By the way, if you are looking for the Geisai #3 Exhibitor’s Booth List, here it is:

GT#3 BOOTH List and Map for exhibiting artists

Plus, the growing popularity of Geisai and the large community of Taipei art connoisseurs means that, if well-utilized, Geisei can be a great opportunity to grow your fan base and increase your exposure – and maybe even to connect with some interested buyers.

Successful art fair presentation

Although I joined Geisei 2 last year, I didn’t know what I was getting into and presented very, very poorly. With just one little booth, I figured I better cram in as many paintings as possible, stacking them up on top of each other, and stuffing each little corner with personal oddities, fliers, news-scraps… I even had an electronic talking fish and a wooden Buddha statue to try and give my booth some style and color. BAD IDEA. You don’t want to present your art like 2nd hand knock-offs at a flea market. You want to project your paintings’ value with simple and clean presentation. Think like a gallery: white walls, lots of space, crisply printed title tags, high quality printed materials (i.e. business cards). If there’s room, perhaps a catalogue of works/price list.

What art should I show?

This question is much more tricky. With hundreds of competitors, you need a selection of paintings that brands you as an artist, stands out for it’s unique style, technique and theme. You want pieces that complement each other with similar colors. But you also want fucking good paintings – absolutely finished, pristine and polished: this means the edges have been painted or framed, the canvas has been glossed, it looks perfect. At the same time, you want something edgy/striking enough to make people gasp in awe-stricken stupor (ok, maybe not if you’re a landscape artist – but you should still shoot for it). Paint something that grips viewers and makes them sigh in wonder at the captivating beauty – or repugnant horror or scandalous humor – something that they will immediately go find their friends and drag them to visit your booth.

So what am I going to present?

Well I’m still struggling with that question. On the one hand I have some of my standard, unusual, Magritte-esque surrealist portraits of beautiful girls; a few of them are pretty good. Portraits or people paintings have won in the past. I also have some stronger pieces; my orange juice Buddha or my new sexy Sponge-Bob adultery painting, which is SURE to make a stir. But I also came back to Peru with some awesome wooden ornamental frames, to do a series of pop-art/religious icon paintings, which could be pretty awesome. I may need to get 2 booths this year.

Unfortunately I was too busy this year to do much painting, and didn’t apply. But I’ll still go and look around – as should you if you’re available.

It’s at the Taipei World Trade Center #2, near the 101 Building. See you there!

Details

Place: Taipei International Trade Center (TITC), Hall 2　No.3, Shung-Lian Road, Taipei
http://www.taipeishow.com.tw/map1.php

Time: May 12 – 14, 2011 12:00～20:00
May 15, 2011 11:00～17:00

Admission: NT$100

From the website:

Asia’s brand new revolutionary art fair, Art Revolution Taipei 2011 (A.R.T. 2011) features leading and emerging galleries and artists around the globe. 216 plus artists, ranging from the established to the latest generation of emerging figures, are represented in the show’s multiple sections. We expect to see tens of thousands of art lovers visiting and enjoying the show.

The exhibition includes time-tested and cutting-edge paintings, sculptures, drawings, installation, photographs, and prints. Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the Art Revolution Taipei, including art collectors, art dealers, artists, curators and other art enthusiasts, to enjoy a revolutionary, one-of-a-kind art fair. Another important spot of Art Revolution Taipei 2011 is that we will also invite 100 highly renowned and influential collectors to attend, which would certainly guarantee to bring great attention to the participating artists and their works.

Gratuitous pictures of last year

My glory days – too bad I’ll be missing it this year!

For more information visit 台北新藝術博覽會 Art Revolution Taipei 2011 (www.arts.org.tw) or the Facebook Page.

“Young Art” in Taipei is considered less than 45 – which means I still have 14 years before I’m famous enough to be invited by a gallery to display (artists can’t self-represent, they have to have a gallery backing them – although I don’t know why I couldn’t just rent a room myself and leave the door open and greet visitors. Maybe I’ll try that next time!)

If you’re a VIP with a pass, you can get into the opening on Thursday. If not, hours are 2-8pm Friday through Sunday. It’s located at the Dynasty Hotel, which is next to IKEA and the Outback Steak House on Tung Hua Rd. The closest MRT is NanJing Dong (East) Rd on the Brown Line.

There are some excellent galleries coming from Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Taiwan so you should see a lot of fresh, kick-ass contemporary Asian art. I’ll post some pictures next week of the art itself. Here’s a gallery list with the room numbers. You can buy tickets at the entrance on the 9th floor. Another requirement is that all art must be priced less than $800, which is cheap enough for nearly anyone who’s interested in starting out in art investment, or who just needs to decorate the living room. Serious art collectors could swoop in and make some smart purchases.

For more information go to http://www.youngarttaipei.com/

Taipei Artist Village is about halfway between the Taipei Train Station and HuaShan art park; easy to walk to from either direction. From the organizers:

A day of raw art. There’s going to be a burst of colors and styles. A variety of appearances from various artists. It’s a day to expose the skills of artists from around the beautiful island of Taiwan. It will be an all day outdoor event. 

For more information visit the Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=118875508202516

Or the Taipei Artist Village page:

http://www.artistvillage.org/tav

 See you there!

But I’m just about caught up on life, and found an awesome new wordpress theme for this site, which I’ll be updating soon (look around you; if this site looks a little messy and strange, I haven’t done it yet. If it looks shiny and kick-ass, it’s the new theme). I’ve also decided to share actual useful tips on how to be an artist, get into into galleries and sell your paintings.

But rather than post that stuff here, I’m starting a new website just for creative and indie artist/authors, called “Creativindie”. It’s going to rock.

Oh yeah – I’ve got a solo exhibit in National Taiwan University’s student center in May, so I’ll get a few new pieces done before then.

Today I went to a big art fair in HuaShan Culture Park called Geisei – it’s a Japanese art fair run by a famous artist. There were a couple hundred artists ranging from bleh to pretty sick (= great). Unfortunately, for my part, I didn’t do so well.

I’d planned on making a big deal out of this but have been too busy with school and writing my book, so I didn’t prepare at all. Also, I hadn’t realized that you were supposed to really think about how to use the space creatively. All I did was throw up some old beaten up paintings and some of my leftovers from previously galleries.

Also, probably because I paid last minute, they stuck me upstairs (I think opened an extra room as an afterthought) and about 1/4th or less of the visitors realized there was anything up there. So we missed all the heavy traffic. And, for some reason I brought only a few hundred of my postcards (rather than the 1000+ I have at home) so I ran out. Then, I took a taxi home to get more, but left me keys at the show, so went back empty handed. I had no business cards or anything, really pathetic. And I was freaking tired. I quit early and left.

It wasn’t a total loss, I got some exposure, people like my stuff, I made some new friends. If they do it again next year I’ll plan it well and put together a much better showing.

I was number “C001″ (C-0-0-1) which looks like “Cool” .

Here are some pictures of the stuff I liked. My buddy Hack put together a very nice showing, spent a lot of time on it, was well prepared. My absolute favorite was the wolf wrestling the sexy sheep girl by Touko Yuma. Fantastic painting.

9-12/10-15, 201o. CTS Modern Art Foundation

“Asianity” will be a display of Taiwan and Asia-specific contemporary oil paintings focusing on cultural identity, national narratives, and contradictions between modern and traditional ideologies. “Asianity”, on the one hand, sounds like a religion or belief system – perhaps implying the acceptance and proliferation of Christianity into Asia. On the other hand, it brings to mind the word “insanity” or craziness. Thus, the title of the exhibition refers to the conflicts between traditional, modern and imported beliefs; the confusion and absurdity of modern culture; and the instability that is the as-yet undefined Asian concept of self.

展覽提案－Asianity (德瑞克默菲個人展覽) 這次Asianity展覽將會展出有關台灣及亞洲地區的當代油畫，畫作內容將聚焦於現代意識型態與傳統意識形態中的文化特徵、國家故事和矛盾等議題。 「Asianity」聽起來就像一們宗教或是信仰體系，暗示社會大眾接受了基督教進入亞洲進而傳播開來的這項事實。另一方面來說，Asianity也會讓 我們想到「精神錯亂」(insanity)或瘋狂(craziness)。有鑑於此，此畫展的標題意指的不只是傳統信仰、現代信仰、外來信仰之間的衝突， 也是存在於現代文化中的混亂和荒謬，另外，還傳達出亞洲本身思想的不穩定。

I absolutely love how this one looks half done, all rough and white… I kind of wanted to sign it and move on. Gotta learn how to do that half done thing I appreciate. (A lot of great portraits; most actually, are a nicely blended 3d face, maybe folds of clothes, and then a super rough, almost abstract or solid color background… my backgrounds are more often than not too busy.) Despite telling myself to finish the drawing before I start painting, I’ve still to sketch in the hands of this one (it’s a puzzle – she’s holding the last piece. Who knows how it’s gonna turn out.)

The idea for this one is still awesome, and it’s looking good – even though her head is too small and her body looks like a linebacker (big and buff) the pose and facial expression is still pretty much what I wanted and I’m happy with it. I’ll give her some more color, a little more dimension… hope to finish by Friday!