A woman sits next to a Gollum figure on the “Middle-earth Shuttle” subway train November 18, 2003 in New York City. The train's cars were decorated with Middle-earth creatures, vines, moss and stones to celebrate the November 18 DVD and VHS release of the Special Extended Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A total lunar eclipse is seen through the old city walls on June 15, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. The longest lunar eclipse for a decade took place tonight. A lunar eclipse comes when the sun, Earth and moon line up and Earth's shadow falls on the moon. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Karl Bang's paintings are unique because he combines totally different styles of painting within the same format. It is very difficult to design a balanced composition with realistic elements that are juxtaposed with flat colors and patterns. The faces of his subjects are painted realistically in the Western tradition with subtle gradations of color; while, his figures and costumes vignette into abstracted shapes, lines, flat colors and patterns that reflect Karl's background in China. It is as though there are different visual languages being spoken within his paintings.

Workers adjust rails at the bed of a drained area of a lake used for the production of salt at the Sasyk-Sivash lake near the city of Yevpatoria, Crimea, September 25, 2015. The area has a long tradition of salt production, prepared from salt flats flooded with water from the Black Sea. (Photo by Pavel Rebrov/Reuters)

England supporters in the Flat Iron Square pub in London react to events in Kaliningrad, where England and Belgium play to decide the winner of Group G in the Russia 2018 World Cup on June 28, 2018. (Photo by Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP Photo)

Underwater photographer of the year – winner. Dancing Octopus by Gabriel Barathieu (France). Location: Island of Mayotte, off the coast of south-east Africa. “Balletic and malevolent”, one judge said of this octopus, hunting in a lagoon. Barathieu waited until spring tides when there was just 30cm of water on the flats and plenty of light in the shallows. (Photo by Gabriel Barathieu/UPY2017)

A dragster supercharger hits cameraman Joe Rooks of Bowling Green, Ohio, in the back at the U.S. Nationals N.H.R.A. drag races in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Saturday, September 1, 1979. Rooks was knocked flat by the heavy blower from a dragster that turned over and disintegrated near Rooks. Rooks died en route to the hospital. (Photo by Chuck Robinson/AP Photo)

White horses of the Camargue thunder through the shallow salt flats at sunset on December 8, 2022. Known as Horses of the Sea, the breed native to the wetlands in southern France is one of the oldest in the world. (Photo by Nathalie Mountain/Media Drum Images)