Silke Otto-Knapp at Berkeley Art Museum

Last week, I stopped by the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) briefly and was delighted to see the special exhibit "Silke Otto-Knapp: A light in the moon / MATRIX 239" (September 30, 2011 - January 15, 2012).

The website of Berkeley Art Museum stated that:

With layered washes of similarly hued watercolors, the canvases of London-based German artist Silke Otto-Knapp seem at first monochromatic, but slight changes in light or a viewer’s position reveal figures or landscapes. Conflating the mediums of painting and performance, Otto-Knapp draws from the vocabulary of abstraction to renew our engagement in the act of seeing.

Otto-Knapp's images were extremely haunting and had a delicate beauty, even the somewhat awkward postures of the human figures hypnotized me with their inevitability and "naturalness", like the chromatic music by Bellini or Wagner.  Understated yet with myriad layers of meanings.  Never melodramatic.









There was another special exhibit, 1991: The Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath Photographs by Richard Misrach, resonated with more urgency with local residents who just witnessed a fire destroying a four-story 1916 building, including all the 39 apartments and two very popular restaurants, on the iconic but economically struggling Telegraph Avenue. 

The BAM website said this about the exhibit:

In October 1991, immediately following a catastrophic firestorm that struck the Oakland and Berkeley hills, renowned Bay Area photographer Richard Misrach ventured into the fire zone armed with his eight-by-ten-inch view camera. Working alone amidst the ruins, he roamed devastated neighborhoods, recording stark vistas and intimate details of destroyed homes. The resulting images are distinguished by Misrach’s masterful framing of his subjects: the compositions are dramatic without being sensational and incisively reveal a world transformed.

Indeed, the eerie and alien landscape showed the devastation without being unduly sensational and that was a very impressive achievement:





Again, I savored the industrial, muscular looking building as much as I could because due to seismic reason, this building would cease to serve as the museum in a not so distant future.

Colorful Leaves on Dark Road

Several days ago, after a cold shower, many beautiful red and yellow leaves rested quietly on the dark paved road, with beads of rain on them like adoring jewels.  Both lovely and melancholic.

Spider Webs

People have fears for many things, for many reasons.  Many people dislike spiders, and even have great fear for them.  Luckily, we don't have Tanrantula here, therefore, my attitude towards spiders is rather a kind of fascination.  They are amazing creatures and their webs are just beautiful.  Incidentally, I'm reading a book by Joseph Roth - The Spider's Web (1923), however, that is a totally different story about the ascendency of Nazism in Berlin, which had a definitely a negative attitude towards the webs.

On a foggy day, I shot several pictures of spider webs.  Aren't they lovely?

Photographer Robert Welsh - Black & White Spider Awards Finalist

San Francisco Photographer Robert Welsh had made great stride in recent years, as witnessed by numerous shows and museum collections.

Outside his main theme of culture clash, one of his black and white photograph was nominated for "Black & White Spider Awards".  

Black & White Spider Awards online exhibition represents the world's finest contemporary photographers as nominated by the Jury. Thousands of images are submitted each year with only a few hundred images making it to Nominee status by consensus of the Jury. The Nominee shortlist consists of images that have received the highest percentage of votes overall and is the shortlist from which the winners are decided.

Welsh's photograph was titled "Child on Ferry".  The description goes: This child who seems deep in thought with the Statue of Liberty in the background is from an on-going series of the Staten Island Ferry. I tried to capture the light and the manner in which it reflects the varying moods of its passengers.

The short biography of Robert Welsh states that Robert Welsh (b. 1953) captures the spirit of various communities and settings to convey a sense of universalism. He documents urban neighborhoods as a reminder of his childhood in working class Boston. Robert works in both B&W and color using traditional methods. His work has been described as painterly and layered. Garnering numerous awards and exhibitions, his photographs are in the permanent collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Denver Art Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Hispanic Society of America, Worcester Art Museum, and Griffin Museum of Photography.

Congratulations!

Modern Lines of Beauty

Recently, I took a series of photos in the hallway of an office building.  I was mostly intrigued by the interplays of many lines in view and the contrast against the vibrant cool light from outside:

Robert Welsh's Chinatown Series of Photography in the Griffin Museum, Boston

San Francisco Photography Robert Welsh, a native of the Boston area, has created a large portfolio of amazing photographs of daily life, particularly from around Chinatown in San Francisco, and from China, where he has traveled. The life he presents is strange, mundane, messy, stylish, tranquil, pulsating, melancholic, joyful, opaque, mysterious or transparent in turn. One often feels that one understands the surface, then something else casts a question on it. He didn't look for exotic artifacts, though. What Welsh presents is the full spectrum of life, a story. Everything has a story to tell, according to him. Even the rustic bathtub, peeling door and discarded button, and empty MacDonald's French fry box. He sees beauty in everything. His senses and treatments of details and colors are amazing.

An exhibit of images from his open-ended series of San Francisco's Chinatown, Chinatown: Metaphor and Memory, is featured in the Atelier Gallery of the Griffin Museum November 12 though January 10, 2010. The exhibit is courtesy of Tepper Takayama Fine Arts, Boston. An opening reception with the artist will be held on November 12, at 7 p.m. It is open to all. A members-only talk at which Welsh will discuss the exhibit is at 6:15 p.m.

According to the Museum brochure and website, "Robert Welsh has a sensibility for the day-to-day lives of people of modest means trying to make ends meet. This makes him able to discover and communicate the beauty, grace, and dignity of those he photographs.

"The Chinatown portrayed in his photographs is permeated by memories from his childhood in Brighton, MA, and is a metaphor for the immigrant experience, despite variation in geographic or ethnic origins. It also recognizes and records the elements of Chinatown, San Francisco, and his wife's Chinese and Chinese-American family, which echo his Irish-American roots. Preeminent are thrift, simplicity, loyalty, continuity, and family ties.

"'We are honored that Robert Welsh has returned home to exhibit Chinatown: Metaphor and Memory where he was shaped in his youth by the streets of Boston,' says Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography. 'Welsh's work eloquently contemplates the ancient Chinese traditions placed against a modern day backdrop.'

"Welsh is essentially a self-taught professional photographer and master of black-and-white and color printing. He also has worked as a photojournalist, but his images - such as those featured in a New York Times travel section article on San Francisco - transcend the purely documentary."

The Griffin Museum of Photography is open Tuesday through Thursday, 11 am - 5 pm; Friday 11 am - 4 pm; and Saturday and Sunday, noon - 4 pm. The Museum is closed on Monday. Admission is $5 for adults; $2 for seniors. Members and children under 12 are admitted free. Admission is free to all every Thursday. For more information, call 781-729-1158.

Congratulations, Robert!