Almighty painter

Chapter 766 Special Exhibition Hall
The process of reading this ancient poetry gave Anna a strong desire to confide in someone.

As Zweig wrote:

"This ancient poem with Greek-style rhythm exudes a kind of primordial sound that makes people's hearts surge all the time."

Just like an outstanding Impressionist painter blending the colors between his brushstrokes, it blends and integrates all the poetic words that carry encounter, love, hate, pain, and desire.

When Anna read this poem, it was as if she was using a scale to weigh two contradictory emotional celestial bodies: "surging passion" and "eternal tranquility".

In the poet's writing, one end carries the suffering of hell, and the other end carries the happiness of heaven.

[They tested me and blessed me with Pandora.]

【She is rich in beauty, but also rich in disaster. 】

Goethe, who had been adept at using the metaphor of "shyness" since his youth and accustomed to expressing his rich inner emotions with restrained symbols, was 74 years old, and for almost the first time in his life, his writing was ignited by the Byronic frankness and enthusiasm, and he fully released his inner emotions and confusion.

pandora.

Goethe's description of the 19-year-old girl he fell in love with perfectly echoes Miss Irene's hesitation about the painting "Old Church in a Thunderstorm"... or Anna's entanglement with the 18-year-old young man.

At this moment, Anna wanted a space where she could talk without being disturbed, and someone to talk to without being influenced by the outside world.

No need to explain anything.

No need to talk about what just happened.

No need to discuss who is right or wrong.

Just quietly recite this poem to someone.

Almost subconsciously.

Miss Elena thought of the detective cat.

Unfortunately, now is not the right time.

Detective Cat always expresses her feelings well with her brush, and Detective Cat is always a better listener.

It's ridiculous.

For a moment Anna felt that Gu Weijing's speech was a little bit like that of the anonymous illustrator. Now it seems that this guy is both pretentious and sarcastic.

How can she look like Detective Cat at all?
The detective cat is much gentler and cuter than this guy.

"Humph."

Miss Elena raised her head slightly again to express her annoyance towards Gu Weijing, and gently turned the page.

Anna read the poem for the third time.

Her phone vibrated, and she received a message from Elliot -

[We have already notified the exhibition organizers and the security team. The crew has applied for flight routes and entry permits. According to your request, we will take off at 5 a.m. tomorrow and try to return that afternoon.]

……

[Mr. Gu, Mr. Tonks really likes your work. He said it is amazing and it is his honor to have such a work in his exhibition.]

[There are many locations in the marginal exhibition area, but Director Tonks believes that those booths cannot match the excellence of this work. There is a joint exhibition hall with the Singapore National Art Exhibition in the main exhibition hall on the first floor. It is a one-week special exhibition independent of this main exhibition. It has the best exhibition hall and the best booth. ]

[Mr. Tonks said that if you don't mind, after the special exhibition at the National Gallery ends this weekend, the vacant exhibition hall will be yours.]

m Rochor Hotel.

Gu Weijing was reading silently.

When he finished reading the first volume of "Goethe's Conversations" and was concentrating on the contents of this volume, his cell phone vibrated.

Gu Weijing received an enthusiastic text message from curatorial assistant Miss Bonnie Lampcher.

Special exhibition hall?
-
Early morning on April 2023, 7.

Tuesday.

The second official public exhibition day of the 7th Singapore International Biennale “Human Noise”.

The Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay, Singapore.

Gu Weijing arrived early.

I don’t know whether it is because the exhibition is only the second day of its opening and the local tourists have not yet gotten over the novelty of it, or whether it is because this exhibition is indeed particularly popular among the public.

The number of tourists was far greater than Gu Weijing had imagined before he arrived.

He went to the organizer to get his ID card to enter the exhibition hall, and when he handed the painting "Human Noise" to the curatorial assistant, the exhibition hall had just opened.

Even on a weekday morning, there was already a long line of tourists waiting in front of the main entrance of the Esplanade.

The staff at the door glanced at his watch and released the red nylon drawstring at the entrance.

A large number of tourists flocked to the art center.

Gu Weijing was also among them.

This was the first time in Gu Weijing's life that he attended such an occasion, and also the first time in his life that he participated in a large-scale international biennial.

Whether as a tourist or as a participating painter, this was the first experience in his life.

Gu Weijing wanted to walk around the Esplanade by himself and look at his own art exhibition quietly and alone.

Therefore, Gu Weijing declined the offer from curatorial assistant Bonnie to accompany him and introduce him to the exhibition details of each exhibition hall.

He doesn't need a "tour guide" to lead the way.

The Esplanade is not small. After deducting other venues such as the opera house, recital room and concert hall, the space that can be used for art exhibitions is not that big.

Gu Weijing followed the flow of tourists pouring in from the main entrance of the exhibition hall, blending in with the crowd and visiting one hall after another. It would not waste too much extra time and would also give him a deeper understanding of the conditions in the exhibition hall.

It is an experience to visit an exhibition accompanied by a curatorial assistant.

Standing among the audience and watching the exhibition is a completely different and new feeling.

When Mr. Sloth asked Gu Weijing whether he would come to Singapore, he told him that for an exhibition, you only have to stand among the audience coming and going, listening to their gasps, conversations, and breathing, watching their footsteps rubbing on the marble floor, talking in a low voice to friends with their hands covering their lips, or frowning and shaking their heads.

When the artist feels the "temperature" of tourists' likes or dislikes, he lets the rustling and quiet noise reach his ears.

At that moment, they will be completely connected to an exhibition.

Artists can get the richest and most complete exhibition experience.

The detailed content of the exhibition does not live on the introduction board next to the booth, but in the eyes of every visitor.

A successful art exhibition is never made up of flashing cameras from journalists and large gilded trophies.

This tangible sense of fireworks that lingers around artists and critics is the most vital heartbeat of an exhibition.

When the heart of the exhibition beats in unison with the heartbeat in your chest, they will realize that this is a living exhibition with a soul.

The artwork is the strings, the exhibition is the carrier and resonance chamber that fixes the strings, and the audience’s joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, and indifference are the lingering sounds of the vibrating strings.

All these elements mixed together constitute the whole of a piece of music.

The satisfaction of being praised and recognized is the final reward for the skills and efforts that a musician has put in after playing a good piece of music with all his heart.

Gu Weijing did not choose the internal channel.

He paused for a moment in the crowd, then walked behind a handsome Latin man who looked to be from the Apennine Peninsula and was wearing Ferrari's iconic red Prancing Horse T-shirt and his female companion, waiting in line to enter Hall No. 1 with a striking Arabic numeral "" on the left side of the main entrance.

Hall 1 is different from the rest of the exhibition in that it also has an internal ticket gate inside the Esplanade.

Because there are many tourists.

Less than 5 minutes after the door opened, there was already a small blockage in front of the door of Exhibition Hall 1. During this waiting period, Gu Weijing opened his system panel -

[Character: Gu Weijing]

Technique Panel——

[Oil Painting Technique: Level 6, Professional Level 9916 (50000/)]

[Sketch Technique: Level 6, Professional Level 12167 (50000/)]

[Chinese Painting Technique: lv.5 Professional Level 9999 (10000/). Note: There is a realm-breaking task to be completed.]

[Watercolor Technique: Lv.5 Professional Level 1126 (10000/)]

……

Skill Panel——

[Calligraphy and Painting Appraisal: 152 times/1000 times (Upgrade Progress)]

……

Experience value panel——

[Currently available free experience value balance: 19529]

Gu Weijing fixed his gaze on the experience column of Chinese painting and pondered for a moment.

Recently.

His painting skills have made great progress.

In order to temporarily raise the level of oil painting to the top level in a short period of time, Gu Weijing recently burned a large amount of free experience points on the small candles blessed by the Muse.

The rewards are very gratifying.

Gu Weijing not only obtained an oil painting draft that reached the first-level master level in both oil painting and sketching techniques, but also completed a masterpiece from scratch, which was a complete transformation of his painting techniques and even artistic ideas.

He did not add the experience points directly to the experience panel, but during the creative process, Gu Weijing's two techniques still gained a total of thousands of experience points each.

Plus a breakthrough in mind.

Gu Weijing now had nearly 20,000 points of free experience.

In the past, as the most commonly used main painting techniques, he has always been developing Chinese painting, oil painting and sketching in parallel, with experience evenly distributed, and his painting proficiency always remained at a similar level.

After returning from the Botanical Garden in Yangon, his Chinese painting skills were still slightly ahead for a time, and he was one of the first to complete the second level of his profession and reach the bottleneck of Lv.5 in painting skills.

now.

He had already tasted the joy of creating master-level oil paintings, and even his watercolor techniques had caught up with his predecessor by entering Level 5 a few days ago due to his frequent use of the [Real World] skill and the breakthrough of his state of mind.

In comparison with each other.

The Chinese painting technique was still firmly stuck at the perfect level of Lv.5, and the reminder that "the mission to break through the realm is yet to be completed" seemed a bit glaring... and held him back.

exactly.

It's not that he doesn't strive for success.

But it was his own father who held him back.

Gu Weijing frowned slightly, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and took an extremely majestic posture. Behind him was a young woman with a little kid. It was probably a young mother who wanted to cultivate her child's artistic accomplishment and asked for leave to bring her child who had just started elementary school to see the exhibition.

It is hard to say whether children can understand the spiritual connotation of serious paintings.

But little kids are at an age when they are curious about most things in the world.

Originally, the child held by the woman was staring curiously at the sky blue VIP badge pinned on Gu Weijing's chest pocket, which was different from that of all other tourists.

The moment the expression of the older brother in front of him changed, the little boy's neck suddenly shrank and he obediently retreated behind his mother.

All the Eastern parents in the world who are too busy with work to discipline their own naughty children will put on such a stern look when they think of their children who do not study hard in class, do not do their homework carefully, and fail the exams.

And such an expression can produce an aura of suppression like blood deterrence to all the little kids in the world.

Able to suppress little furry kids.

For an old man who is suppressing his hair loss, it probably won’t be a big problem.

“No matter how busy you are, you can’t relax your education.”

Gu Weijing reflected on himself in his heart.

During this period, big and small things happened one after another.

Now that he and the old man are separated by two countries, he is indeed no longer urging Gu Tongxiang to practice as diligently as before.

this is not good.

Diligence neglected in play.

My old man has just arrived in London, a completely new working environment and completely new interpersonal relationships.

Britain is a colorful world.

If we leave Gu Tongxiang alone, the old man might just become distracted.

Gu Weijing now has a lot of free experience points on hand, but there are not many skills that can be greatly improved by using the experience points.

Otherwise it's a bit dissatisfied.

Otherwise, there is no way to order it.

To reach the perfect level of Lv.6 painting technique, you need 5 experience points.

With 20,000 points of free experience points, there will definitely be an improvement, but it will definitely be difficult to cause a qualitative change.

There are not many places where Gu Weijing can use printmaking techniques at present.

With the help of the perfect-level skill [Real World], my watercolor technique is improving rapidly every day.

The most urgent task is to find a way to take Chinese painting techniques beyond the third professional level.

"Also, I just got a lot of free experience, so... the part about finger painting..."

Gu Weijing opened the Baiyi Tree in his inventory and took a look.

This silver sapling currently only has one legendary skill, the knife painting technique, and looks empty and bare.

He had originally planned that every time he gained some experience, he would use a portion of it on watering the Hundred Arts Tree.

Brother Hao's problem was really tricky. In the Xihe Guild Hall, Gu Weijing treated the painting "Human Noise" as if it might be the last painting of his life.

Use whatever strength you have.

He used almost all of his excess experience points as fuel for the Muse's Blessing Candle, and his plan to come up with the finger painting method was temporarily shelved.

The plan of watering the Baiyi tree should also be put on the agenda.

It seemed that the blockage had been cleared and people began to be allowed into the exhibition hall in front again.

The crowd surged forward.

Gu Weijing determined the next plan and closed the virtual panel in front of him.

He decided that starting from tonight, no matter how busy he was every day, he would take time to call Gu Tongxiang on WeChat and take a video lesson.

Network communication is so advanced nowadays.

Professor Lin Tao can give him lessons through the Internet, and Mr. Sloth can talk to him through the voice chat room.

I have to use my own whip remotely.

Gu Weijing followed the crowd.

The man in the red T-shirt handed his ticket to the staff, who tore off an extra ticket from the ticket that had been checked and let him in. Then he looked at Gu Weijing's chest, nodded politely, and invited him in.

Gu Weijing had just taken two steps when he saw a young couple in front of him walk into the exhibition hall, then stop, look at each other, and utter a soft exclamation of admiration.

Excellent works have the magic to conquer the audience.

Visitors' behavior and expressions can directly reflect the quality of the work.

There is another benefit to looking at paintings with the crowd -

By observing the flow of tourists, you can directly judge the status of your work in the curator's mind. In other words, you can clearly judge whether the "resonance chamber" that carries your melody can make a loud enough sound to be seen by more people.

How should visitors proceed after entering the exhibition, which hall will people enter first and which hall will they enter after the exhibition.

How long do you stay in each hall on average?

Most people will stay in a certain hall for a longer time. If people stay in the exhibition hall for too long and get tired of shopping, they will be too lazy to go to some remote exhibition halls.

……

For each individual tourist, these things are of course the result of individual free will.

The choices between each person are ever-changing and unpredictable.

For groups, it's another matter.

During a large-scale international biennial exhibition, the number of visitors may range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

There are also popular independent exhibition halls like the Venice Biennale, where tickets are booked out months in advance as soon as they are released. The Venice City Government will even impose a "city entry tax" of several euros on tourists who do not stay overnight to combat "excessive tourism enthusiasm" that exceeds the city's carrying capacity, for super-large exhibitions with a total number of visitors in the millions.

They will form a large statistical sample.

From the perspective of big data, all tourists' visit data can be predicted.

in other words.

Each visitor's itinerary during the exhibition, the route they take to visit the exhibition, and the length of time they stay in each exhibition hall can all be roughly controlled.

And quietly operating all of this behind the scenes is the "brain" of the exhibition - the curator.

Drawing the exhibition route and determining how visitors should enter and leave the exhibition is the first step for curators to turn the exhibition from an idea in their minds into reality in the venue.

This step tests the curator's experience in organizing exhibitions and his prior judgment of the popularity of each exhibition hall.

No need to rely on big data predictions.

An experienced curator should have a clear initial intuition of what will happen at his exhibition and how the audience will visit it long before the exhibition begins.

The exhibition is like a book.

How the curator arranges the contents of a book and how he arranges them chapter by chapter will directly determine the dissemination effect and breadth of a book.

In theory.

The curator should try his best to ensure that every work from the same level exhibition has an equal opportunity to be viewed, just as he should try his best to ensure that tourists who buy tickets of the same price have equal opportunities to visit.

But it is difficult to put into practice.

Tonks can thoughtfully install a small ramp in the exhibition hall to allow underage children, elderly people who are not tall enough, and especially vulnerable groups such as "young ladies in wheelchairs" to get the same optimal viewing angle as ordinary people.

but.

No matter how good a curator is, there is no way to display dozens or hundreds of works on the same stand and give them exactly the same exposure.

If all the elements are piled up on the first page, the book will become unreadable; if all the works are piled up on the same stand, the audience will not be able to see them.

Even if it really piles up.

From the audience's perspective, it also needs to be divided into up, down, left, right, front and back order.

As a result, there were different levels of booths, such as good booths, bad booths, popular booths, unpopular booths, core booths and ordinary booths.

Lao Yang said that an upper-class banquet is a place where people are divided into three, six, and nine levels.

The arrangement of exhibition halls in some art galleries and exhibition routes by some curators inevitably divides the importance of paintings into so-called third, sixth, and ninth levels.

Especially in the case of this Biennale, the exhibition halls cannot be arranged according to the chronological order of the works or the depth of the content.

After entering an exhibition, the first exhibition hall a visitor enters may not necessarily be the most important exhibition hall in the exhibition, and the works displayed on the booth numbered one may not necessarily be the best-class exhibits.

If the Mona Lisa were placed at the gate of the Louvre, the Louvre would not be able to open.

Every day the lobby is jammed with people who want to go somewhere else and can't get in. After visiting the museum, people who want to leave are jammed inside and can't get out.

however.

When visitors enter an exhibition, the first hall they enter must be one of the most important halls.

The works stored in the booth numbered one are often among the best exhibits.

at least.

It must be the work that the organizers of this exhibition most want to be seen by the outside world.

No matter how much the exhibition hall emphasizes that "every exhibit is equally important to them, artworks may have different prices in auction houses outside, but as long as they are inside the exhibition hall, there should be no distinction between expensive and cheap."

Visiting an exhibition seriously is a very energy-consuming process. Human energy is limited. It is also an indisputable fact that the audience's interest and attention will gradually decrease as the time they stay in the exhibition increases.

Unless you become as famous as Mona Lisa.

Otherwise, even the best wine will not sell if it is not well known.

The exhibition hall that Gu Weijing is walking into now is the exhibition hall that the organizer of the exhibition wants to be seen the most.

It's not Katsuko Sakai's exhibition hall.

For the main exhibition area, the booths at the entrance are the ones that hold two impressionist paintings by Katsuko Sakai.

For the entire Singapore Art Biennale, the small exhibition hall he walked into at this moment, with dark green walls and illuminated by gentle light, is the first thing that visitors see.

The reason why it is independent of the main exhibition hall and has a dedicated ticket gate in the exhibition design is not because it is not important.

But because-

It is particularly important.

It is a special exhibition hall jointly arranged by this Biennale and the National Gallery Singapore.

(End of this chapter)