Blue

Our fourth Art competition “Blue” started in May 2024 and concluded on June 06, 2024. Art Room Gallery received entries from many countries around the world: USA, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Romania, Slovakia, Taiwan, Philippines, Poland, Germany, Ireland, Taiwan, France and New Zealand. The Blue theme in this competition included a diversity in types, styles and mediums (oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, colored pencil, digital art, ink and photography). The following evaluation criteria has been used for judging the artwork: creativity, interpretation of the theme, originality and quality of art, overall design, demonstration of artistic ability, and usage of medium. Jury decided to select 93 artworks for inclusion in the exhibition. Aside from First, Second, and Third place Jury also presented Merit awards and Honorable Mention awards.

Thank you, and enjoy the exhibition!

First place

Statement:

Jason SHIH graduated from School for American Crafts, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA, and majored in Metal Sculpture. And, he earned his Art Ph. D. from China Academy of Art, China (2015). Now, Jason lives in Taoyuan City, Taiwan, and consistently engages in the both areas of sculpture and public art. Sculpture is to interpret the beauty of light and shadow, rhythm and volume through the visual techniques of color, shape and texture. The qualities that the creators of sculpture pursue to touch people's hearts are actually as abstract as temperature and smell, but rich in profound penetrating power. This aura that directly points to people's hearts, and the aesthetic sense that makes people enter the drama in resonance, may also be like nostalgia, embodied in the nostalgia of seeing things and thinking about them, and the timid expectation of being close to the hometown. Sea breeze, mountain mist, morning sun, sunset, in addition to shape and color, there is also the memory of temperature. Cooking smoke, hot soup, wooden tables, pottery cups, the echo of the smell is the gradual tone of nostalgia. In people's daily aesthetic experience, the memory of temperature and smell accompanied by touch often becomes a kind of fuse to revisit the journey of old dreams. The work involved in sculpture creation is to "condense" and record all kinds of beautiful presence in this beautiful time and space in an appropriate way and with true emotions. As a professional sculptor, Jason likes to experience the taste of life with perceptual observation in the subtle moments, and also likes the ever-changing situation of game shapes in the poetic imaginary space. For Jason, art creation is to share various moods and stories in daily life.

Statement:

1959 Abitur 1960 – 1965 Studium TU München 1967 Beginn der malerischen Tätigkeit 1971 – 1973 künstlerische Ausbildung bei der VHS in Schweinfurt seit 1974 Studienreisen nach Frankreich, Spanien, Italien, USA, Israel, 2002 Entwurf der Bürgermedaille für die Stadt Bad Neustadt seit 2005 freischaffend seit 1966 wohnhaft in Bad Neustadt / Saale 1940 geboren in NürnbergArtist STATEMENT Compared to the classic pointillism of the 1890s, I have developed a pointillist technique in which the color dots stamped on the canvas are framed in black to increase the luminosity of the colors and an additional 3D effect can be created on the viewer's eyes if there are strong light-dark contrasts in the image. You can observe this 3D effect in many images. The light areas come to the front, the darker areas move to the back. I would like to explain this technique in a little more detail. The creation of the image takes place in 4 stages. In the first step I cover the picture with a colored pre-painting, painted conventionally with a brush. It can be simple color transitions, architecture, faces or even human figures. In the second step, I intuitively print 5 selected acrylic colors, mostly mixed with white in dots, onto the canvas using a small, round stamp with a diameter of 6 or 10 mm carved from an eraser In the third step, this color application is then condensed by stamping with a dominant color, in this case light blue. Then the decisive phase begins. In step 4, all points are outlined with black paint (using a brush or CD marker) and partially connected to each other.This process is very time-consuming, monotonous and characterized by tiring, circular hand movements. Finally, after 30 hours and around 3000 borders on large images.