Filed under: exhibit | Tags: ခင်မောင်ရင်, burmese art, Burmese artist, burmese painter, contemporary Myanmar art, Khin Maung Yin, kin maung yin, kin mg yin, myanmar art, myanmar painter
We cannot get enough of Kin Maung Yin, his infectiously friendly personality, and his insistently fresh paintings. So let’s have another show. Starting 27 January 2012, at Pansodan Gallery on Pansodan Street of course.
Filed under: art and ideas | Tags: Aung Soe Min, မျိုးညွန့်ခင်, မြင့်စံမြင့်, ရဲမင်း, အိမ်အေးကျော်, အောင်စိုးမင်း, Carlos Sardiña Galache, Eain Aye Kyaw, ein aye kyaw, myint san myint, myo nyunt khin, pansodan gallery, Rangoon Daily, Sai Htun Oo, Yè Min
The Gallery Owner of Rangoon, by Carlos Sardiña Galache, published in FronteraD. Click here for original article, which features even more pictures. This article has been translated into English and slightly edited for the Web. All photographs are by Carlos Sardiña Galache.
On the first floor of a dilapidated building in
downtown Rangoon, a narrow staircase leads up to a small space that probably hold more contemporary art per square meter than anywhere else in the city: the Pansodan Gallery. Unlike other galleries, such as those at Bogyoke Aung San market that only sell paintings with “exotic” themes to satisfy the wildest orientalist fantasies of tourists, Pansodan reveals an art scene far richer than one would expect in a country like Myanmar (Burma) — mired in poverty, isolated for years from the rest of the world, and tightly controlled by one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world.
In its three years, the gallery, open every day of the week until six in the evening, has become a meeting place for artists and art enthusiasts. Burmese and foreigners all visit the gallery, not only to buy or sell pieces of art, but to have a tea, exchange ideas, attend a poetry reading, or simply to relax for a short while. The gallery’s owner, Aung Soe Min, is a gentle and kind man that welcomes visitors with Burmese hospitality, and always relaxed and happy to answer any questions.Aung Soe Min was born 41 years ago in a small town in central Burma. Testifying to the country’s isolation, he says he never met a foreigner until he was twenty-five years old. After studying engineering, he spent several years in the publishing business and began collecting books. Today it has one of the largest libraries of Burma, and is visited by scholars from around the world.
During those years, Aung Soe Min met numerous writers and artists, and seeing that that the country lacked the “infrastructure and market necessary for artists to distribute their works,” he decided to open his own gallery in 2005. It took him three years, but in 2008, after overcoming many obstacles and using the profits he made from selling “three especially valuable paintings” he was able to buy a property on downtown Pansodan Street, close to the old colonial neighbourhood at the heart of the city, and open his gallery.
Sai Htun Oo : Two goldfish
“At that time there were several galleries in Rangoon, but the majority catered exclusively to foreign clients. Burmese people did not even visit many of these galleries, or if they did it was only when accompanying a foreigner. What I’m trying to do here is create a space that’s open to the whole world,” says Aung Soe Min. His purpose isn’t only to “sell paintings, but also awaken Burmese people’s interests in the arts. When people say that I promote artists, I say no, I’m promoting a public.”
It’s not easy being an artist in Burma. The poverty, lack of opportunity, and scarce knowledge of or interest in contemporary art make developing an artistic career far more difficult than in other countries. One of the young artists that displays his work at the Pansodan Gallery, Ein Aye Kyaw, made a hard living painting by commission, especially traditional landscapes after studying zoology and fine arts at the University of Rangoon. He decided to devote himself professionally to art five years ago when he saw a man painting on his street and thought “he’s the only person that really looks tranquil and happy.” That man became his first teacher.
Ein Aye Kyaw with his painting
Ein Aye Kyaw’s paintings are of a simple, impressionist style that he polishes in each painting, depicting ordinary scenes or images that, as he explains, draw you in without your really knowing why – an old taxi in the rain, a child playing in a park, or the strange structure of the Arakanese Kingdom, a half-pagoda, half-military fort palace that came to him after seeing an official building in Naypyidaw, Burma’s new capital that the military junta built in the middle of the jungle six years ago.
Toothed Guitar, by Yè Min
Looking around the gallery, one may find the expressive sculpture by the artist Ye Min: a guitar with teeth in the sound hole biting its own strings. The gallery also exhibits portraits of the Burmese democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, which would have been unthinkable just a few months earlier. In any case, government control over the arts is not as strict as with literature or the press. “The government simply isn’t interested and doesn’t care about art. They don’t help us, but they don’t cause problems either. They ignore us,” comments Aung Soe Min.
But artistic freedom is sometimes constrained by prejudice and bias. Burmese society is profoundly conservative and does not tolerate, for example, the exhibition of nudes, nor is it legal. At the same time, the art world is imbued with a sense of tradition and hierarchy, turning itself into a closed shop where innovation is not
always well received. The rejection of modern art forms in Burmese art dates back to the colonial era, when for many years “Western” influence was considered a threat to the cultural purity of the nation. Painters like Bagyi Aung Soe (1924-1990), considered by many to be the father of modern Burmese art, fought a long cultural battle for the acceptance of artistic ideas that were looked down upon as “foreign” by the purists. From this arose the expression “crazy art” to describe modern and abstract art.
Aung San Suu Kyi portrait by Myint San Myint
This battle has not yet come to an end, but the pieces on exhibit at the Pansodan Gallery show the growing presence of contemporary artistic styles, and that realist art lives side by side with the abstract, the expressionist, or pop. The Burmese artistic scene is very eclectic, and has seen a slight boom in recent years, as well as a surge in interest overseas. Several artists now exhibit their works in neighbouring countries, as well as the United States and United Kingdom.
Myo Nyunt Khin : Shan Dance
Nonetheless, very few Burmese people can buy paintings or sculptures, even though nearly half of the buyers at Pansodan are from Burma. With the art market so underdeveloped, people rarely buy works as an investment, a trait which differentiates them from collectors in other countries. According to Aung Soe Min, for a Burmese person “buying a painting is a personal decision.” Another peculiarity in Burma is that people like to collect, almost obsessively, the largest number of works as possible from a single artist. “They don’t care if they have one hundred paintings from only one painter. Often, they store the paintings and alternate them on the walls of their homes.”
Cover of The Rangoon Daily, 5 December 1964
Mausert is convinced that the project will help shed light on the recent history of Burmese art, especially as the vast majority of painters combine their personal artistic careers with other commercial work like advertising or comics, a very popular genre in the country, however “the artistic value of these commercial works is not decreased when they do more serious art. There is no stigma against painters doing commercial work, and both activities influence each other.”
“The historiography of Burma has suffered many distortions in recent years,” explains Soe Min. “In any case, it is based on the texts, not the images produced by society, which aren’t treated with why importance when it comes time to reconstruct history. Hardly anybody values these kinds of things, and I think they should be conserved in a museum.” Faced with neglect by the government, the conservation of the visual legacy of the country, as well as promotion of cultural and artistic life, depends almost exclusively on the enthusiastic work of people like Aung Soe Min.
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: မြင့်စံမြင့်, burmese, burmese art, burmese comtemporary art, burmese painter, M San Myint, myanmar art, Myanmar contemporary art, myanmar painter, myint san myint
“I grew up with silkscreening, it is the family business. It was silkscreens that first excited my appreciation. Most of my most of my works have come to include some silkscreening. To build the silkscreen into a work of art, I create layers upon layers, using strokes and flicks of the brush as well. Images emerge from between these layers, and I focus on the meanings of the images, the variations, the depths, the hints, the shadows. That is the art of it.”
Myint San Myint’s techniques do not reproduce well in a photograph. You need to see the layers on canvas, so come to his new exhibition, starting 3 January 2012 to explore them at Pansodan Art Gallery.
ကျွန်တော်သည် မိရိုးဖလာအရ ပိုးပန်းချီပညာနှင့် 
အကျွမ်းဝင်ခဲ့ပါသည်။ ပိုးပန်းချီဖန်တီးမှုကကျွန်တော်၏အာရုံခံစားမှုများအတွက် အင်အားဖြစ်စေခဲ့သည်။ ပိုးပန်းချီနှင့် အကျုံးဝင်သောဖွဲ့စည်းမှု အနုပညာကိုသာ အများဆုံးလုပ်ဖြစ်လာခဲ့သည်။ အနုပညာလက်ရာတစ်ခုဖြစ်လာအောင် ဖန်တီးရသောအလွှာလွှာ အထပ်ထပ်၊ ဆေးစက်၊ ရေးချက်။ ထိုအလွှာများကြားက ပေါ်လာသောအရုပ်များ၊ ထိုအရုပ်များကြားမှ အနက်အရှိုင်း၊ မတူခြားနားသော ပုံရိပ်တို့၊ ရေးချက်တို့ဖြင့် ဖွဲ့စည်းသွားသော အဓိပ္ပါယ်တို့သည် ကျွန်တော်ဝင်စားကျက်စားရာ အနုပညာဖြစ်လာကြသည်။
ထိုသို့ ဖန်တီးရင်း ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုး၏ လက်ရာများကို အမြတ်တနိုးဖြင့် ပြန်လည်တင်ပြခြင်းအနုပညာတစ်ခုအဖြစ်ဖန်တီးဖြစ်သည်မှာ ကျွန်တော့်အတွက် စိန်ခေါ်မှုကြီးမားလှသော မှတ်တိုင်တစ်ခုဖြစ်ပါသည်။
Myint San Myint’s paintings are also available from Caphe House in London, from Heriot-Grant Gallery, shipping worldwide.
Filed under: info | Tags: Burmese contemporary art, lonely planet, pansodan gallery, search terms, than myint aung, web search
Pansodan Gallery has been open for over three years now, and most of the people who have found us have done so through their friends, or through web searches — under their own steam, in other words. Here are some search terms from this morning:
One of our Than Myint Aung paintings ranks very high in generic image searches for paintings of nature.
Word of mouth has reached the ear of travel writers, and now we expect floods of tourists driving up prices, and our artists buying ever bigger canvases and using ever thicker paint with their new prosperity. But you, you knew us way back when. And you brought your friends. And we all had a great time with the artists.
P.S. Don’t believe it? Buy Lonely Planet here.
P.P.S. Read much, much more about Burmese art, from Andrew Ranard’s book.
P.P.P.S. I don’t even know what NPADC is, do you?
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: BETA Version, capism, Caspar Johansson, lunar eclipse, Pansodan rooftop, Swedish Art
Were you watching the sky the night of 10 December? If so, you noticed that the moon left the sky for a while. She had seen that something extraordinary was happening on a rooftop on Pansodan Street, and came down to listen to a rare unplugged Side Effect performance, and to find out what this BETA Version of CAPism was. She was impressed.
10-17 December, Daily 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Now inside the gallery, on the 1st Floor, 286 Pansodan Street,
Kyauktada Township, Yangon, Myanmar
CAPism on the roof of Pansodan Gallery
Side Effect, in a rare unplugged performance
CAPism in the sky
CAPism waiting for the sun to go down
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: 5ide 3ffect, cap, capism, casper johansson, side effect
The next exhibition, of Capist art, will start on the roof. Come all the way up the stairs on 10 December starting from 16:00, for the usual delicious food, and music by Side Effect. That night the paintings move back downstairs, and will be on display until 17 December at 18:00.
Cap says about these paintings:
With trivial manipulations I want to challenge understandings, presumptions and aspirations. By deconstructing everyday images, re-defining the information and reconstructing it back to its original form, perceptions begin conflicting and semiotic distortions transmit reverberations of the society we have come to know.
The result is an illustrated debate; it is about realizing dreams and accomplishing the impossible, open source in a reachable distance. It is about struggle, coexistence and being painfully average – perpetual BETA versions.
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You can sample some music of Side Effect at their indiegogo page, where they are currently raising money for various exciting uses.
Filed under: art and ideas | Tags: မောင်သာလင်း, ရွှေစိုးဟန်, maung tha lin, shwe soe han, shwesoehan
See Shwe Soe Han’s images here. English version of this post coming in December; there are more posts in English (and a bit in Burmese) below.
This is in Unicode; if it is not displaying correctly, download a Unicode font. For a Mac OS 10.7 that should be enough. For pre-2012 Windows and pre-10.7 Macs you may need to download at add-on to your Chrome or Firefox such as Parallel Universe.
ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ
၁
“နှစ်တစ်ရာ (ရာစုတစ်ခေတ်) အတွင်းမှာ အာလုံးဟာခေတ်ပြိုင်တွေချည်းဖြစ်တယ်”
အဲဒီစကားကို ကွယ်လွန်သူ ဆရာကြည်အောင်က ပြောခဲ့တယ်။
အဲသလိုဆို….ဆရာဒဂုန်တာရာကနေ…ကိုမိုဃ်းဇော်…ကိုကြည်မောင်သန်းတို့လို မော်ဒန်လူငယ်တွေထိ အားလုံးဟာခေတ်ပြိုင်ပဲပေါ့… သဘောတူရဲ့လား…လက်ခံနိုင်ရဲ့လား… မောင်လေးအောင်လည်းခေတ်မကုန်သေးဘူး။ မောင်သင်းခိုင်လည်း ခေတ်မကုန်သေးဘူး။ အောင်ချိမ့်လည်း ခေတ်မကုန်သေးဘူး.. ဖေါ်ဝေးလည်းခေတ်မကုန်သေးဘူး။ မောင််ချောနွယ်လည်း ခေတ်မကုန်သေးဘူး အဲသလိုပြောရင်သဘောတူမှာလား ထခုန်ငြင်းမှာလား။ ကဗျာဆရာတွေဘယ်လောက်သဘောထားကြီးနိုင်သလဲ။
၂
ကဗျာဆရာတွေ ဘယ်လောက်သဘောထားကြီးနိုင်သလဲ
အဲဒါကိုတွေးမိတဲ့အခါ ပန်းချီဆရာ ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးပြောတဲ့စကားကိုပြေးသတိရမိတယ်။
“ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ” တဲ့
ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးကို ” ဆရာနဲ့ ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဟာ ခေတ်ပြိုင်လား ” လို့သွားမေးစရာမလိုပါ။ ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးကိုယ်တိုင်က-
“ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဟာ ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးရဲ့တပည့်မဟုတ်ပါဘူး
ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ
ကျွန်တော်နဲ့တွေ့လို့ ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်တာမဟုတ်ပါဘူး
ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်လာမယ့်သူက ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်လာမှာပါပဲ” အဲသလိုပြောခဲ့ဖူးတယ်။
ဆက်မပြောပေမယ့် ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးရဲ့စိ်တ်ထဲက ပြောလိုက်တဲ့ စကားကိုကျွန်တောကြားလိုက်ရသလို
“ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးလည်း ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးရဲ့ကိုယ်ပိုင်စတိုင်နဲ့
ရွှေစိုးဟန်လည်း ရွှေစိုးဟန်ရဲ့ကိုယ်ပိုင်စတိုင်နဲ့”
ဟုတ်တယ် သူ့နှုတ်ဖျားက မပြောလိုက်ပေမယ့်သူ့မျက်နှာက အဲသလိုပြောတယ်လို့ယုံကြည်တယ်။ ဒီစကားရဲ့ အရင်းအမြစ်ဟာ “အားလုံးခေတ်ပြိုင်ပါပဲ” လို့လက်ခံထားတဲ့ အဇ္စုတ္တမှာ ရှိနေတယ်လို့ ကျွန်တော်ယုံတယ်။
၃
မဂ္ဂဇင်းထဲမှာ သရုပ်ဖော်ပုံတွေကို ကြည့်ရင် (လက်မှတ်ထိုးမထား နာမည်ဖေါ်ပြမထားခဲ့ရင်တောင်) ဒါ ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးလက်ရာ… ဒါ စန်းလွင်…. ဒါ အုန်းလွင်…ဒါ ဘလုံလေး…ဒါ ဦးဘကြည်…ဒါ မြတ်ကျော်…ဒါ ပန်းချီမောင်ငွေထွန်း…ဒါ လှစိုး…..ဒါ ကိုလေး…ဒါ သောင်းဟန်…ဒါ တင်လှဝင်း (ထင်)…ဒါ ကျော်သောင်း…. ဒါ စံတိုး၊ မောင်ဒီပြောနိုင်တယ်။ လိုင်းကိုမြင်တာနဲ့ သူတို့စတိုင်ဟန်ကိုပါသိပြီးသား အဲသလိုပါပဲ ကျော်ဖြူစံ၊ မုတ်သုန်၊ တဂိုးမျိုး၊ ဖေညွှန့်ဝေ၊ ရွှေစိုးဟန် မြင်ရုံနဲ့သိတယ်။ သူတို့မူ သူတို့ဟန်က ရှိပြီးသားပေါ်လွင်ပြီးသား ‘ ခေတ်ပြိုင် ‘ လို့ပြောနိုင်တဲ့ရင်ခုန်သံချင်းတူညီနေတာမို့ မတူတာက လက်ရာ ကိုယ့်လက်ရာကိုယ့်အနုပညာနဲ့ ခေတ်ပြိုင်ကာလကိုထင်ဟပ်နေပြီးသား။
၄
၁၉၈၂ နောက်ပိုင်းမှာ ဒိုင်ယာရီ ရေးလေ့ကို အကြောင်းမညီညွတ်လို့ စွန့်လွှတ်ခဲ့ပေမယ့် ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးရဲ့ ‘ ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ ‘ ဆိုတဲ့စကားကို ရန်ကုန်မင်္ဂလာဒုံမှာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ မိသားစုဘဝသောင်တင်နေတုန်းကာလ (၁၉၈၃-၈၅) အတွင်း နေ့တစ်နေ့မှာ ကြားခွင့်ရခဲ့တာပါ။
မှတ်မှတ်ရရ မြိုင်က ပန်းချီဆရာ ၀င်းမောင် (ခဝဲခြံမှာနေတုန်းကာလ ဝင်းမောင်မောင်) လည်းကျွန်တော်နဲ့အတူ မင်္ဂလာဒုံနေရန်ကုန်ထဲဆင်းလာတဲ့ နေ့တစ်နေ့၊ ကန်တော်ကလေးမြန်မာ့ဂုဏ်ရည်လမ်းထဲက ‘ သဘင် ‘ မဂ္ဂဇင်းတိုက်ဆီအလာ အယ်ဒီတာ ကိုချစ်ဦးညို နဲ့အတူ ပန်းချီဆရာ တစ်သိုက်ရှိနေနှင့်တာကိုတွေ့လိုက်ရတယ်။ ဗဂျီအောင်စိုး ကိုဒီ ဖေညွန့်ဝေ သူတို့သုံးယောက်
နားလေးနေပြီဖြစ်တဲ့ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးကို ကိုဒီက နှုတ်နဲ့ စကားပြောတာမဟုတ်ဘဲ စာနဲ့ ရေးပြ စကားပြောနေတဲ့အချိန်မှာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ရောက်သွားခဲ့တာ ဆရာဗဂျီအောင်စိုးကတော့ နှုတ်နဲ့ပဲ စကားပြန်ပေးပါတယ်။
အဲသလိုမဟုတ်ပါဘူး ကိုဒီ့ကျေးဇူးလည်း ကျွန်တော့်မှာ ရှိပါတယ်။ ကိုဒီ့ဆီကလည်း ကျွန်တော်ယူရတာပါပဲ “
“အဲသလိုမဟုတ်ပါဘူး ကျွန်တော့အိမ်မှာနေခဲ့တာမှန်ပေမယ့် ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ”
“ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဟာ ဗဂျီအောင်စိုးရဲ့တပည့်မဟုတ်ပါဘူး
ရွှေစိုးဟန်က ရွှေစိုးဟန်ပါပဲ
ကျွန်တော်နဲ့တွေ့လို့ ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်တာ မဟုတ်ပါဘူး
ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်လာမယ့်သူဟာ ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဖြစ်လာမှာပါပဲ”
၅
ရွှေစိုးဟန်ဆိုတာဘာလဲ
“ပြော့ပျောင်းတဲ့ ကောက်ကြောင်းနဲ့ ရိုးရာဟန်မပျက်စေဘဲ အညာကျေးလက်ရဲ့ ရနံ့၊ အသံနဲ့ ဟန်ကို ပန်းချီထဲမှာ စုပ်ယူပြီး ပရိတ်သတ်ရင်ထဲ ပို့ပေးနေတဲ့ ပန်းချီဆရာတွေထဲက တစ်ယောက်အပါအဝင်” လို့ကျွန်တော့စိတ်ထဲမှာ မှတ်ချက်ချလိုက်မိတယ်။
ဒီလိုတွေးနေရင်းပြောနေရင်းက-
အညာကျေးတောက ဖုတ်ထောင်းထောင်းထနေတဲ့ ရွာလမ်းကြောင်းမှာ နွားအုပ်ကြီးကို ရွှေစိုးဟန်ကမောင်းထုတ်လိုက်တာလားကျောင်းနေတာလား မပြောတတ် ကျွန်တော့ဆီပဲ နွားအုပ်ကြီးပြေးလာတော့သလိုလို
(အဲဒီတုန်းက လွတ်လွတ်လပ်လပ် ပြောရဲတဲ့ လူငယ်တွေပီပီ “နွားမှာတော့ ရွှေစိုးဟန်အပိုင်ဆုံးပဲ” လို့တောင် ဘောင်စည်းမထားဘဲပြောခဲ့မိသေး)
ရန်ကုန်ရောက်ပန်းချီရာ ဖြစ်လာပေမယ့် နှုတ်ခမ်းထူထူ ပွင့်ဟဟနဲ့ (ရွာလွမ်းလို့လားမသိ) ငေးငေါင်ငေါင်နေလေ့ရှိတဲ့ အညာသားရွှေစိုးဟန်ကိုလွမ်းဆွတ်မြင်ယောင်ရင်း……။
(မောင်သာလင်း)
၃.၈.၂၀၁၁
(မောင်သာလင်းရဲ့ ကဗျာရေးသက် ၄၇ နှစ်ပြည့်နေ့နဲ့
Sitt Moe Aung is among the key Myanmar New Realism artists of today. At first his pictures seem to be straightforward, and his style, is non-flashy. But he is able make you feel the weather, and feel enclosed, or free in a large space.
The big city’s crowded, claustrophobic and closed spaces, a town’s quiet streets, the open air between villages are well evoked. But the longer you look at them the more you see that there is liberty in the city too, and that the villagers are preoccupied, too.
In fifty years, these pictures will be fascinating for their ability to evoke the feeling of the early 21st century. Now they are a valued visual link for the exile, and a pleasure for those who see the streets more often.
Pansodan Gallery has been a supporter of his work for a year and a half, and it is our delight to finally be able to present his work to the public.
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: ကိုချို, စိုးနိုင်, စောလင်းအောင်, ထားဝယ်လေး, မျိုးညွန့်ခင်, ရဲဝင်းအောင်, အိမ်အေးကျော်, ဧကဇာချို, burmese art, callie enlow, Dawei Lay, Eain Aye Kyaw, Eikaza Cho, ein aye kyaw, Han Tin Swe, inside/outside, ko cho, myanmar art, myo nyunt khin, saw lin aung, soe naing, Ye Win Aung
The Inside/Outside exihibition was at the SateFL!GHT Gallery, 2332 S. Presa, in San Antonio, Texas in November 2011. It has now concluded, but some items are still available online.
In early 2011, Callie Enlow spent months teaching in Yangon, and — who wouldn’t? — succumbed to the fascination of the possibilities of the country. Many people feel for the people, but only a few choose to do something about it. Callie is one of those people. She took a route through art. She has carefully chosen paintings from eight artists and arranged an exhibition in San Antonio.
None of this art will make anyone think “That’s realistic, isn’t it!” But then, Burma does not make you think that either.
The art is wonderful, Callie is knowledgeable, and we hope that people will gather their friends, go there, admire the art, be drawn in more deeply, and deepen their understanding of our world, whether through talking to Callie, enjoying the art, or both.
A map showing the gallery is here.
More information about it can be found at this link, and thanks to SMART too!
Artist Brang Li will have his first solo exhibition from September 20-25 at Pansodan Gallery.
ကချင်ပန်းချီဆရာ ဘရန်လီ ရဲ့ တစ်ကိုယ်တော် ပြပွဲကို စက်တင်ဘာ ၂၀ ကနေ ၂၅ ရက်နေ့ထိ ပန်းဆိုးတန်းပန်းချီပြခန်းမှာ ပြုလုပ်ပါမယ်။
ကခ်င္ပန္းခ်ီဆရာ ဘရန္လီ ရဲ႔ တစ္ကိုယ္ေတာ္ ျပပဲြကို စက္တင္ဘာ ၂၀ ကေန ၂၅ ရက္ေန႔ထိ ပန္းဆိုးတန္းပန္းခ်ီျပခန္းမွာ ျပဳလုပ္ပါမယ္။
When I was young, I lived by a small creek in Dawei. I used to watch small boats paddling across the water. Since those early days, my love for them has grown. Now a days I see boats in the Pegu River near Yuzana City Garden. This is what inspires me to paint.
To ease my mind from the stresses of everyday life, I paint small boats in large spaces. Paddling around the world in such boats, one day my destination will be reached.
ကျွန်တော်ငယ်ငယ်က ထားဝယ်မှာရှိတဲ့ချောင်းလေးဘေးမှာ နေခဲ့ပါတယ်။ ချောင်းထဲမှာ လှော်ခတ်နေတဲ့လှေကလေးတွေကို နေ့စဉ်မြင်တွေ့နေရပါတယ်။ အဲဒီမှာကတည်းက မသိစိတ်ထဲမှာစွဲလန်းနေခဲ့တာပါ။ ခုနေတဲ့ ဟုဇနဥယျဉ်မြို့တော်နားမှာရှိတဲ့ပဲခူးမြစ်ထဲက လှေတွေကိုမြင်နေရပြန်တာကလည်း ပန်းချီရေးဆွဲဖြစ်လာဖို့ တွန်းအားတစ်ခုပါပဲ။ နောက်တစ်ခုက နေရာတကာတိုင်းမှာ မွန်းကြပ်နေတယ်လို့ ခံစားမိတာကြောင့် စိတ်ထွက်ပေါက်အနေနဲ့ space အကျယ်ကြီးထဲမှာ ဆွဲထားတာပါ။ ဒီလှေကလေးကို လှော်ခတ်သွားနေရင်း တစ်နေ့မှာတော့ ပန်းတိုင်ရောက်ရမှာဆိုပြီးတော့ပါ။
14 July to 20 July 2011 at Pansodan Gallery, Yangon.
Tel : 09 5130846
Filed under: art and ideas, exhibit | Tags: ခင်မောင်ယဉ်, ခင်မောင်ရင်, Khin Maung Yin, khin mg yin, kin maung yin, kin mg yin, kmy
13 July 2011 at the British Council Library in Yangon. (Bring photo ID)
A famous and admired artist in Myanmar will often be known as a ‘master’. The term implies that he or she has achieved much and is revered as a teacher and exemplar of the art. In English at least it also has a hierarchical air about it, a suggestion of status and rigidity, a hint of an old orthodoxy.
In the case of Kin Maung Yin nothing could be further from the truth – he is justly famous for his informality and lack of pretension. His free-thinking and generosity have endeared him to generations of students and collectors alike – he remains at heart a bohemian with little time for the trappings of wealth and fame.
His art mirrors the man. In his abstracts there is a sensual abandon to the pleasure of colour and shape, whilst his landscapes seek the essential form of the world rather than its accumulating details. In landscapes as rich and fecund as Myanmar and with a visual heritage rich in inventive and almost baroque detail Kin Maung Yin pares us back to simplicity and essence. The portraits serve not as mere photographic record, but the capturing in paint of the spirit of the sitter. It was the great founding father of 20th century sculpture, Constantin Brancussi who said that ‘Simplicity is at root complexity.’ This might stand as a useful introduction to the art of Kin Maung Yin; his works are as open and inviting as the man himself.
A little more about Kin Maung Yin from his 2010 exhibit at Pansodan here, and in a Burmese and English blog post here, and his website here.
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: art bridge, Aung Min, Aung Naing Win, Cho Cho Khaing, Htay Htay Myint, khin mya zin, Khin Thida Yee, kIIk, Kyi Mywe Aein, Kyi Thar Aye, Ma Myint Khing, May East, Min Thu Rain, Nay San, Nu Nu Swe, Nyein Darli Aung Thaw Ka, Nyo Win Maung, Ohn Khine Kin, Ohnmar, Phyo Phyo, Phyu Mon, Saw Tin Maung, Suu Suu Nyi, Thein Tun Oo, Wai Yi Shun Lie, Win Kyaw Htet, WPM, Yi Yi Khin
The new exhibition, Art Bridge, at Pansodan, running from 24 to 28 June, between the usual hours of 10-6, featuring watercolours, oils and acrylics by WPM, Ma Myint Khing, Aung Min, Saw Tin Maung, Nyo Win Maung, Yi Yi Khin, Mo Cha, Phyu Mon, Min Thu Rain, Thein Tun Oo, Aung Naing Win, May East, Kyi Mywe Aein, Khin Thida Yee, Kyi Thar Aye, Suu Suu Nyi, Phyo Phyo, kIIk, Nay San, Ohnmar, Htay Htay Myint, Nyein Darli Aung Thaw Ka, Cho Cho Khaing, Nu Nu Swe, Win Kyaw Htet, Ohn Khine Kin, Wai Yi Shun Lie
286 Pansodan, first floor (upper block)
Kyauktada, Yangon
Mobile: 0951 30846
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: ကိုချို, ဇွဲရန်နိုင်, ဧကစာချို, ben mitchell, brighton, Brighton Festival, burmese art, cho, Eikaza Cho, ekaza cho, inside stories, ko cho, myanmar art, urban times, zwe yan naing
A good article on the Burma-themed Brighton Festival was published in the Urban Times. The response to the Burmese contemporary art there was enthusiastic. One of the artists there is one of our favourites, Eikaza Cho.
“Before my brush touches the canvas, I don’t predetermine what I am going to paint.”
Ko Cho (Mr Cho), as he is known, has a particular use of colour, line and distortion which play out unpredictably in his exercise books and in paper work. Many of his works are fully abstract or feature recurrent motifs such as the owl, cat or figures from the spirit world such as the Lokanat, guardian spirit of the world.
About a dozen paintings are still in London. If you saw anything there that you are kicking yourself for not having bought, contact suriyagallery on gmail dot com.
Ben Mitchell designer, Zwe Yan Naing artist
See more of Ben Mitchell’s design and photography work on flickr and behance; see more of Zwe Yan Naing’s work here.
Ben Mitchell photographer, Eikaza Cho artist
See more about Eikaza Cho.
Filed under: exhibit | Tags: စိုးနိုင်, Brighton Festival, Sarah Cook, soe naing, soenaing
The World Art collection at Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, which has some paintings by Soe Naing, featured his paintings on their blog recently. Click on the link above to go to their slideshow and entry by Sarah Cook:
”Soe Naing’s use of vivid colours and visible brushstrokes invest his paintings with a real sense of energy and spontaneity. Amongst these brightly-coloured brushstrokes he also creates inky, black, calligraphic marks which give the impression of facial features, claws, ears, talons and tongues. Along with colour you can see that the expressive quality of line is important to Soe Naing. Every brushstroke is applied with a sense of urgency”
Read a little more about Soe Naing here and at his page on Yadanapura. Paintings by Soe Naing are available from Sa Sa Bassac in Phnom Penh, from Callie Enlow in the US (and on-line), in London (contact us), and in wonderful quantities in Yangon, at Pansodan Gallery.
Filed under: art conversation | Tags: aung co, aung ko, အောင်ကို, nance cunningham
Aung Co is a renaissance man — he is a director of independent short films, a potter, a performance artist, and installation artist. Aung Co’s 2004 solo show made him the most promising artist of his generation. The combination of his pottery and paintings impressed every visitor.
Since that exhibition, serious collectors and some museums have collected his work. Within a few years he grew prolific. He is perhaps the best-travelled of the Myanmar artists.
His recent paintings are pictures of anonymous women pictures, based on old hand-painted photographs. He says, ‘I want to catch the colours of a moment in history.’
Based on an interview with Nance Cunningham in January 2011, in Yangon. For more art conversations, click on the ‘art conversation’ tag at the top of this post.
Chronology:
1980 Born in Pyay, Myanmar
2001 Exp: 22022001, group show, Lokanat Gallery, Yangon
2002 received BA (Painting), from the University of Culture, Yangon, Myanmar
6th Batch group show, National Theatre, Yangon
2004 Aung Ko’s Art Work Solo Show, AZADA Gallery, Yangon
2006 News is No News, a short film solo show, Nm Gallery, Yangon
Myanmar Ceramic Society group show, Alliance Française de Yangon
Ceramic work group show, Mr Brown Café, Yangon
2007 Wild Eye V, Lokanat Gallery, Yangon
8th Open International Performance Festival, Beijing, China
Performance Art Show, Chaungtha, Myanmar
Performance Art Show, Lokanat Gallery, Yangon
Performance Art Show, Thanlyin, Myanmar
Event of Thuyedan, art show, Pyay
2008 Beyond Pressure, International Performance Art Festival, Yangon
Beyond the Rain, art exhibition, Lokanat Gallery, Yangon
Singapore Bienniale 2008 (collaboration with Chaw Ei Thein and Rich Streitmatter Tran)
Festival of Contemporary Theatre and Performance Art, Alliance Française de Yangon
New Zero Fine Art Show, Beikthano Art Gallery, Yangon
Exposition de Collective, art show, Alliance Française de Yangon
2009 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Trienniale, Fukuoka, Japan
Body Temporary/Corps Temporaire performance, Alliance Française de Yangon
2007–2010 Organiser of Thuyedan Event, a village art project
Filed under: art conversation, exhibit | Tags: သိန်းသိန်း, pansodan, pansodan gallery, thein thein, zach hyman
Sundays at Pansodan we fire up the espresso machine and make coffee from beans grown in Shan State. We just started, but it seems like a good idea, so let’s try it again. This time, we have a Sunday-only exhibit of works by Thein Thein.
Thein Thein paints a kaleidoscopic window into small town life, infusing mundane rural landscapes with prismatic treetops and dazzling skies. Treetops tower over quilt-like hodge-podges of homes, cut through with bustling roads and rivers. Soft pinks, purples, and oranges, bright greens and yellows inject the tranquil scenes of day-to-day life with a buzzing vitality.
Indeed, these roads and rivers are veins – a glimpse into rural Myanmar in motion. Man-made and natural twine; these time-worn paths deftly tie together the artist’s collage of both the visible world of umbrellas, pagodas, and power lines as well as the intangible world of commerce, piety, and dreams.
Known for his watercolors and illustrations, Thein Thein draws inspiration in his birthplace of Pyay, where he makes his life as an artist. He deftly blends reality and fantasy into the colour-soaked canvas iterations of his hometown, effortlessly inhabiting the space between traditional village landscapes and modern abstraction.
By Zach Hyman
Sunday, 20 March 2011 is the last day this exhibition of Eikaza Cho’s work. In addition to his paintings, his notebooks will be on display for the first time. Ko Cho’s playful lines, varied subjects — how many artists paint a colourful fly? — and lively compositions are all evident in his notebooks. Come in from 10 to 6 for a peek at the works we love and a sampling of his new series.
Filed under: art conversation, exhibit | Tags: ကိုချို, Eikaza Cho, ko cho, zach hyman
Boundless Lines: The Notebooks of a Color Composer
Although Eikaza Cho is a very skilled artist with a broad portfolio of important works, some of the most striking examples of his creativity lie within a series of ordinary-looking school notebooks. Upon looking into them, one realizes immediately that these are no ordinary school notebooks, but rather a glimpse into the aesthetic testing ground of a well-established force in Myanmar’s illustrator world. A series of hybridizations of abstraction and cartoon, figures and fantasy, the contents of these notebooks is a glimpse into the creative day-in-day-out exercises and experimentations of a skilled illustrator.
“Before my brush touches the canvas, I don’t give any thought to what I am going to paint.” With this in mind, the whimsical sketches contained within these notebooks are all the more interesting. Upon recognizing the truly spontaneous and unconsidered lineage of these figments of Eikaza Cho’s imagination, one can see them as sort of “aesthetic aerobics” – beautiful byproducts of the daily honing of his creative ability, the stretching of his formidable creative muscle.
This is to say nothing of his canvas works, which will also be included. Traces of influence in the form of Kandinsky and Miro can be seen in his renditions and re-interpretations of traditional Myanmar deities, animals, and legendary figures, although each is instilled with a unique twist of Eikaza Cho’s unique aesthetic sensibility.
Eikaza Cho’s notebooks will be part of an exhibition of his work at Pansodan Gallery, opening on 14 March.
By Zach Hyman
For more art conversations, click on the ‘art conversation’ tag at the top of this post.
![Cho Buddha 1 [CM]](http://pansuriya.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/cho-buddha1.jpg "Cho Buddha 1 [CM]")
![Cho Marionettes [RGN]](http://pansuriya.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/cho-marionettes.jpg "Cho Marionettes [RGN]")
![Cho Nude 13 [CM]](http://pansuriya.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/cho-nude.jpg "Cho Nude 13 [CM]")
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At two in the afternoon of Sunday 6 March poets will gather at Panosdan Gallery to read to poetry lovers — that could be you. Most poets will read their own work on one or two languages (all will be presented in Burmese and English).
Among the poems read will be ones by Padetha Raza and Seinda Kyawthu U Aw. These will not be read by the poets, who are long dead, but their poems live on and have been beautifully translated in a collaboration between Sayagyi and the well-known poetry translator, Keith Bosley. A rare chance to get a sense of personal life in the Nyaung Yan and early Konbaung periods (1700s).
If you want to read up on it this afternoon, I suggest you download this Introduction to Myanmar Poetry by Dragan Janeković. It starts off in Serbian, but skip to page 18 for English, and find plenty of poems in English, Burmese and of course Serbian in the second half.
286 Pansodan, first floor (upper block), Kyauktada, Yangon. Mobile: 0951 30846
For a quick view of upcoming events at Pansodan, you can cast a glance on our facebook page.
ကန်တော်မင်းကျောင်းဆရာတော် (၁၄၃၈-၁၅၁၃)
လောကသာရပျို့မှ
ညောင်ပင်ကြီးနှယ်ကျင့်စဖွယ်
ကျောင်းတော်ခရီး၊ လမ်းမကြီး၌၊
ပင်ထီးပညောင်၊ မြစ်တစ်ထောင်နှင့်၊
မြားမြောင်ခက်လက်၊ ရွက်လည်းစိပ်စိပ်၊
စေ့စေ့သိပ်လျက်၊ ရိပ်လည်းမြိုင်မြိုင်၊
လေမနိုင်လျှင်၊ ပွင့်ခိုင်သီးမှည့်၊
အပြည့်ကျေး ငှက်၊ စားလျက်သောင်းသဲ
KANDAW MINKYAUNG SAYADAW (1438-1513)
A Big Banyan Tree
Excerpt from “Lokathara Pyo”
A prominent solitary banyan tree
Grows near the road.
With its thousand roots
And its multitude of branches, Its leaves thickly set
Gives abundant shade
The wind cannot overcome it.
Its branches
Bend with young and ripe fruit
Birds come twittering to eat.
Translation by Dragan Janeković
