Artworks At TCG Nordica

Since we were going for 'Excess Luggage' at TCG Nordica (TCG 诺地卡文化中心), it provided a chance to view Ke Yi's (柯义) solo exhibition titled "Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups" (童话), and Jonathan Aumen's (加里森) interpretation of his sojourn in Kunming, "The Cell's Longing" (细胞的渴望).

Colors in Ke Yi's (柯义) pieces are bright and chirpy. Placement of familiar figures of humans, toys and animals is intentionally chimerical, and out-of-the-box, almost mischievous. In the artist's words, he wanted to re-create the magic of childhood and to still see the world through a child's eyes. “童年的美好记忆就像被风吹过的云，离我们越来越远。曾经在脑海中时时会浮起的童话也被我们埋藏在心底了，因为时间让我们变得忙碌起来，它开始变得像一部机器，打磨掉了我们曾经稚嫩的脸庞和我们的天真。  我曾经很努力地寻找那被我遗落的童年时光和我那天真的童话，希望能够把他们都捡回来，直到现在我才知道，它们就在我的身边，当你用孩子的眼睛看世界，用它们的耳朵听世界，你就会发现童话就在我们每个人身上。”

Ke Yi's whimsical touches and colors. There's one of a clown. Gave me the creeps in its cheerful grin. I hate clowns.

American artist Jonathan Aumen's (加里森) exhibition of 30 oil paintings is a curation of his 6-month residency at TCG Nordica, depicting his interpretation of the city, its people and their inner thoughts. This is especially poignant in terms of the sheer mass of demolition, construction, and relocation going on in the city. It's a rather depressing view of a city in flux. He's not unfamiliar with China, having grown up in Tianjin and Beijing, vastly different from his hometown of Virginia. (Read more about Aumen over at curator Luo Fei's blog.)

Aumen's drawings are structured, and not particularly fluid. Contemporary in terms of brushstrokes, muted colors and interpretation, the press release explained his style, "Before he arrived in Kunming, Aumen read a popular science article that said that a single cell is just as functionally complex as a city the size of Kunming. It has its own laws of operation, centers, transport hubs, and lives. In short, your very own finger tip contains 100,000 cells.  If you continue  this train of thought and do the math, we find the human body is a biological wonder and the complexity mind-blowing.  Aumen was stunned and captivated by the beauty and wonder of life. In light of this extravagant complexity, how can one argue that there was no designer? This inspires a train of thought and a scope of work."

The girlfriend doing some serious viewing of Aumen's 'Vanish (Math and Rust)'. The smaller one to the right is 'Inverted City (Multitude)'.