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For Bookmark, ArtAsiaPacific invites an artist to spotlight some of their online sources of inspiration. This week we asked Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung.
Hong Kong-born, New York-based artist Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung remixes iconography from pop culture and advertising to create new digital images, animation, video games and multimedia installations. His work often explores themes such as identity, power and sexuality. You can see his work at tinkin.com.
1. Visionary Environments
From Dr. Evermore.
I LOVE outsider/ folk/ visionary arts. Places like Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron, the Salvation Mountain, African Village in America and Le Palais Idéal are among the most amazing art installations in the world. In a way I see Kurt Schwitter’s “Merzbau” and Yayoi Kusama’s works belongs to the same categories. The whimsical and surreal quality of these places often dumbfounded me and make me question my reasons of making arts.
3. JR
From the JR Photobooth of the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris.
I am a huge fan of this French photographer’s works. My favorite of his works are the “Women” series, especially the one in Brazil’s favela, in which he took closeup portraits of local women, enlarge them and wheat-paste the prints on the buildings. The project not only strengthen the local communities, empower the female identities but also break down the barrier between the favela residents and the more affluent neighbors down the hill.
5. Battle Jackets
This is kinda my anti-fashion statement. Nothing is more real than a blood and beer soaked “Battle Jacket”. Simply amazing full-throttle DIY with real history and passion, a fresh breath from the manufactured fashion trends. “The future is unwritten!” This particular jacket is from tshirtslayer.com.
2. Kurt Ralske
Kurt Ralske is a digital artist and educator who creates “generative arts” based on his own custom software. His works “Silent Accretions” and “Faust (Murnau, 1926) Golden Vivisection [excerpt]” are based on the ideas of eliminating the core elements of cinema- either the narrative, duration, or the coherence of linear time. Also while you are at his site be sure to check out the rediscovered Eugen Schüfftan’s footages, those are some of the most beautiful things I have seen in a while.
4. Osocio
From an blog entry from the site today, this piece by British artist Chris Drury is called Carbon Sin.
Osocio is a great blog solely focused on social advertising and non-profit campaigns, with vast subject from Human Rights to Road Safety. You can find almost every campaigns here since 2005. These are probably the only ads I watch now.
6. Grapus
From a concert in 1983.
The Situationist International movement in 1960’s Paris is one of my biggest influences in terms of my arts practice. And Grapus, a collective of Marxist graphics artists continue the subversive ideas of Situationist and blended it with amazing visual impact. They often create social conscious poster works in a very poetic way. Not to mentioned that one of the founder was studying under the great Polish poster artist Henryk Tomaszewski, another huge inspirational icon of mine.
