Category Archive for: arteng biswal

kultura

Art Upstaged: The National Gallery Singapore opens

A media trip to Singapore for any of its arts and culture events – from the Art Biennale to the Writers’ Fest – is always welcome respite from the daily grind of writing. Usually, one is given the time to go through the smaller art galleries and the bigger museums, and one is given the opportunity to see the various cultural projects of both the government and the private sector, over and above what one is invited into the country for.

I’ve always thought that this was what made these visits a great thing: in the past, organizers of media trips know exactly how much time writers need to see the art, and then how much more time they might need to go around and get a feel of what else is going on – the better to contextualize whatever it is we are being flown in for.

The moment I saw the National Gallery Singapore (NGS), I realized there was no way any art critic would be able to do a credible review of it with the three whole days we were being given. And then I saw the fixed and tight itinerary of activities and I knew this would be far from being a relaxing trip to SG. (more…)

kultura

Ai Weiwei, beyond Western claims

Though it was apt to kick-off a year with the promise of writing more about art, and hopefully more about art outside of this country (haha!), with the first Ai Weiwei exhibit in China, something that I happened upon when I was there in September, and rebelling against the very fixed and strict schedule set for the media group I was with. So I got in a cab and asked in my Chinese-English (which is really just English with a hopefully successful Chinese accent, haha), to be brought to 798 Art District, 30 minutes away without traffic, a wonderful wonderful space for art and creativity, and art selling, inevitably.

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kultura

Blaspheming against the bul-ol

There is no looking at Ronald Ventura’s work without having in the back of my head that $1.1M dollar record-breaking sale at the 2011 Sotheby’s auction. In 2012 it seems he’s also had a good run at art auctions such as the Christie’s auction in Hong Kong last last year, which shouldn’t be a surprise really. Between the interest in Southeast Asian art and 2011’s record-breaking sale, it would seem strange if Ventura were not to ride that wave.

It is a wave of course that might not go in the direction of home, at least as far as putting together an exhibit is concerned, and this might have been why “Watching the Watchmen” (at the Vargas Museum in December) ultimately interested me: why would you exhibit at home at this point? What for? Underappreciated as the arts are, no matter how critically and globally acclaimed, why care at all to engage with this nation on the level of one’s artmaking? In the same breath, what would nation get out of something it refuses to acknowledge as important?

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kultura

on Rai Cruz’s Urban Modifications

NOTE: Urban Modifications is on exhibit at Vinyl on Vinyl at The Collective in Malugay.

Seize The Daze
Photography has always been embroiled in the question of impropriety: what is it that you seize, that you catch in a frozen frame, other than what is expected, if not what is obvious?

H

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radikalchick.lit

competition* #WomensMonth2015 #IAmNotMyShoes

Here’s to the friendship
that could have been ours:
wife of my lover,
lover of my husband,
lover of my lover.

For women at both ends
are always rivals:
smiling for points
at a beauty contest,
icing the cake
at a cooking competition,
sprinting for the gold
as they race to a man’s heart. (more…)