Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
This sculpture Fooled everyone though! Police received several calls in a German town reporting that a man was dead inside of a gallery…come on people, you must not look in galleries very often. The realistic looking sculpture was of a dead Ai Wei Wei face down on the floor by Chinese artist, He Xiangyu, who said he intended to praise Ai Wei Wei’s efforts to criticize corruption and censorship in the Chinese government despite the threat of imprisonment.
Controversy has been swarming all over the web about Ai Wei Wei and his recent arrest and supposed tax shenanigans. The Chinese government just demanded that he pay 2.4 million in back taxes, yowza!
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
Group Show
The Hannya mask is one of the most highly recognizable images of the 14th century Japanese Noh Theater. The masks are used to convey the identity and mood of the nearly eighty characters in the different tales of the play. The Hannya mask is specifically used to represent a vengeful and jealous woman. “A woman scorned”. Her anger and envy have so consumed her that she has turned into a demon, but with some traces of her humanity left. The pointed horns, gleaming eyes, fang-like teeth, combined with a look of pure resentment and hate are tempered by the expression of suffering around the eyes and the artfully disarrayed strands of hair, which indicate passionate emotion thrown into disorder.
FX Artist Nix Herrera, tattoo artist Ant Iannucci of Ascension Tattoo, and Orlando’s Twelve21 Gallery combined their efforts to put together a Japanese themed art show to benefit the Red Cross relief for the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami victims in Japan. The exhibition featured 50 hand-painted Hannya Masks, by some of America’s best tattoo artists, conventional artists, sculptural artists, and body painters. To review the show visit hannyamaskproject.com
