Hasta La Ideas

Writer Nancy Lazarus heads to the Far East without leaving Manhattan as she takes in the sixth annual Asia Week and offers up five highlights.

Kaneko Toru’s Blue Rust #1 (2009) is on view during Asia Week at Lesley Kehoe Galleries.

Spring marks the arrival of Asia Week New York. The nine-day event (March 14-22), a marathon of 47 gallery shows and 19 auction sales, along with museum exhibitions and special events, offers the opportunity to admire a wealth of ancient and modern treasures. We’ve picked five exhibits where the themes, settings, timeless works, contemporary pieces, or unique techniques reward close looking. They’re listed by location, starting in midtown.

Lesley Kehoe Galleries (Melbourne, Australia-based gallery specializing in Japanese art; has Asia Week gallery space in Fuller Building at 41 East 57th Street, 5th floor)
The Transcendent Spirit, a special Asia Week exhibit, highlights works of seven Japanese artists. Owner Lesley Kehoe believes “there’s not another culture with the patience and self-discipline to master these complex techniques.” Mitsuo Shoji creates paintings, calligraphy, and objects. He’s inspired by Buddhist chanting and fascinated with fire, using traditional Japanese foils to fire canvases. Kaneko Toru and Kidera Yuko specialize in metalworks. Yoku hammers flat metal sheets to create spirited female forms of dance and song. Toru uses copper oxide and enameled metals to craft colorful tin-plated decorative vessels with exotic textures.

Ralph M. Chait Galleries (specializes in Chinese art; 730 Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, Crown Building, 12th floor)
For Asia Week, the oldest U.S. firm dealing in Chinese art is focusing on porcelain, silver sculpture, root carvings, and a collection of 20 snuff bottles dating from the 18th-20th centuries. Though miniature in size, the bottles were quite eye-catching, especially given the variety of animal and botanical motifs, shapes, and design types. Some were inlaid, while others were carved, painted, or embellished. Among the gemstones were lapis, jasper, jade, rhodonite, and moss agate. A stopper in a matching or contrasting color sat atop each bottle.
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Showing at the Kemistry Gallery in London is an enticing display of Polish posters from the 1960s. The collection belongs to designer and artist Ken Sequin, who acquired the works in 1964 having secured £200 for a student research trip to eastern Europe…

Sequin went to Poland and on to Czechoslovakia using a travelling scholarship from the Royal College of Art, as he explains in the booklet that accompanies the Kemistry show, which is on until March 22.

Franciszek Starowieyski, Heatwave

F. Trokowski, The Quest for Green Metal, theatre production

As a third year student his intention was to research the animators and poster designers, such as Andrzej Wajda and Jan Lenica, whose work had fascinated him while studying in London.

Having bought a camera, Sequin reckoned he had enough money for a three week trip. He caught a ferry to the Hook of Holland and from there travelled by train to Berlin and then on to Warsaw where he arrived during celebrations for the 20th anniversary of Polish Socialism.

Marian Stachurski, The Man from the First Century, Czech film

Jan Mlodozeniec, 20 Years of the Polish Arena, pageant

While attempting to meet his idols proved fruitless, Sequin did manage to get his hands on a selection of posters from Warsaw’s poster shop – along with a handful of editions from the basement archives of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Prague.

His haul included work by Lenica, Roman Cieslewicz, Waldemar Swierzy and rare posters by two of the most prolific female designers from the period, Liliana Baczewska and Anna Huskowska.

All the posters made it back to London and were either kept in storage or on display in Sequin’s flat. When he later moved north to take up a teaching post in Yorkshire, the posters formed a single exhibition at the college. Sequin returned to London in the 1990s and now in fact lives very close to the Kemistry Gallery.

So this is the first outing that his collection has had for a long time – and it is well worth a visit.

Jerzy Flisak, Where is the General, film comedy

A special mention must also be made of the way that the gallery has framed Sequin’s collection. While the technique, sandwiching the fragile printed works between two panes of glass, isn’t new, it certainly works beautifully here – suspending the fraying paper towards the ‘front’ of the frame so that visitors can get a closer look at all the detail and colour.

Ken Sequin’s Polish Adventure is at the Kemistry Gallery in east London EC2A 3PD until March 22. More details at kemistrygallery.co.uk. Mike Dempsey’s blog contains a good selection of Sequin’s own design and illustration work for Corgi and Penguin, among others – see mikedempsey.typepad.com.

Franciszek Starowieyski, Thérèse Desqueyroux, French film

While a good majority of panels and projects at this year’s SXSW Interactive centered around the NSA and government surveillance, interactive installation StreamMeUp offered a lighthearted alternative to the discussion on where advancements in technology can…

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CR has partnered with Bridgeman Studio, a new online platform representing contemporary artists, to launch the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014. You could win £500 and a year’s subscription to Bridgeman Studio offering professional representation for your work. Just show us what ‘joy’ means to you

Bridgeman Studio is a new Image licensing and managing platform for contemporary artists, including illustrators and photographers, offering copyright clearance, reproduction and marketing services for your images.

CR has partnered with Bridgeman Studio on the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014. The idea is to uncover emerging creative talent who might benefit from the services Bridgeman can offer.

We want to see your images representing the theme of Joy.

To enter, submit up to five single pieces of original artwork on the theme of joy, which will be assessed on their ability to be licensed on all three of the following products:

Book Cover • CD/Album Artwork • Standalone piece of art

Deadline: May 20. Send entries to competition@bridgemanstudio.com

Prizes

Our winner will receive: £500, the Bridgeman Studio Award 2014 Certificate/Award, and a one-year free subscription to the Bridgeman Studio portal.

Five runners-up will each be given a free one-year subscription on Bridgeman Studio or £100 (at Bridgeman discretion to decide which)

The judging panel will consist of the Bridgeman Studio manager / CEO, a Creative Review representative and an industry professional from either publishing, art, design or music.

Results will be announced in the CR’s July Issue and across all Bridgeman social channels, website and newsletter.

This is your chance to get professional representation for your work. Good luck

Details

• Maximum of 5 entries per artist.
• All artwork entered into the competition remains 100% copyright of the artist.
• All artwork can be used in marketing and advertising the competition from Bridgeman and third parties (Creative Review) .
• Entrants must give permission for their names and photographs to be used for publicity.
• The entry can be photography, illustration, digital art or fine art.
• All artwork must be 100% original copyright owned by the artist and not use any third party copyright material.
• Entries must be supplied as two files, one high resolution .jpeg sized between 3MB and 5MB, and one low resolution version, sized between 250KB and 500KB
• By submitting an entry, each entrant agrees to these terms and conditions

Entries/queries to: competition@bridgemanstudio.com

Further details here

As part of their year-long exploration and celebration of all things Belgian, the surrealist gang at Opening Ceremony is plastering the reality-bending works of fresh-from-his-MoMA-restrospective artist René Magritte on instantly collectible goods. First up in this partnership with the Magritte Foundation: Vans. The five sneaker styles, priced at $135 each (a bargain for a Magritte!), include kicked-up canvas versions of Magritte’s Ladder of Fire (1939), The Blow to the Heart (1952), and, for lovers of his bowler-hatted men of mystery, The King’s Museum (1966). The sneakers are available for pre-order through Monday, March 17.

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