Modern art 18

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-02-12 (1/25 limited edition)
Mystic fish 12

It is an unquestionable fact that Prints fade. Two factors explain this:
- paper quality and longevity
- Ink quality and longevity

Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc is the world leading specialist of those matters relating to prints durability.

Eina BEMS, the company distributing my prints, uses one of the best combinations presently available on the market for its art prints:

1. EPSON Enhanced Archival Matte paper: a beautiful flat finished heavyweight paper, with no texture surface; popular for fine art use
- Features:
* Flat matte surface
* Instant drying with Epson inks
* Excellent color reproduction
* Highest resolution output
* Photo thickness
* Excellent Hightlights
* Fine shadow detail
- Detailed Specs:
* Weight: 45 lb. (192 g/m2)
* Thickness: 10.3 mil
* Opacity: 94%
* Pounds/Ream 51#
* Base Material: Paper
* Surface: Flat Matte
* Lightfastness: 62 years.

These ratings are based on accelerated testings of prints on specialty media displayed indoors, under glass. Actual print stability will vary according to media, printed image, display conditions, light intensity and atmospheric conditions. For maximum print life display, place all prints under glass or lamination or properly store them. Ratings based on tests conducted by Epson and Wilhelm Imaging Research Inc.
For more about the subject, visit Inkjet Art Solutions

2. EPSON UltraChrome inks.
Pigment-based, the ink is water-resistant, resists running or smudging, with any paper type, though the papers may not be waterfast. These inks resist fading from light in framed display condition for over 60 years. These ratings are based on tests conducted by Epson and Wilhelm Imaging Research. PC World cites a Display Permanence rating of 92 years for the EPSON C80-82 inks as used by Eina BEMS for printing its 8x10' formats.

Modern art 17

POST PSYCHEDELIC PRINT COLLECTION
1-02-08 (1/25 limited edition)
Mystic fish 08

My "Post-Psychedelic Print Collection", to this day, comprises 60 "digital paintings" that I created in 2002. I plan to give in this blog's "Modern art" series a selection of 8 of those prints as an illustration of my digital work.

Those works are realized with the following FREE programs:

- Fractals: I used successively the following tools: Fractint, Chaos Pro and Ultra Fractal. All 3 programs can be downloaded free. Ultra Fractal is clearly my preferred. You can for example cut parts of a fractal image and then zoom in those parts... After reaching an interesting fractal image, I transfer this image to an imaging program for changing contrast, intensity, colors and details.

- Imaging: Adobe photoshop7 and The Gimp. I worked with Photoshop since the mid-nineties but after working extensively with The Gimp recently, I find that the Gimp works perfectly for me. Technically, you get the same functions on both programs, the real bonus of The Gimp is that it is Free while Photoshop costs hundreds of $ that you have to give out with each new version. The finalized image has then to be transferred to an editing program for printing.

- Editing and printing: I now use Open Office for A4 (letter) or A3 sizes (a free program that I find very stable and user friendly). I used to work with Page Maker which I continue to use for larger sizes. I discovered Scribus (free) recently, critics say that it is comparable to Page Maker but I need more time to familiarize with this program.

Modern art 16

DREAMSCAPE. Tapestry n# A-001-4x6'-1/1
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Artist unique edition tapestry: 1 on 1 piece in total, available in
2 different sizes (1, 4 design units)
Here follows the design of a 4 Design Units

Tapestry n# A-001-x4psd.jpg-1/1

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 15

THE INFINITE A. Tapestry n# D-014-A-S-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit

Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-8DU-../30

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 14

SONG OF SPRING A. Tapestry n# D-013-A-S-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit= 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit

Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-8DU-../30

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 13

WINNOW THE WINGS A. Tapestry n# D-007-A-S&L-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit

Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-8DU-../30

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 12

MIRROR A. Tapestry n# D-007-A-S&L-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit

Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-8DU-../30

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 11

FLAMING A. Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-1DU-../30
(photo of a 1 Design Unit = 120 x 180 cm)
Limited edition tapestry: 1 on 30 pieces in total, available in
6 different sizes (1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 design units)
Here follows the design of a 8 Design Unit

Tapestry n# D-005-A-S-8DU-../30

I have been commissionned in 2002 to design a collection of tapestries for Eina BEMS llc.

Traditional tapestries and rugs are based on the weaving of yarns. Eina BEMS' material as well as the manufacturing technique were new (assembly of leather-wool parts) and nobody had ever designed rugs for this technique.

Eina BEMS' finally selected 13 designs, in 2 color versions, among some hundred designs that I had proposed. In total that gave them a collection of 26 different tapestries.

I give here a sampling of 7 of those tapestries as illustration of my designs. For more on those tapestries, visit www.einabems.com

Modern art 10

Philosophy. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache/paper 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT


An image, colors and words.
The words in the image are the following:

The contact between opposites generates a burst of energy fueling changes and transformations that are as the seconds on the ticking clock of evolution.

From this we know that the life of all species and their members is given by the changes occuring in the following 3 dimensions:

- The SKY or the influences of environments, from vicinity to infinity, on each specy and its members.

- The EARTH or the influences of the hardware and software assigned to the members of each living specy. This is called:
* the drama of reproduction of the specy through sex
* the drama of reproduction of the individuals through the satisfaction of their objective needs: food and shelter.

- The SELF or the influences of the cultural and economic works of each specy upon itself, upon its members, upon other species and upon the environment.
Seeing that cultural and economic works are nothing more than the specific forms and answers of one particular specy to the influences of the earth and the sky, that is very wise indeed.

Since having written this text in fall of 2001, I come to think that I should add a third aspect of the earthly influences:
* the drama of complexification: starting with unicellular organisms, life is programmed to strive for always higher degrees of complexity.

Modern art 9

The Concert hall that Beijing will not get. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache/paper 55 x 65 cm.

CONTENT

Having decided to build a new concert hall in the capital Beijing, in 2000, the Chinese Government called for bids from architects and designers. They received proposals from around the world and after long deliberations, the selection committee decided to award the contract to Paul Andreau, the French architect who had built Shanghai's International airport. His project was to build a half sphere, covered with titanium plates, wherein the different concert rooms would be encased.

A storm of protests erupted from the Chinese architect community and the project was cancelled.

After many months of silence, the selection committee decided to reaward the contract to the French architect. JIANG Jemin's voice triumphed, Beijing would have its modernist monument.

Witness of all this affair, I put my own idea on paper...

The most amazing came after Paul Andreu's Paris new terminal at Charles de Gaulle crashed unexpectedly only 6 months after its opening. Beijing was sweating, the talk was now all about the calculations of the construction that they had started under Andreu's direction?

But more importantly, how shall their leaders' monument to modernity reflect upon Beijingers and all chinese for that matter? Let's just for an instant imagine what has been Beijing's masters deep motive. Is it proudness of their culture and civilization or is it some sort of deeply burried shame that makes them reject all Chineseness and root for a deeply Western take on modernity?
In the end, should Andreu's selection not be seen as something akin to Jiang jemin dyeing his hair in yellow

The New York Times, of August 1st 2004, had an article by SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN entitled Frank Gehry's Mideast Peace Plan. It seems that Gehry's take on modernity succeeded where all the world is failing since years. Israelis and Palestinians at the end can agree on something: they hate Gehry's Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance. They hate this Western cubist cliche of modernity.
Could we one day see the Chinese united in hating Andreu's vision and toring his monument down?

Modern art 8

Vegetable garden. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache on paper. 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT

In the Western world and the big cities of the developing world, people nowadays eat stuff coming out of tin cans, plastic bags of frozen food and other plastic bags of junk that have been produced in huge agribusiness factories controled by a handfull of multinational corporations. In our area of hyper-industrialism food mutated into an industrial merchandise.

Statistics show us that these last 50 years more and more of us are fattening, they call that rampant obesity. What they don't tell is that such obesity is a direct consequence of daily ingestion of industrial foods. Take a look at the ingredients content that I found on the package of bread and cookies: niacin, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavfin, folic acid, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium chloride, erythorbic acid, L-cysteine, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, calcium propionate.

As I see it, obesity is as a collective punishment for the growing distance between ourselves and the origin of what we eat.

Vegetable garden is about my memory of the beauty of gardening when health and beauty were doing fine before the agribusiness fell into the claws of big capital.

Modern art 7

The dragon. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache on paper. 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT

In Chinese mythology the dragon is the creator. In Western Christian mythology the dragon is a force of destruction. Those interpretations could not be further apart.

The question that thus arises is how can Chinese and Westerners understand each others when the mythologies that they heard of or learned about since early age describe the same things in completely different terms?

I tried to represent the Chinese understanding through my Western eyes "reformed" through my decade and a half immersion in Chinese society. Not much of a destructive force at work here!

As I wrote in depth in my past theoretical posts, I firmly believe that one of the three central determining factors of post-modernism is the death of Western-centricism that accompanies the emergence of the Eastern cultures of 60% of the world population.
Artists can't miss the point, for, if they did they would forever turn in circles of insignificance.

Check this out in the two excellent articles hereunder.


Does The 21st Century Belong To China?
Phillip Dodd is leaving as director of London's Institute of Contemporary Art to focus on Asia. "In my usual pompous way, I have a kind of wager that the 21st century belongs to a constellation of China and India and my deepest feeling is that Britain shows no sign of understanding this. There is a lack of engagement with that part of the world which is just crazy. My real worry is that we spent the past 10 years being so in love with ourselves - that's what Cool Britannia was, like Narcissus - we thought we were the centre of the world. But the world has moved on and we are bewildered." Financial Times 07/27/04

Art in Arab Region

Good article by Samar Farah in ArtsJournal. Always this stupid Westerncentricism:

"""Gallery owners in Syria say that most Western visitors are shocked by the very idea of contemporary art in the Middle East - not to mention works that tackle sexual concepts and newer forms like video and installation art....
Those who do travel to Arab countries usually expect to find nothing more than traditional crafts. They are surprised to stumble, for example, on Samer Kozah's contemporary art gallery on Straight Street in Damascus."""
URL: How To Define Art From Arab Region

Modern art 6

Changing wars. Beijing. Fall 2001.
Gouache on paper. 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT

Brute physical force has been superseded by what we have learned to call "high tech" gear.

But reality is somewhat more complex.
Humanity evolved into more and more complex systems.
Technology is part of those systems but it has no life of itself, it is used inside the multiple systems that interact together to form our "human societies".

The least we can say is that our understanding, at the start of the 21st century, of the working of those complex systems is "impressionist" at best.
We humans are lost in our multiple theories and don't grasp the whole picture of life anymore.

"Changing wars" is a trial to render our "impressionist" understanding and vision of the reality of 21st century wars.

Modern art 5

The roots of wisdom. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache on paper. 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT.

According to neuro-biologists, we humans should use only 2-3% of the neurons in our brains.

I'm sometimes wondering if those 2-3% of neurons have not gone totally wild and, as a cancer invading the whole body, are not just destroying all activity of the remaining 97-98%..

Something is indeed sick in our behavior and I deeply believe that humanity is in dire need of understanding the global picture of which we are only one pixel instead of zooming always deeper and deeper into the details of that pixel itself.

"The roots of wisdom" is how I see my own quest for knowledge, always hiding from the fads and trends and running from what ends with "ism"...

In the end can't believe that evolution gratified us with those neurons if it was not for our using them. If they really were unused there should be a reason for that. I'am firmly convinced that reality is more profound than what is said about it and thus I believe that one day neuro-biologists will have to revise their claim.

Modern art 4

Terry praying. Beijing. Fall 2001
Gouache on paper. 55 x 80 cm.

CONTENT

My friend Terry is a fervent prayer. I wanted to catch her in a moment of enlightenment. I think praying is kind of bowing in the face of total harmony. Forms and colors, forms, colors.

The great harmony is something objective. The great harmony is what all great religions and philosophies of humankind pointed to. It just can't be deranged, whatever happens in the cosmos, in our personal lives or in our human societies harmony is always resulting... Religious rites have always a functionality, in the case of prayer (religions of the word) or meditation (Eastern approaches) the rite helps the follower having a glimpse of the great harmony.

Disharmony is an impossibility, it is a creation of our egos.
We fabricate disharmony through our desire for material possessions that instill greed, envy, jealousy in our hearts. And thus, all great religions and traditional philosophical systems discourage the desire for material possessions.

As human creations, paintings are subjective renderings and in consequence they are not automatically harmonious. In a painting of whatever style some objective rules apply to reach harmony.
The harmonization of the artist's subjectivity with the objective rules of beauty governing our changing cosmos is what art is all about.

FORM

The first phase of my work is automaticism. This is still very visible in this painting. The blues of the sky have not been reworked, and give a feel of spontaneity. Lines have been added to accentuate the movements.

- The yellow below the sky is hiding what was more blue, only some parts of that blue have been kept to form the first elements of the content developing under the sky.
- Yellow was used to hide some parts further down to the bottom.
-- At that stage, I started to draw lines, taking the opportunity of forms that appeared in the colors and trying to discover a harmonious combination covering the whole page. The content of my work is designed in that stage that I call "making sense'.
- When I succeeded to make sense out of the chaos of colors, I tried to reach color harmony of the complete page. To do so, I restarted working with colors in between the lines till I was satisfied with the harmonic of the page .
- In the last phase I rework the lines to have a clean finish.