News

Paradigm Swift from General Art Magazine to Asian Contemporary Art

Makis

Hidden Room was first published back in August of 2012, that was almost 7 years ago. From that day a lot has changed in my life and I had to focus on other things than art.

Even though I'm still busy running things offline I feel it's the right time to change the subject of this website and focus on Asian Contemporary Art. While blogging about art and artists I've found myself very interested in the Asian art scene because it has a weird and mysterious way to merge the traditional art and the new technology-inspired art styles. In fact, Asian art, in my opinion, is at the same time classical and avant-garde. So, without further ado, I want to announce a Paradigm Swift for Hidden Room from a blog dedicated to Arts in general to a magazine mostly focused and dedicated to promoting Asian art and its derivatives.

Art

Tsang Tsou Choi, the King of Kowloon

Makis

Hong Kong artist "King of Kowloon" Tsang Tsou-Choi started drawing street walls with Chinese calligraphy (or Shūfǎ 書法) in 1956 while his work was one of the first graffiti expressions in Hong Kong. Tsang completed more than 55,000 works until his death in 2007.

Most of his street artwork has been replaced or erased by Hong Kong's construction development or renovation, so a project was created by Google's online cultural platform in order to preserve Tsang Tsou-Choi's artwork. Actually, Tsang was the first artist to be featured in Google's cultural platform where more than 170 of his street artwork was saved and presented online. Chang's work was considered by iconic Chinese museums and government as "too controversial" to care for so the only place people can find and enjoy his calligraphy street art is through Google's Arts & Culture online platform. Tsang (aka King of Kowloon) claimed that Kowloon belonged to his ancestor's clan so he wandered around Hong Kong's Kowloon district claiming his land and naming his family members

names through his graffiti and calligraphy artwork. One of Tsang Tsou-Choi's last calligraphy works was in Hong Kong's electricity box and was destroyed about a year ago by a government contractor. Kowloon was famous for its walled city which was torn down 25 years ago (March of 1994). It was called The Wall City because it was built as a high-rise squatter camp covering an enormous complex of 300 interconnected buildings. This used to be one of the most crowded places on earth, 119 times as dense a New York City. From the 1950's, which was the year the complex started building up until its demolition year in 1994, more than 33,000 lived and worked inside the 6.4-acre city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fd56CGnVRU Tsang Tsou Choi 曾灶財 King of…

Art

Naomi Okubo, Contemporary Artist and Painter from Japan

Makis

Born in 1985, Naomi Okubo is a contemporary artist from Japan that is interested in the relationship between oneself and others or society and a contradiction that happen among the relationships. From an early age she was not sure how to relate with other people since she was afraid of what others would think about her.

Party Forever by Naomi Okubo Painting 2013

Those feelings were expressed by his series of paintings from 2006 up to 2010 mostly showing his plural self-portraits in an effort to escape from those fears by merging all them people in the world as herself. Since 2010 Naomi wanted to express herself through his own experience and as a result, she changed his art expression by using ready-made images from fashion advertisements or interior

magazines into his paintings, trying to understand painting composition rather than the contents themselves From 2012 and on Naomi obviously feels better about herself, even though she is always interested of other people's opinions, so she returned to his original expression in art, painting the way that she should connect to the societies he is involved with! Below you can enjoy his 2013 series of paintings.

Video

Tokyo: Capturing video sequences from inside a speeding train

Makis

Traveling in the Japanese high-speed train Shinkansen from Shinosaka to Tokyo.

Japanese high-speed train Shinkansen travelling from Shin-Osaka to Tokyo was the core idea of Daihei Shibata for creating a great video sequence probably using mirror effect and vertical flip effect combination, the video was shot by OLYMPUS EP-1(PEN). It seems that Daihei Shibata isn't the only japanese that got inspired by Shinkansen, Darwinfish105 shot the Hyper Drive video sequence using a Panasonic DMC-GH3. https://vimeo.com/68546202 Although they seem similar in my opinion the angle of their camera in front of the train for versus the side from Daihei Shibata really makes a difference.

Art

My Father and I Series by Laurie Kong

Makis

My Father and I Series by Toronto artist Laurie Kong, A BFA with Honours 2008 graduate of Concordia University in Photography,is a series of photographs that explore Laurie's bonds and relationship with her dad.

My Father and I Series by Laurie Kang

Laurie is showing the similarity in the way they express themselves, the conventionalism attitude that is lurking around when being materialistic but also the tenderness that seems to appear when all formality is gone. This series of photographs show the human need for communication and expression as a parent and as a child.

Video

So long my Hong Kong by Gregory Kane

Makis

Vimeo staff picks is great place to find interesting artistic videos from all over the world.

HiddenRoom's pick is So long my Hong Kong by Gregory Kane. Gregory lived in Hong Kong for the past six years and moved from there recently so he made a farewell video for the city he called home. So long my Hong Kong was shot on the Sony RX100(link) while editing was done using Final Cut Pro X(link).