just a reminder if you’re in Brooklyn to check out my friend Sean Marc Lee’s awesome CHI-SEEN exhibit at the KK BROADWAY gallery. also, he has a book coming out soon! his photos will be on display until the end of december so please go, be merry! xx

loving the recent coolhunting post on montreal-based artist JON RAFMAN. it’s a big world out there and he’s poured over a zillion google maps streetview images to pull together an amazing collection of images. check out his tumblr for more. xx

coupl’a photos + nice video from the Steve Garrow: Insight Presents Garage Art Tour set up from The Source. sadly, i’ve been MIA for the last week and didn’t make the show, a horrid stomach flu slash allergic reaction to antibiotics left me bedridden (and missing out on turkey dinners!) but i heard it went very well and there are still some pieces up in the gallery for sale. prices are reasonable, starting from ¥2000 upwards, so if you want to pick up an original, i would highly recommend getting your butts over to the shop sooner rather than later. the gallery will be up for a few more days, so goooooooooooo!

pleased to announce that my friend Sean Marc Lee is having his first solo show! you might remember him recently being featured on neocha’s Creative Edge, so if you’re in brooklyn and want to check out the show, here’s a snippet of the show blurb written by Yew Leong Lee:

Sean Marc Lee / 李子仁: Chi Seen!

Sean Marc Lee’s anagram name is LASER MENACE, which wouldn’t you say is super apropos for a photographer. I once put my name through an anagram generator and it spat out WELL EYE GONE and just before I was due for LASIK correction too! Fortunately, fate isn’t always written in one’s name and this writer still has two well eyes to ogle at the gorgeous collection on display starting from 3 Dec 2010, at K&K gallery.

Lee’s solo exhibition, comprised of 130 photographs, is called CHI SEEN, and when I first saw the title, I wondered if Lee, being Chinese (get it? CHI SEEN=CHINESE), was making a point about one of the many minority races in America that are increasingly less so, but still being invisibilized. Perhaps, I thought, Lee is using photography as a tool to raise the status of the Chinese in America. Also, might CHI not in fact allude to the invisible life force believed by the Chinese to literally animate us, and might CHI SEEN, then, not refer to captured manifestations of a Chinese way of seeing, or even its opposite: of being seen?

As for the mystery of the show’s title, I soon received my answer in an Email the next day. “Chi Seen is in Cantonese which is what I speak.” (This writer, being of a different dialect group than the photographer, does not understand Cantonese.) “If one were to translate it literally “Chi” means sticky, and “Seen” means string, but it’s a slang term used to connote one’s mind as being all wound up/sticky like string. However, it’s used as a slang of a slang of the original meaning, kind of like an interjection when someone tells you something and you are more or less saying “whaaat?” or “ridiculous” although it’s not necessarily negative! I know, language is confusing!”

Opening December 3, 7-10pm through December 26

K&K
Hours: Fri-Sun 1-7
109 Broadway. Brooklyn, NY
(JMZ to Marcy Ave. or L to Bedford)

EDIT: peep the shoutout from >booooooom!!!!!!!

my dear friend Emilie is someone i met during our time together at W+K Shanghai. sadly, she’s since left shanghai and is now hunting for love in the big bad city of Tokyo. check out her blog, it’s one of my favourites, so sweet and funny and beautiful and great! xoxoxo Emilie, i miss you!

my friends at JELLYMON got a very nice surprise yesterday, which was the news that their work is being featured on the cover of the November issue of CREATIVE REVIEW. huge huge huge congratulations, so proud and pleased for them!

ps. the green slug’ish thing sitting on the couch is me! it’s untrue that i often slug around on their couch but i’m glad i asked sam to draw me in, it means that i am also on the cover, albeit in slug form!

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slowly catching up on posting images from my month log blogging hiatus. these are photos from the ratatat show at dream factory in may, and also the jellymon seagull lao ke exhibit at the factory that i participated in – i think the show’s just been taken down but it was so much fun and my friends at jellymon totally know how to put on a party. wheeeeeee!