Again and again, the focus of Slawomir Elsner’s work is “catastrophe’s dazzling beauty”. This series, titled “Windows on the World”, first draws you in with its furious light play and its sensual beauty, and conceptual aspects appear again on the aesthetic master plan in these large-sized coloured pencil drawings. The drawings are based on photos [...]

Feng Zhengjie paints striking contemporary women. With their coloured hair, richly hued clothes and luscious, expressive lips, the women appear irresistibly dazzling. And yet, the wandering expressions in their eyes render them elusive and enigmatic. Reminiscent of Warhol’s screen printed celebrities, Feng’s paintings reflect a vision of futuristic pop. His generic portraits of women are [...]

When I was young, I practiced painting. It was a natural extension from Chinese calligraphy. I remember being fascinated with beautifully “watery” paintings of landscapes, wildlife and buildings produced by ancient Chinese masters, and I certainly tried very hard to mimic the natural flow of brush strokes common in many Chinese paintings, but [...]

Vice President Joe Biden, voice trembling, paid tribute to one of his closest friends, Sen. Edward Kennedy, calling him a “truly remarkable man.” “Today, we lost a truly remarkable man,” Biden said. “To paraphrase Shakespeare, I don’t think we shall ever see his like again. I think the legacy he left was [...]

Two hundred years ago, the little Indian kingdom of Marwar, in what is now Rajasthan, was a bloodsoaked and troublesome place. The long decline of the Mughal empire encouraged squabbles in the Hindu ruling dynasty; in 1751 an upstart second son, Bakhat Singh, came to power, having murdered his father the maharaja a quarter-century [...]

Through his paintings and sculptures, Gernman Anselm Reyle is reviving concepts of 20th century art history. He often cites the painter Otto Freundlich as a great influence. Minimal and abstract, Reyle’s works are notorious for eye-catching colors and surfaces. His paintings can be drippy, gestural or sharply geometrical, yet his works are [...]

The work of George Condo is grotesque, comic, baroque and sinister. His paintings, drawings and sculptures portray humanlike figures that make one think of caricatures and cartoon films. But these characters are brought to life on canvas in an expressive utterly painterly manner. Condo goes about his work in the traditional way, [...]

Heaven, earth, water, and forests are the natural ingredients in Axel Hütte’s landscapes. The photographs stage a subtle play on the difference between nature and landscape. Here, ‘nature’ is the physical world which surrounds us while ‘landscape’ is nature as it appears to the observer.

Nature has always been the subject of participatory interest, [...]

I used to doodle endlessly in class, especially during Biology. It infuriated my teachers but filled my classmates with curiosity. They always wondered what I would draw next. I never realised it at the time, but my doodles let me explore my inner world - a world filled with both biological possibilities [...]

Delicate and elegant as they are, ancient costumes have alwways been a symbol of Chinese cultural tradition, as clearly witnessed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony. But as time passes by, that materialism and consumerisn gradually change the Chinese culture - Western style attire substitute traditional ones. By making a contrast between [...]