Art thread...

[shaolin kungfu]

post some of your favorite art and what not.

chet zar

kind of creepy/wierd stuff, but good if your into that.

[shaolin kungfu]

three people here and no one replied.

maybe i'll post this one the main board to...

[CaptinPickAxe]

Thats some nice art...I liked it at the Tool concert.


Check out MearOne:
www.mearone.com

[Sho]

John Howe
Ted Nasmith
Robert 'Bobby' Holz

[Losttrak]

Guo Xi is groovy. (designed for people who live in urban areas to mentally walk through, allegedly)

http://students.itec.sfsu.edu/itec89...ape/guoxi.html


DuChamp: Nude Descending a Staircase (pure motion, bebe)

http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/classes...oems/nude.html


Van Gogh, of course, for his amazing textures. Even his practice pieces are awesome. I couldnt find the piece I wanted to post on the web but all you need to do is search to find all the pop stuff.

[bodhitree]

Basquiat

M.C. Escher (may no be spelld corektlee)




A lot of good stuff around, all a matter of taste.

[CaptinPickAxe]

Doze Green just got his site up...

Personally, He's my favorite artist. (I'm a graf addict)

check it:
www.dozegreen.com

[Kristoffer]

http://www.bombtheworld.net/

[Christopher M]

How about William Blake or Pieter Brueghel the Elder?

[Chang Style Novice]

Hey, I started a whole Lee Bontecou thread earlier this week! You know how I do. In a similar vein, try Alexander Calder and Sarah Sze.

[GeneChing]

Totally hijacking this old thread for something a little more on topic...

The Art of Kung Fu: From Hong Kong to Africa and Back
2:09 AM PDT 3/16/2016 by Patrick Brzeski


Hanart TZ Gallery
Hong Kong's Hanart TZ gallery’s Kung Fu in Africa exhibition unveils a rare collection of lively, hand painted film art from the 80s and 90s depicting everyone from Bruce Lee to Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Hong Kong's film heritage is coming full circle — by way of West Africa.

Currently showing at Hanart TZ, one of the city's finest galleries dealing in Chinese contemporary art, is "Kung Fu in Africa," an exhibition of 32 colorful, hand-painted martial arts movie posters, which were produced by enterprising artists in Ghana during the 1980s and 1990s. Painted on huge canvas flour sacks, the images are as delightful as they are unlikely. As the exhibition's curator Ernie Wolfe puts it: "These works are a product of globalization in the best possible way."

Wolfe, a long-time dealer in African art via his namesake gallery in Los Angeles, collected the works over dozens of trips to Ghana during the past two decades. A personal friendship with Hanart founder Johnson Chang — the two went to college together — lead to the galleries' collaboration on the current show.

"This is about returning to Hong Kong images that came from Hong Kong but were never filtered through Chinese or Western eyes," says Wolfe. "There is an independent reality to their being that anyone can immediately appreciate."

As Wolfe explains, the posters were created by Ghanese sign painters as advertisements for a unique form of mobile moviegoing that once existed in the country.

Throughout the 80s and 90s, large portions of Ghana had no electrical grid and much of the country's population had little to no experience of going to the movies. Digital printing technology had also yet to arrive in the country, and nearly all signage and billboards were handprinted by craftsmen trained through a loose by rigorous master-apprentice system. The only variety of cinema that did exist across broad stretches of the country consisted of vans, a gas powered generators and VHS tapes, which enterprising local "distributors" took on the road into the Ghanese hinterlands. To attract an audience, these mobile movie hawkers hired local sign painters to produce vibrant posters, which they called "crowd pullers."

According to Wolfe, many of the painters never had a chance to see the films before they were commissioned to produce the ads, meaning that "verisimilitude of what's depicted in the poster and what actually occurred in the movie was not alway present," as he puts it. "They invented images and wanted to let their imaginations run wild to create a level of visual agitation that would lure people into the movies," Wolfe adds.

Along with Bollywood pictures and Hollywood action movies, Hong Kong kung fu flicks — such as, Jackie Chan’s Hand of Death, Bruce Lee’s Exit the Dragon and Jet Li's Master of Shaolin — were particularly popular in East Africa during the period.

"I've been to tiny villages in remote Ghana, where the kids have never even seen a person that looks like me; but at the same time, you find people practicing martial arts moves or Tai Chi in the town square," says Wolfe. "Kung Fu movies have a degree of universality in their popularity and appeal like the way that football is played in almost every corner of the world."

The posters are are also strikingly huge, with many of the characters nearly life-size. "They were made so that if you drove by in a bus, you could instantly read what was happening on the poster and make a decision if you were going to jump off to see the film."

Sadly, the works on view at Hanart TZ already represent a lost form. By the late 1990s, import laws were relaxed in Ghana and a "tsunami" of technology swept into the country, including printing technology, cheap TVs and chalk boards, which artists use to make quicker and cheaper temporary signage. "Home viewing and the import of chalk boards ended this tradition," says Wolfe.

"What's important about this show," he says, "is that these posters were made during a time when quite literally the best and brightest of Ghana's artists kept technology at bay and created images that were utterly organic in their creation and in their invention."

[GeneChing]

Ghana’s Golden Age of Hand-Painted Kung Fu Movie Posters
by Carey Dunne on March 30, 2016


Gilbert Forson, “Shaolin Drunk Fighter”

In the 1980s and ‘90s, a vibrant new art form proliferated in Ghana: Kung Fu movie posters painted by self-taught artists on recycled flour sacks. Known locally as “crowd-pullers,” these posters advertised the only variety of cinema available in much of the country, parts of which lacked an electrical grid — mobile screenings of VHS tapes in vans with gas-powered generators. These were hosted by entrepreneurial traveling film fanatics. West African audiences were particularly enamored with Kung Fu flicks coming out of Hong Kong, like Jackie Chan’s Hand of Death, Bruce Lee’s Exit the Dragon, and Jet Li’s Master of Shaolin. Trained in a loose master-apprentice system, sign-painters decorated the Ghanese landscape with their fantastical portraits of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and other martial arts stars.


Gilbert Forson, “Snake in the Monkey’s Shadow”

Ghana’s hand-painted movie poster tradition is now obsolete, replaced by digitally printed images. In the late 90s, mobile movie-going gave way to cheap TVs. But the art form is not entirely lost to the world. Over the past two decades, Ernie Wolfe, a dealer in African art and head of a namesake gallery in Los Angeles, collected dozens of these posters during trips to Ghana. Thirty-two highlights of his collection are now featured in Kung Fu in Africa: Golden Age Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana (1985–1999), on view at Hong Kong’s Hanart TZ Gallery in collaboration with Ernie Wolfe Gallery. They’re painted by 13 self-taught artisan-artists, some with Kung Fu-inspired pseudonyms: Joe Mensah, Leonardo, Death is Wonder, Alex Nkrumah Boateng, D.A. Jasper, Stoger, Bright Obeng, Gilbert Forson, Samuel, Dan Nyenkumah, Africatta, Babs, and Muslim.

China’s biggest action stars rendered in this folk style is a recipe for some of the more unique movie posters you’ll likely ever see. “Lucky Ninja Kids” throw fists, “The New One-Armed Swordsman” brandishes his blade, the Fatal Flying Gulotines (sic) wield their fearsome weapons. For Westerners used to the photoshopped ****geneity of contemporary Hollywood’s movie posters, they’re especially striking reminders of how technical and formal limitations spark creativity. Many of these posters artists never had the chance to see the films before painting, so they’re filled with scenes sprung from the artists’ imaginations instead of the films themselves.


Bright Obeng, “Stranger from Canton”

The idiosyncrasy of these images comes from an organic collision of cultures and artistic styles, one without any of the corporate, mass-produced ad aesthetic that prevails in major film industries. “This was a direct Hong Kong-to-Africa transmission, without any kind of Western filtering,” Wolfe writes in a curatorial essay. “I consider these Golden Age movie posters to be the visual equivalent of neon signage, but without the benefit of electricity. Whether viewed from a passing bus, through swirling dust at 40 miles per hour, or studied from a distance of five feet on the side of the road, the imagery in these posters is undeniably arresting.”


Bright Obeng, “The 18 Bronx Men”

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Stoger, “The Heroic Trio”


Stoger, “Who Am I”


Stoger, “Heroes Among Heroes”


D.A. Jasper, “Two Champions of Death”


D.A. Jasper, “Shaolin Kung Fu Myste Goose”


D.A. Jasper, “72 Desperate Rebels”


Alex Nkrumah Boateng, “Dragon”


Death is Wonder, “Hit-Man in the Hand of Buddha”

KUNG FU IN AFRICA: Golden Age Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana (1985-1999) continues at Hanart TZ Gallery (Pedder Building, 12 Pedder St, Central, Hong Kong) until April 16.

This is a wonderful collection. I hope it tours, or at least, that they produce a gallery album.

[GeneChing]

More 'fine' art.

The Kung-Fu Series by Zhong Chen at Singapore's REDSEA Gallery
BY SAMUEL SPENCER | MAY 03, 2016


"Kung Fu 10," 2015, by Zhong Chen.
(Courtesy REDSEA Gallery)

Singapore’s REDSEA Gallery is going Down Under this spring with a new exhibition of work from Chinese-Australian artist Zhong Chen.

“The Kung-Fu Series by Zhong Chen” explores how Chinese cultural touchstones, like the iconic martial art, are diluted in the process of exportation and representation in Western mass media. The artist’s own experiences living in Australia inform his perspective on the phenomenon of “Western” or Anglo-Australian ideas mixing freely with “Eastern” or Chinese ideas.

His work is drawn with the black lines of traditional Chinese calligraphy but stylized to evoke Western cartoons. He conjures up figures dressed in stereotypical Eastern garb that strike exaggerated poses, brandishing swords, or sporting imperial headdresses, paper fans in hand.

These characters are juxtaposed with elements of contemporary Australian and European art—abstract blocks of bright colors painted, splashed, and dripped onto linen.

In a statement, REDSEA Gallery owner Chris Churcher explained that the contrasts and contradictions of Western and Eastern art that Zhong plays with will resonate deeply with visitors. “Many of us in Singapore will identify with his trans-cultural feelings, whilst being drawn to his expressive and colourful works that meld … Chinese characters and mythology with a very vibrant contemporary edge,” he said.

“The Kung-Fu Series by Zhong Chen” runs May 12-June 10 at REDSEA Gallery in Singapore.


ZHONG CHEN Headshot. Courtesy the artist and REDSEA Gallery


Kung-Fu
Zhong Chen Oil on Linen 137cm x 137cm
REDSEA Gallery.
Courtesy the artist and REDSEA Gallery


Zhong Chen
Kung Fu Oil on Linen 120cm x 120cm REDSEA Gallery.
Courtesy the artist and REDSEA Gallery


Zhong Chen
Kung Fu Oil on Linen 100cm x 100cm REDSEA Gallery.
Courtesy the artist and REDSEA Gallery

[David Jamieson]

My current favourite artist out of China is Leng Jun.
Amazing, simply amazing work.

For instance:


My other current favourite artist is Christian Hook from Gibraltar
For Instance:

Amir Khan and Ian MacKellen