Description

Paper

By Marc Alexander from his ‘Touch’ exhibition. ‘Paper’, Archival Paper Print, 300g Hahnemuhle Paper, 6cm by 8.5cm. Framed.

Paper

“Rock paper scissors” is a simple and interesting game. Many of us used to play it in a school to resolve disputes or just to spend some time. The rules are very simple and probably you remember them from your childhood:

• If you choose Rock, you will win against Scissors but lose against Paper.
• If you choose Scissors, you will win against Paper but lose against Rock.
• If you choose Paper, you will win against Rock but lose against Scissors.

There can be 3 to 5 rounds. The game ends when somebody gets 3 wins. My collection of hand drawings would not be complete without a gesture of rock, paper and scissors. Did you know that this game first appeared in China in the 17th century? Yes, it was not invented in Europe or America but in Asia. Europe started to play this game only in the 19th century. Statistics say that people usually choose Scissors in the first round and Rock in the second. There is a robot developed in Japan which wins with 100% chance. It analyzes the movement of your hand muscles to predict what choice you’ll show. If you want to win, you need to be a good psychologist to predict the next choice of your opponent. There are many strategies and different people have different patterns of behaviour.

But if you follow this advice you will win in most cases. If your last choice was…

– Rock, then choose Scissors in the next round

– Scissors, then choose Paper in the next round

– Paper, then choose Rock in the next round

It will work only with not experienced players. The strategy is based on experiments at Zhejiang University.

Touch Series

After a long season of producing portraits in oils, I returned for a while to the humble pencil. The ‘Touch’ exhibition, which opened at the Studio Gallery Kalk Bay on Friday June 14^th 2013 and ran until July 3^rd, was the result of that experience – a true celebration of the beauty and expressiveness of the human hand.

Several months before this show, a group of us artists got together in the studio to work on life drawings, and for me, hands are one of the most difficult parts of the human body to draw, so I decided to master this challenge by producing one hundred detailed drawings. Friends, family and even casual acquaintances, modeled their hands for me and in each drawing I tried to capture the unique character of each individual.

A great deal could be learned about a person just by observing their hands. For example, the slight hand gestures of a person in love, or the anxious mannerisms of the addicted smoker clutching his last cigarette, or the telltale scars and callouses which belong to a hard working laborer. The hands are young and old, lined and smooth and endlessly expressive and tell a hundred stories which are all captured in my hyper-realistic style.

Archival Prints 

Many of Marc’s artworks are available as fine art digital prints. Professionally photographed and printed on large format inkjet printers, these prints are limited edition numbered bottom left and signed bottom right. The paper used is 320g Hahnemuhle archival watercolour paper. The process employs fade resistant, archival inks, which boast a 100+ year fade-proof guarantee. The paper prints are sold plastic wrapped on an acid-free foamcore backing board. These prints are also available in varying sizes of canvas.