Hong Kong Born International Artist Simon Ma Now On Display In Miami

There are some great places in the world to see contemporary art. Based on the caliber of work being shown at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum, Miami must be one of them. Their current show features a Hong Kong-born artist who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale, MOCA Shanghai, Amsterdam's Leslie Smith Gallery, Taiwan's Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts and more. His name is Simon Ma and with his current exhibition making a U.S. debut (July 12 - October 19) I tried to catch up with him to learn a little more about what's behind his passion. The work itself, as you can see here, is quite striking.

Simon Ma has quite a resume. He's worked with Julian Lennon, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche, among others. He was appointed by the United Nations as a Cultural Ambassador and The Shanghai Tatler named Simon Ma "Crossover Artist of 2013"... plus sohu.com named him "Designer of the Year."

EN: How did growing up in Hong Kong shape your life and art?

Simon Ma: I was born in Hong Kong and grew up in the U.K. I started painting at 7 and began making music at 11. I was 13 years old when I left to live in the U.K. Chinese and western thinking and the methods of painting were things that I learned. Fusion and mix is something I was born with.

EN: How did you go from being a Chinese artist to showing your work internationally?

SM: I am a very hard worker. Many people in Hong Kong can't make art although some of the most famous artists are from China. What I believe is to let your art work and talk to people. Passion and purity are very important principles to me. My background and understanding of both cultures was very helpful in my getting into the Venice show.

EN: What is a “Crossover Artist”?

SM: Unlimited thinking and work. We are exploring (art aspect) new ways and new elements of expressing life. Nowadays we have too much information, technology and pollution etc… I think balance is a very deep and hard way of learning this. Yin and Yang from Chinese history is about balance.

EN: How do you view your work in the context of current philosophical trends?

SM: My philosophy for the Venice Biennale was about love and nature. 2014 is the Chinese Year of the Horse. My new show, the horse show, is about giving love to people. The whole world needs more peace and we need to slow down everything. We are all running too fast. I really hope the world can use my REN horses. I really want to pass on love throughout the world. Artists have social responsibilities, too, and that is what I would like to do. We should be more happy, or rather, not frightened in facing problems and pass on the right positive energy to the younger generation.

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I think you will agree that the young Mr. Ma is doing impressive work and will be someone to watch in the future. Click on the images to enlarge.

For more information about The Frost Museum of Art visit thefrost.fiu.edu/

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it!

All the Pretty Horses

Watched All the Pretty Horses earlier this week, a much better film than I was led to expect. Having read Cormac McCarthy’s superb book this past year, I decided to pick up the film when I stumbled upon it at Blockbuster on Tuesday. Billy Bob Thornton directed this year 2000 film starring Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz. And whether it was short lived in theaters because of bad reviews or poor marketing, for sure it seems like a good “big screen” film with its Mexican vistas and panoramic camera work.

It’s a coming of age story with two teens from San Antonio heading south o’ the border to find work and, perhaps, adventure. John Grady Cole is the central character (Damon) in this story of innocence lost. The film remains faithful to the the book for the most part. And maybe that is what carries the film because it is a powerful story.

Some aspects of the movie were formulaic. The usual Hollywood plot twist occurs at 25-27 minutes.

If you watch any film on DVD, check out the elapsed time when the plot turns, and you will find, nine times out of ten, that this is so. It’s called writing by the book. The book, by the way, is Syd Field's Screenplay. This is the book 1990's Disney producer Robert Schwartz sent to me when I wrote my first of three Hollywood screenplays... none reaching the silver screen. Producers, decision makers, will turn to pages 25-27 to see “what happens” with the assumption that any screen writer who knows what he’s doing will make this part of the movie into a plot twist. Instead of reading a whole screenplay, the length being one page per minute of screen time, they take a short cut. Once you see this skeletal frame, you may have difficulty closing the curtain again for a while.) Anyways, Thornton’s film follows the formula. And if you wish to take an original approach to writing screen plays, you'll discover this is why the best creative screenwriters have had to go outside the system.

Damon got very critical reviews for his performance here, but I did not expect a lot, so I ended up surprised. The romance between Cole(Damon) and Cruz has suppressed steaminess that is believable. The film does a good job of portraying the collision of cultures in their relationship. Like the book, his heart is cut out and filleted by the whole series of events that proceed naturally from the opening decision to go south.

McCarthy’s characters are superbly crafted in his books and the settings so vivid you are transported easily and longingly. In the film, the scenes and settings are honest replicas of reality, and one is not distracted by any false notes anywhere in the film, other than the fact that Damon and his friend Lacy Rawlings look a bit older than the 16-year-olds they were purportedly portraying.

Of the images on this page, I painted the horse head last year in the spring, acrylic on paper. The photo was taken in Kodak Ektachrome near a river west of Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the spring of 1981. It was a beautiful horse. (As always, click to enlarge.)

As regards the book, here’s a paragraph from a reviewer at amazon.com that summarizes my impressions of the book:

“Many people compare, fairly or no, Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" to William Faulkner's literary work. What is neglected is the strain of Flannery O'Connor that runs throughout the novel as well. At any rate, "Horses" more than stands on its own as a startling achievement. It's prose is more accessible than Faulkner, and its themes less esoteric than O'Connor. "Horses" is an immaculate novel, dealing with the extreme facets of the everyday and the ways in which people become who they are.” ~ Melvin Pena