On further reflection - all Dancing people should be permanently guilotinned.
Painting the Giant Hands - Mirena Rhee
Painting the Giant Hands - Mirena Rhee
Painting the Giant Hands - Mirena Rhee
Remember Summer
Installation in Central Park, 2021
Remember Summer is a series of installations in Central Perk created to complement the old masters colors of the park with streaks of red, orange, yellow and blue. Created by artist Mirena Rhee without the endorsement of the park.
A lot of people who come to see the installations immediately recollect the Gates.
I am not gonna pretend, I work in the tradition of Christo Javacheff but my work is quick, fast to deploy, without permission, cheaper to make and easy to handle by just one person. It lasts mostly a day and then its gone. That’s the spirit of the 21 century. The speed of light :)
Right now Central Park is the color of An old masters painting except for the Vermilion and the ultramarine blue and yellow which I guess goes into the birds
Whenever I work in New York City
People always stop by to talk offer support comments and the work often times ends up a collaboration people suggest things maybe I try them.
As you know people in New York often talk to strangers which is something that happens nowhere else in the world.
People understand, are curious, ask questions and often physically help.
Street culture has always been important for New York City also the culture of Central Park which is kind of a mix of the city and picnicin culture.
In New York I guess the apartments are too small, And Venues too expensive. So people take their creativity to the Street
Manic Monday - or if you ever wondered what the Artist and Genius Mirena Rhee does on a Monday. Or if you ever wondered why hands need to Fold. ??? When they are tooo Looong.
remember summer - can’t wait for spring - tree hugs - minimalist installation in central park inspired by the Colors of Central park which are Old masters colors this time of the year. And the fire ladders all over the park which beckoned to me to splash some color here and there.
I was stalking some trees which look incredibly honest and beautiful this time of the year. If you see a Rembrandt painting you will see the same colors except for Vermilion, Yellow and Ultramarine which at this time of the year are hidden in the colors of the birds.
The colors and the shapes and of course the Fire ladder inspired me to make a few minimal installations which will come back next week just in time for spring. I love working in the park, it is incredibly beautiful but it is also full of culture, which is the mix of street culture of New York city as well as the neighborhood cultures of UES and UWS, the cultures of the performers, the drum circles, the musicians, the bubble guy, the museum going crowd, the Boathouse crowd, the joggers and the bikers and the boarders, and the skaters.
As for myself - if Christo, Marina Abramovich and Dali made a triangle - I'd sit in the middle.
Colors of central park - like a Rembrandt painting with the splashes of color from the Red ladders
Salvador Dali Bucket
Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques, 5 x 7 feet, acrylic on canvas, 2021
See more and details of the painting here: https://www.mirenarhee.com/salvador-d...
In this painting I use old masters technique of glazing layers and cobalt blue pigments. It shimmers.
Let me just say that I think the bucket is the most useful thing ever, if it's a nice color it's even better. The only thing a bucket doesn't do is paint a picture. But I can paint a picture and I can paint it really well, we are a good team. Now if I could only get an iPhone to play along.
First of all I have to say that I don't care for iPhones or tools just because they're brand names I want a tool to do its job and the job of this particular device for me is to take a picture. But the iPhone takes yellow pictures, I call it the cadaver filter and I'm just going to return the phone because it's not useful to me. I want to have a device that takes good pictures but also true to color without any misguided beautification.
Truth is the best policy in everything, including taking pictures and art. I learned that once at SFMoma where both Richard Avedon and Robert Frank had exhibitions. Avedon was on the top floor, Frank was on the third floor. Avedon pictures were like 6 feet tall, Frank's pictures were 6 inches tall. Frank won hands down and I lost all interest in Richard Avedon since.
https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/william-kloss
Been listening to a great course in art while I was painting, I felt truly connected to the long history of creators, to the long history of artists that came before me.
I also accidentally saw something on YouTube and was amazed at all the ghastly paintings brimming with greens and oranges and all the most atrocious things I'm not going to call it art.
My course in art history actually was preceded by a course in Egyptian art and Egyptian history which was also marvelous. People that love the subjects that they teach shine that love onto the people that listen.
Again I'm going to emphasize the fact that I found on YouTube the most absolutely atrocious examples of Mark making I can possibly imagine so I'm trying to shake that ugliness out of my mind. I'm guaranteed not to go on YouTube anytime soon, I just wanted to find out how fast certain glazes dry and boy I ran into these absurd grotesque courses. I really don't understand. And all of a sudden it hit me of course Google has no taste, they're not Steve Jobs. Apple has taste on account of Steve Jobs so that culture kind of lingered behind him but Google will show anything for money.
Although I can't forgive Apple that their iPhones take yellow pictures. Okay sorry I couldn't help it. I'm ready to give advice to any head of state on any matter.
My advice in learning about art is stick to your old Masters, study their paintings stroke by stroke copy them look at them and then make something of your own, something original that no one has ever seen before.
Anyway I terribly digress.
I've been to Spain before to study the great masters of painting in person in the great museums of Madrid, the three museums that host seminal paintings in the history of Art, by the way the Spanish Kings were great patrons and had great taste. And before that I was in Spain to see Gaudi, but I didn't know that I had to go to the Spanish countryside rather than the museums to study the pictorial tradition of Spain.
As I walked on the Camino de Santiago all I could see around me were the paintings of Salvador Dali. Blue skies and then the browns, ochres and golds, wait until I got to Costa Brava, the Mediterranean towns of Cadaques and Port Ligat. After I finished my Camino de Santiago I headed for the land, for the hometown and home actual house of Salvador Dali on the other end of Spain.
This was one of the most dramatic experiences of my life as I had seen a lot of Art, I had seen all the great art of the world in person from The Vatican, to the Uffizi to the Louvre, to the national Gallery, to the worlds and paintings of Rembrandt and Vermeer in Amsterdam, Van Gogh, the impressionists and so forth. I see and I've seen a lot of Art in New York, constantly.
But nothing had prepared me for the art, the massive museum, the house and the world of Salvador Dali. Every single square inch of this man's art was marvelous original beautiful and made with superb taste for shape and color.
People want to look at paintings because they want to look at something and oftentimes people rely on textures and thick paint to give people something to look at but this is only because of a failure at the disegno stage
Salvador Dali is superb both in the shapes and the colors, he referred to himself as colorist.
When I got to Cadaques and Port Ligat I discovered that all these landscapes were in all of the Salvador Dali paintings, all the way down to the cactuses on the side of the road and down to the crab legs in the cracks of the rocks.
I took a swim in the cool Waters of Cala Jugadora which was purportedly Salvador Dali's favorite spot. It didn't disappoint.
Below I captured the truth that Spain is absolutely beautiful and has produced some of the greatest artists the world has ever seen.
Updated the high resolution images of Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques, also had to re-photograph it because every time the shutter closed I got a different shade of blue, which is the purpose of painting, to shimmer. It is never the same. Had to re-photograph Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques in artificial light.
I developed Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques using glazing and cobalt blue pigments. It is based on this Folded Hand drawing.
Folded Hand, 11 x 15.5 inches, pen and ink of tinted french paper, 2019
Click on the image to see high resolution.
I used this drawing to develop Salvador Dali waiving in the sky over Cadaques.
5 x 7 feet, acrylic on canvas, 2021
Download high resolution image here.
In this painting I use old masters technique of glazing layers and cobalt blue pigments. Although acrylic dries fast in the old times painters used egg yolk which dried even faster.
The only way to make acrylic look good is to build it with many layers to let the pigment particles shine. Salvador Dali recommends that after each application of paint you must look at the layer sideways and examine if it’s evenly laid out. There shouldn’t be any thick parts unless it’s a highlight. Highlights structurally make sense to be thicker.
Just like with inks - i dislike thick paints and lay paint out in layers built up in succession, with the brushstrokes built in the direction of the way the wrinkles on the hand are folding.
Download high resolution image here.
Click on the image for high resolution.
Click on the image for high resolution.
Click on the image for high resolution.
Click on the image for high resolution.
Click on the image for high resolution.
Mirena Rhee, portrai of the artist with the red sled
Mirena Rhee, a portrait of the artist with skulls vans
Mirena Rhee, The Artist, with Winter and a “Blank” wearable photographed in the studio - 2011. Winter, a primed canvas wearable is painted with a frame from Winter Diagrams: December - Animated pen and ink drawings digital video, Edition of 12, dimensions variable, 2012. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch
Winter Diagrams: December - Animated pen and ink drawings digital video, Edition of 12, dimensions variable, 2012. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch
These series of animations are the digital equivalent of my Red diary. It is a non-linear diary - I sometimes write notes on past entries and cross-reference ideas. Usually written in both English and Bulgarian, sometimes a sentence starts in English and ends in Bulgarian, sometimes I write English words in Cyrillic; sometimes I write Bulgarian words using the English alphabet.
In these animations I use my latest drawings and paintings and they, instead of Bulgarian and English, become a new procedural language. I use a single drawing to create a visual Morse code and a procedural script to animate and draw each frame. The Brooklyn machine series carry the mood and the sense of place and space I currently occupy - Brooklyn, New York.
No digital manipulations for the drawings have been used - I scan them into the computer and procedurally animate them. The hands are pen and ink drawings on hot pressed board, a very smooth velvety surface produced by an American paper company. The red background is a Crimson Red Intaglio ink monotype on Fabriano papers
( an Italian paper praised since the Renaissance ).
For these compositions I was inspired by Marcus Fischer's amazing album mip~map/for friends this winter.. and my friends as well.
Painted and animated by Mirena Rhee. Music by marcus fischer / mapmap.ch
in 2011 I went to Zuccotti Park to photograph the Art of Occupy Wall Street. A man holds a sign which reads “The disease which afflicts the body politic is lack of love and absence of altruism.”
“If you are unable to find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
― Dogen
There's a snow storm here in New York City and it's a big one. Mainly wind really, and I think tons of snow. I wonder how did the first settlers manage these Winters man?
It is helpful to me though because I can find an excuse to read \ uninterrupted.
I was reading a saying by the Zen master Dogen.
I'm like let's see what his biography was like! And it turned out the man didn't find the truth where he was in Japan but he traveled to China and found it there, and went back to Japan to teach it.
The key lesson here is get your lessons from people that are already dead, that's one, and the second is always double check the context. Because essentially what he said didn't mean what we think he meant.
You have to travel far and wide to find the truth that's for sure.
