Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the then Party Secretary General of Vietnam became conscious of the damage brought by an economic system of large-scale production and centralised planning to Vietnam’s financial progress. Consequently, a long-term series of economic reforms known as the ‘Doi Moi’ policy was launched in 1986, and together with President Clinton’s decision to lift the U.S. trade embargo in 1994, led to Vietnam’s rampant economic ascension. […]
Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) Despite Christmas-themed pieces being long overdue, I, who respect tradition — though sometimes from afar — thought that the season called for a little less conventional celebration at this point. It is a Coca-Cola kind of approach, if you will; much like their famous 1930′s slogan ‘The pause that refreshes!’ Widely thought to have been the origin of Santa Claus’s modern image, the depiction is not the first of its […]
Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) Who’s afraid of surrealism? I can’t have a certain answer to it, but what I and Google do know is what were the surrealists afraid of. The literature and visual art movement whose foundations were laid in interbelic Europe, strongly opposed the rationalism seen by surrealists to have been the cause behind World War I. Like so, a new way of looking at reality came forth. The ‘pope of surrealism’, […]
Shamoni Sarkar, Correspondent (Art) Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 is the title of the expansive exhibition of René Magritte’s works currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But once the viewer is sufficiently lost (probably by the time one reaches the third room of the exhibition), one’s experience will not be one of mysterious ordinariness, but rather of meticulous extraordinariness. One is fooled into thinking that one […]
Dohwa Jina Kim, Correspondent (Art) Russia has undergone much speculation recently concerning its social welfare rights, especially with its anti-homosexual laws in the upcoming Olympics. A Russian artist, Pyotr Pavlensky, solidified his dismay for the Russian social system and media attention by nailing his scrotum to Red Square, Moscow in protest to the, ‘apathy, political indifference and fatalism of the Russian society’. According to plan, the artist protested the emergence of Russia as a […]
Vaiva Seskeviciute Correspondent (Art) An African American artist Willie Cole stuns art lovers by presenting a never-seen-before project called High Heels, which gives a new insight of what modern art is or could be. Since 1980’s a New Jersey-born contemporary artist has been exploiting everyday objects to create visual art compositions that communicate meanings to different audiences all around the world. Unexpected creatures, visualizations and sculptures emerge from irons, hair-dryers or even shoes. An […]
Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) Remembering is not an easy thing to do and resistance to it doesn’t ease the process either. Romania’s communist past has been, for almost two decades, a topic much discussed and analysed for the sake of the past and the future alike. The 1975-1989 era left behind the painful memory of a time of radical change, a burdensome legacy and a stigma. Because time doesn’t dissappear, it passes. And much […]
Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) Why don’t we just hop on the Chocolate Express straight to Pumpkin Paradise; that soft-spoken gingerbread lady is probably waiting to check us in the Candy Cottage — is what I would have said if you were familiar with the images above. Do bear with me though; the explanations are yet to come. Why? Because Carl Warner. That’s why. The talented British food photographer has been creating mouth-watering foodscapes for […]
Andreea Saioc, Editor (Art) Lovely Aneta Ivanova is a young Bulgaria-based talent, nothing short of sheer beauty coming out of her camera and her wonderful mind. Making use of double exposure, a technique as old as photography itself, she creates spectacular portraiture by joining together silhouettes and landscapes in the art series ‘Scars’. Do follow us through a dialogue with the artist to get closer to the core of this charming project! 1. […]
Vaiva Seskeviciute, Correspondent (Art) Frozen images of translucent liquid in motion compose the new series of photographs made by Israeli artist Moses Hacmon. ‘Faces of water’ exposes the movement that has never been captured before; the flow of water pictures a moment in clear three-dimensional space through a reaction of light and endless transformations. ‘Water always takes the form of the basin it is in. But without water itself, there is movement that […]
