Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

Visions of war and a promise of peace
The same saturday that found me at the Sake tasting was a hot and sweltering day in Leiden. Having dressed up for the occasion (a suit nonetheless) I was particularly punished by the sun's recent tendency to microwave the Netherlands. Even so, I trudged on, taking many wrong turns and asking the way many times, before ending up at the Expansionist Art Empire Gallery.

Despite the grandeur of its name, this gallery seems to be a full 25 square meters, if that. Its walls are white and its interior empty. All the better to draw the visitor's eye to the work on display here.

In this case, the exposition "No more Hiroshima, no more Nagasaki, no more War", a collection of Sumi-e and painted artworks by Seizan Azuma, and photographs made by Leiden's photographer Fred Rohde of the memorial events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.


When I entered, I was greeted by Fred himself, and it became obvious very quickly that he has great heart for his work, and that he wants to miss not a moment's time in greeting visitors and guiding them past the artworks, explaining what it all represents. While this seems in a bit of contradiction of the classical "walk past art and form an opinion" style of visiting, it seems fitting in this context; all the more because the man who made the pictures is there himself to show the way.

We talked for some time, regarding his work, the philisophy behind it, and eventually about me and my blog. I was given some very useful advice, which I intend to take to heart. The pictures in this blog are but a snippet of what was on display, and the best thing to do is go and visit the Expansionist Art Empire Gallery.
10:57 | Category: , | 0 comments

Performance at the Lakenhal: Maki Ueda

Entering one of the small rooms of the Lakenhal exhibition, I suddenly found myself back in Japan of 400 years ago...a small room with tatami mat flooring, and a seating arrangement with a real live Geisha. The scent of incense and perfume pervades the area . The scene is so realistic, that my first instinct was to bow, excuse myself and leave.

It is then that I noticed the cabinets, designed to fit one's head, and the bottles of perfume arranged neatly by the mirror covering one side of the room. Each bottle and cabinet contains a fragrance of those times past, and in your mind you relive the old streets of Japan. It is interesting how without ever setting foot then and there, your mind still fills in the picture.


Placing my head inside one of these boxes, I smell the scent of camphor trees, and the Jinko incense of the old red light district.

Maki Ueda specializes in using natural materials to capture the scents (and with it the emotions) that people feel when they smell a certain smell. She captures local scents, of everyday things, and recreates them later to achieve a certain effect. The smells from another place, here.

If you want to learn more about Maki Ueda's work in the world of scents, you can visit her website. She also has a blog, where she records her work.
09:22 | Category: , , , , | 0 comments