanlah satu formula yang cukup efektif(mungkin juga retorik bagi sesetengah individu), tetapi dari sudut kesedaran yang lain 'sekurang-kurangnya' ia adalah satu usahasama yang perlu manusia pada masa kni sumbangkan kepada bumi dalam mengurangkan masalah kepanasan global."Earth Hour @Zinc" menampilkan beberapa artis seni tampak (visual) dan golongan seni muzik atau seni persembahan.Seniman bukanlah hanya sekadar pelukis atau pemuzik yang hanya menampilkan karya cantik dan sedap ditatap sahaja,senian juga dalam erti kata lain adalah seorang pemikir yang peka terhadap persekitaran yang mempengaruhi mereka. Seniman juga menyumbangkan tenaga,jiwa dan nilai apresasi mereka terhadap sesuatu perkara termasuklah isu 'Global Warming" ini.
~Syafiq Aliam(Sebiji Padi/Sosound/Artist)
H20 Color>Artvillage Gallery
Budding artists showcase talent in H2O Colour exhibition
By JAYAGANDI JAYARAJ(The Star,May 2010)
WATER is a vital element for all living organisms. It is also an important component in art.
Colourless on its own, water creates lively images once it is mixed with colours, hence water-based medium is still very exciting to work with in the art world.To promote this type of artworks, the Art Village Bangsar South gallery in Kuala Lumpur is holding an exhibition entitled “H2O Colour”.It showcases the works of seven young artists — Siti Norhidayah, Haafiz Shahmi, Safiq Hariz, Radin Erus, Sukor Romat, Razlan Adnan and Faizal Suhif.
The exhibition is made up of various bodies of work, experimenting with different techniques and combination of techniques. The colours used are either water colour or acrylics.Gallery director Kenny Teng said the exhibition presented mixed medium works with water-based colour, reflecting the versatility of the mediums.
“These young artists were selected through careful interviews and by looking at their works.“One has straight-forward watercolour work, while some utilises watercolour to produce collages,” he said at the opening of the show on May 22.
Visitors to the exhibition may find interesting cement cut works by Faizal Suhif, who used cement and colour to create his works.Sukor Romat’s pieces on butterflies might interest some collectors.
To date, as far as publications in Malaysia are concerned, sculpture and sculptural studies books falls under the scarcity category and are on the verge of being classified as none-existing. Ironically, in terms of sculpture exhibitions, almost every year since the 1960s we never failed to produce at least one exhibition celebrating, endorsing and acknowledging sculpture as an important aspect in the Malaysian Art scene.
Why has this gap eclipsed particularly on sculpture and sculptural studies? What happened to the theoretical aspects, articulations, reasons, analyses and interpretations derived from these produced 3D artworks? These questions concern not only the knowledge produced from these exhibitions, but also ponders on the status and role of sculpture in society. I have found in my own teaching, there is no introduction to the field that seeks to offer an overview and exploration of some the most important avenues of local research in the field of sculpture – hence this exhibition, deliberately and very consciously sets out to be a reference to students studying sculpture as part of their university course and at the same time catering to the public at large.
Many academic subjects have long brought their own disciplinary concerns to the study of Visual art: leader among them are drawing, painting, print making, visual manifestation, photography, animation, video, film etc. However, for more than 4 decades there has been a renewed interest in the study of sculpture which has crossed disciplinary boundaries. The resulting activity, sculptural studies, has emerged as an intriguing and exciting area of intellectual activity which has already shed new light of the character of human’s culture and continue to go on.
LOCAL TOUCH – is an attempt to establish connections between the contemporary practices of research and art, in this particular concern; sculpture and sculptural studies. Globally, the idea of integrating art and research has awakened a great deal of thought. LOCAL TOUCH would like to focus on the critical confrontation between the two, and ask what is happening when art and research are “touching”. I adopt the term “touching”, because just as in every form of touching, this contact between art and research has a tendency towards fusion, implying a possibility of further deliberations and ultimately turned into prominent publications.
Participating artists are Anniketyni Madian, Azli Wahid, Aswat Kidam, Jamil Zakaria, Fauzi Amir Hamzah, Mior Mohd Nafis, Hilal Mazlan, Razlan Adnan and Mohd Razif Rathi.
Ideas.. Work of Art.. I'm not sure how important my work is supposed to be.. but I DO IT. I'm living as the kind of children's character that i like as a kid.. Character with ideas.. As a children I learned art thought cartoon character in TV such manga.. I like the Idea of HAPPINESS.. As a children I love to watch it because it make me happy.. I like that character at my childhood playthings.. At my comic books and toys.. I like that kind of FEELING.. Manga or cartoon was create by Japanese's artist after World War II to bring back that FEELING after depressed of the war..is that what i want to FEEL? What do peoples FEEL when seeing my artwork?.. I see the idea of creating my work like creating LIFE.. Until they seem to have a movement and life of their own.. I learn a new kind of concentration.. I enter an IDEA SPACE.. In Idea Space.. New Ideas come faster than can draw them or write them.. More like I conduct them.. More like they conduct me.. And I try to keep up.. When I return from Idea Space.. I bring NEW IDEAS with me.. The Idea is SIMPLE.. It is about LEARNING TO SEE.. And LEARNING TO DO.. It was that PROCESS bring back that FEELING.. My Ideas creating my life.. My Art is my life its self..
Pop Art was emerged in the United States, mid 1950s in Britain and in the 1960s. Pop Art is a visual art movement and one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Pop art is characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books which aimed to employ images of popular as opposed to elitist culture in art nowadays.Such pop art's artist is Andy Warhol that also known as Prince of Pop Art.
Thus,Pop art has influenced many artists throughout the world and some of them are Japanese Pop artist, Yoshitomo Nara is one of the rise artists of the New Millennium and used children as a subject in almost all of his art, creates scenes of anger or rebellion through children. Nara’s work actually based by his recollection of chillhood happiness and traumatic, strong influenced of rock and punk music, Japanese Manga comics and the well-ordered structure of Japanese society.
Yoshitomo Nara was born 1959 in Hirosaki, Japan and currently lives and works in Tokyo. Nara received his B.F.A. (1985) and an M.F.A. (1987) from the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music. Between 1988 and 1993, Nara studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, in Germany. Nara has had nearly 40 solo exhibitions since 1984. Nara is well known for exploring the tensions of a hyper consumer culture by using deceptively simple drawing, paintings and sculptures of cute and knowing children inspired by American cartoons, manga, rock 'n' roll and punk culture, which surrounded Nara while growing up in Japan.
According to Takashi Murakami, in his writing; Japanese Pop Art is unique and identifiable as Japanese because of the regular subjects and styles. The movement has been strongly influenced by postwar American pop art and by Western music and film. Like American Pop Art, Japanese Pop Art borrows from popular culture, consumer products and comic books, but also is heavily indebted to traditional Japanese art and animation. Some Pop artists from Japan have found fame in the United States, while many art experts recognize Japanese Pop Art as the most influential Pop Art movement in the world today.
Many Japanese pop artists take inspiration largely from anime, and sometimes ukiyo-e and traditional Japanese art. One of the best-known pop artists currently in Japan is Yoshitomo Nara famous for their graffiti-inspired art, and some, such as Takashi Murakami, are famous for mass-produced plastic or polymer figurines. Many pop artists in Japan use surreal or obscene, shocking images in their art, taken from Japanese hentai. This element of the art catches the eye of viewers young and old, and is extremely thought-provoking, but is not taken as offensive in Japan. A common metaphor used in Japanese pop art is the innocence and vulnerability of children and youth.
Nara is part of a generation of Japanese Pop artists who first rose to prominence in the mid-'90s. An attempt to define a modern, uniquely Japanese aesthetic, Japanese pop art is characterized by flat colors, crisp lines and irreverent subject matter. The movement employs the style and vocabulary of contemporary pop culture in order to both critique and celebrate it. Such prominent Japanese Pop artist, Takashi Murakami has dubbed this aesthetic "Superflat," referring not only to the traditional flatness of Japanese drawings and animation, but to the collapsing of hierarchies between fine art and commerce.
According by book, ART NOW (2002), Yoshitomo Nara is one of the rises artists in the millennium and most influential artists to emerge from Japan during the Pop art movement of the nineties. Nara's work mines the pop culture of his childhood. Growing up in Aomori Prefecture, he was a latchkey kid whose childhood companions were most often pets and the television. It's no wonder then that Nara's figures are usually alone, and that their bodies resemble the simple, rounded forms of early, animated classics like Astro Boy and Speed Racer more than the sleek, angular look of contemporary anime.
Nara’s employing a format that resembles the kitschiest of all consumer goods such as the commemorative plate. Nara suggests that fine art is just a larger, more expensive version of commercial products. And Nara's characters are just as likely to appear on a key chain or an ashtray as in a gallery or museum. This foray into consumer culture has helped him win an enthusiastic cult following, not only in Japan, but also in the United States and Europe. T-shirts emblazoned with his images are also even appeared on the TV shows Dawson's Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
As well as being an artist, Nara is also a pop musician and a designer of T-shirts, CD covers, fanzines, buttons, dolls and other lifestyle products. In his work, he draws on a medley of sources, including pop culture, comic strips, manga Japanese and Western artistic traditions. Adored by everyone from art critics to punk kids, Nara's figures haunt galleries and museums and adorn T-shirts, CD cases, ashtrays and clocks. They are peppered now into the fabric of American pop culture. At the San Jose Museum of Art exhibiton entitle "Nothing Ever Happens, 2004" Nara's traveling solo exhibition, organized by the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art.
Yoshitomo Nara is not only famous in Japan and Europe, where he's exhibited in galleries and museums since the mid-'80s, but also in the United States. Nara has a rock-star-like appeal, and his career momentum is still on the upswing. At a Sotheby's auction this May, a 1999 Nara painting sold for $198,400, more than twice the pre-event estimate, firmly establishing Nara as a key figure in what some art professionals call the Japanese New Pop movement, a proliferating style and approach that incorporates and comments on iterations of kawaii, or cute.
Over the last few years, Nara has frequently collaborated on exhibitions with Japanese design collective Graf. Yoshitomo Nara and graf building the installation and they continue to explore an ongoing theme of the relationship between the individual and the space they inhabit, a work and it's environment, as well as art and life. In doing this, the artists hope to revive the idea of a narrative. The artists realise their goal by the completion of the 26th house, with a street name representative of the 26th letter of the alphabet, A-Z.
writer by Razlan Adnan(my final year thesis on UiTM)
