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    Peeling Paint in Hong Kong Reveals Work of Newly Relevant ‘King’

    When he was alive, the graffiti of Tsang Tsou-choi, or the “King of Kowloon,” was considered peculiar and personal. In a radically changed city, his mostly vanished art now has a political charge.HONG KONG — Often shirtless in summer, smelling of sweat and ink, the aggrieved artist wrote incessantly, and everywhere: on walls, underpasses, lamp posts and traffic light control boxes.He covered public spaces in Hong Kong with expansive jumbles of Chinese characters that announced his unshakable belief that much of the Kowloon Peninsula rightfully belonged to his family.During his lifetime, the graffiti artist, Tsang Tsou-choi, was a ubiquitous figure, well-known for his eccentric campaign that struck most as a peculiar personal mission, not a political rallying cry.But Hong Kong has become a very different place since Mr. Tsang died in 2007, and his work — once commonly spotted, but now largely vanished from the streetscape — has taken on a new resonance in a city where much political expression has been stamped out by a sweeping campaign against dissent since 2020.“In his lifetime, particularly early on, people thought he was completely crazy,” said Louisa Lim, author of “Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong,” a new book that examines Mr. Tsang’s legacy. “Even at the time that he died no one was really interested in the content or the political message of his work. But actually, he was talking about these Hong Kong preoccupations long before other people were — territory, sovereignty, dispossession and loss.”When a decades-old work surfaced earlier this year, it started drawing a crowd to a setting that could hardly be more mundane: a concrete railway bridge, built over a roadway and adorned with little besides a registration number and a warning against graffiti.The bridge sits near a bird market and a sports stadium on Boundary Street, a road that marks the edge of the territory ceded by the Qing dynasty to the British in 1860 after the Second Opium War. It is covered in gray paint, some of which flaked away this spring — exactly how remains a mystery — to reveal a palimpsest of Mr. Tsang’s work from several eras of painting at one of his favorite sites.Taking a photo of the newly discovered work. “There are very few King of Kowloon works left in Hong Kong, and now, those that are before our eyes are precious,” When In Doubt, an artist collective, wrote in celebration of the discovery. Anthony Kwan for The New York TimesLam Siu-wing, a Hong Kong artist, said he happened across the Boundary Street work while out for an evening walk in late March.“I thought the old Hong Kong was saying hello again,” he said.News of the discovery began to spread, with When In Doubt, an artist collective that Mr. Lam belongs to, describing his find as a rare treasure. The group noted that it’s one of the earliest artistic creations to prod discussion of an essential and increasingly pressing question in Hong Kong: Who does urban space belong to?The Latest on China: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 6China’s economy stumbles. More

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    Impasto Layers Blur Portraits and Landscapes in Li Songsong’s Fragmented Oil Paintings

    
    Art

    #China
    #impasto
    #memory
    #oil painting
    #painting
    #portraits

    November 11, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “I Am What I Am” (2020), 120 x 100 centimeters. All images © Li Songsong, shared with permission
    Chinese artist Li Songsong (previously) obscures portraits and wider landscapes with thick dabs of oil paint. His textured, impasto works are based on found photographs or imagined scenes, and each conveys a narrative tied to ordinary moments or a broader shared history. Varying the extent of distortion in every piece, Songsong tells Colossal that interrogating personal identity is at the center of his practice. The “cultural and historical aspects are related to China, and the language and expressions are my own,” he explains.
    Songsong’s recent works include a tender scene with an officer and his dog, a portrait of a hopeful pilot, and a panoramic shot featuring a crowd with hundreds of anonymous faces. The richly layered pieces speak to the haziness and fragmentary nature of memories and stories, especially those interpreted from a distance, and come into focus when viewed farther back with a squint.
    Based in Beijing, Songsong is currently working on a new series of works, which you can follow on his site.

    “Blondi” (2019), 210 x 180 centimeters
    “Blondi” (2019), 210 x 210 centimeters
    “Tea for Two” (2020), 210 x 210 centimeters
    “No More Tears” (2020), 100 x 100 centimeters
    “You Haven’t Looked at Me that Way in Years” (2020), 170 x 280 centimeters
    “Three Decades” (2019), 210 x 420 centimeters

    #China
    #impasto
    #memory
    #oil painting
    #painting
    #portraits

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  • “KAOS TRIP: A Color Journey by Okuda San Miguel” in Guangzhou, China

    It has taken nine months and an infinite amount of effort within a Chinese-Spanish multidisciplinary team working in the midst of a global pandemic crisis. But finally, ‘Kaos trip’ made its debut last July 10 in K11 Art Mall in Guangzhou, China. This show  offers a tour of the different supports, formats and techniques that he uses in his work, but also covers some ideas and concepts that drive him when creating his art.
    Okuda has brought together some twenty pieces of large format and spectacular installations, in addition to presenting in public some of his latest visual research in the form of kaleidoscopes and dark rooms. The show creates a gorgeous and fantastic surreal visual experience, presenting an organic fusion of colors and geometric figures and provoking both a visual impact to the audience, but also reveal a sense of mystery in the viewer.

    In the words of Okuda, “I have enjoyed creating this exhibition not only because it is my first in China but also because I wanted to share with the public an authentic immersive experience with two unique pieces that I introduce here for the first time. This exhibition is a retrospective of all my work that covers from the early years to my latest pieces that include painting, sculpture and embroidery, among other things”.

    Spanish contemporary artist Okuda San Miguel is famous for splashing vibrant hues across architectures in different corners of the world. He is known for his distinctive style of colorful geometric patterns that portray animals, skulls, religious iconography and human figures.
    Scroll down below to see more photos of Kaos Trip.

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    26 Contemporary Chinese Artists Explore Materiality in ‘Allure of Matter’

     Zhu Jinshi, “Wave of Materials” (2007), Xuan paper, cotton thread, bamboo, and stones. Installation view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, image © Museum Associates/LACMA CHICAGO—Containing a massive paper wave, a tower of leftover fat, and a tiger-skin rug of 500,000 cigarettes, The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China encompasses 48 works […] More