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Montagnes Sacrées

Mi-Hyun Kim “Huang Shan, Montagnes Sacrées” 2007 exposition du 4 juin au 18 juillet 2009

Pour sa première exposition à la galerie Philippe Chaume, la photographe coréenne Mi-Hyun Kim nous emmène en Chine sur les hauteurs du Huang Shan, littéralement montagne jaune. Classé depuis 1990 au patrimoine mondial de l’Unesco, ce site granitique exceptionnel exerce sur les hordes de touristes qui s’y rendent, une constante fascination. Mi-Hyun Kim ne déroge pas à la règle. Quand elle obtient enfin son visa pour la Chine, après plusieurs années d’attente, son pèlerinage va pouvoir commencer.


Depuis plusieurs siècles, le site a construit sa réputation sur quatre phénomènes naturels, appelés les Quatre Merveilles. Les pins parasols centenaires, les sources d’eau chaude, les rochers aux formes curieuses et la mer de nuages sont les piliers de ce paysage pittoresque exceptionnel dont la géologie et le climat, de moussons subtropicales montagneuses, sont si particuliers. C’est pourquoi, les monts Huang Shan n’ont pas cessé d’envoûter les artistes.


Les photographies de Mi-Hyun Kim rendent doublement hommage à l’héritage culturel chinois. D’une part, elles reprennent le thème pictural classique du paysage ; d’autre part, elles perpétuent la tradition taoïste du vide et du plein. En effet, les photographies de Mi-Hyun Kim fonctionnent comme des microcosmes qui captent les jeux de correspondance et de tension entre les éléments : la montagne est enveloppée de brume, mais celle-ci est aussi déchirée par le pic rocheux. Ses paysages sont traversés de forces visibles et invisibles qui rythment la composition de ses images exposant ainsi les lois dynamiques du réel. Le plein qu’est la montagne est lié au vide qu’est le nuage qui révèle son existence. Dès lors, le vide n’est pas quelque chose d’inexistant, au contraire permet-il aux éléments qui l’environnent de s’accomplir. C’est pourquoi, Mi-Hyun Kim photographie aussi bien la nature que les hommes dans la nature puisque, tous ensemble, ils interagissent dans l’univers. De même, ces touristes, aux imperméables colorés, qui descendent la montagne ou qui prosaïquement déjeunent devant cet extraordinaire panorama donnent du corps à la brume, de même, ces conifères sont liés à la montagne par une mer de nuages.


Ainsi, si les monts du Huang Shan ont été l’occasion pour Mi-Hyun Kim et Marc Riboud d’explorer le même sujet, leurs interprétations sont diamétralement opposées. Quand Marc Riboud cherche à densifier les nuages, Mi-Hyun Kim redonne au vide sa grâce aérienne.



Elise Legris-Heinrich

one day it will all be just a faded memory

hopefully...

amazing

Ron van der Ende, see all here

(Love is light, it comes in every color, or no color at all)

We try to grasp all we don’t know,
at the limits of what we believe to know.
Terra firma.

We try to design the unseen,
On dreams and glimpses,
Visions we make out, based on what we see.
Familiar.

What color is love ?

the dignity of man

"When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man."

final words of Harold Pinter's acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize of Literature 2005

melhor do que isto aqui

Esta semana mato o cabrito. Ando a engordá-lo desde o Natal, deixei-o mamar na cabra até querer, depois foi sempre mimo e papas tenras.
No Domingo, o rapaz e a rapariga virão da cidade e trarão os netos. Teremos mesa farta para todos, do bom e do melhor, que a mãe deles, lá nisso nunca falha.
Será o dia de festa da aldeia : logo de manhã alvorada com morteiros, cedo chegará a banda filarmónica que seguirá a tocar pelas ruas. Levarei os pequenos comigo atrás da banda um bocado, a mostrar-lhes a terra onde nasceram os avós e os pais, a mostrá-los aos outros também, claro, depois antes do almoço, levo-os até à fazenda.
Eles brincarão com a cabra, verão as galinhas e saberão donde vêm os ovos. Dir-lhes--ei onde plantei as batatas e mostrarei onde estão as crescer os alhos, os cebolos e a maternidade das alfaces, dos feijões, dos tomates e dos pimentos.
Depois do almoço, teremos missa e procissão em honra da Senhora da Saúde. Recolhida a Santinha a banda tocará no adro da igreja a sua despedida e toda a gente aplaudirá os músicos, lhes baterá nas costas e lhes oferecerá de beber.
O adro ficará então desimpedido para o leilão das oferendas, acondicionadas em tabuleiros de pão forrados com boas toalhas de linho. As raparigas casadoiras mostrarão os tabuleiros, andando em círculos à frente de todos.
As moças estarão vestidas nas suas melhores roupas e sapatos finos. O chão do adro, maltratado das chuvas, dificultará muito os seus passos, mas elas sorrirão o tempo todo e o pregoeiro puxará pela malta tentando conseguir sempre melhores lances.
Quando eu era novo, rapaz que quisesse uma rapariga, tinha de arrematar o tabuleiro que ela carregava. Hoje são os velhos que fazem os lances e será tudo feito com alguma pressa, porque se vai fazendo tarde para quem tem de ir embora.
O sol entretanto começa a ficar baixo, lancharemos ainda no quintal, ou dentro se o tempo não estiver para isso e depressa todos estarão a deixar a aldeia e a voltar às suas terras de agora.
No dia seguinte, voltarei à fazenda, soltarei a cabra para pastar agora só e voltarei ao almoço para comer os restos. O dia da festa serão apenas instantes, como cromos a perder a cor na minha cabeça e do que eu me lembrarei melhor serão os risos e a tagalerice dos garotos. A seguir voltarão no Natal, porque no Verão precisam de praia que agora dizem é bom para eles, melhor do que isto aqui...

Happy Easter - Feliz Páscoa

wonder

today

O meu amigo Óscar faz hoje anos. Que contes muitos Óscar, um abraço !

yesterday

A tall elegant woman,
Passes me, smiling and singing to herself
Behind her coming from the same street corner
Comes a man, leaning on a cane, beautiful white beard,
Wide smile on his face and I think :
-This must be joy’s street corner.

During lunch, somebody says :
-It’s hard, getting out of bed every day,
Face the day, carrying this big void inside.
Better to move on, don’t spare a thought.

Somebody got broken,
Got so completely broken, that a new life
had to be reinvented, it’s sad but also
Beautiful and moving, teaching us all
How fragile our dead certainties are.

Maps

Iuri Gagarin is dead

O dia de ontem

Uma mulher alta e elegante,
passa por mim a sorrir e a cantarolar,
atrás dela vindo da mesma esquina
surge um homem, apoiado numa bengala, bela barba branca,
com um sorriso largo no rosto e eu penso :
- Esta deve ser a esquina da boa disposição.

Ao almoço alguém comenta :
- Como é difícil, sair da cama todos os dias,
enfrentar o dia, levando este
tão grande vazio dentro.
O melhor é seguirmos em frente e nem pensar.

Alguém se partiu,
partiu-se tão completamente, que uma nova vida
teve de inventar, é triste mas ao mesmo tempo
comovente e belo, como todos podemos sempre
aprender quão frágeis são todas as nossas certezas.

color

Born in 1964, Keiko González studied first at the University of Texas and later at Rutgers University, where he was awarded the Fellowship for Excellence in the Visual Arts and attained his Master of Fine Arts. In 1992, he specialized in engraving at the Kunsthochschule in Dresden, Germany.

He has held fifteen individual exhibitions in Bolivia and the United States and has participated in more than twenty collective exhibitions on three continents. To name a few: Ru Artists, New York, Five young Bolivian artists in Rome; Circumstances, myth and abstraction in Bolivian contemporary art, IMF, Washington DC; Galerie Downingstrasse, Dresden, Entre trópicos, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber, Caracas. His work has also been represented at international biennales in Cairo and Cuenca.

Among many awards, he has received the First Prize in Painting at the Salón Pedro Domingo Murillo in La Paz, Grand Prize at Recuperación del Dibujo, BHN, La Paz, Grand Prize at the XI Bienal de Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Grand Prize at Salón Internacional de Arte (SIART), La Paz and the First Prize at Salón 14 de Septiembre, Cochabamba, Bolivia.

His paintings have neither geographic adherences, nor artistic allegiances. They radiate freedom reached by a steady search on empty supports. From the early 1990s, Keiko´s works have been a constant dialogue between figuration and abstraction, with the predominance of the latter. In 1991, he displayed paintings made up by colourful abstract planes, which combined formal rigor with informal space. The powerful expressions bring to mind De Kooning´s works of the 1950s. These pieces appear to be the result of a random process, where the artist almost attacked the support with his media, only to cease when the true spirit of the painting had been revealed.

In 1992 he showed paintings which had subdued to the figurative, evoking women painted by Braque during his post Cubist period and Matisse’s recumbent figures. However, Keiko introduced them to an imaginative deconstruction of the aesthetic trend.
Between 1993 and 1994 he created organic shapes reminiscent of leaves, branches and sexual organs, which explore the picture plane in compositions that elude both a symbolic interpretation and a relationship with natural forms.

In recent years, he has been consistent in his quest for freedom and has continued to create works within the context of abstract art. The paintings displayed here were created in the field of two-dimensionality and that of three-dimensional space. Painted in acrylic, they range from a chromatic saturation of yellows, through cold blues, sombre blacks and nihilistic whites. His artistic conception engages tonalities with geometrical shapes, and chromatic planes with lines. The paintings restricted within wooden frames can be arranged randomly to create complex compositions, and allowing freedom of expression.
From the album:
"Keiko González" by ARTE BOLIVIANO CONTEMPORANEO on Facebook

the small clearing of each heart

"The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart." --Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

zeitgeist

bergamota

e eu este tempo todo sem saber que era uma laranja...

Buddha Eden, Garden of Peace

...and there's a wine shop on exit...

Tudo muda

Everything changes; nothing dies; the soul
Roams to and fro, now here, now there, and takes
What frame it will, passing from beast to man,
From our own form to beast and never dies.

Ovid

Tudo muda

Tudo muda. De novo começar
podes, com o último alento.
O que acontece, porém, fica acontecido: e
a água que pões no vinho, não podes mais
separar.

O que acontece, fica acontecido: a água
que pões no vinho, não podes
mais separar. Porém,
tudo muda: com o último alento podes
de novo começar.

Bertold Brecht

All changes pass me like a dream

John Everett Millais
Ophelia
1851, Oil on canvas
76 x 111 cm
Tate Gallery, London


Love and Hate by Elizabeth Siddal

Ope not thy lips, thou foolish one,
Nor turn to me thy face;
The blasts of heaven shall strike thee down
Ere I will give thee grace.

Take thou thy shadow from my path,
Nor turn to me and pray;
The wild wild winds thy dirge may sing
Ere I will bid thee stay.

Turn thou away thy false dark eyes,
Nor gaze upon my face;
Great love I bore thee: now great hate
Sits grimly in its place.

All changes pass me like a dream,
I neither sing nor pray;
And thou art like the poisonous tree
That stole my life away.

Jesus

Darwin

Avó

A minha avó Maria Augusta.

As mulheres da minha vida têm-me trazido histórias...desde pequeno que adoro ficar quieto junto a elas a ouvi-las conversar. Ouvi algumas da minha avó Maria, mas ela partiu cedo, ouvi mais da minha avó Amélia, e das minhas tias. Com elas passei muitas tardes nos meus tempos de adolescente.

Jasmim

O jasmim está de novo em flor no meu quintal

Bertha the childflower