5 - Serge J-F Levy's photographs

Being here at VCCA has been a wonderful treat. I'm meeting an amazing group of artists, authors, and a composer, and I'm struck by their generous spirit as well as artistic sensibility. Once again, over the dinner table, our discussions arranged from current projects we are working on to family histories, art schools in 70s and 80s, and novels. I've met a wonderful Chinese-American author whose mother was a film screenplay editor in Shanghai. A film maker and an artist talked about her adoption to America and in her searching for home and belonging. She went to CalArts back in 80s and how wonderfully raw that time was for art students. "Was John Baldessari there?" I asked. "Oh, yes. I would go and listen to his lectures. It was an interesting time." Then we concluded how different our current time is and how younger generation of artists (that includes me, I suppose) just know what they want and have to quickly adapt into a capitalistic structure of art world that exists today. Another author who just arrived last night talked about a novel he is writing. It's about a Korean woman who marries an American soldier in 90s and moves to Virginia. This author in fact lived in Korea in 1970s (a very unique time for South Korea) and talked about his experience of Korea then. Oh wow. Then we talked about how wonderful Chang Rae Lee's writings are, especially his first novel Native Speaker.

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Serge J-F Levy, a self-taught artist and a photojournalist, did his artist presentation last night. His photographs are absolutely stunning. He is now working on paintings - he mentioned how people automatically perceive photography as a form of truth, yet how difficult it is for a photographer to be objective with subjects in taking photos. Yourself is always somehow reflected in the process, and therefore he is now purely working on emotions surfaced through painting, not via lens or direct images that may seem arbitrary. You can check out his work at http://www.sergelevy.com/images.htm.