the Graduate Thesis Exhibition

I went to see the Graduate Thesis Exhibition in  Fine Arts Gallery last saturday. 

Each of these works has excellent thoughts and is fully developed. They showed very high skills of graduate students. I recommend that every of us should go and have a look.

I love the  "Investigations In Absurdity"  by Bill Faecke most. Huge abstract and geometry graphics beautifully constructed on raw canvas. I think they are amazing works. 

("Investigations In Absurdity"  by Bill Faecke )

I watched Yi's works carefully. Personally, I think "Stroke" is the most successful one, because every alphabet which is made up of Chinese stroke is beautiful and easy to recognize. I believe she must have carefully considered each stroke of every alphabet. I just imagine the design process and can not imagine how difficult it could be.  Also, the "Ming Chair" surprised me. All the letterform came from the shape of Ming Chair. It is a great and interesting exploration of the shapes of Chinese furniture and Roman typefaces. "Running" and "Hui Pattern" are also thoughtful and well designed. Again, it must be very difficult to create such typefaces with strokes of Chinese characters and chinese patterns. I must ask Yi whether she has learned Chinese calligraphy for a long time. The shapes of strokes are really beautiful considered by Chinese taste.

 ("Stroke", by Yi Lu)

("Ming Chair", by Yi Lu)

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("Hui Pattern", by Yi Lu)

("Running", by Yi Lu)

But there is one thing I am thinking about seriously. Does every Chinese HAVE TO do their work by using traditional Chinese elements?  I know a Chinese graduate student major in ceramic did a piece of work by making bamboo shape ceramic. He told me that he has performed chinese calligraphy in his works too. And in china, it seems very popular to use Chinese elements like watercolor painting in advertising and graphic design these years.  Even my father told me very seriously that: You have to use Chinese elements in your design! Remember it! 

Honestly saying, I think it is lazy to start design by using traditional Chinese elements. The deep cultural implication of China makes it really easy to do beautiful arts and design without any extra effort by just using some of the traditional elements. But it seems that no body really cares about the meaning of Chinese culture, no body thinks deeply about it. 

Also I think it is inevitable that Chinese artist and designer do art and design works by using Chinese elements. We can not avoid the cultural roots of every Chinese people. So as artist or designer who can preserve and communicate the culture, we really should think seriously about culture (different cultures) rather than just use some symbolic elements from our own.

Yi's graduate works reminds me of the exhibition "My China My Life" of Alan Chan Design Co in 2007, which I think is a good example of Chinese design. Now I am thinking about how to do graphic design as a Chinese. 

Alan Chan (I think this photo was took at AGI exhibition "to kyoto")

"My China My Life" of Alan Chan Design Co