Sunday, April 5, 2009

Shanghai (Extreme photo post)

Welllppp, seeing as my light table broke I decided to not do anything today and just hang out in Shanghai. It was pretty fun!
It started out with leaving at 6 am in the morning to catch a bus to the train station which takes an hour because we had to get off the bus to catch ANOTHER BUS and then get tickets to the train to Shanghai.
Except there were no seating on the bus OR on the train. So we had to stand the whole time...for like 3 hours. ugahhalkljdf Not to mention, Ah Lang didn't sleep and I slept for an hour. -_-'




So then we went on the lightrail and had to stand more. Lol. And we finally got to the one part of the city in Shanghai. I don't remember what it's called...Lol. But it's a pretty sweet place. It reminds me of Cali and Chicago put together, but everything is Chinese. It's very western...




We then decided to go to the Shanghai Art Museum and today was our lucky day because it was free. (Today is a special holiday called Qing Ming Ge, which is a holiday to respect the loved ones who have passed away and sweep the graves and make everything nice and pretty, but people usually just have it as a day off too.)

There was this artist being exhibited named, Bei Zhengjiu? Or maybe that was like a book. wtf. I can't tell. Lol, anyway he was very into these sunflowers it was kind of sweet.




There was some calligrapher there in the calligraphy room and just pumping out these writings...I wish I knew what they said. *Sigh* This is as far as I get with Chinese calligraphy, unless I some how get really lucky and understand every word written. Which is highly unlikely.


And some other things that was in the next room. This artist takes a lot of well known works and remakes them, they are pretty sweet up close and it's all collage.

This one is kind of interesting because I recognized it as this fabric...painting? that my grandmother had and I would see it everyday when I was little and I would look at it and not like the way the horses were because the legs didn't look right. So I then saw this remake on the wall and I asked my friend Ah Lang if it was a famous painting, and it wasss. It was exciting guys...-_-'


Anyway we walked around more:

My friend Ah Lang



LOL WTF IS THIS?!








This woman was so amazing...







Well isn't this funny?












Funny story about this dude. He was watching me take pictures and was like, "Hey! Take a picture of me!" so I did it, and then he was like, "Are you Chinese? You sure don't act Chinese, taking all those pictures. Are you from America?" And then I was like, "uhh no no, just hanging out, taking pictures...that I like..hahaha." Lol anyway he kept making fun of me, it was great.



Anyway, So we went to this exhibition that my friend's professor was in, his name is Shao Wenhuan and he has the most amazing photographs, it's the kind you have to see it in person because he uses mixed media so you won't be able to see it in my photos. It was a duo show with another photographer named Hans Wilschut. But I was rather disappointed at this dude because there wasn't...Much of anything in his work except that it was large format and they were night. ...kayy...









The Artist himself. (My friend's old professor he use to study under)


This is the other artist Hans Wilschut:


And the artist:


So afterwards we went to other contemporary art galleries which I was really excited about and then went to a coffee shop...And finally sat down. You see all these pictures, I have NOT sat down at all from 6am-5pm. It was horrible, I'm usually all up for walking but I was not wearing the right shoes and they were wet.
We talked to Ah Lang's friends for awhile and they were really awesome! All graduated and going for their master's degree. Or they already have a job. So I exchanged numbers with a few of them and then we all went to the train station together to get back to Hangzhou.

4 comments:

Hannah said...

holy balls, i love looking at these photos
also, world famous home of the famous????? lolll

Owen Dennis! said...

Good post. Did you go into that famous place? It's world famous you know. Everything that is famous is in there.

Jonathan said...

It isn't a bad translation for 殿堂名人环球巨星 (diàn táng míng rén huán qiú jù xīng). Literally it is a palace hall for the super-famous around the world.

Ben Innes said...

Oh, I think that photographer, the one with the, like 20-panel piece, I think the MIA has one of his photographs in their contemporary photography section. Brush with fame!