We hope to see you there!

-Jessica

In the meantime, you won’t find any new content here, so please keep up with us on our Laughing Tree Facebook page (we’re on there far too much, really).

Thanks for being lovely. See you soon, when we’re sparkly and new!

-Jessica

A print from Mike Stewart's "The Hard Way" exhibition

Mike also teaches fine art classes in English in Myeong-dong in Seoul… interested?

-Jessica

A story about an artist, told by a writer and a photographer, all boyhood friends of mine whom I am so happy to see are using their talents to bring beautiful things into the world. Through Kevin Bouldin’s vivid words and Daniel Collin’s communicative images, I was able to catch up with an old friend from boy scouts, Ethan Swiggart. His is a classic tale of lemons and lemonade. I feel so proud to know these guys. I hope you will head over to Nashville Public Radio‘s web site and check it out.

-Adam

Last weekend we got a nice group of art-loving friends together and headed down to Seoul’s Museum of Contemporary Art, which is located in the Seoul Grand Park complex. Another friend had been raving about the Peppermint Candy exhibit she had seen there, and we wanted to be sure to see it before it closes on February 15th.

This was our first visit to the Seoul MOCA, and we were thoroughly impressed. If you haven’t made a trip there yet, do yourself a favor and go. Preferably before February 7th, when Kang Ik-Joong’s year-long exhibition, Multiple/Dialogue ∞, will be coming down. It really should not be missed.

“Multiple/Dialogue ∞” is a stunning, prolific and multi-layered body of work filling the massive space of the MOCA’s spiral-shaped Rampcore Gallery from top to bottom. Comprised of over 60,000 of Kang’s ’3×3 inch’ works, the barrage of imagery and textures performs several, simultaneous functions, as the title, Multiple/Dialogue ∞, suggests. First, Multiple/Dialogue ∞ is a comprehensive retrospective of Kang’s prodigious output of work dating back to the early 1980′s. Second, it serves as an homage to Kang’s artistic mentor Nam June Paik, with the sensory-overload of Kang’s 60,000 images echoing the same effect created by Paik’s famous video pieces that flash and vibrate with a flood of endless visual content. Lastly, Multiple/Dialogue ∞ is meant to reinvent and give new life to Paik’s towering work, ‘The More the Better,’ that dominates the center of the Rampcore Gallery. Indeed, “The More the Better” seems to have been Kang’s motto, as evidenced in his mind-blowing volume of work.

I was completely in awe of this exhibition, it is nothing short of a multi-sensory delight.

Also very excellent was the Peppermint Candy exhibition. It was originally assembled to serve as the first, full-scale introduction of Korean contemporary art for the South American audience, and was shown in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Santiago, Chile before coming back home to the MOCA. Evidently, it was very well received there and it is easy to see why. The exhibition, which is broken into three sections, ‘Made in Korea,’ ‘New Ghost Town,’ and ‘Plastic Paradise.’ and traces various threads of development in Korean contemporary art since 1980, such as nationalism, the rise of capitalism, problems of consumption and commoditization of culture, and the challenges of Korea’s incredibly rapid urbanization. The show was really well curated in this regard, with these sub-sections of the exhibit helping to illuminate the overarching issues and motifs that have captured the attention of Korean artists during the last three decades.

In addition to these special exhibitions, there is an excellent permanent collection as well that highlights some of the best 2d, sculpture and photography produced in the last century. Of special note is the gorgeous collection of works on hanji (traditional Korean paper) that is not to be missed.

In short, go to the MOCA and see these excellent shows. We had an absolutely delightful afternoon there, and I can assure you that you will not be disappointed.

-Adam

First of all, the film is beautiful and matches the aesthetic of the book perfectly. I liked the book a lot as a kid, so I was really glad to see  it so faithfully executed. They included the few lines of dialog word-for-word from the book, and there are moments where a freeze-frame might capture an illustration from the book almost perfectly. Max is perfectly cast, and the monsters amazingly look the part, too.

That’s all good. What left me feeling conflicted was the fact that the movie was so sad. In the book, you can easily stay detached from the monsters’ feelings and enjoy the ride with Max, but in the film, you have more time to really get into the dysfunctional interactions of the monsters and really hope that Max, as king, can make everything right.

However, the whole scenario is from Max’s imagination, and it rises out of his need to deal with his own feelings of loneliness and difficulties in relating with others. So, the resolution comes for him and not the monsters.

I feel really lame saying that I was conflicted about a movie because it made me feel sad, but I know I’m pretty normal there. I know that the melancholy tone was a deliberate artistic choice on the part of the director, Spike Jonze, and in a big way, I see the film as more of a “film” than a movie because of it. Why is that?

What is it about melancholy that makes something more “artistic”? Do you think that it does? I have a few thoughts on this, but I’m curious to hear yours.

-Jessica

One of the threads we explore and try to embody here at Laughing Tree is that of ‘Reimagination.’ To us, this word connotes an approach to life that involves breathing new life into familiar or forgotten things. From the simple act of putting to creative use things most people tend to discard, to the more subtle process of extracting and recombining ideas and motifs from the past into new works of art, reimagination is about recognizing the tremendous wealth all around us, all the time.

Today at Worldchanging, I came across a most fascinating and in-depth review of the book, Unfolded – Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry, by Petra Schmidt and Nicola Stattmann (Amazon). Paper is something so ubiquitous that it’s exceedingly easy to ignore its massive creative potential. However, the artists and engineers highlighted in this book have broken through such a crystallized perspective and really seem to embody a spirit of reimagination in their highly inventive and diverse paper applications.

“The humble material can turned into a dramatic temporary installation in an art gallery but it can also be used to build a school, delicately cut it evokes a fairy-tale world, combined with electronics it’s a breathing shirt. Give paper to Japanese engineers and they’ll plan an origami paper plane that can return to Earth from space. Paper can be as rough or as aerial as artists and engineers need it.”

I hope that you will check out this review and, even better, the book itself and feel inspired to reimagine even the most seemingly forgettable aspects of your world. What’s in your trash can that might find a new life on your wall? Did these applications spur any further paper reimaginations for you? We’d love to hear all about it.

-Adam

An elegant, simple idea: Our friend Youngdoo from Seoul has recently begun posting weekly photo diptychs with her friend who goes by fiftyfootshadows. Their concept is simple. Weekly, they each choose a photo, place them side-by-side and let the interesting juxtapositions and serendipities arise. I love the collaborative idea, and I love the beautiful diptychs.

Check out their site, Our Window.

-Jessica

I know abstract, modern art isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and it hasn’t always been mine. There’s still a lot of stuff I don’t get (like the “film” upstairs in the permanent collection of a clown screaming “NOOOO!!!” over and over… huh?), but I’m getting a lot more out of abstract modern art, the more I see. I thought I’d share some of my observations about the Twombly exhibit and why I thought it was so engaging.

First of all, I love people who won’t be pigeonholed. Just as it’s impossible to fully define ourselves by the work that we do (I’m a lawyer, I’m a teacher, I’m a fireman), I think it’s an injustice for a creative to have to say only, I’m a painter, I’m a sculptor, I’m a guitarist.

Cy Twobly’s exhibit includes sculpture; photography; and paintings on paper, board, canvas, with acrylic, tempera, oil, mixed media; with highly abstract pieces composed of blobs and drips, slightly more figurative floral pieces, and abstractions of text as form. He even scrawled poetry onto a couple of pieces, including an ancient haiku about a samurai. It’s diverse stuff.

As we were approaching the exit, a man near us shook his head, laughed and said about Twombly’s work, “He had fun doin’ it!” He clearly did.

Love from Chicago,

-Jessica

MUTO from Blu on Vimeo.

I got curious to see if any one else was doing similar work, and in poking around here and there, I came across this guy David Ellis, and was equally impressed:

Daily from David Ellis on Vimeo.

Needless to say, I was absolutely stoked to discover on Likecool today a recent collaboration between the two executed at the Fame Festival in Italy. Amazingly, it was executed in just a week. Behold, the madness, the masterpiece that is “COMBO,” by Blu and David Ellis:

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

Produced by Studio Cromie
Music by Roberto Lange
Made at Fame Festival, September 2009

-Adam