Almighty painter

Chapter 719 Bukit Timah
Throwing stones to find a way.

In the brief ripples caused by the coconut thrown into the lake by the little sloth, Anna seemed to have caught a glimpse of the relationship between Sakai Katsuko and Gu Weijing, which was much closer than she had imagined.

Gu Weijing - she has heard this name too many times in different occasions during this period of time.

She wanted to hear what the other party had to say.

"he?"

Katsuko Sakai was silent for a few seconds.

“He is the cicada in the tree, the frog by the lake, the light, the shadow and the tremor.”

"Cicadas and frogs? Are you talking about once-in-a-lifetime encounters?" Mr. Sloth asked.

“Yes. If “The Old Church in the Thunderstorm” is the frog that Gu Weijing met by the lake, then Gu Weijing is the frog that I met by the lake.”

Ms. Sakai said: "We have parted ways, and that spring has ended, but it is still the cicadas and frogs I encountered by the lake in spring when I was a girl. The light and shadow that trembled me, looking back through the sky, no matter where I look, it will still linger in my memories, ringing softly from afar."
-
What I am thinking of is Mount Tai.

Liang's father, who wanted to go and obey, was struggling, and looked sideways to the east, and his tears were sticking to Han.

……

What I am thinking of is Guilin.

When I wanted to follow him, the Xiang River was too deep; I turned sideways to look south and my tears wetted my clothes.

……

What I am thinking of is in Hanyang.

When I wanted to follow him to Longban, I turned my head and looked west, my tears soaking my clothes.

……

What I am thinking of is Yanmen.

I wanted to follow him, but the snow was thick. I turned sideways to look north, my tears wet my handkerchief.

……

——Four Songs of Sadness by Zhang Heng of the Han Dynasty
-
Miss Elena took off her headphones.

She handed the tablet back to the housekeeper and walked down the ramp in front of the booth alone.

The housekeeper followed behind at a distance, carrying a bag.

Anna walked among the booths on the second floor of the Esplanade.

A variety of fill lights give the stands and pedestals a warm or cool feel.

The light is diffused into a mist by the plant fiber surface of the canvas stained with varnish, and is refracted by the sculptures, the metal bases, or the modern artworks with a mirror-like texture, illuminating the dust particles floating in the air one by one.

They flashed in the air one after another, not falling but slowly suspended with a moist texture.

Miss Elena's wheelchair was placed on the pedestal in the main exhibition area.

Her skirt fell to her feet, smooth as a mermaid princess wandering in the ruins of the lost underwater palace of Atlantis.

Those floating dust particles and those tourists coming from all over the world.

Even those lights that surround the booth.

They were all the mermaid princess's guards and servants. She separated them from each other and then quietly closed them behind her.

Beautiful fish tails slapping the water waves.

behind——

Leaving behind a long trail.
-
As Anna is, whether as the editor of Oil Painting magazine or as a wealthy person, she has no need to join the crowds with tourists from all over the world.

The so-called equal “exhibition opportunities”… sorry, this is for ordinary people.

The privileged class does not breathe the same air as you; that is a huge exaggeration.

But there are lots of art exhibitions.

It is true that the privileged class won't play with you at all.

Anna wore a light blue "VIP guest card" on her chest.

This VIP card is not the kind that gives you a 95% discount on tickets, allows you to cut in line when entering, and allows you to go to the bar area on the second floor to sip a free glass of orange juice when you get tired of shopping.

It is a true VIP ID card, only issued to true VIPs.

VIPs in the true sense are often a group of people who attach great importance to privacy and are used to the world revolving around them.

therefore.

Biennales often have separate VIP open days.

During the open day, the exhibition is completely closed to the public and social visitors are not allowed to enter.

The exhibition organizers will devote 120% of their energy to provide individual services to collectors who are interested in buying paintings, well-known art critics, wealthy people, or super VIPs like Anna who are both wealthy people and well-known art critics and are interested in buying paintings.

As for the biennials with stronger commercial attributes.

For the art sales department of an exhibition, from a money-making perspective, a room full of ordinary tourists is not as important as a VIP guest.

They could simply sign a check and buy a major painting, and the sales revenue they could generate would exceed the total value of a thousand tickets.

Director Tonks was so happy when he heard that Mr. Chen, who had previously spent $800 million to book the entire Barcelona Biennial, was interested in the Singapore Biennial and CDX Gallery was willing to introduce him to him. This is why.

Not only during the exhibition there are separate VIP days.

Important people can also enjoy the privilege of viewing the exhibition in advance.

Industry practice: If an art exhibition opens on a Monday, the weekend before will often be set up by the organizer as a VIP advance viewing day.

For example, this year’s Lion City Biennale.

The VIP advance viewing days were July 7th and 8th, which was last Saturday and Sunday.

Tonks even reserved a time slot for the reporting team of Oil Painting magazine and invited them to be the first batch of guests to enter the art exhibition.

The Esplanade was open only to Anna and her group.

Miss Elena can shop however she wants. She can look at the artist's sign or ask for anyone to accompany her. She can ride a wheelchair in the exhibition hall or slide on the small ramps in the venue.

Not only can she play by herself.

She can also bring August to play, and the big dog can have fun however he wants. When the big dog has barked enough, Director Tonks will bark beside him.

Tonks had practiced her smile.

The British curator can now accurately open the corners of his mouth to the roots of his ears, revealing a mouth full of 28 teeth plus 3 wisdom teeth, just like a huge shark holding a ball, opening its bloody mouth, waiting for the keeper to feed it.

But the real owner hasn't arrived yet.

The oil painting team did come, but they were led by a deputy editor-in-chief of the Visual Arts Department. They did some peripheral reporting and photo photography work and then left.

Last week.

Anna did several small interviews in the city, interviewed the heads of art projects in Singapore, talked about the changes and progress that have taken place in the Lion City Biennale since the first art biennale was curated by Fumio Nanjo, and talked about the future development plans of the Lion City art industry.

We also had a conversation with the Asia director of CDX Gallery and a partner of White Cube, the most influential gallery in Singapore.

We can't say that we have done enough.

The strange thing was that she had never set foot in the Esplanade before today, which made Tonks's heart beat like a drum. She secretly sucked her teeth, wondering if she had done something wrong and offended the current head of the "Oil Painting" magazine column.

Tonks was overthinking.

Anna has never been to the Biennale, not because she has a prejudice against the organizing committee, but because she... wants to see the most genuine reactions of the exhibitors to the various works of art together with ordinary audiences on the day the exhibition officially opens.

The painting’s first unmodified echo among the crowd.

What you hear can often explain many problems.

Anna had been observing the central exhibition area for so long, and the effect of the exhibition of the musical "Cats" series of watercolor drawings was roughly the same as she had expected.

That is... great!

If drawings like the "Cat" series were put in a serious Biennale, there would be a series of unavoidable problems.

The originality is not high enough.

The artistic ideology is not high enough.

The painting style is not high enough.

The entire watercolor painting is a bit small.

……

There is no need to be secretive.

Anna's exhibition suggestions to Detective Cat as Mr. Sloth are never perfect painting suggestions.

It is even far from being described as "perfect".

Painting the watercolor version of the musical "Cats" was just the best painting direction they could achieve in a very short time and under limited conditions.

but.

Detective Cat has portrayed them perfectly, with flawless brushstrokes.

She draws really well.

Good rolling properties.

There were twelve cat drawings on the base of the booth, and Anna named the collection "The Twelve Cats". Looking at them neatly arranged on the central booth belonging to the invited painters, all the audience felt like they were watching a silent musical.

Laughing, angry and scolding.

vivid.

There are also advantages to not being artistic enough.

At least everyone can understand it.

There are also benefits to not being profound enough in “thoughtfulness”——

At least everyone can smile knowingly.

At the solemn, profound, and even somewhat boring art exhibition, the creators at each booth were doing their best to express profound social issues, and every painter wanted to be the next Damien Hirst or Jackson Bodock.

Turn the corner.

These cute, furry creatures appear before your eyes.

It's like waking up from a hazy dream in the early morning after a hangover and finding a cat lying on your chest, rubbing its ears against your chin.

It is inevitable that some tourists will occasionally feel that these works are too childish, and that the purely realistic watercolor style seems too old-fashioned in this era, and they will secretly shake their heads... This is not the tourists' problem, it is the problem of the painting, and there is nothing to say about this.

But generally speaking.

From children holding hands with their elders to old men with white beards, they often stop and stay in front of the cats painted by Ms. Cat for several times longer than in front of other paintings. "It's a good sign."

In terms of painting skills, there are quite a few painters with good skills in the central exhibition area, but they are far from Detective Cat.

Anyone can observe the difference in the expressiveness of these works, even from a distance and at a casual glance.

It is the difference between a candle flame and the sun.

From the perspective of "artistic quality", the judges will more or less take into account the overall feelings of the general audience when voting.

In Anna's heart, Detective Cat's work is the best among all the works in the special exhibition area.

Compared with previous Lion City Biennales, this year's "Human Noise" Art Biennale has a higher cost of organizing, more participating painters, more attention, and correspondingly more intense competition.

It is a great honor for a work to have a special booth at such a biennial.

There is no particularly bad level.

In addition to Detective Cat's "Cat", there are many other interesting works.

For example, the work "Bukit Timah" from an artist from CDX Gallery.

Bukit Timah is Malay. According to the Hokkien dialect used by local Chinese in Singapore, it should be called "Bukit Timah Hill".

Bukit Timah Hill is 163 metres above sea level.

Correct.

Its total height is only equivalent to a 50-story office building, which is about the same as the original height of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. It is one-third the height of the Empire State Building and less than one-fifth of the world's current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Compared with those magnificent and stunning mountains and peaks, it is just a small mound.

After all, Singapore is a very small country with a relatively flat terrain. Bukit Timah Hill, which is less than 200 meters above sea level, is already the highest peak in Singapore.

A mountain is not high.

It is magical if there are immortals.

Bukit Timah Hill embodies this point very well.

Such a short hill has lakes, cliffs, waterfalls, and is one of only two pristine tropical rainforest reserves in the world that are still preserved in prosperous cities.

Singaporeans are very proud of their "Bukit Timah Hill".

CDX Gallery caters to the taste of the audience and the main work of their Biennale this time is called "Bukit Timah".

CDX Gallery has an exclusive booth in the center of the Biennale.

The shape of their booth base is different from that of other booths. It is a model of a hill, 163.6 cm high.

One and a half meters.

It is exactly the same height as Bukit Timah Hill at 163.6 meters.

If a complex model of a mountain is used as the base of an exhibit, it may overshadow the main attraction if not handled properly.

The base of an exhibit often only needs to do the essential job of "carrying the artwork."

With additional special design.

If it is matched properly, it will certainly be the icing on the cake.

But if it is too complicated and gorgeous, it may grab the audience's attention too much and compete with the works above.

It is like a florist using a very, very exquisite vase with complex hollowing, carvings, and inlays of gold and jade to do flower arrangement art, which may not be more suitable than using an ordinary plain narrow-necked vase.

A little bit wrong.

The audience's attention is drawn to the vase rather than the artwork it carries, and the artist's efforts are wasted.

The colorful mountain models with rainforests and lakes scattered around the mountains, if they were not made exquisitely, would look very much like the sales models displayed in the lobby of a sales office.

Looks tacky.

Not only does it fail to highlight the artworks displayed on it, it also makes the colors of the painter's works look like a rural fair.

Notice--

The color scheme of a rural fair is not necessarily a derogatory term. It will appear very rustic, down-to-earth, and even "contrasting" and trendy.

There is no inherent good or bad in color.

There is only suitable and unsuitable.

Just like a suona player doesn't necessarily seem more vulgar than a piano player... but... if in Bach's religious symphony, the timpani has just finished playing and the violinist puts down his bow, and suddenly the sound of the suona is heard, it will always make people feel a little strange.

Unless the "weirdness" is one of the artistic elements that artists want to express.

otherwise.

No matter how complex the concept is or how lofty the aesthetic philosophy is, a design that makes the audience feel strange is a bad design.

What are the criteria for good design?
Anna came to the Esplanade specifically to see Detective Cats. But she still has to say that the CDX Gallery booth in front of her is a standard of good design.

The base was made using metal casting and carving techniques.

There aren't any gaudy, messy colors.

exactly.

It wasn't spray painted with any color at all.

It is only silvery white metallic color.

This hill stand should have been made using a mold, with molten tin poured into it to depict the general direction and undulations of the mountain, and then the sculptor hand-carved the fine textures and shadows.

It is a mountain of tin.

Because of the abundance of antimony, tin and lead mines in history, the original Malay name of Bukit Timah Hill is "Bukit Timah", where "Bukit" means "tin products" in Malay, and "Timah" means "hill".

These two words are combined.

Its name is just right, which is "Xishan".

The nameplate of the CDX Gallery next to it shows that the base of the booth was created in collaboration between the gallery and a chemical plant in Canada, and contains tin powder extracted from the tin coating of 16000 recycled Coca-Cola aluminum cans.

Don’t say anything else.

This booth itself can be considered a rather exquisite piece of installation art.

There are only four different works on the base of the booth, on the four sides of the east, west, south and north.

On the west side, near the top of the mountain, there is a small sculpture made of sea gongs, wood and celluloid. It is called "The Joy of the Sea and the World". According to the introduction on the plaque, it expresses the artist's thoughts on the relationship between the earth and the ocean, as well as her concerns about the impact of rising sea levels on future people's lifestyles.

There is smaller space on the north and south sides of the mountains that can be used to place artworks at a suitable viewing angle for the audience. A good-quality pointillism painting and a pop art oil painting are displayed respectively.

On the front side of the mountain, about one-third of the height of the mountain on the east side of Bukit Timah Hill, there is a cliff that is almost vertical to the ground like a wall and goes straight to the bottom of the mountain.

Geologists say that this cliff was formed tens of millions of years ago when the rock strata showed vertical joints and the mountain rose dramatically.

No matter how the cliff was formed.

This large vertical surface is the best natural location for hanging paintings.

The oil painting, also called "Bukit Timah", firmly occupies the center of people's sight.

The exhibition stand under the stage that holds the works almost perfectly reproduces the undulations and shapes of Bukit Timah Hill through carvings, but without any color.

And this oil painting.

It completely abstracts the color of the mountain, but lacks the shape of the mountain.

Yes.

The name of this oil painting is "Bukit Timah", but it is not a mountain landscape painting, it is a figure painting.

The green of the rainforest, the blue of the lake, the absinthe-like color of the reef, and the empty paleness of the pits left like wounds by the machines of the mining industry...

These colors are combined with each other.

Finally, a silhouette of a woman hugging her knees was formed on the canvas.

The picture is very simple. Unlike Van Dorn’s brushstrokes, which Anna described as “a mess”, it still brings Miss Elena some “visual synaesthesia”.

The woman in the picture is completely immersed in the temperament of Bukit Timah Hill.

Waterfalls and jungle.

Damp palm leaves.

Tourists rowing a boat.

Couple on the shore.

All kinds of feelings and imaginations emerge on the screen one by one.

"…This painting is not good at expressing the human body structure. Even abstract art or deconstructionism is not a safe haven for painters who lack the ability to depict the human body…If that were the case, then the painter would just have to paint everyone like ET aliens…The ability to express lines is not good either. Look at Jackson Pollock's paintings. It tells us that even works of art made up purely of extracted lines can be smooth, elegant, cascading like waterfalls, and shining like the sun. And its lines seem to be twisted from soot…"

When Anna saw this painting.

She even had a plan in her mind for how the review article should be written.

After a standard Anna-style sharp review, Elena would change her tone and give a very high evaluation.

"Indeed."

“This painting is not a perfect work. The creator’s fantasies and ambitions about nature have not been fully realized, but it is still a good work. Mr. Yovan cleverly found a place for his interpretation of nature and color in this work.”

“His lines don’t remind me of Jackson Pollock, but his use of colors reminds me of Matisse in his later years. I don’t mean that he copied Matisse’s color style, but the taming and control of color…”

Miss Elena looked at the explanatory plaque next to the CDX special booth.

The creator of "Bukit Timah" is named Yovan Phin. There is a photo of him in the gallery next to it. He is a middle-aged Asian man with slightly dark skin.

He turned out to be a rare artist from the Maldives, but he has lived in Singapore for many years.

See introduction.

Yovan Phin is not only an oil painter, he also went to Jianghu area in Dongxia to learn the art of tin carving.

The design and carving of this tin statue, which is modeled after Bukit Timah Hill, were done by him.

“I can see the difficulties and determination the artist faced when completing this work. The natural lightness of the work is just like the interpretation of the concept expressed in this painting on the nameplate of CDX Gallery——”

Anna whispered the words on the plaque: "Standing on the top of Bukit Timah, feeling the noisy collision between nature and the city, people and the land."

"This slogan is too much for the sake of being a theme, and it sounds like the slogans used by travel companies around here to promote spa services. But I still have to say that this painting deserves it."

"Even if this is a composition written just for the sake of participating in an exhibition, it is still an excellent composition."

This is how I end my comment column, right?
Miss Elena prepared a draft in her mind.

CDX is worthy of being selected by the media as the most popular emerging gallery in the past five years, and the award-winning works they promote are quite popular with the jury.

(End of this chapter)