All posts tagged: Ping Pong

Julian Charrière at Ping Pong

Ben Brown Fine Arts and Ping Pong Gintonería present: An Invitation To Disappear Video Screening Monday November 19, 8.30 –10pm Shot in Southeast Asia, Julian Charrière’s new film An Invitation to Disappear records a psychosocial transcendent rave set in the fields of a monoculture palm oil plantation. A linear camera shot through nauseatingly infinite rows of trees is underpinned by the mesmerizing pulse of natural sounds and techno beats, developed together with the British DJ and producer Inland. The film also marks the first outcome of the artist’s collaboration with philosopher Dehlia Hannah, responding to the 200th anniversary of a volcanic eruption in Indonesia that plunged the world into darkness and weather extremes—a climate cooling crisis remembered in Europe as the “year without a summer.” The delirium of the rave feels increasingly alienating within the man-made grid of the plantation, culminating in feelings of unease competing with the temptation of intrigue. Fog, flashing strobes, and overwhelming sounds turn the palm grove into a melancholic party zone in which the lack of people only exacerbates the dystopian …

Gerard d’Alton Henderson

A Total Embrace By Alexandra A Seno In the autumn of 1963, a new luxury hotel opened in the heart of Hong Kong’s Central district. The 27-floor Mandarin Oriental boasted state-of-the-art amenities such as the city’s first phone system that allowed guests to make direct calls to outside numbers, and switchboard operators to activate an in-room light informing occupants of missed calls. Befitting such a cosmopolitan operation, the hotel’s owners chose an artist based in Spain to create the property’s most prominent features. A rising star with a growing international following, he was of European and Chinese descent, and seemed to have just the right style for the large, dramatic murals in the lobby and the Mandarin Grill restaurant, as well as mosaics for the rooftop swimming pool area. This is how most of Hong Kong was first introduced to Gerard d’Alton Henderson. In the final two decades of British rule, Henderson — who was born in Malaysia and grew up in Singapore — was the artist to know in the Crown Colony. The best households had to …