Olaf Breuning

I had to check him out when I saw this photo. He's a Swiss artist who now lives in NYC.

Apparently, his recurring themes are face-painting, eyeballs attached to non-moving objects, long wigs, breasts, and movie allusions... everything that a 6-year old boy would wrack his brain and come up with?

Good as an anti-cigarette commercial?

A pink i-pod person standing harmlessly in a room... or rather, he's not pink but the pink room makes him look nice and harmless.

The attention given to the details!

While not a single object or theme seems to go out of elementary school craft class (seriously!), something is very attractive about his work. Curious.

The Selby's website shows more pictures from the above work. Check out his recent exhibition called The Army too! And later when you have time, the artist's own website, which is uselessly detouring.

Photo credit: The Selby's

Almond tree blossom

I am posting a piece of almond blossom I picked up in San Francisco...

...because outside my hotel window in DC, it feels like spring will never come.

Grace in Undercover

I recently came across this stuffed animal-looking ET creature called "Grace" that desinger Jun Takahashi created. He has first shown it in his Paris fashion show in 2008 where instead of doing a runway, he put his clothings on white mannequins and added these little creatures around them.

The creature, sometimes tiny and sometimes human size, has flashlight looking eyes that beam on you from where its face should be. While a little territorial, Grace can co-exist with humans and is supposedly a good neighbor.

Takahashi, with Katsuhide Morimoto also takes photos of Grace to show his new clothings. I like how he does not focus on the clothing in each picture, but instead focuses on showing his world of Grace... as if to create an utlimate fantasy world for those who wear those clothes featured.

Here is a clip of him actually making one of these dolls (you can skip to the last part). I like how the hands look completely human but only slightly out of proportion, thus very freaky.

Photo credits: Web magazine Hanikamu, designer blog.

Bolshoi Ballet's Spartacus

Going along with the Kennedy Center's focus on Russian art this week, I went to see Spartacus by Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet.

While I haven't seen many ballet performances lately and it was my first time to see a gladiator-type ballet stage, I must say, this was spectacular!

The overall taste was very progressive in terms of the coreography and costume which was somewhat erotic, while the storyline and of course the ballet dancers were traditional and simply excellent.

The coreography by Yuri Grigorovich was not just modern, but went beyond that. The hands were sometimes thrust in the air never to reach an ordinary ballet pose, and legs kicked fro and back to stop in mid-air. Yet, every move was just true art.

I have never seen so many dramatic lifts by the main pair dancers, almost in the manner of, and as if to make up for the recent Olympics drama of Russia losing their 48 years of gold medal in pair figure skating.

One striking thing about the costume, and I'm sure many in the audience secretly thought of was the red spandax for Spartacus towards the end of the first curtain. From the front it was completely 80s leotard, and from the back it was conspicuously thong.

I was also in awe (in a different way) of the back dancers' costume that looked like Gustav Klimt's goddess dresses. When the dancers were holding a kind of sage looking leaf in their hands and dancing in unison, it looked truly devine.

The storyline was an old one of a brave warrior getting captured and enslaved, taking a revenge on the capturer but letting him go when he gets a chance to kill him, and in the end dies a martyr.

Finally, above anything else, the most impressive was Spartacus's high jumps. One small leap by the 21-year old Ruben Muradyan would out-air anyone else on the stage! It was as if he's in another dimension and gets extra air time by default.

This ballet was not what I had imagined from the brochure and definitely a must-see.

Photo credits: Voice of Dance, Spartacus

Amadeus

I just finished watching the Mozart film Amadeus. I thought I had seen it before but apparently not. Everything was new and everything was astounding! Was Mozart such a prick and did he lead such a life!?

I was first and foremost shocked how much of a monkey Mozart was. His laugh! His arrogance! His obsession with alcohol!

Second, Mozart seems to have focused a lot on opera? He seems solely focused on this art whilst in his financial difficulty.

Lastly, the movie goes on to tell how he died in the hands of a crazy man Salieri, who was the Kappelmeister or imperial music director of Austria, and was criminally jealous of Mozart for his own mediocrity.

After the end of the movie, I got a tingly feeling that this image of Mozart could all just be the imagination of the protaganist, the crazy composer Salieri whose mind was so jiggled that he imagined he killed his beloved and most respectful composer.

... and of course, I just read now that there is very little evidence of their rivalry and that this movie was entirely made up, loosely around two composers that lived in the same era!

Denis Matsuev and James Gaffigan

I arrived in DC yesterday, and I couldn't resist going to the Kennedy Center already. It was such a special treat for me. This concert had two big pieces, both Rachmaninoff's No.2 Concerto and Tchaikovsky's No. 4 Symphony (I just read that Rachmaninoff composed this when he was 28 years old. Unbelievable!).

The pianist Gaffigan was the winner of the Tchaikovsky competition from 1998, and the conductor a very popular up-and coming American. The contrast of the monster-looking Russian on the piano vs. the tiny young American conductor added to the entertainment.

Between the two, I would usually comment on the pianist, but something was very comical about the conductor. He was doing a mini dance on the stage, and especially that I couldn't see from the back, he looked like he was not conducting but simply moving his bod.

I found his blog. He hasn't written much about the performance tonight, but it would be interesting to see what he has to say after a concert you see. I really liked his improvisation and ease of conducting.

Tonight was a very a nice introduction to my 7 weeks of stay in DC. Cannot wait for more!

Photo credit: artists' official websites.

Foggy San Francisco

San Francisco was looking like it was floating in the clouds...

SFMOMA's 75th Anniversary

Today, I had the best SFMOMA experience ever. The museum is celebrating its 75th anniversary, and exhibiting their strongest pieces and those with stories that contributed to building the museum.

The first piece I liked was this very happy wall paper of the different phases of the sun.

This one below was a series of shooting the same four women over a period of 25 years. My sister especially liked it, as you could definitely see that these four women had each gone through a different life and aged differently. One woman seemed to especially age fast.

Then there was this piece of everyone emitting thoughts to create this black cloud. I tried to emit one as well but mine didn't show.

Of course, we cannot ignore MJ. This piece intentionally mixed up his right hand and the monkey's right leg, perhaps to show the close connection between the two. I didn't know this was such a famous piece. My sister insisted that she saw it in her textbook from middle school. The background is a separate piece and is not connected to MJ.

I also liked this high heel painting. It is an oil painting. I was surprised how pretty it came out in this photo, despite the dirt and the not so nice state of the foot.

And now a few funny photos...


Paris in the Spring

From the series Parking Lots

I feel this photo series from 1999 of the various parking lots is the most incredibly useless work by Ed Ruscha. I remember seeing this special exhibition somewhere else and reading the comments that the oil dirty parking spots are those being most heavily used - which are usually closer to the building. How truly insightful! And yet, I remember this series well...

Finally, a self portrait off of a golden fish statue.

Muir Woods

I visited Muir Woods after and before dining in Sausalito today.

Forest bathing is one of my favorite pastime as it reminds me of my childhood in the German woods. It also always gives me a mystical feel, and the photos come out as if from the Hayao Miyazaki movie, Princess Mononoke.

The sequoia trees in Muir Woods are near 80m long and on average 500-800 years old. Some that are super wide could be 1000 years old, meaning that they have witnessed (not literally but) mideval time! It is sort of similar to thinking that the star light that reaches you today were generated perhaps 100 million years ago.

The smell of Coastal Redwood was so adoring that I sucked in as much air as I can to replace my lungs filthed by poluted air from the last few months.

After bathing for a few hours, I dined at Sushi Ran in Sausalito. This restaurant apparently imports special fish from the Tsukiji Market in Japan. Whether that prior knowledge helped or not, the negitoro maki that I had may have been the best sushi that I ever had outside of Japan.

Chinese flower market

The day before I left HK, I visited a Chinese new year fair. I was looking for small trinkets to buy as souvenirs, but instead I ended up in the biggest flower market I have ever seen.

It was near the Sogo Department in Causeway Bay, so right in the middle of the city. The market took up such a huge space, but it probably had half the population of HK there.

Apparently for the Chinese, decorating houses with flowers is a new year tradition among other things such as cleaning up the house head to toe and eating with family, as it symbolizes the arrival of spring and represents new beginnings.

The most beautiful were the orchids. Plum branches also seemed popular. They also sold mini trees of small golden citruses, which my friend told me that in Chinese, sound like money thus would bring good business for the year (very Chinese).

Chinese new year is followed by most Asian countries except for Japan. Wikipedia says Japan followed until 1873 or 5 years after modernization (Meiji Restoration). I assume it was confusing that along with counting emperor years (this year is Heisei Year 22) and starting to follow the Georgian calendar with Westernization, it was too much.

It must have been weird switching to Georgian back then, as people must have related the beginning of a new year with the coming of a new spring - celebrating I am sure with plum blossoms, the first of the series of pink flowers that bloom gorgeously in the spring time (followed by peach flowers in March and cherry blossoms in April).

Happy Chinese new year!

Hong Kong tea house

I am spending a few days in Hong Kong for work. Since it is different from my usual vacation of hardcore pre-planning, it is like a mini adventure trying to get around and figuring everything out myself at the spot.

I am probably extremely wrong as one coming from Jakarta, but here it feels like a mixture of Tokyo and NYC. I can figure things out as the layout of the department stores and passages are a little like Tokyo, but it is generally much wilder, faster paced (I swear the escalator moves at twice the speed!) and smells a little like NYC.

Just now, I finally found something serene and "Chinese". It was a little tea shop with many, incredibly imposing cans of tea. I am a tea freak, so I had to resist buying a package for every single friend I can imagine like I do when I go to Mariage Frères in Paris.

I ended up with 4 small packages of tea. One is called White Dragon Pearl (a jasmine green tea), another Tit Koon Yum Tea (an oolong tea but completely green), a flower tea with a big ball of green tea wrapping a flower inside (4 kinds - World Champion, Oriental Beauty, Seven Fairies, and Double Happiness), and some rose buds.

The shop person told me to start with Oriental Beauty. Not a bad move, it sounds. This shop was surprisingly customer friendly (nobody is friendly in HK!), and now I see why - background of the shop. It was very nice feeling to be right in the middle of a busy street but feel protected by the quietude of this tea shop, sipping tea from a teeny tiny Chinese cup.

Ki Chan Tea Co., Ltd.
http://www.kichantea.com/

Fashion First

If I only had a chance to visit one store in Jakarta, I would go here. This store is the perfect one-stop place to see modern Indonesian fashion. It emphasizes on presenting fashion as art - there is only one piece shown per design, and the price ain't cheap.

Of course, all the necklaces are like size XXXL and the clothings (they show works by about a dozen designers) have so much on it, that none that I found so far are anything but out there! But I feel that if I do find something, it surely will become and will remain extremely special to me, thus I continue to visit.

Fashion First
Senayan City 1F
021 7278 1444













I liked this dress - at around $500.














Cute wedges.

My tailor 2

I had my tailor make two more versions of a skirt that I bought in Tokyo last fall. The skirt is from United Arrows but called Green Labeel Relaxing. I assume the store concept is to be eco friendly, as the other basic black suit I got does not need to be dry cleaned but can be washed in your washing machine.

I really liked the shape of this skirt, so I tried to look for the exact same fabric. Luckily, I was able to find Japanese polyester for the first skirt.

The second variation is made of Italian silk. The fabric was more expensive than the tailor so I put a lot of pressure on him as such, especially that it should be more difficult to create the shape. In the end, I like it the most.

I wear them all to work with a stiff navy or black jacket. Sometimes when I am feeling good, I would wear the polkadot skirt with a white, deep V-cut cotton shirt that has white tiny polkadot sewings.

Van Cliburn

You will die when you hear this. Whether it is because I am emotionally attached to Beethoven’s film Immortal Beloved, or because Cliburn has the JFK hair, I do not know. But I decided that this is the most beautiful youtube video as of now (sorry Evgeny Kissin, you are still my favorite pianist).

Second movement from the Beethoven Piano Concerto No.1

I first got to know about Van Cliburn through the Van Cliburn Competition, in which a friend from my music school, Andrew Armstrong entered as the youngest performer and received the Juror Discretionary Award. That is when I learned that this competition is as prestigious as the Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia, in which Cliburn won the first year during the Cold War.
The story is that Cliburn as an American was so good but that the US-Russia were in such a state that the judges had to ask the Soviet leader Khrushchev if it were ok to give Cliburn first prize. Apprently it went,

"Is he the best?" "Then give him the prize!"

I couldn't imagine Russians not recognizing and rewarding the best in the area of art anyway, but funny conversation. After all, the Tchaikovsky Competition sometimes would not give out the first prize!
By the way, as is very obvious from the clip, Cliburn had gigantic hands that could reach extreme chords. He plays the Rachmaninoch Piano Conerto No. 2 with such incredible ease. Past 7 minutes in, I cannot stop headbanging.

The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 is also one of my favorites.

Apparently, Cliburn has been playing for every single President (other than Obama). How truly lucky of them Presidents!

Leaf Man

It all started really simple. The leaf man was born because s/he showed up in a flower arranger's dream. Apparently in the dream, leaf man has the ability to relax the flower arranger, which the flower arranger thinks is because plants and humans can always maintain a perfect distance between each other.

The leaf man is immobile. S/he just stands there, with pale, rice legs... I think, the paler and stouter the rice legs, the funnier! I hear that the actual person inside often suffocates but I cannot help smirking. It's so hilarious.

Apparently, leaf man's sex is distinguished by the types of leaves.

The flower arranger Makoto Azuma is an artist of course, but he refuses to be called so. He runs an haute-couture flower shop called JARDINS des FLEURS, now in Minami Aoyama.

His first work that gained him international recognition was Shiki, first shown at Tribeca's Issey Miyake in 2005.

Shiki 2 is practically a frozen bonsai tree. It almost makes you feel guilty to witness it - freezing such a perfect "cosmo" (uchu). But it is a false sense of eternity - because the ice will eventually melt...



Photo credit and more details on Azuma Makoto: http://www.kalons.net/e/artist/artists_13.htm