This week has me thinking a lot about creative process. Making a commitment to do a self-motivated creative effort on a regular basis comes with a process of sorting out what that creative thing is about. Six weeks in and I'm still figuring out how I want to use this weekly blog touch point. I prefer this process be open and flexible, rather than fixed and confining. After-all, it's a process of creation for me, which I just happen to be sharing publicly as I go.
As I consider this week, I think, should this just be a summary of everything you can already find on Instagram or Facebook? That will get too repetitive if you follow me in other places. However, I give myself grace for mostly doing that so far, because in the first month of changing places regularly and then working through jet lag recovery, that was pretty much all I could manage creating while taking in everything new as I went.
This is the first week that I'm starting to feel a little more settled into Shanghai. Life is feeling a little more routine, and that makes it easier to think and strategize beyond what new thing needs to be explored or figured out today. This is also the first week that I've had several days of being awake the entire day and asleep most of the night rather than half nights of sleep and afternoon naps to get through the day. Good sleep cycles makes a big difference in the ability to strategize and create beyond observing and documenting.
I also consider the format of this blog space and how it serves others beyond myself. Online. Digital. Searchable. Archivable. Should everything I create here be of use to other people, or should it just be record keeping for myself? Historically, this particular blog has always been a mix of both- as flexible and multi-dimensional as I am. As flexible as the creative process should be to allow for variations, deviations, and innovations.
Perhaps all this thinking about creative process was inspired by a visit to a few art galleries this week. Alex mentioned that his NYU Shanghai summer class would be visiting some gallery and museum spaces downtown, and when he saw my curiosity pique, he invited me to come along. The tour was curated by Michelle Hyun, director of NYU Shanghai's Art Gallery, in tandem with a class project designed to reimagine the gallery experience. On a hot and humid day, I was grateful she curated a short walk between distinctly different gallery spaces, which also happened to have a lot of curatorial variety at the time of the showing. If you find yourself near the Bund in Shanghai and want some interesting places to spend your day, definitely check out these galleries...
We started at the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Center Gallery, which was featuring the exhibition "Growing Home: Archive of Master Architect's Own Houses (1930s-1960s)" As someone who has an interest in architecture, it was interesting to see what perspective was recognized and what architects were included and omitted from the exhibition.
From there, we headed across the canal to the Art Plus Shanghai commercial gallery, which was featuring a group show for the summer. I gravitated to works by Huang Yulong for the use of hoodie representation in classical sculptural form and Zhang Zhenxue for the use of organic line and shape to walk the boundary between abstract and figurative.
Crossing the line between commercial gallery and museum was the Perrotin, which would be perhaps the most challenging gallery to find if I were on my own and not being guided into the space since it resides on an upper level of the building. I feel like it's rare to see many truly original and visceral artists in galleries, but that's how I felt about Izumi Kato's work. It seems to refuse a level of symmetry that our mind wants in order for it to fall into the expected dimensions of classical beauty. Yet that was what captivated me- how the figures could push and pull on our expectations and create moments of surprise and interest just by looking and lingering longer.
The grand finale of the day was RAM: Rockbund Art Museum. An Opera for Animals Exhibit was an intense collection of works from a wide variety of artists displayed in almost dizzying density. The intensity of color and detail from one exhibit to the next defied many museum norms of letting each art work or artist's collection breath a little in its own space. In a sea of artists I'd never seen before, I was surprised to find the familiar Jeff Koons balloon animals so familiar to me from the windows of my New York City neighborhood. I could easily spend much more time in this museum, and may have to take a return visit to linger quite a bit longer.
A few more adventures posted to Instagram from this week...
Discovering the rooftop lounge bar views at the Bulgari Hotel
Helping some expat friends get custom clothing and find Bassetts Ice Cream
Taking a day trip out of the city to explore the Shanghai Wonderland Intercontinental
As I consider this week, I think, should this just be a summary of everything you can already find on Instagram or Facebook? That will get too repetitive if you follow me in other places. However, I give myself grace for mostly doing that so far, because in the first month of changing places regularly and then working through jet lag recovery, that was pretty much all I could manage creating while taking in everything new as I went.
This is the first week that I'm starting to feel a little more settled into Shanghai. Life is feeling a little more routine, and that makes it easier to think and strategize beyond what new thing needs to be explored or figured out today. This is also the first week that I've had several days of being awake the entire day and asleep most of the night rather than half nights of sleep and afternoon naps to get through the day. Good sleep cycles makes a big difference in the ability to strategize and create beyond observing and documenting.
I also consider the format of this blog space and how it serves others beyond myself. Online. Digital. Searchable. Archivable. Should everything I create here be of use to other people, or should it just be record keeping for myself? Historically, this particular blog has always been a mix of both- as flexible and multi-dimensional as I am. As flexible as the creative process should be to allow for variations, deviations, and innovations.
Perhaps all this thinking about creative process was inspired by a visit to a few art galleries this week. Alex mentioned that his NYU Shanghai summer class would be visiting some gallery and museum spaces downtown, and when he saw my curiosity pique, he invited me to come along. The tour was curated by Michelle Hyun, director of NYU Shanghai's Art Gallery, in tandem with a class project designed to reimagine the gallery experience. On a hot and humid day, I was grateful she curated a short walk between distinctly different gallery spaces, which also happened to have a lot of curatorial variety at the time of the showing. If you find yourself near the Bund in Shanghai and want some interesting places to spend your day, definitely check out these galleries...
We started at the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Center Gallery, which was featuring the exhibition "Growing Home: Archive of Master Architect's Own Houses (1930s-1960s)" As someone who has an interest in architecture, it was interesting to see what perspective was recognized and what architects were included and omitted from the exhibition.
From there, we headed across the canal to the Art Plus Shanghai commercial gallery, which was featuring a group show for the summer. I gravitated to works by Huang Yulong for the use of hoodie representation in classical sculptural form and Zhang Zhenxue for the use of organic line and shape to walk the boundary between abstract and figurative.
Crossing the line between commercial gallery and museum was the Perrotin, which would be perhaps the most challenging gallery to find if I were on my own and not being guided into the space since it resides on an upper level of the building. I feel like it's rare to see many truly original and visceral artists in galleries, but that's how I felt about Izumi Kato's work. It seems to refuse a level of symmetry that our mind wants in order for it to fall into the expected dimensions of classical beauty. Yet that was what captivated me- how the figures could push and pull on our expectations and create moments of surprise and interest just by looking and lingering longer.
The grand finale of the day was RAM: Rockbund Art Museum. An Opera for Animals Exhibit was an intense collection of works from a wide variety of artists displayed in almost dizzying density. The intensity of color and detail from one exhibit to the next defied many museum norms of letting each art work or artist's collection breath a little in its own space. In a sea of artists I'd never seen before, I was surprised to find the familiar Jeff Koons balloon animals so familiar to me from the windows of my New York City neighborhood. I could easily spend much more time in this museum, and may have to take a return visit to linger quite a bit longer.
A few more adventures posted to Instagram from this week...
Discovering the rooftop lounge bar views at the Bulgari Hotel
Helping some expat friends get custom clothing and find Bassetts Ice Cream
Taking a day trip out of the city to explore the Shanghai Wonderland Intercontinental
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