ART-RAGEOUS!

In case you don’t already know about it, ART HK 10, Asia’s largest, most prestigious Art fair is coming up from the 27th to the 30th of May. 35,000 people are expected to blow through the fair which features international galleries and their star artists which hail from around the globe.

For the art fair, I came up with an offbeat idea to create a dress in canvas and have a local artist paint on it. This would be the dress that I would wear to the art fair. The concept of the dress came about after I read this social media blog about which talks about the concept of person vs. brand.

http://justinkownacki.blogspot.com/2007/10/are-you-person-or-brand.html

A lot of people confuse hiphongkong (the company) with my personal blog (me). Instead of trying to fight that perception, I decided for this massive art event, I would capitalize on this concept and make myself a living, moving work of art which is also physical representation of my brand.

I contacted the fantasmical Melaine Living Arts shop in Central- as they do ‘new style tailoring’ and I thought they could make a canvas dress for me that someone could paint on. At Melaine, they encourage you to try things on. Some people stay in the shop for hours playing dress up and having a chat. It’s all very girly and fun.

The owner of the shop, Elaine, is an amazingly creative woman who uses feathers, hand painting, and girly accents like feathers, lace and beads to create sensual accessories and clothes. Most of the pieces are China-inspired and have a 1920’s- 1950’s feel to them.

I struck gold when I found a white dress which looked half like a pristine wedding dress and half like a spacewoman outfit with pointy extensions which jut out from the hips. It looked like a blank canvas and I knew it would be perfect for the statement we were trying to make for the Art Fair.

This white dress is going to have paint splashed all over it!

I asked my friend Olaf (his artist name is XYZ from the artist conglomerate dimmsumm.com) if he could paint the dress for me. I had embedded some of Olaf’s videos on my website before. In these videos he was painting in the middle of Central’s busiest crosswalks using Hong Kong as the inspiration for his art.

http://www.hiphongkong.com/videos/i_believe
http://www.hiphongkong.com/videos/time_stripes

Olaf comes from Poland and has a background in architecture but his dad inspired him to make his mark with his own individual form of expression. Thus he ended up moving to HK, quitting architecture and started painting. He did this because he wanted to lend some of his talent and ideas back to the city.

One of XYZ's paintings which recently exhibited and got sold at Senses 99.

We decided together that we go one step further and instead of just painting the dress, we’d actually create a live performance art happening and paint me in the dress in the middle of Mongkok and at different busy locations in Hong Kong like the IFC bridge.

We brainstormed over coffee about the logistics. We needed a wooden box for me to stand on, some kind of plastic tarp to protect the street and a stencil for painting the hiphongkong logo all over the box.

We thought about what we would actually paint on the dress and originally I thought we should paint a city skyline and some contradictory words on the dress like “Social climber” and “Fuck what you think”. After creating some sketches Olaf thought it would be cooler if he splashed paint on me, Jackson Pollock style and later on add a big stencil of the hiphongkong logo over the colorful finished product.

For me, the performance would symbolize hiphongkong’s support for the arts, generating out of the box thinking by stirring up reactions from the passing crowds. It would be a perfect way to raise awareness for hiphongkong both on the street and at the Art Fair when I wear the finished product.

I asked Olaf what his motivations were for doing the performance and he exclaimed “Sexy!” We both had a laugh and he stated that he liked giving simple answers to very sophisticated questions. He said he liked the idea of having a clean white delicate dress and invading its purity by splashing paint all over it. “There’s something brutal about it.” He says.

As we walked down the Gage street market, we found everything we needed. The wooden crate we found was so perfect even though it had a few giant roaches, spiders and ants living inside it. Olaf joked that we were giving the box a new chance at life since it had been useless and abandoned. I didn’t want to touch the box but Olaf kindly washed it for me since all the insects gave me the heebeejeebees!! We found several cool locations for filming and reveled in the colors smells and sights reflected in the daily goings-on of the market.

Artist XYZ and our wooden soapbox which was formerly a roach motel.

Anyhoo- tomorrow is the big day for our performance art happening! Exciting! I told to Olaf to get a good night’s sleep since we will need all our energy and courage to pull off a stunt such as the one we are doing. “Courage?” Olaf dismissed, “I come for a background of street art and we are always painting in public and taking risks”. Well, for me it will take all of my energy and courage to make this happen since I’ve never done anything so bold before! Watch out for the video soon!

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