Chinese Contemporary Art in Dresden

I recently visited an exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art in Dresden. Everyone who is interested in developments of modern chinese artists, should visit the Art Hotel at the train station Dresden Mitte. The address is:

Kunsthalle Dresden
Ostra-Allee 33
01067 Dresden

The Art'otel features a range of accomodations in combination with artistic elements such as an art gallery, interior design by Dennis Santachiara, artworks from A.R. Penck, Architecture by Prof. Rolf and Jan Rave .

Some of the pieces that caught my (artisitic) attention can be seen below.




Huang He: Face Series, 2007, oil on canvas, 280 x 250 cm

My impression of the face is that of a monkey, possibly a chimpanzee (in distress?). Very expressive!




















Morgen: No.1, 2006, oil on canvas, 160 x 140 cm


An interesting composition using a single colour, blue. The characters, an african boy and a baboon floating under water over a wooden bench. Note that the baboon has a hand on the boy's thigh and wears some kind of overall. One of the boy's flip-flops is floating behind the pair.

The monkey misses a shadow. I am reminded of the allegory of the monkey sitting on a man's shoulder to indicate a drug addiction. I do not dare to interpret this painting in this way, but it is remarkable that the baboon lacks a shadow, therefore making it less real than the boy. The fact that they are under water, makes this picture seem more surreal and dreamlike. Maybe to reflect the tranquillized nature of the boy's state. But I am wandering far off here... You may make up your mind and post me your thoughts.
















Shen Liang: Book Cover Series No. 2, 2007, oil on canvas, 80 x 100 cm

This painting's motive stems from a chinese book cover. The painter Shen Liang incorporated even scratches, stains and scribbles by assumed former readers and owners. The book's title is the chinese name for Lenin (read as "Lie ning zai 1918" - Lenin in 1918)

All pictures kindly provided by Michael Schultz. Copyright remains with M. Schultz. Please visit www.galerie-schultz.de.

Mathematics is the language of nature

"Mathematics is the language of nature". So it has been said in the movie "Pi", which deals with the intricacies of mathematical constants and their supposed connection to conspiracy theories. We do not want to go so far as to admit this connection at this point, but the artistically visualized mystery of mathematics was quite obvious there.

Another field of the arts, where mathematics are probably the very foundation for beauty, is music. Harmonic patterns and rhythm give testimony to the power that mathematics has on our human mind and probably on the minds of various animal species (1, 2) too. Some people even believe, that music influences the growth of their beloved plantlife. The effects might not be as some scientists want to make us believe (in order to enhance the music that the cash ringing in their wallets makes). In any case, the mathematical beauty of music gives us bliss, which noone will refute.

In the art of projecting visions and impressions on a planar surface using a coloured liquid substance and a solid transfer agent, otherwise called painting, printing or drawing, math usually plays a role, albeit a marginal one. Great renaissance artists such as Leonardo DaVinci for the first time placed greater emphasis on mathematical ratios that mirror naturally harmonic or eye-pleasing proportions in their paintings. It is no coincidence that many of these painters were also researchers of mathematics and natural sciences.

The golden section (a+b is to a as a is to b) is one such evidence for a connection between a natural law concerning the formation of biological shapes (leaves, sea-shells, etc.) and what we perceive as harmonic composition.

In more recent times, artists have been experimenting with mathematics even further, not just using it to improve artistic style elements, which they had utilized instinctively. Moreover, symmetry and regularity itself started to be central themes in arts.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (*1898 Leeuwarden, Netherlands, +1972 Laren, Netherlands) was an artist applying these themes more and more frequently in the course of his life. However according to him, this happened more intuitively and he claimed not to have the slightest clue about math.

Still he was revered by scientists and mathematicians, because his clean, precise works approach mathematical topics in an intuitive and sensual way. His contribution can be seen as illustrations to scientific subjects and hypotheses. Quite often he was invited to math lectures and held lectures all over europe about his work himself, which were well attended. In a way he had his fan followers like the icons Einstein and nowadays Hawkins, which cross the boundaries between science, art, philosophy and the human soul.

His pictures can be found under www.mcescher.com and are worth a look. Visitors to Den Haag can enjoy them in personal by going to the Palais of Queen Emma located in the old city.

M.C. Escher - Rome 1927 woodcut in grey and black, printed from 2 blocks

M.C. Escher - Development II woodcut in
brown, grey-green
and black, printed from 3 blocks (1939)
All M.C. Escher works (c) 2008
The M.C. Escher Company -
the Netherlands.
All rights reserved.
Used by permission.
www.mcescher.com



(1) Peretti PO, Kippschull H (1991) "Influence of five types of music on social
behaviors of mice, Mus musculus." In Indian Journal of Behaviour 15(2): 51-58.

(2) Rickard NS, Toukhsati SR, Field SE (2005) "The Effect of Music on Cognitive
Performance: Insight From Neurobiological and Animal Studies" In Behavioral and
Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, Vol. 4, No. 4, 235-261.

Inner Turmoil (2007)

Inner Turmoil (2007) Study done with MSPAINT.

Inner Turmoil (2007) Acryl on canvas, 50x70 cm.

(c) all images by Reconciler 2008

Sphere in SLUB Dresden V 1.0

(c) Reconciler 2007

This image is the first version of the picture "Sphere in SLUB Dresden". The original photo has been taken in the state and university library of Saxony in Dresden. The main reading room in the center can be seen. The oil-canvas effect and the sphere were done using "The Gimp 2". The aim is to make the search for knowledge visible in the hall's atmophere. More soon...

Freedom

What is freedom? It is to take my own life, the only one life I have, to take it in my own hands and do a real creation out of this. Creation that makes me grow and positively inspires the others. It is to be responsible for my own satisfaction and happiness. Whatever happiness is or can be.

Freedom is when my human being can feel free, it can enjoy when there is time for joy and it can suffer when it's time for sorrow. It is also to be open to all the things that come to us and react sincerely. All the good and bad aspects of me, of world, of the others come to me and cause my own individual sincere reaction. Reaction that involves my mind, body and heart.

Freedom is to be open to new things, new beautiful things and new ugly things. It is not to avoid part of myself, not to escape. But to be open, ready to feel, to understand, to smile and cry, to act. The ideal would be to feel everywhere at home. Like habitant of the Universe, meaning not more than an ant but not less than the stars...

Birdy

(c) Reconciler 2008

On Religion

"Faith" is an evolutionary quite successful concept, because it is not refutable. Knowledge on the other hand is. A humanistic-materialistic concept of the world is therefore much more fragile. In the long run it is doomed, at least under today's conditions. Similarly, the idea of freedom, so valiantly fought for in the last 500 years since the christian reformation, is on the way to oblivion in people's minds. We do not notice, how the ground is cut from under human rights' feet. The reason for this is the inherent inability of the mem "Human rights and humanity" to protect itself. Human rights have to justifiy themselves over and over again before the basic human nature.

Belief is not rooted in ratio but in the instinctive need for support. The major religions underwent an evolutionary process (shamanism to polytheism to monotheism), during which they successfully removed the pressure of self-justification (through a cunning system of infallibility). They are thus much more assertive and competitive than the western philosophical mindset of gaining knowledge and developing ratio. They are simpler and concern themselves with the immediate reality of people. They give answers to the questions, which are left behind by the complexity of modern society. Questions that common people still have.

It has to be noted, that the western mindset is itself already under attack from many sides: Neoliberal ideology, Manchester capitalism, police state tendencies, corruption, reversion to uneducated superstition as a result of the breakdown and socio-economic stratification of the civil society. Increasingly our system has to fight back neo-religious groups, fundamentalism in the midst of our metropoles (Berlin, London, Paris, to name only the tip of the iceberg).

Thoughts are like bugs leaping off your finger

(c) Reconciler 2007

Like a bug leaping off your finger, a thought flees from your mind if it cannot feel the ground, that is your soul, your character, your essence. Neither familiar (like a dragonfly) nor unfamiliar (like an ant) with the heights, where it likes to roam sometimes, it will always return to the foundation of your being.

对称 Symmetry

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S y m m e t r y y r t e m m y S
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Bieszczady
Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine
(c) Reconciler 2007

南校区

杨凌，陕西，中国：西北农林科技大学的南校区，管理主楼 (c) Reconciler 2007

Creativity, Culture and Probability

Human capacity for cultural development and new ideas is limited to the amount of decisions possible in the universe. The universe knows only one state, one reality because it changes linearly in time from its beginning to its end. Every possible occurance will take place and only once, because the universal conditions for an occurence change from occurance to occurance. The lifetime of the universe is divided into states of its existence down to the scale of quantum states, lining up discretely on a chain that we call history.

The present state probability for a singular idea to occur once in a human mind is directly proportional to the population size of mankind in the given moment. Population size determines population density and therefore the rate of interaction of humans on a global scale. The more "singular" interactions take place (as far as singular actions can be classified as such), the higher the inspiration rate of humankind should be. Creativity of an individual as an abstract process is based on external inspiration as well as on internal factors (experience, memories, health, chemical state of the brain, etc.), which in turn depend mostly on external factors (namely to the extent of the difference between all interactions and the individual's actions, roughly speaking).

Hence it is appropriate to state that:
1. the creative process of the indvidual is the result of all possible interactions of the universe, including those actions of the individual,
2. every singular creative process is unique in the universe,
3. the bigger the scale is, on which a singular creative process is described, the more likely it is to find itself in company of look-alikes.

If you decsribe a star like our Sun on the quantum level, or even atomic level, you will not find the exact same star anywhere else despite the shear number of them. If you describe it on the level of main sequence stars, you are likely to find many or few look-alikes depending on how complex you choose to classify.

Ideal

I seek calmness
but my calmness is lethargy
I want happiness
but my happiness is mania
I strife for interest
but my interest is opportunism
I search for strength
but my strength is vanity
I look for sadness
but my sadness is depression
I hunt after continuity
but my continuity is stagnation

I rummage the depths of my soul for a glimpse of what never was and never will be. A hint of the purity, the innocence that is so unnatural. A faint image of my divine essence, that is tainted. A fading ideal of what life should have been, but can never be.

"Paradise" (sketch03, (c) Reconciler, 2007)