2010 Recapitulation

2010 was a busy year for me.  This year, I continued my exploration of spatial relationships and patterns, and continued to attend drawing sessions at University of California, Berkeley.

My trip to New York City was very exciting and I visited many museums and galleries and had wonderful encounters with incredible works.  Locally, I was excited to see two special exhibits generated from Musee d'Orsay: Birth of Impressionism at De Young Museum, San Francisco and Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at De Young Museum, San Francisco.

I also started to use video to present my paintings and drawings.  The last offering of these efforts of the year is 2010 Recapitulation:



>> Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XVII: Looking Back One More Year
<< Video presentations of paintings and drawings, Part XV: Monochromatic Drama

List of Video Presentation of My Artworks

Pavilions in Shanghai Expo - The Good, the Bad, and the Hur?

Recently, San Francisco Art Museum mounted an exhibit about Shanghai. The exhibit is interesting but lacks focus. I suspect that the whole show was staged to promote the World Expo in Shanghai, due to take place in 1 May to 31 Oct, 2010, to complete Shanghai's rivalry with Beijing, who staged a militant but impressive Olympic Game in 2008.

The concept of World Expo in the digital age is quite archaic and downright stupid. Shanghai wants a bigger party than Beijing's Olympic Game and it has money to burn.

They are building large pavilions "representing" cultures from all over the world. However dubious the functions of these structures, they do impress, some in a not very positive way, like the host country's garish red prison cell. Some corporations join the foray and below are the artist's renditions of the many Pavilions. Depending on the criteria if a design is beautiful and innovative and if it represents the culture of the country/region, I grouped them to Good, Bad, Neutral and Huh? (whose designs make no sense):

Good:
Russia:


Mexico:


Malaysia:


Denmark:


Australia:


Czech:


Finland:


Iceland:


Oman:


Italy:


Poland:



Neutral:
Nepal:


Brazil:


Hong Kong:


Thailand:


Kazakhstan:


Saudi Arabia:


Turkey:


Venezuela:


Norway:


New Zealand:


Germany:


Japan:


Pakistan:


Switzerland:


Belgium:


UAE:


Chile:


Monaco:


Bad:
Spain:

- I know Guggenheim is popular, but is that what Spain is all about?

Ireland:

- Airport gangway?

Israel:

- Are they expecting second deluge?

USA:

- Pure brassiness

France:

- Come, France, you can do better than this

Korea:

- Legoland?

Netherlands:

- Has Netherlands sunk already?

India:

- Too old fashioned and ugly

Sweden:

- Last time I checked, the head of Sweden is their King, not the CEO of IKEA.

Singapore:

- Nuclear reactor?

China:

- Prison?


- Host country deserves second look, alas, it still looks too watchful to me.

Huh?
Maca0:


Romania:


Luxembourg:


Canada:


UK:



I am too exhausted to rate the corporate pavilions. Perhaps you can try to rate them yourself?

China's State Grid:


Space:


Republic of Korea Joint-Corporate:


Aurora Group:


Japanese Corporations:


Shipping:


Cisco:


Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp and General Motors:


Aviation:


Oil:


MeteoWorld: