Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Transforming spacial concepts into natural forms

I have just been to Taipei.  The main purpose of the trip was to visit Art Taipei that was just being held over the weekend, but I also found Taipei Fine Arts Museum very good. 

Because it is the city's municipal museum, you can enjoy 4 to 5 exhibitions for a mere 1 US dollar (NTD30) admission fee, and each exhibition is good.  Interestingly one of the exhibitions was "Trans-Cool Tokyo," which featured many of the most major contemporary artists of Japan.  Indeed it is a very efficient opportunity to have a quick overview of the contemporary art scene in Japan, and you would never see such a show in Tokyo.   So if you are interested in the Japanese contemporary art and happened to be in Taiwan, it is a must see.  It is open until September 25, 2011.

I was more impressed by the retrospective of Read Lee, "The Struggle of Space and Sentiment."  I did not know about the artist until I saw the show, but I was just fascinated by the colors and brush strokes of his abstract paintings.  Many of the works looked soothing to me, having no conflict, so to say.  And I believe that must have been what the artist struggled to achieve.

Lee said "In my paintings, I transform spacial concepts into natural forms."  On the other hand, according to Lee, Cezanne transformed natural forms into painterly space. 

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Perseid meteor shower over Hawaii

I just learned that it is the season of observing the Perseid meteor shower.  This year the meteor shower is said to be active from July 23 to August 22.  Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, too, where you normally see enormous number of stars in the skies, you just look up to the night skies and can see the shooting stars even before the peak (August 13 in 2011.)  I saw several last night. 

It is said that your wish will come true if you can recite the wish three times to a shooting star before it disappears.  But who can?   Let's consider just seeing one brings you a luck.