Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Gastronomic Festival - “Malaysia tastes like Venezuela"

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The Gastronomic Festival, "Malaysia tastes like Venezuela" was officially opened last night at the colourful setting in Serena Brasserie, Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur.

Chef Adrian Yanez is here!
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All Rights Reserved © 2014

The Gastronomic Festival offers food lovers two sets of menu to enjoy the  variety of the Venezuelan dishes.

Menu 1
Bread - Pan de maíz (Corn bread)

Soup
Venezuelan pumpkin & mandarin soup with beef bacon & feta cheese

Salad
Vuelve a la vida (Seafood vinaigrette salad)
Ensalada de pollo (Cold chicken salad)
Venezuelan avocado salad
Chickpeas salad


Main course
Asado negro (Blackened roast beef)
Lamb in coconut curry sauce
Pebre de pollo (Chicken and vegetables stew)
Escabeche de atún y citricos (Tuna vinaigrette citric salad) - Cold dish
Carne fría con salsa verde, papas, cilantro y aguacate (Cold roast beef with green sauce, potatoes, coriander and avocado) - Cold dish
Arroz con pasas, almendras y spring onion (Almond and raisin rice with leek)

Dessert
Negro en camisa (Black chocolate monten with hazelnut crème anglaise)
Quesillo de piña (Pineapple pudding)
Tres leches (Three milks cake with Italian meringue)
Manjar de toronja con almíbar de naranja (Grapefruit pudding with orange syrup)


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Menu 2
Bread - pan aliñado con ajo asado, pimentón y aceitunas negras (Roasted garlic, red capsicums and black olives bread)

Soup
Fosforera (Seafood soup)

Salad
Ensalada rallada con chip de plátano (Carrot and cabbage salad with green plantain chips)
Ensalada de papa con vainita y perejil (Potato salad with green beans and parsley)
Pico e gallo (Tomato, onion, avocado and coriander salad)
Ensalada de remolacha, zanahoria,cebolla, huevo y perejil (Carrot, beet, onion and egg salad)

Main course
Tarkarí de cordero (Spicy lamb stew with yellow curry)
Corbullón de Mero (Mere stew in creole tomato sauce) - Fish
Pelao guayanés (Soupy rice chicken with green olives and capers)
Carne mechada (Venezuelan shredded beef)
Dulce de plátano (Stuffed sweet plantain)
Puré de papas (Mashed potatoes)

Dessert
Bienmesabe (Coconut cream cake)
Torta de pan (Venezuelan bread cake pudding)
Juan sabroso (Sweet potato pudding with coconut and ginger)
Merengon de guanábana (Sour sop meringue cake)


To have a taste of these delicious Venezuelan dishes, head on down to Serena Brasserie, Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur from 13 to 19 October 2014! Nos vemos!
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Thursday, October 9, 2014

Faces - Venezuelan Art Exhibition -The Artists

Randy Alcala Escobar
Falcon, Venezuela

Randy M. Alcala E. a Venezuelan graphic designer is well known for his ability to draw. He began developing his skills in painting while growing up in a nice town called “Garden City”. His father introduced him to art and since then a pencil and a sketchbook has been part of his life.

He graduated in 1991 as a graphic designer in one of the most internationally renowned institutes at that time: IDD Instituto Neumann. During that period, he learned the techniques and adopt the dedication and passion for drawing from a special mentor Marcela Navea, an artist/ lecturer.

After many years of working hard, he decided to go back to school, moved to Malaysia where he is actually studying arts of animation at the prestigious Limkokwing University. He has been inspired by the people and their culture. His drawings have a new awakening and the need to be alive.

A few months after his arrival in Kuala Lumpur, he was invited to a bazar where he had the chance to show some of his newest work: sketches of masked ordinary people.

BREATHE


A representation of a small society that leaves under a suffocating environment. A place constantly bombared by modernity and technology. These people breathe from a pure source, one that keeps them alive and simple. A source given to them since the day they were born and must be carefully cultivated for that will built and define their spirit.

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Sebastian Guzman Nuñez
Caracas, Venezuela

The man and his rareness is the central topic of the drawings and paintings of Sebastian Guzman, who refers that he starts a sketch with nothing in mind. Something like an eye, a finger, can be the beginning. From that point the composition grows and completes itself. It doesn't go from the whole to a part; on the contrary, it goes from the part to the whole. In that way, and unintentionally, it addresses the elusive appearance of things, evading what is already known.

The work of this artist born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1991 reflects a contemplative and focused attitude. There is strength in his stroke, but not violence. His characters are placed in timelessness, without age, identity nor geography. They outline an internal posture, suspended in what never takes place, in that eternal field of icons.

Emblematic figures. Contemporary archetypes. The one who prays or waits with faith, the one who screams, the one who meditates, the one who returns the gaze, the puppet man, the one who freezes an ugly expression, the bare skull as that first worldly box that contains the soul’s codes, are some of his reiterative concepts.

The graphic resolution of this work can’t go unnoticed, the synthesis of shapes, beyond the external conventional features. A technical and linguistic ease uncovers these characters that dialogue in silence with the spectator.

After completing his primary and secondary studies in his country, Guzman obtains the title of Bachelor of Arts in Limkokwing University in 2013. Nonetheless, his obsession for drawing faces goes back to his childhood. An irreplaceable and daily practice has resulted in precision and effectiveness. His expressionist repertoire can be anything but foreign to us. These papers and altarpieces reveal more of men, than the masks daily exposed in the cover of magazines.


FE (Faith)

This work of art is a sample of the series with the same entitle. On the rustic wood, Sebastian Guzman, has used the mastery of the rough brushes to shape and give form to human prayer. Faith is an invitation to the coexistence and tolerance. One and all beliefs at the same time.
A sample of Sebastian's work
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Erick Alcala Bustamante
Caracas, Venezuela

Erick Alcala roams the world grabbing images, sounds, scents and feelings to guard in the great magic box that is his head, surprising everyone when he pulls them out from under his sleeve, reinvented and enhanced for the enjoyment of all.

Being a restless and creative child, his father sought to direct Erick’s energy into drawing. At age 9, he was already designing and selling his own school newspaper and at age 15, he was generating materials for advertising agencies.

After studying Graphic Design; Advertising and Marketing in Venezuela; and Creative Multimedia in Malaysia, Erick has accumulated over two decades of experience as a graphic artist, web site developer, director and video producer, creative director, sport clothes designer, producer and host of a TV music channel.

Among many others, he won First place for the “Short Film Festival” at the Instituto Universitario de Tecnologia Venezuela. He had worked developing campaigns for magazines and newspapers, films, franchises, fashion brands, Government, political parties, NGO’s, wines, fast food chains, and many more. He also enjoyed working as a lecturer at the National Institute of Educational Cooperation in Caracas.

His latest passion is projection mapping, a creative medium that uses motion graphics to add optical illusions, extra dimensions, and notions of movement onto previously static objects.


NO NAME

The fact that there is no name, no apparent content, does not mean that there is no message. The platform, the medium chosen by the artist has its own intrinsic effects which are its unique message. As Marshall McLuhan would say, the medium is the message because it is the “medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.”

A glimpse of Erick Alcala's Project Mapping. 
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Click here to watch more of Erick's Project Mapping
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Carlos Enrique Rey Romero
Caracas, Venezuela

Twenty-five year old Industrial Engineer devoted to the study of Sound and Music. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, and raised in the Andean city of San Cristobal, Carlos Enrique has participated in many musical projects, which goes from modern and contemporary sounds to academic choirs and orchestra, making several performances around the country.

Born from a fascination with the Post-Rock movement, the idea is to incorporate a fusion of afro-Caribbean rhythms, Venezuelan rhythms, and experimentation with a variety of instruments, atmospheres, synthesized sounds within the genre.

Carlos Enrique moved to Malaysia in the beginning of 2013. He started studying Sound and Music design at Limkokwing University. So far he has worked on a series of recordings, which he is aiming to release by the end of this year.

As his influences, he would name the Venezuelan composer Antonio Lauro and the Venezuelan experimental band Kre, also works of the british composer Jonny Greenwood, and Ambient Post Rock tendencies.

He believes that Venezuelan music holds a unique richness in rhythms and harmonies, and this can be represented in new forms of music, allowing listeners to know and enjoy these elements in a different format than the folklore music allows.

SEIS (Six)

The theme received its name after the traditional configuration of the Venezuelan rhythms, found in the piece. An abstraction through sound, creating ambient, utilizing elements such as an electric guitar and digital programming, creating familiar spaces within the Venezuelan music field. 

Carlos Enrique Rey Romero performing at a Venezuelan Embassy in Malaysia event 
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David Jesus Granadillo di Gravia
Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela

He started studying Theatre in Karl Hoffman’s Training Center for Arts and Acting, in Caracas, capital of Venezuela. After few Plays and small participations on TV, the acting dream pushed him to discover other paths of arts, to finally achieve “creative peace” in the National Film School of Caracas. There he realised that it was better being behind the camera than in front.

Right in the middle of his education, between performing in plays and shooting documentaries, he had to decide wither to finish his Film career in Venezuela (which was only 1 more year) or to start from cero here in Malaysia. Today he can proudly say it was a right decision.

Currently studying Film and TV in Limkokwing University of Creative Technology, since he arrived in 2011, he has dedicated himself to portrait every possible corner of this country with his lens; faces, landscapes, buildings. He personally called this country “the thesis of Asia”… with almost all cultural expressions of Asia in one place, this country is, for a photographer, a paradise of images.

He wants to dedicate this exhibition to his parents:
“To them; the ones who forgot about their artistic sides, to encourage and impulse mine”.

LIVING MALAYSIA

This exhibition encloses faces from the most popular sides of the Peninsula, such as Malacca and Cameron Highland. From the innocence and refine beauty of children to the technology around fruits, Malaysia has perfect images for a photographer. 

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Faces - Venezuelan Art Exhibition


The exhibition entitled "Faces" is an initiative of the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in Malaysia, and is an essential segment of the 9th Venezuelan Week in this country. It is composed by the collections of young Venezuelan artists, graduated from the Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in various modalities. Venezuela is a reservoir and a cultural incubator that has generated large and recognizable figures in music, in literature and in fine arts.

In this occasion, the forefront of artistic creation reaches a peak with the proposals by Randy Alcala, Sebastian Guzman and Erick Alcala, who have worked in this collection, from their different personal optics, resulting in the framework of a single concept. In Spanish, "Faces" means “caras”, revealing the visage. When we face, we show ourselves to the others, thus the communication transcends. The fine arts, and other cultural expressions are aimed, first and last, to communicate, to inform, to convey. It makes genuine the transcendence of the artist as a creator. Also at this exhibition, David Granadillo will present a series of photos that reflect the faces of the people of Malaysia.

In this collection, the artistic works invite to think, to reflect. They have a high content of rebellion and self-determination. Breaking established rules, it is self-sustaining in inner voices. It is rustic in its genesis and achieves the refinement through all the studies and techniques learned.

The works have been created in the presence of the light, white is the embryo and serves to find their own shadows. It also contains the necessary ingredients to give way to hope, to begin a journey to the world view, man and his environment, man and the world, the man trying to avoid the desert wilderness, struggling to escape the sterility of earth. Light travels faster than sound, but the sound respects its own footsteps. Enrique Rey has designed an unprecedented format to present the sound as an ally of light. The works are not displayed by themselves in this collection. They need to be heard. The eyes do not hear, therefore, prepare your ears to hear what the paintings are telling us.
This activity serves to promote once again, our cultural talents, especially in 2014, when Venezuela celebrates the International Year of the Venezuelan Youth.

Enrique Gonzalez Kong

Curator of Fine Art Works