Friday, April 30, 2010

TRIBUTE TO ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI

TRIBUTE TO ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI
by
Erik Heyninck




When I read that Beksinski had been stabbed to death, I experienced the same shock as when I read John Lennon had been killed.

The year before he had been the Guest of Honour at the Biennal of Saint Leonard where I too was exhibiting. At the time I knew his works from the Internet ( Morpheus ) and from some reproductions in magazines. Seeing his works for real was quite a complex experience. His is not a world I would like to live in. I prefer, say, Waterhouse's. Yet he fascinated me because, like often when something profound happens to me, I hear music in my head. I won't spin off to music here but it may be said that I'm an omnivorous gourmet. Beksinski's music is full of dissonances. Diabolic quints to be more precise. Quints are very important because of the quint-essence and the fact that five is the number of life: no crystal can have a five-sided symmetry. The diabolic quint, which everyone knows as the eerie sound that creates tension in older horror movies, is not harmonous but sounds like nearly being there but not yet. Like something is about to happen. Sometimes there are lots of deep drones in his works with sharp, gliding masses of high pitched clusters, and sometimes I hear music that makes me think of Penderecki's early work like his " Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima ".

Some six months later he was killed. Murdered. I was so shocked that I had to tell it to someone. So I called Marie-Thérèse Malbet who organises the Biennal. The idea was born to do an homage to him. She contacted Pjotr Dmochowski once again and he agreed to lend a series of works. As I always go to the Biennal a week early to participate in the hanging of the works, I had the honour to hang Beksinski's works in the beautiful medieval Salle des Conférences ( see photos ). So I spent a lot of time with them, trying to find a harmony in the whole that would be more than the sum of the quality of the individual works. This gave me the opportunity to come closer to them. Then there was also Dmochowski's book on Beksinski. In the evenings I looked at the illustrations and read the texts. Dmochowski is a very close friend of Beksinski (friendship never ends with death. nor does love.) but the impression I got from Beksinski was a different one than the mental cluster I had already created.


Beksinski hated seeing other people's works because he didn't like to do something someone else had also done. He ate sausages for years and was anxious to change that habit. He listened to solemn classical music for up to fourteen hours a day.

To be honest, those details are not important. They may be food for tabloid press readers, but they do not say anything about the man as the nearly Dalinian show is far too apparent. " Don't let appearances fool you: feel the vibes as well, " Donovan sang. What is important is the fact that he never gave titles to his works because he did not want to limit them to any interpretation whatsoever.


At the opening, Dmochowski speech was very touching as his friendship for the late master was evident. So once again I had to adapt my point of view. When the Biennal was closed during the mid-day hours, I spent hours alone in that room. Only me, and those works. Musing. Meditating. Interested, attentive but refusing any answers. Just like he refused titles. I did not get bored like I often do.


Beksinski's works remind me of Charles Baudelaire's famous verses from his poem "La Beauté" ( Beauty ):

"Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris"
( I hate any movement that would give the lines another place and I never cry nor laugh )

His works are massive blocks of power, nuclear plants even, as the radiate their forces on anyone without exception. No friendly invitation awaits one: it's rather: " enter freely, and of your own free will " There's a kind of stasis in them, deep rooted and immovable. Something that can be interpreted as a threat. A defence perhaps. Pessimism which leads, via putrefaction, to alchemy and transmutation.

Dmochowski said that shortly before the murder, he'd had a long telephone chat with Beksinski, who said that he finally was feeling better, nearly cheerful even ( during the nineties he had lost his wife, and his son had commited suicide ) . He had also said that his works were changing, that a new style was emerging. The grey work with the lightning was one of his last works. Shorthy after, he was stabbed to death for a fistful of money.


Music needs no explanation, so why would a painting need a title, a theme? Preserve the mystery. Also the mystery called Beksinski. There's much Romanticism in his works. Poe, Baudelaire's fascination for death, Mary Wollstonecraft's Frankenstein, Lovecraft, ... it seems he had used the word "Gothic " to describe his own works. The doom chords of bands like My Dying Bride can come very close. But...


But when you come closer and resist all words, even the vaguest of interpretations, if you pass the ordeal of the power that says "thou shalt not pass", everything changes. Seen from close by, beyond the static appearance, Beksinski's works are extremely light and full of movement. Nervous movements of the brushes, a play with colours, a joy in painting I have rarely seen in other artist's works. To me, there's only one certainty as far as Beksinski is concerned:: Beksinski loved painting, and wherever love is around, things are ok.

These 33 photos are a way to share with you what I experienced. If you paint yourselves, and most of you do, you'll admire his "handwriting". If you don't, you can see a master of painting at work and this from very close-by. None of the works are complete. To see the full works and many, many more, don't visit those commercial galleries, but go to http://www.dmochowskigallery.net/

Erik Heyninck

read it comlete with images:

TRIBUTE TO ZDZISLAW BEKSINSKI - VISIONARY ART GALLERY - HALL OF FAME

Monday, April 26, 2010

IFAA from Japan "Fantastic art Show TOKYO 2010" is coming soon...



" Fantastic art show 2010"

May 1 (Sat) - May 9, (Sun).,
open 11: 00-20: 00 (last day, May 9 ~pm18: 00 )

* May, 1 Pm18: 00 reception party

"Gallery Yasashii - Yokan"
nearest station JR Meguro
141-0021, 2-9-25 kamiosaki shinagawa-ku Tokyo ,Japan



Musée de l'Imaginaire

IFAA from Japan "Fantastic art Show TOKYO 2010" is coming soon...



「幻想芸術展 2010」
International Fantastic Art Association 
http://ifaa.cc/
info@ifaa.cc  
会期5月1日(土)~5月9日(日)
開廊 11:00~20:00(最終日18:00迄)
※初日18:00よりレセプションパーティー

会場 Galleryやさしい予感
最寄駅 JR目黒駅
〒141-0021 東京都品川区上大崎2-9-25
TEL 03-5913-7635
http://www.yokan.info/.
yasashii@yokan.info

===================================================

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Theme: ALCHEMY & HERMAPHRODITES

SilKMilK MagiZain s p o o l # 4

I am proud to be part of this fine publication with this painting:

Hermaphrodite_by_ArtOfTheMystic

Hermaphrodite by Otto Rapp

wFascinum4

Fascinum Panel 4 by Iain Whittaker, from the SilKMilK 4 centrefold

small72SM4outsidecovers

Front (above right) cover by Joseph Larkin, back (above left) cover by Adam Scott Miller.

edextr

 

http://www.crossroads.wild.net.au/silkmilk4.htm

Friday, April 23, 2010

New Artists added to the VISIONARY ART GALLERY

 

New Artists added to the VISIONARY ART GALLERY

There are a number of new members that had joined our Private Visionary Art Network this past week, and we welcome them to the tribe:

ERIC LACOMBE

 

MARCEL BAKKER

TIM ROOSEN

DON FARRELL

 

CAMILLE DELA ROSA

 

ILEANA CERATO

 

The following had been members for some time, but their pages in the public gallery had been added just recently:

RUBEN CUKIER

RAUL CASILLAS

 

Visit their pages in our VISIONARY ART GALLERY

(click on the names, opens in separate window)

themystic's posterous - Art of the Mystic Otto Rapp

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

2010 INTERNATIONAL SURREALIST EXHIBITION

BISSAYA BARRETO FOUNDATION
Surrealism Now


INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
BISSAYA BARRETO MUSEUM HOUSE
SANT´ANNA CONVENT, COIMBRA, PORTUGAL, EUROPEAN UNION

Open 20th of May, 18:30, until 30th of June 2010

Idealization and coordination: Santiago Ribeiro

Institutional support: Intervention Brigade



 Many great internationally respected artists attending!

Monday, April 19, 2010

Ning Update - my 2 cents worth

This is a follow - up to my previous blog on the subject of Ning eliminating free Networks Free Ning Services to end soon?
Please read it first to put the follow up in context.


The overwhelming majority of comments on the Ning blog are very critical of the move by Ning to eliminate free service, which is understandable. Many are left high and dry, unable to afford the rates for premium. This is a desperate money grab that is bound to backfire! There are other services out there that are free and easy to use, with premium services available that are affordable and actually worth it. At Weebly, pay $ 4.58 a month (six month term) for premium, which drops to $ 2.99 a month if you choose a 2 year term, for a cornucopia of great extra features and up to 10 websites! But the free basic service is not bare bones by any stretch of the imagination, but jam-packed with great features!

Aside from Weebly, which has proven to be a reliable host for two of my websites, there is also Google offering free websites with a number of attractive templates and easy to use features.

Weebly’s basic service is free – and it has a lot of attractive features – the premium service is affordable, giving you even more great features, domain and hosting ten websites with virtually unlimited storage (basic service gives you 2 sites for free).

While I will try to keep one of my networks on Ning going (because of the amount of time and effort invested), I will certainly drop the other ones with a recommendation to either use Weebly or Google as more stable and reliable hosts.

Those of you that cannot afford premium at Ning (for example, the rates for dropping ads are absolutely ridiculous – even a large network cannot make $ 25 by replacing them with their own google ads) the advise would be to go either Weebly or Google.

The 75% of Premium customers on Ning had at one time started with the free service. Where does Ning think their future premium customers are going to come from?
Perhaps Ning should look at the Weebly business model to learn a thing or two about dealing with their clients, the structure of basic free services and offering great premium services at affordable rates that truly give the customer a big bang for their buck!

Today, I left a comment on Weebly's blog (announcing $ 13,000 in Prizes for Designers):

I've been with Weebly now for just about a year. I am continuously impressed by the improvements and the jam packed features of your free service, and now this: an opportunity for some lucky designer to make it big!
You leave the competition in the dust, gasping for air! The recent announcement by Ning to eliminate their free service will cast off a great number of disgruntled clients. I recommend that they look at Weebly! Your premium services are very affordable (unlike the gouging that Ning will force their premium clients into, should they decide to stay) - I have to commend you and hope for your continued success. I am sure you will see quite some growth come May, when Ning clients are left high and dry.

My sites on Weebly:
Otto Rapp Photography
Visionary Art Gallery

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Free Ning Services to end soon?

Visionary Art
Members of the Visionary Tribe





VA IMG BANNER

A message to all members of Visionary Art


Please read this Ning blog for some disturbing news about the fate of free Ning networks:


http://blog.ning.com/2010/04/an-update-from-ning.html


In reply to this, I had added this comment to the blog (awaiting moderator approval, at the time of this writing):


I feel very strongly that you guys are shooting yourself in the foot!
Where did your premium customers come from in the first place, if not from the free start-up little networks that outgrew their bandwidth and storage space when they became successful and their memberships expanded. This, in the not too distant future, will be the case with my own network. At that point in time, it was planned already to add extra bandwidth.
But if you get rid of the free service, you won't have the start-ups that eventually expand enough to become premium customers! Was it not enough to get the google ad revenue from all these little networks? I concede, it is not much, but the potential of these small networks to start up and grow into premium revenue networks will have the rug pulled out from under them.
I would hope that sanity will prevail, and short term gain from slash and cut will be abandoned for a more progressive view of long term opportunities and building of an ever growing customer base, instead of what promises to be a stagnating enterprise gasping for breath.
Interestingly enough, I've seen sites go exactly in the opposite direction, making more of their services free as a basic service in order to atract a customer base to which innovative and atractive premium services can be offered.


At this point in time, I can only speculate about what is going to happen, but let me assure you all that I will do everything I can to keep this network intact. I had spent too much of my time and energy to build this network and the Public Gallery on weebly (which is fed by embedded content from here) to let anything happen to it.


In an e-mail to some friends I jokingly suggested that I am thinking about selling a kidney (preferably not my own) to keep the network afloat.


Seriously: we already have grown to a point where we would need premium services anyway in order to add to our ever growing collection of great art. Thus, additional storage and bandwidth would have to be purchased through premium services.


A solution will be found. It is not an insurmountable problem!
Otto Rapp

Update: check my follow up post "my 2 cents worth"

Additional information:
Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives
Ning Fails at Free Social Networking

The Private Visionart Art Network on Ning displays the art of its Members in the

VISIONARY ART GALLERY

Visit our Gallery to see the work of some of the best Visionary Artists in the Universe!

ASYLUM - New Sculptures by Tim Roosen + EDGE OF LOVE Group Show at Strychnin Gallery, Berlin


Strychnin Gallery presents in cooperation with C.O.P. magazine:


Asylum


Featured in The Vault this month is sculptural artist Tim Roosen from Belgium. After building the largest artistic scale model of our solar system in the world, Tim Roosen returns to what he likes doing most: figurative art. His latest sculptures are all part of a little universe that he named “the Asylum.” The Asylum is a place for different creatures that have either escaped from the human world or are being hunted down and seek refuge in it. Every creature has his or her own story to tell. In November 2009, Roosen started a collaboration with German photographer Ansger Noeth, who took pictures of Roosen’s creatures. Directly printed on glass, Noeth’s signature technique, these photographs help bring the sculptures to life.


Edge of Love

An exciting new group show curated by Andy Howell (LA Artsprojekt) and Yasha Young. Featuring international street art artists such as Kid Zoom, Beastman, motel 7, Phibs, Yok, Rose Hardy, Amy Matthews, Monique Ligons, Bridge, Mimi S., Christian Rothenhagen, Amandalynn, Andy Howell, Chris Parks, Ginger Che, Jeremy Forson, Jeremyville, Jesse Reno, Luca Ionescu, SIT, Ma Liang, Brannon, Madi Ju.. Also featuring sculptures by Tim Roosen in the Vault.

Opens April 9th at 7 pm.


Andy Howell is a professional skateboarder and artist from California (USA). He is the founder of Artsprojekt, a curated platform that enables emerging and established artists to connect, collaborate and expand original art, designs and ideas with fans and consumers. It’s a playground in which the world's most creative individuals and brands can turn unique ideas into dynamic product experiences that best represent each individual artist and brand. Among other famous artists, Andy Howell represents Shepard Fairy, Clive Barker, and David D’Andrea. In cooperation with Strychnin Gallery owner Yasha Young, this alliance is set to be a spectacular one!


Originally from Perth Australia, KiD Zoom has become the one to watch in the Australian street art scene. He recently collaborated with Ron English at Worlds End studio in Sydney, producing a limited edition print series. Taking advertisement posters from local bus-stop shelters using an improvised key, Ron and Zoom re-worked these posters to create alternative versions of current ad campaigns.


“deerBerlin” – that is how Christian Rotenhagen addresses his native city Berlin. Living there for more than three decades now he has a lot to tell- via graphic-design, illustration, fine art and art installations. His works confront his urban surroundings, the decay, conurbation and agglomeration. The style in which he presents his art is a crossover of design and art in that way he lets his viewers enter in the street life of Berlin.


Edge of Love. An international group show curated by Andy Howell and Yasha Young.

Asylum: Tim Roosen in the Vault with photographs by Ansgar Noeth.


Opens April 9th at 7 pm. Runs until May 9th.

Opening times: Thursday- Sunday 12 noon - 6 pm


Strychnin Gallery Contact: Miriam Bischoff

Boxhagenerstr. 36 pr@strychnin.com 10245 Berlin phone: 0170 - 4161108


http://www.strychnin.com/

Friday, April 2, 2010

"Fuchs-Chapel": The Apokalypse is coming

Detail of “Isaacs Offering” on the west-wall of the Chapel

More images are found on

the Church of St.Egid

Website





fuchskapelle_1_gross

fuchskapelle_3_gross

fuchskapelle_7_gross

fuchskapelle_12_gross

Main Article in the (Austrian) Kurier on Friday, April 2nd:

Ernst Fuchs created: "In God's image"

Background Story:

"Fuchs Chapel": the Apocalypse is coming

The News Articles are in German.