SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
SOLO EXHIBITION
The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
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The World's Leading Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
Bobby Kim
Ling Chen
CHINA
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“I believe that most artworks existed due to the intention of the artist to ‘communicate’ with the spectators, be it using an aesthetic piece of work, a sculpture, an illusion, a game, and so on.”
Bobby Chen is a Canadian digital artist currently residing in Hong Kong. Because of his father’s career, he became a traveler at a young age. Strangely enough, as he recalled, he saw the world more from an artistic perspective when he visited new places in those days.
As a teenager, Bobby went to the United States for higher education. His first stop was San Francisco, a place he fell in love with at first sight and could never forget. And he does not understand why the precious feelings stuck all these years. It is the mystery that inspired him to create this artwork, in which he applied the rules by mathematician Marin J. Kruskal to project a magic game, in which no matter how a viewer chooses to move, he/she would end up in San Francisco.
Bobby was trained in accountancy, followed by an MBA, and served as CFO for many major multinationals earlier in his career. Later, he branched out to the high-tech world in terms of Information Technology (IT) and web designs, which he cherished his exposure through these years.
California is one of the best States to visit in the United States. And, California would not be the same without Los Angeles. The city gives Bobby the imaginary feeling of liberation, of music, and of people dancing in the street. This artwork, using QR codes, connects four channels of music (3 Los Angeles FM Radio Stations and 1 music channel) to the viewers where they can look at the people dancing on the street and listen to the music on their smartphone: a total emergence of sight and sound.
Bobby is an ‘end-to-end’ artist with specialized skills in image/video processing, generative, and derivative arts using diversified methods. He uses more than one software or technique to derive his creatives.
“If imagination has no borders, arts should have no limits.”
He is “end-to-end” because, on his creatives, he does all the work himself. For example, in addition to the finished creative, he may write an AR program to connect the artwork to a video, which he created/processed himself.
“In the long run, I hope to become one of the leaders that contribute to the cultivation of interests, acceptance, appreciation, and success of digital arts. I hope to serve as an example for others to be more innovative during their digital artwork creations.”
As a result of his ‘natural love’ for arts since childhood and his exposure to technology, all his artworks reflect his beliefs in mixing digital science with traditional arts, in their preparations, processing, and presentations. He further differentiates himself from other digital artists by adding “extensions” to his artworks, using digital technologies such as QR codes and/or Augmented Reality (AR) to lead spectators to other related presentations through their smartphones.
Sweat, lights, music, and booms are common elements of a night pub that are supposed to relax an individual after a hard day's work, particularly on the weekends. This artwork aims not only to illustrate what is taking place in a pub but also attempts to make the viewer “feel” the sweat and the lights. Augmented Reality (AR) technology is injected so the viewer can also feel the crowd dancing in the background.
“I believe digital science and technologies should be explored and used daringly to the fullest, not only to bring out the aesthetic of arts but in artwork creations as well.”
Over just a timeframe of less than fifteen years, Beijing had transformed from an old-fashioned township where bicycles were seen in the millions to a major city ready to host the Olympic games in 2008. This artwork reflects exactly how Bobby felt about the changes. Whereas the opera singer and the roof of the Forbidden City were symbols of traditional good old times, the images and videos in cylinders, seen “moving” with the help of Augmented Reality (AR) show the benefits of modernization.
Bobby is not afraid to be non-conventional in his artworks. Yesteryear’s non-conventional could be today’s contemporary, and/or may even lead us into the future. Who would have thought that Virtual Reality, which existed only a couple of years ago could now become part of the metaverse, and lead us into a futuristic world where viewing of artworks could be carried out in meta-art galleries?
Shanghai is nicknamed “Shanghai Night”, a term directly translated from Chinese. In actuality, it should be better defined as “Sleepless Night in Shanghai”. It was sleepless because of the city's night activities, where parties could never end in the nightclubs in the old days. Much has changed since then, although the night scenery would remain forever young as reflected in this artwork with the help of Augmented Reality (AR). This artwork demonstrates how motion and aesthetics could coexist.
Enhanced by the rapid advancements in digital science in recent years, it is now possible to use less of paints and brushes, yet show artwork in many different ways, including but not limited to injecting other art forms such as music and videos into the presentation.
Metaverse is one of Bobby’s fascinating topics. Secondly, Bobby also loves colorful stuff. Last but not least, Bobby also favors the incorporation of Augmented Reality (AR) in most of his artworks to add motions to an otherwise still artwork. In short, this would be a typical example of Bobby’s works if he is not diversified. That is why he personally favors this piece of work himself.
Although he loves colorful stuff and may be fascinated by the metaverse and environmental topics, he is quite diversified, and follows only his imaginations in themes and artwork creations.
The technical challenge of this artwork is not in the still artwork itself but in the “extension”, which in this case is a video, bridged and viewable on the phone by application of QR code technology. Notice that the main video consisted of four unique cube-shaped videos that would play concurrently when the play button was chosen. This artwork is yet another example of how motion could be added to an otherwise still artwork using digital technology to express or communicate extra feelings.
“It is the evolution that brings improvements in mankind and not revolution.”
This artwork was created out of Bobby’s concern about global warming. Far too many fires have taken place in recent years in the United States and have extended to Canada, China, Europe, and Australia lately. This artwork, particularly with the help of Augmented Reality (AR), attempts to show how something so green and beautiful, could be forever gone under the rage of the orange burning fire.
The marriage of digital science and traditional arts gives birth to “digital arts,” a real hybrid of two different worlds where just the removal of the word “digital,” would return the artwork to its traditional form.
Apart from fire, the other sign of global warming which is both alarming and disturbing is flooding. This artwork was created out of Bobby’s concern about the flooding issues. Far too many floods have taken place in recent years in China and have extended to Europe and Asia lately. This artwork, particularly with the help of Augmented Reality (AR), attempts to show how planet Earth could disappear under the glacier if flooding continued.
Digital Arts are measured in resolution-based pixels. Hence, although they could be converted into dimension measurements such as inches, it may be meaningless as it does not mean that the image could not be viewed in a bigger size digital frame. All of Bobby’s artworks presented here are 1920 x 1080 pixels, representing a Full HD 1080p 16:9 aspect ratio standard. Again, in a less meaningful dimension, they represent 20 x 11.25 inches and 50.8 x 28.6 cm.
The two alarming factors of global warming are fire and rain. Both have caused havoc from China to the United States to Europe. This artwork was created out of Bobby’s concern for environmental issues. Art-wise, this is the only artwork in this Solo Exhibition that Bobby does not provide an “extended communication” in its presentation using digital science. Nevertheless, it is still digital art as the preparation and processing were all done under the “digital arts” definition.