Berkeley Central Arts Passage Gallery

Berkeley Central Arts Passage Gallery is a half-block long gallery in downtown Berkeley, nested inside a huge apartment compound, connecting two major streets full of major institutions such as  City College, Berkeley Repertory Theater, Aurora Theatre, Jazz School, and Freight and Salvage club.

A Berkeley gallery, Expressions Gallery, was entrusted to curate several recent shows for Arts Passage: "The Many Forms of Art", "Today's Artists Interact with Major Art Movements", and "Our Challenged Planet".

The Many Forms of Art surveyed many forms and the definition of those art forms, ranging from painting, drawing, sculpture and particularly the varieties of print making, as show in the video below:



Today's Artists Interact with Major Art Movements demonstrated how active artists were influenced by major art figures and movements in the past, and how they reacted and responded to the rich history:



Five of my paintings were included in that show.


The Triumph of Saint George (Baroque)


Progression (Romanticism) and Mackerel (Realism)


In Distant Country (Modern Art)


Siege (Neo-Expressionism)

Last week, the latest exhibition opened and my painting, Leisurely, was included in this "Our Challenged Planet exhibition, which ends on February 2, 2016:




Leisurely



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- Changes Exhibition Opened at Expressions Gallery, Berkeley
- New York Gallery Wrap Up
- Art Show in the Gallery of Studio Trilogy, San Francisco
- "Golden Ages" Opening at Expressions Gallery, Berkeley
- Students' Show at Worth Rider Gallery, UC Berkeley

My Favorite Artworks at Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Venice has almost as many museums as its numerous Palazzi; one of these stately buildings stands along the Grand Canal is Ca' Rezzonico, whose art collections are fully in line with the peculiar tastes of the 18th century Venetians, decorative, precious, and a bit silly, but redeemed somewhat by whimsical playfulness and perhaps self-mockery.

The favorite piece I saw there was a fresco titled "Mondo Novo" by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, featuring vivid and even theatrical figures populating the streets in Venice, very much like those portrayed by the great Venetian Commedia dell'arte playwright Carlo Goldoni.



My second favorite was a bas-relief, Priamo chiede ad Achille (Priam Implores Achilles), a poignant and messy scene presented in restraint, manifested in those cleanly rendered classical lines:




My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 108: My Favorite Artworks at Ca' d'Oro, Venezia (Venice)
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 106: My Favorite Artworks at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venezia (Venice)

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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- Il Ghetto di Venezia and Museo Ebraico (Jewish Museum) in Venice
- Bridges in Venice, Italy
- San Giorgio Maggiore, Il Redentore, Scuola e Chise Grande di San Rocco, Venezia
- Magical Piazza San Marco in Venice
- Teatro La Fenice di Venezia (La Fenice Theatre in Venice)

My Featured Work: Sorrow and Suffering, a Diptych Commemorating the Tragedies of our Time

Human history is sadly saturated with sorrow and suffering, a theme resonates strongly with me. In 2003, I made a diptych of oil paintings, titled "Sorrow and Suffering", to record the pain people suffered and will suffer at the hands of ruthless and/or reckless political leaders, when George W. Bush was brandishing his excuse to invade Iraq.

 
Sorrow and Suffering
Oil on Canvas 
Completed in 2003

Since that fateful invasion, the unstable Mideast became ever more explosive and the human suffering ever escalated. Yesterday a series of concerted attacks on civilians in the great city Paris shocked and saddened the civilized world and this diptych expresses my feeling aptly.

Originally posted on my website: Featured Works.

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My Favorite Artworks at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venezia (Venice)

Collezione Peggy Guggenheim (Peggy Guggenheim Collection), located in an unfinished 18th-century palace, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, boasts many modern masterpieces ranging in style from Cubism and Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism.

One of my favorite work there was a sculpture in the garden: The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato) by Mimmo Paladino, which was simultaneously formal and fluid, familiar and strange, comforting and unsettling.  The figure, installed inside a small square brick confinement, in a small pile of gravels, was unassuming and even humble, but his intentionally stiff posture, resembling age-dried twigs, bore the traces of the ravage of time and wearying journey. 


The Cloven Viscount (Il visconte dimezzato), Mimmo Paladino, 1998

My second favorite work was a painting by Giogiro de Chirico, titled The Red Tower, in the typical style of the highly individual artist - subtly yet strikingly contrasting colors, enigmatic landscape and cityscape, opaque symbols and overwhelming sense of desolation and loneliness.  The focal point of the work, the Red Tower, was really a foreboding fortress squatting somewhat in the background, and held secrets the artists refused to divulge.

 
The Red Tower (La Tour rouge), Giorgio de Chirico, 1913


My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 107: My Favorite Artworks at Ca' Rezzonico, Venice
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 105: My Favorite Artifacts in Il Ghetto and Museo Ebraico (Jewish Museum) in Venice

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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- Introduction to Fisher Collection and the 75th Anniversary Exhibit at SFMOMA
- Anderson Collection at Stanford University

Administrative Building Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley

Till today, for exactly the duration of one year, my office at UC Berkeley was temporarily relocated to the central administrative building, Sproul Hal, a grand old building located in front of the landmark main entrance, Sather Gate. 

Every morning, I enjoyed the absolute quietness before the campus stirred back to vivid life when students started to flood in.









My affection for this neoclassical building not only lies on its beautiful proportion and serene orders, but many seemingly insignificant corners both within and without the building, often at some particular hours, such as the intricate shadows cast by the staircases by the morning sun, or the front lobby after a day's bustle:















Outside classrooms and student residential halls, Sproul Plaza is often the center of student life, such as noontime musical performances, or civic protests on issues ranging from environment, tuition and national or global politics:


Jazz at Sproul


Protest in front of Sproul Hall, Sproul Plaza, November 11, 2011


Free Speech Movement 50th Anniversary, 2014


Mock Guantánamo Prison Cell, Free Speech Movement 50th Anniversary, 2014

I'll miss my old temporary office.  Ciao.

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