Gonkar Gyatso & Marcel Duchamp

Gonkar Gyatso

Gyatso is a contemporary artist, born in Tibet and living for over a decade in the West. He is the founder of Contemporary Tibetan Art gallery the Sweet Tea House in London.”

http://gonkargyatso.com/

Gyatso studied Chinese Brush Painting in Beijing, attaining a B.F.A. and Thangka (traditional Tibetan scroll painting) in Dharamsla. He has been living and working in the West ever since; and is the founder of the Sweet Tea House, a contemporary art gallery dedicated to showing Tibetan work, based in London. Gyatso was the recipient of a Leverhelm Fellowship in 2003 and was an artist in residence at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. 

Gyatso'swork has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Israel), The City Gallery (New Zealand), The Institute of Modern Art (Australia), the Rubin Museum of Art (New York) the Chinese National Art Gallery (Beijing), the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art (Scotland), the Courtauld Institute of Art (London), Burger Collection (Switzerland), the Wereldmuseum Rotterdam (Netherlands), and the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), Additionally he has participated in the the 53rd Venice Biennial (Italy), the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial in Brisbane (Australia) and the 17th Sydney Biennale (Australia). His work is held internationally, in public and private collections .

http://gonkargyatso.com/about-the-artist/artist's-bio

Artist: Gonkar Gyatso

Title: Excuse me while I kiss the sky 2011 (high view)

Meduim/ Material: Stickers, paper collage, and pencil on cast polyurethane sculpture

Size: 122 x 81 x 71 cm

“EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY” is one of Gonkar Gyatso’s most visually arresting and monumentally ambitious projects to date. It consists of seven works on paper, altogether spanning more than 15 meters across, which spell out the unforgettable lyrics from Jimi Hendrix’s song, Purple Haze. Under the artist’s hand, the lyrics are transformed into a visual kaleidoscope of colors and forms.

The stencil font used to form the letters is Braggadocio, a style created in the Art Deco era and revived during the psychedelic age of the 1960s, commonly used for advertisement copy, magazine headlines, and street signage. In each letter, in each word, the artist brings iconic pictures from popular culture taken from stickers, newspapers, magazines, and political cartoons, in conversation with each other, to map out the visual spectrum of our contemporary moment. Unified by ink dots and graphite drawings made by the artist, the obsessive display of found objects suggests the potential of new articulations.

"Upon closer inspection, iconography from Gyatso’s own Tibetan heritage can also be discovered within: a golden wheel, a pair of fish, the Dalai Lama, and Tibetan script, even a yak and a Tibetan pilgrim. Employing techniques from traditional Buddhist painting as well as Tibetan motifs, the artist seeks to create a unique language that addresses the tension between cultural loss and the dynamic processes of globalization. Here and in so many of his works, pop culture collides with traditional and cultural references as Gyatso injects a solid dose of his native Tibet into the vernacular of the social and political milieu of our time." Read more

EXCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY was made between New York and Australia, en route to Beijing, during the summer of 2011.

As my subject is Influences and Identity Gyatso has enlightened me a remarkable idea which I can apply and explore while creating my arts. This has really inspired me to be under the influence of such product which will enhance and motivate me while I am creating my art work. For an example a cup of green tea, coffee.etc

Marcel Duchamp

When French artist Marcel Duchamp submitted a piece of art called Fountain to an exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists in 1917, many critics said art was going down the toilet. Quite literally, given that Fountain was simply a men’s urinal signed ‘R. Mutt’. But while the Society refused to display it at the time, nearly 100 years later Fountain was voted the most important piece of art of the 20th century.

As well as poking fun at the art world, Duchamp’s wanted to prove that anything can be called ‘art’. His idea of ‘readymade’ art has influenced some of the world’s most famous artists including Pablo Picasso, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, all of whom have used found objects in their work. Nowadays, lots of artists are recycling materials in their work, making not just weird and wonderful art, but also a point about environmental issues.

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By studying Duchamp's behaviour towards his work, I have learned a very important lesson, Dumchap believed that his works of art would spark because he had a great message to tell the world that "everything is art".