Saturday, January 16, 2010
China Design Now!
In its closing days, I was able to squeeze in a couple of visits to China Design Now, an exhibit of architecture, design and fashion at the Portland Art Museum. I wish I had visited earlier and more frequently becasue there was an awful lot to absorb in the three rooms dedicated to the show. I had a sense of being exposed to an alternative universe. There is much of what we see daily in our world on this side of the planet, but it comes off so much differently, with a kind of twist.
For instance, forget about Hello Kitty. A designer in China has come up with Hi Panda, bears that are slightly twisted and a little bit sinister. The room dedicated to Shenzhen and the graphics community associated with that city was filled with all kinds of posters, CD covers, pop collectibles and so forth that were simultaneously familiar and very foreign. This was also true of the rock n roll concert footage and the animation that was playing.
The showcase of Beijing architecture featured structures built for the Olympics, but I found myself impressed with the angular conversion of the China Central Television building. The intensity of the building projects reminded me as well of the kind of activity that was taking place in Berlin at the end of last century.
I'm not entirely sure how to process all of the sights in this exhibit except perhaps to conclude that China truly is a work in progress and that within the next decades, the west is going to continue to see itself interpreted through another lens of creativity and culture.
I have always believed that magazine covers en masse provide an interesting mirror on culture. Certainly they provided quite a contrast of east meets west when coming down this staircase.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:26 PM
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