Lido

Lido [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

one of the cinemas that my father designed in the 1960's...in which I had watched many of the classics from the western cinematic repertoire...memorable films from Dr. Dolittle to Dr. Zhivago, from Disney fluff to James Bond buff...all forming my early exposure to american and european cultural dissemination, and inevitably leading to unrealistic and disillusioned expectations during my initial encounters of life in the canadian "wilderness"...

paris nues

"the brocade strings and reeds weave daily music,
half of it with the clouds, half river breezes:
for music such as this was meant for heaven,
how many times is man allowed to hear it?"
[TU FU, 761 AD]

les nues du soir

"from the south sea did a guest appear
and give to me a mermaid's tear
and in that pearl there were cloudy signs:
I tried to unfurl what lay in those lines;"
[TU FU, 796]

pleine lune

ferry me across the dark distance to this solitary pearl -
so still, so far...
in the full umbra of the alabaster moon, glowing pale fire, mild passions are smuggled and obscured for later disbursement...
on some other night when the moon hangs low again over the next reclaimed isle, softly lighting the steps down to the cimmerian sea.

[from 'once upon an alabaster moon' by g.verster, 2005]

la porte ottomane

an aeolian howl reverberates in the courtyard, rattles the portal doors...
a wisp of paper, leaf, soul brushes against the shutters, providently, just once...
a being in a darkened eyrie contemplates impromptu sounds through the wordless night...
stringendo compositions of derelict noise spiraling aloft...
...brushes up again...
continental elements held together by an unseen extempore force...
still out there fiercely corralling pieces of intangibility...
soon to disconnect and escape, air distrait in the morning light.

['a november wind' by g.verster, 2004]

orangerie [parc andré-citroen]

orangerie [parc andré-citroen]
oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 100 cm

one of two glasshouse pavilions on the former site of the citroen automobile factory, now transformed into a hyper-rigid designed park on the south west flank of paris [patrick berger, gilles clément, jean-paul viguier, allain provost, jean-françois jodry et associés (1992-3)]
the exotic plant "temples" showcase a collection of tropical specimens, some of which brings me right back to the wild jungles of borneo...

monument tpm

monument tpm

oil and acrylic on canvas; 90 x 120 cm

"This monument is erected by the people of Jesselton to the founding of Malaysia on 16th September 1963"...engraved on the plaque of this monument designed by my father and sponsored by the North Borneo Chinese Asssociation and the Jesselton Chinese Chamber of Commerce.

[Jesselton is now known as Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of the state of Sabah, one of the two states of East Malaysia on the northern half of the island of Borneo]

*structuralambiguity::

::the obscuration of an exterior wall by the tenacious willingness of vertically challenged plants to bond, survive and flourish against all odds, [thereby gracing the building envelope to encompass more than a uni-faceted function...]

[location:: Musée du Quai Branly, a new museum exhibiting primitive art and artifacts from non-European cultures, designed by Jean Nouvel (2005-07), and the "Mur Végétal" by Patrick Blanc (2007) on Quai Branly, 75007 Paris]

*from ZY-XIN's ZYGOSPHERIC HYBRIDARCHITECTURAL TERMINOLOGY

[originally published in the september/october, 2007 issue of FRONT journal of contemporary art and ideas]

*ornamentalisentropy::

::the adornment of a 17th century ceiling with segmented owl body parts composed into a gleeful montage as a measure of the ever devolving degradation of the wholesome natural world...

[location:: Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, a museum dedicated to the hunt and to nature in the Hôtel de Guénégaud designed by François Mansart (1652-55), Rue des Archives, 75003 Paris]

*from ZY-XIN's ZYGOSPHERIC HYBRIDARCHITECTURAL TERMINOLOGY

[originally published in the september/october 2007 issue of front journal of contemporary art and ideas]

père lachaise::les monuments

light the first light of evening, as in a room in which we rest and, for small reason, think the world imagined is the ultimate good.

this, therefore, the intensest rendezvous. it is in that thought that we collect ourselves, out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

within a single thing, a single shawl wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth, a light, a power, the miraculous influence.

here, now, we forget each other and ourselves. we feel the obscurity of an order, a whole, a knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

within its vital boundary, in the mind. we say god and the imagination are one... how high that highest candle lights the dark.

out of this same light, out of the central mind, we make a dwelling in the evening air, in which being there together is enough.

['final soliloquy of the interior paramour' by wallace stevens, 1954]

rue de charonne

rue de charonne [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 90 x 120 cm
along the rue de charonne, one block has had a 1970's utilitarian apartment building inserted between older structures...one end bracing against a skinny 19th century building with le bistrot du peintre on the corner...the interplay of stylistic differences all the more stark in the sheer verticality of both...

père lachaise::les symboles

"old styles, old tempos, all the engagement of the day -

the sedate, the regulated fray - the antique light, the moral rose, old gusts, tight whistlings from the past, the mothballs in the love at last our man forswore."

[from 'medgar evers' by gwendolyn brooks, 1968]

paris rouge::les milieux

moroccan rose petal tea in the lush sleekness of the ysl salon privé...

gliding along the seine with a red steel box of secrets...

ascending to a mysterious rendez-vous at chez julien...

red walls and freeflow wicker::an unlikely combo for modernist architects...

paris rouge::les objets

redo-rhino demagog-demigod guarding the temple of modern mod-art...

the holy receptacle of sacred water for precious futuristic gardens...

randomly thought-out nest chair for the poetically agitated...

for slow-paced adventures in the land of remnant-romantics...

les objets rouges of paris firing up serendipitous passion in spades...

paris rouge::les portes

behind the red portal doors the insistent ghost tend to her garden of occidental conceit...layered greenness draped with white roses, heavily scented, lightly virtuous, easily bruised...
the ghost poet looks out his window at the darkening of this jade canopy, elusive words clinging to torn pages...
the ghost artist hoards the hours of light, shifting images in pale grey strokes on another fresh canvas...
the ghost pianist lingers on notes that cry out for a sultry voice, a faithful orchestra, the lover who turns his back when the music begins to fade...
the ghost of the muses visits upon them all, at the vanquished hour, when the snow roses float in the moonlight and the portal doors creak open slightly to let in the river breeze...
the poet is lying fitfully on his nest of tangled lines, the pianist trembles in a mild state of satie fever, the painter in fragile sleep still dreams in flashes of luminous hues...
the gardener ghost drifts through her vernal nightscape, fading in and out of the dawning mist, entangled in the reaching branches...

'behind the red portal doors' by g.verster, 2008

off gaya street

off gaya street [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 75 x 90 cm

something about hot pink walls against a bright blue sky...I find them in borneo, in mexico, even in paris [see below post]...but not much in rainy vancouver...

one of my father's shop buildings [from the 1960's] off the main street downtown and a couple of blocks from his office...walk behind these blocks and across the parking lots is the lush jungly hillside shimmering in the tropical heat and afternoon sea breezes...some days I would play marbles along the shaded sidewalk behind the coffeeshop with the kids from the record store...

paris tropicale

the palette for my paris paintings is usually moody greys and the muddier colours...but having tropical blood, I can still be drawn to the brights, be they in france or in borneo, which I am now exercising in the paintings of my father's buildings...

rue keller

rue keller [2008]
oil and acrylic on canvas; diptych 60 x 100 cm
a 1960's generic schoolhouse for the little ones in the bastille...across the street is a magic store, a tap-dancing studio, a one-stop gothshop, several emerging designers' boutiques, a gay and lesbian youth centre, a bicycle shop...in short, everything to encourage a well-rounded childhood on top of the standard education provided under the bleu-blanc-rouge...

paris me manque...

paris me manque...
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

every spring I spread my wings for my french feeding ground...I flock to be with my caillebottes, my morisots, my rodins...I land in the shade of the branches above the place des vosges...I find again my nest on rue charles V...
and I will answer the call of the crazy bird across the street in the garden of the marquis de brinvilliers...

baudelaire's muses

du temps que la nature en sa verve puissante concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux, j'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante, comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux...

baudelaire still musing away in the jardin du luxembourg...

j'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux; deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme aux brouillards humides qui nagent dans ses yeux;

parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes; ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes, et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,

lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne, dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins, comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

['la géante', charles baudelaire (1821-67)]

lèche-vitrines III

from a rude gilded gnome and his odd assorted friends in the window of a hair salon...
to a coyly posed unicorn lounging on a stiff green broom...
to a window stacked with all cutesy things plastic, yellow and some red...
paris can still do kitsch with the best of them...

la tour phallique

la tour phallique
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

je te goûte de plus en plus - ta salure, mon appétit...

mes cuisses coussinent ton visage - ton festin, mon tourbillon...

je m'abaisse dessus ta gloire - ta résurrection, mon sauvetage...

ma bouche s'élargit pour l'air - ta persistance, ma prière...

[excerpted from 'à nous deux' by g.verster, 2004]

paris atlantes

paris atlantes
Originally uploaded by gverster_artwork.

tu portes bien mes jambs - mes pieds, ton halo...

tes mains bandent mes seins - ma mollesse, ta sauvegarde...

tu traces un voyage de langue - ma peau, ton atlas...

tes doigts me fourragent - ma crudité, ton remède...

[excerpted from 'à nous deux' by g.verster, 2004]

jalan s. tiga

jalan s. tiga [2008] oil and acrylic on canvas; 60 x 90 cm
built in 1979 for relatives, I had already left borneo and had never known this house...I came to visit and stayed with the family here 3 years ago and felt a little closer to my father as I moved through the spaces he had designed for them...