From afar, it looks like an abstract painting made up of dots, of cherry blossoms and strange terrains that seem to flow and float. It traps your attention, your interest, your curiosity. As you approach, you start to see that the image is not static, that every single dot moves in unison, coordinated with the [...]
A city gains its reputation rightfully or erroneously, but to change that perception in people’s hearts, it needs a good idea. A great idea. A monumental idea. Miami is known for many things, a retirement paradise, a passageway for drug trafficking, a hurricane magnet. A clichéd image of sun, fun and stupidity. A cultural wasteland…until [...]
Art can be fun. It can make you laugh, run for cover, be amazed, play like a child. And forget to ask where does art start and why bother with the question: is this art? I did not know what to expect when I walked into the Rain Room in the West Bund Art District [...]
by Juan van Wassenhove For this special space of “Catch 22”, I have made a selection of the art that I have experienced in my travels this year covering China, Hong Kong, Italy, Germany, North Korea, and Switzerland. The media of the art works range from ancient roman statues and architecture to visual and digital art. [...]
Historical photography shows more than reality; it depicts a moment in time when future is uncertain, and yet the moment portrayed may never know its participation in history. The Taikang Space gallery in Beijing opens an exhibition that reflects one such extraordinary moment in China’s recent history. “Home for Photography Learning: The Friday Salon, 1977-1980” [...]
The “Heroes Monument” in Bogota, Colombia, is a six-story rectangular stone tower dedicated to the warriors that had fought for the independence of six South and Central American countries from the reign of the colonial Spain in 19th Century. Forgotten and neglected, the door was always chain-locked. From afar, one could see the statue of [...]
Many of us know Pablo Picasso mainly for the powerful statements he has made regarding war and violence, revolutionary plastic approaches of Cubism and Modernism, his interest in African art, his passionate and convoluted formal explorations of portraiture, of human figure and women, his rather intimate and tender erotic etchings…But his relationship with Nature has [...]
by Juan van Wassenhove “Catch 22” is a phrase used to express a contradiction or an impossible situation, like a “mission impossible". It actually describes what I often feel when I visit an art fair and its satellite events: so many things to see in such a short period of time! To share with you my experience [...]
Of the multifarious art fairs in the world, why come to Artbo, the International Art Fair of Bogota? To feel the vibe of the Latin American art, to take the pulse of the art market, to enjoy the energy of young artists, new galleries, the satellite events and open studios spotted all over this vibrant [...]
Some artists are forgettable. Some of them shock you, sadden you, provoke you. Others simply move you beyond words. And then there is Fernando Botero. Love him, despise him or be indifferent, no matter what you feel, Botero continues chaffing at the church, the police, the society at large, anything he fancies, with what he [...]
