Paintblog:64

Couldn’t really resist posting this one, its a bit cryptic but if you look at it for a while you can figure it out…

The official title is ‘foreigner’s calligraphy.’ My  八 got criticised a bit.

Fidel

Fidel is still kicking apparently, or at least his body double is.

Quit a change since the old days. There ’s an interesting article here on ‘the chairman smiles‘ looking at the different images of some of the better known communist dictators.

Paintblog: ‘big Shanghai’

Got 60 paintings photographed, and just got the pics back from the photographer. Randomly, here is the 60th one.

More news…(don’t they ever stop?)

Shanghai Eye neglected to open its email box over the weekend. Apparently while we were dozing in front of some DVDs Shanghai Fringe festival got underway. In fact Shanghai Eye never even knew there was one - but there is. Anyhow, so the Shanghai Fringe website is up, though the program is not very clear if you want to go see something, though there is a handy mobile phone number posted up if you do actually fancy attending one of the events. Guerilla performances, heh, just pray it doesn’t rain.

Now then, and also there was a sale of original North Korean poster art on Taikang Lu. I couldn’t get the Shanghai Eye’s new fangled technology to work, when you click on the thumbnail and a big new picture pops up. Anyhow, here is the flyer. See if you can figure it out, some sort of deal on offer. You need to email ‘oneinabillion-at-gmail.com for details.

Oh, and there was the ‘Asian Art workshop‘ in London on contemporary Chinese and Indian art. Wonder how that went?

New Russian art

A friend in Moscow pointed Shanghai Eye to a Russian site where photographers and illustrators and the like upload their work.

The site is hiero.ru - and there’s quite a few interesting bits and pieces there. There is also this site. This chap Dimkin apparently also writes hilarious stories if you read Russian- the site does handily have a ‘translate to English’ button on the top right corner. There’s plenty of interesting browsing material. The pics below are by ‘Diana August‘ and ‘Azazella.’

696 Weihai Road

Shanghai Eye will be moving studio to a new address- 696 Weihai Road. A former glass factory and originally an opium den. Empty for 3 years it took three days to rent out once the correct buttons were pressed. There are now ‘30 artists’ installed - what will happen next no-one knows, though there is talk of persuading the local government to turn it into a ‘cultural centre.’

Anyhow - to celebrate this new move here is a quick tour of the Chinese Internet- starting with Shanghai Eye’s new neighbour Ma Leang.
Linking in from Maleonn we have ‘Jiji‘ the designer, who also runs ‘www.shirtflag.com‘ and www.poledesign.cn.Moving along the links we arrive at ‘perk’ or ‘poke,’ who also run the ‘green school’ magazine. Then we go to www.getitlouder.com, then onto Ouning at www.alternativearchive.com/ouning , which links to www.danwei.org, and then on to the serious stuff and have a look at the model and singer Chunxiao.

Warring States film in the works

A new Andy Lau flick, ‘a Battle of Wits‘ is taking on the Warring States period. But with flying kung fu fighters? The movie site has a trailer. The last major work on this period Shanghai Eye managed to notice was Chen Kaige’s Emperor and the Assassin. Looking forward to the massacre of the Zhao Guo. The Lau film is inspired by the comic book ‘Bokku.’ The author is Japanese and someone has put the whole thing online here - aarg why did they do that? Now Shanghai Eye has got to spend the rest of the day reading it.

As Chairman Mao would say:” A commander’s correct decisions stem from his correct dispositions.”

Shanghai Eye in situ

You’ll have to bear with us on this one- this is the Shanghai Eye #1 outlet. OK, so the shop is on Huai Hai Road, number 1986, and its name is Ting.

It also sells a lot of stuff by some relatively famous designers, in clothes and porcelain, furniture, that sort of thing.

So here are some photos of some Shanghai Eye stuff, in situ, so to speak.

Oh my!

Shanghai Eye was shocked, repeat, shocked. Shanghai Scene magazine has long been the tired and mildewed attempt by mysterious organs of the local party to knock That’s Shanghai off its perch as the city’s top Time Out clone (not that we care anymore). Suddenly, lurking on a coffee table, with a ‘do not remove sticker’ was the ‘new’ Shanghai Scene. It has now turned into an art magazine. Featuring on the cover, no, not a picture of the Jinmao tower, it instead has a pvc/leather clad hermaphrodite touching their private parts, hanging upside down off the magazines front logo type. Browsing the inner pages we see some boring advertorials for Mont Blanc, which runs for seven pages. But then the reader is submitted to a barrage of avant guarde-ish art stuff, such as Tobias Bernstrup’s (who?) anyhow, this guy, dressed up as a computer game character with machine guns attacking the Jin Mao tower. With cosplay characters.

After some investigation Shanghai Eye discovered Thomas is the guy on the cover (see above).

There are several more obscure but nicely laid out art articles, including several full page spreads of some interesting art work, including some naked lesbians. Then there is a full page technicolour picture of a ladies private parts, next to some weird existential ramble about relationships,

There are a few more art features, something about film, and then a two page spread of a girl lying naked somewhere opposite Jin Mao tower. All very enlightening and not what we’d expect from the old Shanghai Scene at all. But then these guys also seem to have entered a deal with That’s to publish classifieds, so it seems this publication has lost its old masters.

Some of the shows mentioned are as follows:

German? artist dressed as preying mantis atacking Jin Mao tower exhibition is on October 27, at Shanghai Doulun
moma, you need to call in advance, 6587 5996

There is an ‘international art exhibition’ at 1918 Artspace warehouse, 78 Changhau road.

A Korean sculpter Park Sung Tae has a solo show at 50 Morganshan rd, building 6, 2nd floor.

The photos are from Harvest 2, as advertised somewhere on this site I think, Art Scene Warehouse, also at 50 Morganshan road.

This 1918 Artspace also has a website.

(ed- that’s enough art stuff)

Cartoon on ‘research’

This is this month’s cartoon for ‘the Beat’ magazine, the cover story is on research, so erm, the theme of the cartoon is research! Genius.