Curated by Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu, and Su Wei, the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale is a research-based exhibition organized by OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) consisting of various components: Unexpected Encounters, an examination of individual practices in China from 1989 to 2000; What You See is What I See, a grouping of recent works made by Chinese artists and artists from all over the world; and Public Projects, four special commissions for public venues. In the exhibition, artworks made from 1989 to 2000 in China in Unexpected Encounters and recent works by Chinese and international artists in What You See is What I See will intermingle with each other in the exhibition, rather than being presented in two sections. The exhibition opens on 12 May 2012 and will last until August 31th, 2012.

Participating artists and documentations Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Agenda (1994, a publication of artists’ proposals edited by Wang Luyan, Wang Youshen, Chen Shaoping, and Wang Jianwei) and 45 Degree as a Reason and Agreed to the Date 26 November 1994 as a Reason (1995, 1994, two postcard-based exhibitions curated by Geng Jianyi), Black Cover Book, White Cover Book, Grey Cover Book (1994–1997, a publication initiated and edited by Ai Weiwei, Xu Bing, and Zeng Xiaojun), Chen Shaoxiong (b. 1962, Shantou/China), Chen Zhou (b. 1987, Zhejiang/China), Josef Dabernig (b. 1956, Austria), Ding Yi (b. 1962, Shanghai/China), Fang Lu (b. 1981, Guangzhou/China), Laura Oldfield Ford (b. 1973, Halifax/UK), Simon Fujiwara (b. 1982, London/UK), Gu Dexin (b. 1962, Beijing/China), Guan Xiao (b. 1983, Chongqing/China), Hao Jingban (b. 1985, Shanxi/China), Hu Yun (b. 1986, Shanghai/China), Huang Ran (b. 1982, Xichang/China), Huang Yongping (b. 1954, Xiamen/China), Lee Mingwei (b. 1964, Taiwan/China), Li Yongbin (b. 1963, Beijing/China), Li Fuchun (b. 1983, Jilin/China), Li Ran (b. 1986, Hubei/China), Li Yu (b. 1973, Wuhan/China) + Liu Bo (b. 1977, Shishou/China), Lin Yilin (b. 1964, Guangzhou/China), Liu Shiyuan (b. 1985, Beijing/China), Lu Zhengyuan (b. 1982, Liaoning/China), Darius Mikšys (b. 1969, Kaunas/Lithuania), Haroon Mirza (b. 1977, London/UK), Nástio Mosquito (b. 1981, Angola), Qian Weikang (b. 1963, Shanghai/China), Kelly Schacht (b. 1983, Belgium), Shi Chong (b. 1963, Huangshi/China), Song Dong (b. 1966, Beijing/China), Sui Jianguo (b. 1956, Qingdao/China), Tsang Kinwah (b. 1976, Shantou/China), Katleen Vermeir (b. 1973, Belgium) & Ronny Heiremans (b. 1962, Belgium), Danh Vo (b. 1975, Vietnam), Wang Gongxin (b. 1960, Beijing/China), Wang Guangyi (b. 1957, Harbin/China), Wang Jianwei (b. 1958, Sichuan/China), Wang Luyan (b. 1956, Beijing/China), Wang Xingwei (b. 1969, Shenyang/China), Wang Youshen (b. 1964, Beijing/China), Wild (1997, a publication of site-specific projects curated by Song Dong, Guo Shirui, and Pang Lei), Wu Wenguang (b. 1956, Kunming/China), Xu Bing (b. 1955, Chongqing/China), Yan Xing (b. 1986, Chongqing/China), Yu Honglei (b. 1984, Inner Mongolia/China), Zhang Enli (b. 1965, Jilin/China), Zhang Peili (b. 1957, Hangzhou/China), Zhang Xiaogang (b. 1958, Kunming/China), Zhou Tiehai (b. 1966, Shanghai/China), Zhu Jia (b. 1963, Beijing/China)

Performances Yan Xing 12 May, 4:30pm OCAT Hall B10, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Nástio Mosquito 12 May, 5:30 pm OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Artists’ Talks – What You See is What I See

Lee Mingwei Thursday 10 May, 7:30pm Moderator: Liu Ding Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+

Dahn Vo Friday 11 May, 7:30pm Moderator: Su Wei Language: English, with Chinese translation OCAT Hall A3+

Josef Dabernig Sunday 13 May, 2:30pm Moderator: Liu Ding Language: English, with Chinese translation OCAT Hall A3+

Artists’ Talks – Individual Narratives: Contemporary Art Practice in China from 1989 to 2000 Ding Yi Friday 22 June, 2:30pm Moderator: Liu Ding Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+

Wang Gongxin Saturday 23 June, 2:30pm Moderator: Liu Ding Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+

Sui Jianguo Sunday 24 June, 2:30pm Moderator: Liu Ding Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3

Wang Luyan Saturday 21 July, 2:30pm Moderator: Fang Lihua Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+ Song Dong Sunday 22 July, 2:30pm Moderator: Fang Lihua Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+

Zhang Peili Saturday 18 August, 2:30pm Moderator: Su Wei Language: Chinese OCT ART, Shennan Blvd. 9009# Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China

Chen Shaoxiong Sunday 19 August, 2:30pm Moderator: Su Wei Language: Chinese OCAT Hall A3+

Screenings

Josef Dabernig Saturday and Sunday, 19 and 20 May, 2:30pm OCT ART, Shennan Blvd. 9009#, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China Saturday and Sunday, 26 and 27 May, 2:30pm OCAT Hall A3+

Free admission for all events.

Related Report

7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale: Artists & Programmes  by e-flux

The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale  by OCT Contemporary Art Terminal

Birdcalls in the Floating World Xiang Jing & Qu Guangci Works at The Pao Galleries Hong Kong Arts Centre

Birdcalls in the Floating World

May 2012 by Xiang Hua

What is the floating world? The Comprehensive Chinese Dictionary explains: the floating world is this world, the here and now. Therefore, the Ukiyo-e School (aka Floating World School) in Japan focused on the depiction of folk customs, performers, warriors, travelling maidens and the landscape. That was the world of the Edo Period. Through the veil of history, it looks quite beautiful.

The floating world is the drifting dust of the mortal world, the red haze of human activity tinting the sun in the sky. The painted scrolls of history tend to begin mildly and move towards liveliness, from cold to energetic, from broad meadows ringing with cowbells and shepherd’s flutes to the wharves and taverns of the bustling cities; from the pride of the loner to the dizzying cacophony of the collective. Those who persist on a lonely aesthetic path are growing increasingly rare, while those who leap into the embrace of gleaming towers like Spiderman will always be lauded by the crowd. These awkward straits are not unique to modern man; the ancients faced them too. It is just that the explosion of information in this era has magnified them to infinity.

Which awkward straits of this world have Xiang Jing and Qu Guangci depicted in their “floating world?” In this day and age where the collective consciousness drowns out individual thought, throwing a little tantrum or playing with a bit of personality is nothing more than a fashionable gimmick. To be an artist capable of independent thought is truly a blessing. We are very fortunate to see two such people here. Their artworks present a sweeping cold serenity, a state of mind that is a requisite for stepping outside of the floating world in order to see it more clearly. The awkwardness of life is manifested in the state of being observed without being self-aware. Self-ignorance is a good thing, something that will not influence one’s performance on the stage of life. The awkwardness one does not know is the most awkward, and also the most interesting. We are the performers of our own awkwardness as well as the viewers of the awkwardness of others. The performers and the viewers both bathe in the dazzling light of history.

Xiang Jing, Chat, 2010; Fibreglass Painted, H.57cm

Xiang Jing, Fish, fish, swimming in the water, 2010; Fiber glass, painted, H.42x66x66cm

Xiang Jing, The Approaching Butterfly, 2010; Fibreglass, painted, H.40cm

Xiang Jing says, “I have seen happiness,” and takes us to watch it together. With much interest, we discover that happiness usually appears under the guise of unhappiness. In the scroll of the floating world, any condition that the collective is accustomed to has a sense of joy, and anything that fits with the current posture has viewing value. As a result, the people in the street scene appear in various poses, facing the tedium of life with an attitude of seriousness. There are also little characters steeped in the heady atmosphere of art and letters, the sorrow and joy of struggle in the transitive self. Xiang Jing shows us that so called happiness takes on all manner of poses. Poses must be authentic and accented. In the finest details, we see shared glances and passing movements that convey tiny little bits of happiness. Xiang Jing’s artwork reveals a touch of warmth in cold serenity.

The “bird call and response” that Qu Guangci overhears is in a language that is neither human nor avian, and therefore contains many subtleties that can only be sensed, not spoken. In the floating world prosperity grows more desolate the hotter it is. In this way, prosperity can be viewed as the roiling steam created by the friction between an infinite number of lonely individuals. Whether in a concrete jungle or a copper grove, posture is always the most important. Looking out into the distance, the man, bird and tree are as one, a composite, wholly inseparable. The man’s personality cannot leave the bird’s body and the bird cannot leave the tree’s branch. There is no desire to fly, as the sky does not belong to the floating world. Qu Guangci’s artwork reveals a touch of humor in cold serenity.

Qu Guangci, Twittering, 2009; Bronze 117x32x52cm

Qu Guangci, Smoke and Mist, 2010; Bronze, H.82x47x32cm

Qu Guangci, My Nature Tree, 2010; wooden chair, painted fiber glass, 121x72x61cm

The visual experience served up by Bird Chatter in the Floating World is transformed by the viewer’s state of mind, just as the flourishing avenues and dark alleys are woven into a network of conveyance for the soul. When viewed with an objective eye, all appears real; when viewed with a more objective eye, it all becomes an illusion. That is how it should be.

(Translated by Jeff Crosby)

Xiang Jing

Renowned Chinese contemporary sculptor Xiang Jing was born in Beijing in 1968 and graduated from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts Sculpture Department. Currently living and working in Beijing. Famous artworks include Your Body and Are a Hundred Playing You？ Or Just One?

Xiang Jing’s creative trajectory covered such famous series as Growing Up, The Female Self-Image, Keep in Silence, Naked beyond Skin and Will Things Ever Get Better? From the experience of growing up to the female body and self-awareness, she has steadily elevated her exploration and interpretation of humanity, gradually creating her own unique style to become an outstanding figure of Chinese contemporary art. Her works have been exhibited across Asia, Europe and America and collected by important museums, institutions and individuals around the world.

Through her works, we gain a sense of an artist’s maturing perceptions and insights into life and the world around her. She is not tangled up in ultimate judgments about this world. Instead, she tasks herself with digging into the depths of its existence in search of an internal standard of judgment. This makes Xiang Jing’s works more human, even warm.

Qu Guangci

Renowned contemporary Chinese sculptor Qu Guangci was born in Shanghai in 1969 and received his MFA from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts Sculpture Department. Since 1999, Qu has been invited to exhibit his works around the world, including such countries as China, Germany, France, the United States and Southeast Asia. To date, he has held seven solo exhibitions. He formally resigned from his university teaching position in 2007 to found X+Q Sculpture Studio. He currently lives and works in Beijing.

As the youngest artist to win the grand prize at the National Fine Art Exhibition, Qu Guangci became renowned throughout the art world for his sculpting techniques. He attracted widespread attention for his contemporary sculpture language and his post-political expression techniques, and is most famous for his Little Fatty series. Qu’s work often presents a dual nature, providing infinite space for viewer interpretation. Many of his works present a kind of intermediate state between humanity and divinity, neither angels nor demons, neither conflicting nor aligned; the import here is a reflection of a unique Chinese state of affairs.

About the Exhibition

Title: “Birdcalls in the Floating World” Xiang Jing & Qu Guangci Works

Exhibition Period: 5:30pm, 21st May, 2012 (Monday) – 28th May, 2012 (Monday) (Opening Hours 10am~8pm)

Venue: The Pao Galleries Hong Kong Arts Centre

Add: 2 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Tel: +852 2582 0200

Presented by: X+Q SCUPLTURE STUDIO, www.x–q.com. For further information please contact xqsculpture@gmail.com.

Presented by: X+Q, www.xiqiart.com.

In Association with: KHAC (Hong Kong Arts Centre), www.hkac.org.hk.

Sole Sponsor: Jaguar

Media Sponsor: GQ

Catering Sponsor: Assaggio

In May 2012, Gallery Yang will be relocated in the core of contemporary art, 798 Art District, which is going to be a new starting point for the gallery in many senses. The first exhibition to be prestigiously launched here is also the first solo exhibition of Kong Lingnan in the gallery with her new creations finished during the last year, “Write in Water.” Kong is a young artist emerged from her solo exhibition at UCCA in 2011. This solo show will be consist of two painting series Miao-ku-yi Mountain and Oh Brambles, and an installation of As We Wander, We See The Flicking Flame In The Wasteland. The new creations extended Kong’s previous inspiration and consideration on the relationship between human beings and the objective world.

Miao-ku-yi Mountain, 2012; oil on canvas, 471X190cm

With the commonest oil color, Kong, holding the cautious attitude to skills and following the rational requirements on line arrangement, drew each line as if she was seeking for a kind of objective and essential state. Different from her previous serial works featuring cold pure black background, the background of these newly finished works turned to be gradient color from red to black, or vice versa; and for the first time, botanic element appeared in them. In the vast wilderness and mountains, there are figures blurred and ambiguous, fighting or rejoicing, being happy or sad. The idea originated from the traditional Chinese Taoism, Chuangtse. It is a pure, simple, remote but primitive world, unique without a peer. Maybe this is the objective world we are living, which is never aware of due to human limitation at all. Kong paralleled the pure world and the worldly feelings together, with the trifling life, unknown plants, remote mountains and flickering stars being separated from the real world to the furthest distance. Everything is so familiar but also strange, lonely, sentimental, remote as if it is in another world.

Installation made use of fire as the media to explain the change of universe. The ever-changing phenomenon world seemingly has a physical rule which can be followed, but actually it is definitely infinite forever. Human has been seeking for constant truth from the vast wilderness, but finally found themselves merely.

“Here lies one / Whose name was writ in Water.” —which is quoted from the epitaph of John Keats, the British romantic poet who died young. Compared with the universe and the stars hanging high above, human life is only a transient moment, while the stars are almost shining forever. People will turn into soil and lie in the Earth always, while star will shine high up in the sky lonely forever.

About the Exhibition

Duration: May 19th—July 9th, 2012

Opening: 2012.5.19 16: 00—20: 00

Venue: Gallery Yang

Address: Storehouse 20. East of Creative Square, 798 Art Dist., NO.2 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist., Beijing, China

Tel: 010-59789491 / +86 13581616497

E-mail: galleryyangbeijing@gmail.com

Courtesy of Kong Lingnan and Gallery Yang, for further information please visit www.galleryyang.com.

Sponsored by the Baiyaxuan Cultural & Arts Organizations, Meteorological China—the Exhibition of Eight Contemporary Printmakers features representatives of eight contemporary masters in printmaking including Wu Changjiang, Xu Bing, Tan Ping, Su Xinping, Wang Huaxiang, Chen Qi, Hong Hao and Kong Guoqiao all of which have systematically obtained professional training from top art institutions in China. It is held at Baiyaxuan Art Center from May 13th through to 30th, 2012.

All of the artists included in this exhibition are courageous in overcoming all kinds of limitations and find their own unique language in their separate art careers. As Mr. Shao Dazhen, the academic who presides over this exhibition has described their artistic achievements and characteristics in the preface, “These eight middle-aged artists who has grown with the Reform and Opening up can well represent the new generation of printmakers. They have their own expertise in printmaking with different species of technology, skills and even their own aesthetic trends. Although they share something in common with their reflections of the modern meteorological China, that is they present profound descriptions of the essence of contemporary human and social reality rather than the superficial phenomena of society. They deeply explore the innovative resources from national cultures and traditions rather than hunting for the novelty of traditional symbols of art. They learn from the advantages of foreign modern art through their analysis rather than blindly copying others and making oneself look foolish. They hide their cultural thinking into their unique language of art rather than playing with the idea or form.”

Exhibition View Photo by Hu Zhiheng/CAFA ART INFO

Photos of Works in Alphabetical Order

About the Exhibition

Duration: May 13th–30th, 2012

Venue: Baiyaxuan Art Center

Opening Ceremony: 4:00 p.m. on May 13th, 2012

Artists: Wu Changjiang, Xu Bing, Tan Ping, Su Xinping, Wang Huaxiang, Chen Qi, Hong Hao and Kong Guoqiao.

Tel: 86-10-5762 3018

Fax: 86-10-5762 3058

Courtesy of the artists and Baiyaxuan Cultural & Arts Organizations, for further information please visit www.art100.org

The reason for Jiao Xing Tao’s fame in the sculpture industry probably relates to his deconstructive style of works of the 1990s. After that period, his creations mostly focused on the breakthrough of traditional sculpture language, and promotes the expressions of the new figurative sculptures, at the same time they breakthrough the boundary between sculpture and installation works. He also tries to discover the expressions of concepts in the field of sculpture, and the exhibition today is a presentation of his experiments.

The word “Common”(Chinese: 常 Cháng) has double meanings: one is “common”, the other is “uncommon”. While “common” means the focus of daily routines, everyday living, micro matters, and the pursuit of studies on inner self, it also focuses on the relationships between our real life and the sculpture itself, and “uncommon” focuses on the visual expression, in other words it’s the pursuit of de-familiarization expression. Here, the influence of the de- familiarization originates from the rebellion of the artist’s daily visual experiences, and the “recode” of those works, which creates a strong visual contrast when you look at it.

“Hidden”(Chinese: 藏 Cáng) is exactly the reaction for the word “code”. However, in today’s exhibition, “hidden” was only a method which can also be seen as a concept. For example, the artist intentionally “hides” things, and binds his sculptures with common objects and places or tries his best to bind those works into daily experiences. The reason why we can see the characteristics of concepts is because the artist was eliminating the boundary of an art work and a common object. After Duchamp, the boundary between daily objects and art works became blurred, but Duchamp did not mix the art works into daily lives. This is probably what the word “hidden” hide behind, and the deep thoughts about the nature of art.

The “environment”(Chinese: 场 Chǎng) is also a descendant from “hidden”, however, it’s descendant can only be expressed in the effect of the works when they are shown. There are two concepts of the word “environment”. One is a place to show things “live”, the other is to create a theatrical presence. The “live” environment was created by daily objects and backgrounds. But the presence of the environment is not the pure expression but the surface of the work, because those art works were “hidden” inside. Therefore, artworks became a middle object and make the audience’s common visual experiences become behavior of art. While the theatrical presence creates a new visual relationship, the other effect is that it makes the audience’s visual experiences bind with the work, the environment and became a part of the work.

About the Exhibition

Curator: He Guiyan

Presented by: Sun Yongzeng

Exhibition Director: Dai Zhuoqun

Organizer: White Box Museum Of Art

Opening: Saturday, May 12, 2012, 3p.m.

Dates: May 12, 2012 –June 11, 2012

Museum Opening Hours: 10:00 – 18:00, Tuesday – Sunday

Venue: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, 798 Art Dist., NO.2 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist., Beijing, China

Tel: +86-10-5978 4800

Courtesy of Jiao Xingtao and White Box Museum of Art, for further information please visit www.798whitebox.com.

Huang Yuxing’s paintings are idiosyncratic and based on premeditated different scenes. He applies multiple pure oil paint and acrylic upon canvases, rendering a colorful yet transparent picture. The scenes are fantastical, but simultaneously with quite a few elements of everyday structures or items in his paintings. These elements are dissected and rearranged by Huang to form a new pattern. Showing a series of his latest paintings, “Huang Yuxing” is the artist’s fi¬rst solo exhibition at Beijing Commune. It will last until June 3rd, 2012.

Trap, Colosseum, Podium and Club of Law Enforcers…many details within these dramatic but concrete scenes explicitly explain the relations between the paintings and their titles, behind which lies a lucid narrative approach. Huang mainly uses geometric forms, rendering multiple proportions which are painted mainly red, yellow and blue, so as to create the style for this new series. The works are mainly based on bright yellow, and then partially covered with red, blue and other mixed colors. Huang intentionally leaves some rooms or outlines the subjects, so as to intensify the colors in the paintings. Ostensible brushworks leave paint streaming down the canvases. Huang’s works ends up with obvious characteristics of expressionism. With this method, Huang Yuxing represents individuals’ reactions, imagination and mental fabrications about the surroundings and social milieu.

The development of paintings is sluggish nowadays. Compared with other artists of the same generation, Huang Yuxing’s style reveals singularity, which is seemingly detached from current contexts. Yet, there are practically apparent relations with his educational background in the academy, exposing a “fallacious” aesthetic value and “paradoxical” comprehension, which are especially apparent in his latest undertaking. Strong visible impact intertwined with thin paint attached to the canvases, endowing the whole picture with an eerie aura. Despite the surrealism prevailing in his paintings, sarcasm about politics, even the non explicit or pertinent, serves as a quintessence feature. Huang’s detachment mirrors a collective consciousness of a group of people of the same generation. Renouncing conceptualism when starting a painting, Huang typically ful¬fils his artistic practice along with modernism, imbuing the new surroundings with new signif¬icances and values.

Huang Yuxing was born in Beijing in 1975. He graduated from The Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2000, now lives and works in Beijing.

About the Exhibition

Duration: April 26th–June 3rd, 2012

Gallery Hour: 10:00-18:00 Tuesday-Saturday

Address:Beijing Commune,P.O.Box 8503,798 Art Factory, 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing100015,China

Tel: +86 10 8456 2862

Courtesy of Huang Xingyu and Beijing Commune, for further information please visit www.beijingcommune.com or contact  info@beijingcommune.com.

The Depth of Planes

By Peng Feng

To create an illusion of three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional surface was seen in traditional Greek painting. Because of this, Plato believed painting was deception. “Sometimes the concave can be seen as the convex, because of the color generated illusion to our eyes. Clearly, this delusion generated great confusion in our heart. Using the distance of light and shadow on the painting or drawing to cheat people’s minds to achieve its magic. The magic that is the same as this.” The artists were an obstacle to the pursuit of truth and were to be expelled from Plato’s ideal Republic. E.H Gombrich’s view, the whole history of Western art moved to the direction of manufacturing an illusion. It’s ultimate goal was reached with the rising of Impressionism in the late 19th century. However, with the development of photography and innovation of art, the illusion that was produced by impressionism was challenged by modern painting from the beginning of 20th century. Modernist painting became opposed to illusion effects. Minimalism was an extreme shift in the treatment of the picture plane, just as impressionism was at the end of classical painting. Minimalism ended the Modernist painting. Since then, painting has entered a Post-modern or Post-Historical stage. There have been a multitude of movements throughout history, all have had the possibility of being rewritten. In the Post-Modern or Post-Historical era of painting, the point is not renovation of the form itself, but in an ambiguous attitude. However, the ambiguous state of the Post-Modern in all fields is boring now. What is painting now? Or can be good art? Yan’s answer is a negative one. Because exploring another way to continue painting outside of the Post-Modern- he has created paintings that belong to this new era..

Painting is done on a flat surface. Whether it is on cloth, paper, or other material, painting only exists in two-dimensions. However, while painting is done on a flat surface, artists have always tried to pursue the creation of depth. Depth is a construction using color and space to result in illusion within painting which is a pursuit that comes from the European traditional painting. Describing depth through ink was a pursuit from traditional Chinese ink painting. From the traditional point of view, although the painting was on a two-dimensional surface, it has tried to create depth. Modernist painting disregarded pictorial depth. Without considering perspective it may be possible to bring new styles to painting, but it also may damage its possibilities. After Minimalism, is depth possible? In other words, can the pursuit of depth in painting restrict possibilities contained within the medium of painting? It is from this point of view we should begin to interpret Yan Bo’s painting.

Yan Bo’s painting is flat and doesn’t pursue the illusion of perspective with the color and space that is created by the painting, so Yan Bo’s painting could be placed within the catalog of Modern painting, however, Yan’s work differs from Minimalism which was just to pursue a pure form. There is a sense of humor and ridicule in his painting. However, the depth of his painting is from a pre existing object. How could he express three dimensionality from a two-dimensional plane?

Yan Bo added layers to his paintings. Through the dozens of layers accumulated, they are thick and rich with meaning. All the layers didn’t finish at the same time. His paintings are much more similar to the traditional Chinese ink paintings which are transparent also are accumulative in application. Through adding layers again and again, he was trying to form a density of visual language and subtle visual effect. We regard this kind of depth as the illusion of objects.

Whether oil painting that was painted in a transparent way or accumulated like ink in the traditional Chinese ink painting, it’s hard to define the pictorial depth of objects. In traditional oil painting, perhaps the illusion created by the depth of field was too much of a distraction from the actual objects depicted. It is difficult to have thick layers on the ink painting, so there is no physical relief to be seen.

In Some conceptual paintings we can see pictorial depth. There are two kinds. First, Zhang Yu repeatedly pressed with fingerprints, this action was repeated again and again. Second, Tan Ping’s abstract paintings have a true depth. Tan’s paintings seem simple, but the layers were repeated many times. The last layers beneath the other layers can be seen, because of the keeping of the last layers when he began new layers. You can even touch the different layers. This method became a kind of historical document in itself, since the process occurred over a duration where the artist would have had many different experiences or states of mind.

The trace of time and feeling is on his painting. His paintings are a kind of contemporary abstract painting. The difference is his goal to express his feeling not the state of his life. His painting is an object which can grow. The difference between him and conceptual abstract artists is that they are expressing their state of minds, but Yan is waiting for his work to grow into something that has life.

Yan Bo graduated from the Design Department of Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, and he likes to appreciate the artifacts, and see the importance of the object itself through the appreciation of traditional Chinese art that is represented itself in jade, ceramic, bronze. In the contemporary art, what is meaning in the emphasis of these objects?

When Sir Kenneth Clark saw Velasquez’s Las Meninas, he noticed he must observe the painting from a distance. When he walked closer to the painting, the delicate hands, silk, velvet just became brushstrokes of oil paint. Concerning realistic oil painting, there are two different views: one is the illusion from a distance, the other is up close, where we only see the color and canvas. Impressionism was worse. Viewed up close, its’ hard to be satisfied. When we walk very close to Yan’s work, we can see his work is just as slippery as the jade. In this situation, our visual experience is likely to convert to a tactile experience.

Art historian Alois Riegl conceived of the terms “Haptic” and “optic” to explain the relationship between artworks and the world around them. But, his haptic was by imagination not through physical touching. However, Yan’s artwork can be touched, giving the same experience as jade and porcelain. We can’t help touch his artwork when we walk closely to it.

Haptic, optic and olfactory become involved in Contemporary art, in order to create more possibilities. Yan’s contribution is that he had introduced the haptic into painting. We can feel the depth of the objects. To achieve this kind of depth was not through the effect of color and layers of paints, but the object itself. We can appreciate his paintings both from far away or up close, both of which giving the viewers an aesthetic enjoyment.

May 8th, 2011

wrote in Wei Xiu Yuan Community of Beijing University

About the Exhibition

Cocktail: 18:00-20:00, May 16th, 2012

Location: Eastation Gallery – Shop 12A, M/F, ART ONE, Convention Plaza, 1 Harbour Road, Wanchai, Hong Kong

Tel:+852 2511 2911 F:+852 2511 2711

Courtesy of the artist and Eastation Gallery, for further information please visit www.eastationgallery.com.

On April 16th, 2012, Zhang Yu accomplished his new work Sealed Fingerprints, a small piece of installation that he had conceived quite a long time ago. This piece no longer emphasizes the concept of self-cultivation in the practice of fingerprinting. Instead, it notes down part of the prints in the short process and seals them up. The fingerprints in this piece are different from those in the earlier works. Made by different materials, they are manifested in quite clear traces, which can reflect the artist’s identity. In other words, the work emphasizes the social attributes of the fingerprints. The practice of sealing does not mean hiding the fingerprints from viewers by archiving them, but presenting them to viewers after they are sealed up in a certain way. Sealed Fingerprints is also an inquiry by visual aesthetics. Composed of the invisible practice of fingerprinting and the visible nail polisher, fingerprints, wood, the transparent glass-box and the cast of light, the work might provide viewers with something new. The way of sealing up can be applied to other works. Zhang’s fingerprints made at various stages and with different emotions can also be sealed into his fingerprint archive. For this project Zhang Yu works together with Maarten Bertheux, the international curator of The Netherlands for which Maarten has written an article for the exhibition. Actually Sealed Fingerprints is specially created for this project. So this solo exhibition held by the OTHER GALLERY, in a strict sense, is the exhibition of a single piece of work.

About the Exhibition

Artist: Zhang Yu

Curator: Maarten Bertheux

Duration: May 6th- Jun 17th, 2012

Vernissage: 5 – 7 pm, May 5th, 2012

Venue: OTHER GALLERY l Shanghai Space 101, Bld.9, Moganshan Rd, M50, Shanghai

Courtesy of Zhang Yu and Other Gallery, for further information please visit www.othergallery.com.cn.

The “91 Years” denotes the total amount of years all of the participating artists have been engaged in painting.

The individual aesthetic “tastes” of the artist are the most fundamental personalizing element in artistic creation, the thrust behind the pursuit of spirituality in painting. Painting in China has passed the phase of studying the techniques and styles of the Western masters, and the waves of passion for isms and schools have begun to recede. Meanwhile, currents are beginning to flow towards the placement of conceptuality over technique in painting. The artists of this exhibition, Cui Yanwei, Tan Jun, Huang Liyan and Zhu Zhengming are staunch in their faith that “Painting is an extreme sport, a difficult ascent with no end (Tan Jun’s words).” Their works do not wallow in conceptual gimmicks or the painterly tricks of ink and brush but directly paint doubts about the self and the essence of humanity. Their independent stylized creations express unique individual tastes, weaving a secretive atmosphere with the traditions of ancient Chinese painting, calling to mind the highly individual literati painters of old, such as the dignified and understated Ni Yunlin, the outlandish yet elegant Chen Laolian or the aloof and solitary Bada Shanren.

Immanuel Kant once researched the intricate relationship between aesthetics and taste, concluding that taste is both personal and beyond reasoning, and that there is no universally applicable standard for taste. In the realm of oriental art, “taste” is similar to the concept of “pin” emphasized by ancient calligraphers and painters, as in the four classes of “pin” or taste emphasized by Zhu Jingxuan in Famous Paintings of the Tang Dynasty: the “shen,” or spiritual aspect, “miao,” or inspiration, “neng,” or capabilities, and “yi,” or the reclusive spirit, all attributes connected to the level of painting or the artist’s inclinations. For painting, “taste” is the fusion of multiple visual elements, expressed in the brushwork, colors, materials, texture, composition and form, and connected to the artist’s life experiences and cultural accumulation. On the other hand, taste seems to be innate, almost a destiny, abstract and difficult to put into words, existing within the artwork in a present yet invisible state, like stars shining from the bottom of a deep pond, muted yet profound.

Cui Yanwei‘s (b.1963) youth coincided with the period in which the Chinese art world began to recognize modernism and American art, and he expended a great effort in abstract color field painting (influenced by such artists as Mark Rothko), though the artist also had an instinctual inclination for realist painting. In his recent works, related to ancient landscape garden themes, he has diminished the sense of space, treating the stones, pagodas and bushes as abstract collage elements. The addition of exquisite and realistic female bodies fills the picture with internal tension through the interplay between loose and tense.

Tan Jun, Beasts of the Heart, 2011; mixed media on paper, 75.5x143.5cm

Tan Jun‘s (b.1973) tastes embody his pickiness towards paper. After experimenting with treated scroll paper, untreated scroll paper and partially treated scroll paper, he tried parchment, cotton, flax paper, yuanshu paper, yunlong paper, fine rice paper and cicada skins before finally finding the best material carrier for his expressions: “handmade original color long fiber wrapping paper.” The natural color of the unbleached paper is needed to present a vivid, translucent air. The long fibers make the paper more durable and add a unique feel to the sheets. The paper must be water-permeable but not overly sensitive, so that there is no order to the bleeding of the ink. Tan Jun uses the supposed disadvantages of this paper as advantages. His pursuit of the primitive and crude qualities of paper has established the weighty yet vibrant spirit of his artworks, and his tastes find manifestation within the sprightly beasts, birds, forms and expressions that populate his ancient-style images.

Zhu Zhengming, One Hundred Years of Solitud No.38, 2012; mixed media on silk, 33x52cm

Huang Liyan‘s (b.1976) inspiration and drive in painting are derived from a sense of detachment from a fabricated existence. In his art, we gain a sense of the influence of Schopenhauer and others with regards to the philosophy of suffering. Perhaps the artist willingly immerses himself in this dejection as he spins bizarre, surreal tales: fierce tigers, mosquitos, parrots and naked, sleepwalking men encountering each other in the night. The human and animal bodies are stretched and distorted, as if being pulled into a space that has been warped into the depths of the image. These scenes, however, appear not so much as symbolic allusions (like the paintings of Neo Rauch) as they are connected to the artist’s tastes, marked by a spontaneous and playful spirit.

In her travels through Thailand and India, female artist Zhu Zhengming (b.1979) found objects that correspond with her tastes: the Buddhist monks who calmly stride through the everyday clamor of life in Thailand, androgynous bodies, meditative faces, the marks and fissures of porcelain, lace, animal skin and the patterned wings of butterflies are all calmly laid to paper with her delicate, meticulous palace painting method. Under an intangible magic shroud, these images tug at the heartstrings, evoking familiarity, estrangement and distracted astonishment.

Huang Liyan's Work

In his later years in southern China, Song dynasty painter Li Tang began to feel left behind, and penned a self-deprecatory line of poetry: “If I had known before that it wouldn’t catch the eyes of the times, I would have bought more red to paint peonies.” Taste is the artist’s line of defense against vulgar appeal and monotonous styles. Sincere artists are faithful to their own instincts, allowing us a diversified artistic landscape, rather than one dominated by realist depictions of beautiful maidens. Lopsided taste, however, is a double-edged sword; it is an indispensable wellspring of singularity in artworks, but it can also entrap the artist, blinding him to new possibilities. “Forgetting what is good” is the precondition for innovation and revolution. As to how the artists in this exhibition conquer and control their “tastes”,immersing in them while maintaining self-awareness and clarity as they continue on their artistic adventures, is something for which we can only wait and see.

About the Exhibition

Duration: 2012.5.5-6.20

Venue: Amelie Gallery, Beijing, China

Opening: May, 5th, 15:00pm

Artists: Cui Yanwei, Tan Jun, Huang Liyan, Zhu Zhengming

Curator: Tony Chang

Courtesy of the artists and Amelie Gallery, for further information please visit www.longyibang.com.

Duration: April 28th—May 4th

Artists: School of Chinese Painting, Department of Oil Painting, Department of Printmaking, Department of Mural Painting, Foundation Program, Department of Experimental Art, Research Institute of Plastic Arts;

Venue: CAFA Art Museum

Address: No.8 Hua Jia Di Nan St., Chao Yang District, Beijing, 100102 P. R. China

Tel: 8610-64771575

Fax: 8610-64771699

“In species of spaces, Perec talks about the ceilings and how the tangles of rosettes and decorations remind him of other labyrinths of ideas and words. So I have been imaging the ceiling as the place where the thoughts go and stick to, when you are lying on your bed. The installation is the result of the collection of the first thought of the day during an undetermined but continuous period. The restricted choice of the first thought of the day is dictated by the difficulty on defying a thought that reveals itself in a specific time, when you are between sleeping and waking, moment that defines the switch from the unconscious state to the conscious one. Trait d’union is hardly definable, difficult to catch and control,” Stefania Migliorati said so.

Stefania Migliorati pins on the ceiling the real sentences that occur to her during the residency period in Beijing. These sentences are contextualized with the ongoing experience, whatever they are: worthy, senseless or ordinary. In an effort of truthful communication, it is self-opening and self exposure. Its’ a particular exercise of Stream of consciousness applied to an unusual context because it’s not only the literary one but the artistic one, linked by the visual and esthetic poetry of the language and by the perception of the space. An animation video with a drawn self-portrait will read the final text in order to give voice to the stream of consciousness proposed in the words carpet of the installation.

Stefania Migliorati, born in Bergamo (Italy) in 1977. Lives and works between Bergamo and Berlino. Lab-Yit Art Residency Program in Beijing from April 5th to May 8th 2012.

This project has been realized thanks to the warm support of: liuba, Bellero Renata, Bianchi Elena, Bidoli Luca, Bissoli Marco, Cavallaro Claudio, Chen Xueyin, Colombo Roberta, Cossu Antonio, Doraimon Uwe, Frederik Foert, Freschni Lucia, Giambrone Silvia, Giorgetti Silvia, Iacono andrea, Lanza Andrea, Marinone Valentina, Mazzoleni Neve, Menegaldo Francesca, Migliorati Maurizio, Muzi Sabrina, Novarese Irina, Paderni Paola, Palmieri Sabrina, Pamici Odinea, Pinzari Francesca Romana, Rivella Chiara, Sansevrino Serena, Sbrana Caterina, Totolo Giuseppe, Turner Georgina.

About the Exhibition:

Curator: Cecilia Freschini

Duration: May 7th through 20th 2012

Venue: 杂家 zajia lab // beijing project space

Opening: May 6th 2012 from 4pm

Organizer: lab-Yit | the Italian Contemporary Art Platform in China

Supporter: The Italian Cultural Institute in Beijing

Courtesy of Stefania Migliorati and lab-Yit, for further information please visit www.lab-yit.com.

Miao Xiaochun’s 3D Animation Work Microcosm

Miao Xiaochun’s 3D animation work Microcosm specially designed for the AVIE 360° system is on view at the Creative Media Center, School of Creative Media of City University in Hong Kong and it lasts till May 20th, 2012.

Miao Xiaochun’s recent work transforms paintings from the canon of Western art history into photographic and animated computer models. Microcosm is based on Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights. It is an imaginative reinvention of its sumptuous landscape of sin and salvation, where new digital means and computer technologies have allowed Miao Xiaochun to conjure a contemporary visual vocabulary. He abolishes the traditional fixed single-point perspective aesthetic, instead favouring the Chinese tradition of multiple points of view, which he constructs into a world of radically different metaphors and tangled relations among reality and virtual reality. In his remake of this work for the AVIE 360 degree immersive 3D cinema, Miao has taken Microcosm a spectacular step further, literally placing the viewer in the centre of its phantasmagoric universe.

About the Artist

In the domain of China’s new media art, Miao Xiaochun is considered one of the most representative and influential artists. His creative explorations on the interface between reality and virtuality started in 1990s.

He works in contemporary photography based on the “multiple view points” perspective to pioneer connections between history and the modern world.

Miao Xiaochun successfully uses 3D technology to create upon a 2D image a virtual 3D scene, to transform a still canvas into moving images, concurrently changing the traditional way of viewing paintings and giving a completely new interpretation and significance to a masterpiece of art, especially with the striking use of his idiosyncratic imagination about history and the future. His works add another important example to contemporary negotiations with art history, and open up new potential for art as he experiments with new possibilities, taking a step forward into new potential spheres.

About the Exhibition

Date: 28/4/2012 – 20/5/2012 (Closed on Sunday and Public Holidays)

Time: 12 – 8pm

Venue: L8 Gallery 360 (M8001)

Courtesy of Miao Xiaochun and City University of Hong Kong, for further information please visit cmc.scm.cityu.edu.hk.

Just like a gigantic creature from ancient times, Zhao Guanghui refuses to evolve, and he grows in a wild style, it looked as if the “wild” runs within his veins, we see his rebellious nature towards the “rules”. The growing experiences in Yunnan’s jungle made his live more special than ordinary urban folk. Therefore, we can say that he is kind of like an endangered animal, thrilled, chaotic, mysterious and lost.

His newest work ” The most beautiful and correct nature”, uses a realistic method to create an ultimate blueprint to fake nature, homogeneous sand, square grass blocks, random but symmetrical fences, handcut long grass, simulated trees and tree trunks, birds, ducks are all created and interfered with then fixed manually with an order of sense. The artist rips out the individual interest in his works, and tries to create an unnatural figure by using the scientific methods of duplication, and arrangement.

In today’s world of “easy figuration”, manual-factured sights are slowly eroding our world’s natural habitat, 60 years ago, we worshiped the blueprint of communism, but today we are constructing a brand new world that represents the perfect blueprint of our future, and it seems to be the ultimate truth of idealism, while it became the castrated fluid for humans to harm our nature.

However, towards the “blueprint” itself, we can discover a simple truth, from a logical point of view, the reason why idealism can never come true is probably because once it became a blueprint, it might just became an ultimate goal that then ceases forever. In this case we should first deny the idea of blueprint from the perspective of history.

Curator: Dai Zhuoqun

Presented by: Sun Yongzeng

Assistant Curator: Xie Jinyuan、Lin Tao

Public Relations: Wu Wei

Project Cooperation: Liu Chenya,Wu Ling

Organizer: White Box Museum Of Art

Opening: Saturday, April 28, 2012, 3p.m.

Dates: April 28, 2012 –May 28, 2012

Museum Opening Hours: 10:00 – 18:00, Tuesday – Sunday

Venue: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, 798 Art Dist., NO.2 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist., Beijing, China

Tel: +86-10-5978 4801

Courtesy of Zhao Guanghui and White Box Museum of Art, for further information please visit www.798whitebox.com.

Tony Cragg brought first museum show in China  to the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts fromMarch 2nd through April 15th, 2012. We took this opportunity to interview him about it before its opening. Focusing mainly on Cragg’s work of the last fifteen years, this exhibition provides an excellent opportunity for art lovers in China to see new works by one of the world’s greatest living sculptors and it features around fifty major sculptures, along with a series of drawings and watercolors with a total of 127 pieces. An artist of great international acclaim and immense energy, Cragg has developed more possibilites in the making of sculpture than any other sculptor since Henry Moore discovered the “hole” as a positive space. Cragg’s contributions to contemporary sculpture practice are beyond challenge.

Here’s the interview recorded his original experience related with Sculptures and Drawings.

CAFA ART INFO Courtesy  and all rights reserved. 

The opening of Guo Hongwei: Painting is Collecting was announced by Chambers Fine Art on May 5th, 2012. In this exhibition of watercolors on paper, Guo Hongwei turns away from the everyday objects such as paper cups, plastic bags etc. that were the subject-matter of his works in various media in Things, his first solo exhibition at Chambers Fine Art in 2009, to encompass natural history as it has been collected and classified in a systematic way since at least the Renaissance. Since the beginning of his career, Guo Hongwei has used oil painting and watercolor not in pursuit of a Realist enterprise but as a means to investigate the relationship between the objects he chooses to represent and the infinite possibilities of his media in all their unpredictability.

In so far as he depicted objects close at hand in the paintings shown in the 2009 exhibition and immediately after, Guo Hongwei’s works were to a certain degree autobiographical. With Painting is Collecting , he moves out of the studio into a much broader arena that incorporates mankind’s curiosity concerning the world in which he lives, the classification and understanding of the relationships between the infinite variety of animals, insects, plants and minerals. Not only has he visited natural history museums and botanical gardens with their ancient herbaria, he has also read widely in historical literature and developed a keen appreciation of the artistry of botanical illustrators of previous centuries. From this vast amount of material, he has selected certain images that appeal to him as a result of their cultural patina and has also created arrangements of his own that show his interest in tracking relationships between closely related forms.

The series of watercolors devoted to plants, for example, are closely based on botanical specimens in which the date of collecting, inventory number etc. are only partially revealed as a result of the free-flowing pools of watercolor. Contrasting are the sheets in which rows of birds and insects are freely arranged, the minute differences between them beautifully replicated by the subtle adjustments of color and density of pigment. As Sun Dongdong comments, however, “thanks to Guo’s expressive painting style that breaks through the boundaries of scientific representation, the watercolors in the exhibition are not documentary studies meant for natural history museums. The naming of these paintings, “Flowers, Birds, Fish, and Insects,” is at best a playful allusion to scientific methods of categorization.”

Although capable of being highly developed, traditionally, watercolor has been reserved for informal studies and small-scale works. Guo Hongwei appreciates the fluidity and transparency of the medium but is prepared to place a greater burden on it, exaggerating its qualities in order to transform the physical characteristics of the objects he chooses to paint. For Painting is Collecting I, Guo Hongwei has transformed the galleries of Chambers Fine Art into a hauntingly beautiful reflection on mankind’s need to classify, preserve and depict, to pin down the qualities of living forms whether in watercolor on paper or in the vitrines of a natural history museum.

About the Exhibition

Date: May 5, 2012 – Jun 23, 2012

Opening: May 5, 2012, 15:00, Saturday

Venue: Chambers Fine Art (Beijing)

Courtesy of Guo Hongwei and Chambers Fine Art, for further information please visit www.chambersfineart.com.

Li Shurui is showing her latest large space painting installation by 106 pieces of paintings. As the exhibition title suggests, this new piece tries to fully present the many characteristics of Li Shurui’s art practice, and will particularly be an important breakthrough in the practice of the concept of space.

Li Shurui has started to work on “light”-themed pieces since 2005. These visual illusion planes constructed with air-brushed colorful spots remind viewers of a way of life of the subculture, and the phrase “beat around the bush” could vaguely express the life experience related to this visual effect. However, when the body shrinks inwardly into the dimension of flesh, its freedom obtains an unprecedented assertion, achieving a reversed self-recognition. Therefore, the vision in Li Shurui’s art is not only an optical characterization reflected on the retinas, but also something drifting in the endless void external world, connected to desire and destination.

Li Shurui was born in 1981 in Chongqing, Sichuan Province and graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. Currently lives and works in Beijing.

About the Exhibition

Date: May 5th – June 17th, 2012

Venue: White Space

Add: NO.255 CAOCHANGDI,AIRPORT SERVICE ROAD,CHAOYANG DISTRICT,BEIJING, 100015

Tel: +86 10 84562054

Fax: + 86 10 84562749

Email: info@whitespace-beijing.com

Opening Hours: Tues–Sun 10am — 6pm

Courtesy of Li Shuirui and Whiter Space Beijing, for further information please visit www.whitespace-beijing.com.

ShanghART is pleased to announce Close to the Sea •The Revival of the Snake – YANG Fudong Solo Exhibition which will be on view from 12th May to 15th June 2012 in ShanghART Beijing and ARTMIA Gallery. This show will be Yang Fudong’s first Beijing solo show and the premiere of his works in China.

Close to the Sea (2004)

In this ten-channel video installation, a concert is being staged at the seaside. Accompanied by various musical instruments, the love story of a young couple is unfolded on the same location. The videos set on the centre, display two scenarios taking place simultaneously: one shows a young couple riding a horse along the sea and the other a pair of lovers struggling for survival after a shipping accident. The other eight screens deliver at the same time the performance of diverse musical instruments, a trumpet and a cello played on the rocks, for example. The background music, which is hallucinatory, dreamlike and even uncoordinated, reflects the conflicts between ideals and reality. The young lovers, despite the threat of death, continue with their discussion of ideal, faith and anticipation.

YANG Fudong, Close to the Sea, 2004; Edition of 6, Video|Multivideo|(10 channel video installation, sound by Jin Wang), 23 minutes

YANG Fudong, Close to the Sea 02, 2004; Edition of 6, Video|Multivideo|(10 channel video installation, sound by Jin Wang), 23 minutes

The Revival of the Snake (2005)

This work tells the end of the story of a soldier going into exile. On a sunny winter’s day, the icy ground is stared with snow and life seems as peaceful as the weather. A soldier, escaping from a battlefield, comes to this deserted place which is plagued with the smell of death, He is wandering, attempting to leave this uninhabited world. The only option left to him, however, is walking, ceaselessly and endlessly. What is waiting for him? A hibernating snake is startled awake from its nice dream and then sees a human, eyes blindfolded and hands bound at his back, kneeling on the freezing ice-covered lake. Who is sentenced to death by the sound of gunshots reverberating around the mountains?

YANG Fudong, The Revival of the Snake, 2005; Video|Multi-Channel Video| 10 channel ,music by Wang Wenwei|, 8 minutes

The Revival of the Snake, 2005, (detail pictures)

About the Artist:

YANG Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing and trained as a painter at China Academy of Art between 1991 and 1995, and then later in the Department of the Photography there, as well as the Film Academy Beijing in 1996. Starting in the late 1990s, he embarked on a career in the mediums of film and video and is among one of the most successful and influential Chinese artists today.

YANG Fudong’s recent important solo exhibitions include: 2011 The Distance of Reality, Yang Fudong’s Solo Exhibition, Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, Havana, Cuba; Yang Fudong, Utopia and Reality, Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Tapiola Finland; One half of August, Yang Fudong Solo Exhibition, Parasol, Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London, U.K.; Yang Fudong: No Snow on the Broken Bridge, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, Sydney, Australia; 2010… In the Bamboo Forest…, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, Switzerland; Yang Fudong, Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest and Other Stories, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Yang Fudong Solo Exhibition, Kino Kino, Sandnes, Norway; 2009 Yang Fudong: the General’s Smiles, Hara Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Dawn Mist, Separation Faith, Yang Fudong’s Solo Exhibition, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; Yang Fudong: Seven Intellectuals in a Bamboo Forest, Asia Society and Museum, New York, U.S.A.; Yang Fudong, East of Que Village, MuHKA Media, Antwerpen, Belgium.

At the same time, YANG Fudong’s recent work The Fifth Night will be exhibited in the Vancouver Art Gallery from 12 May to 3 September 2012. Until 6 May, his works are shown in the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art in the group exhibition La La La Human Steps. And the new work Yejiang/The Nightman Cometh will be exhibited during the THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORKS OF TIMES – REBIRTH AND APOCALYPSE IN CONTEMPORARY ART-The First Kyiv International Biennial of Contemporary Art from 17 May to 31 July 2012.

About the Exhibition:

VIP Reception: 12th May 2012, 17:00-19:00

Duration: 12th May – 15th June 2012, 11:00-18:00 (Closed Mon.)

Address: ShanghART Beijing & ARTMIA, 261 Cao Chang Di, Old Airport Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Website: www.shanghartgallery.com

Yan Pei-Ming, Exécution, Après Goya, 2008; Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 3/4 inches (280 x 400.7 cm)

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of recent work by Yan Pei-Ming, on view at the gallery’s 519 West 19th Street space. Born in Shanghai in 1960 and based in Dijon, France, Ming has gained international recognition for his large-sized, monochromatic portraits. His subjects, which range from historical figures, political leaders, and celebrities to anonymous soldiers, serial killers, female prisoners, orphans, and the artist himself, are typically presented face-on, with bold and expressive brushwork. The artist’s fluid yet precise technique and his use of shallow pictorial space combine to create iconic, monumental, and psychologically charged works.

The paintings in this exhibition, Ming’s second at the gallery, relate to events in the recent and distant past. In a departure from previous work by the artist, they extend beyond the depiction of a singular subject to reference broad historical issues and, in the process, the gap that exists between the events and their visualization. Often taking a combination of mass media imagery and his own recollections of a motif as his starting point, Ming thus broadens a traditional understanding of the medium of painting: he refers to his large-scale canvases as “collages” of photographs and memories, while medium-specificity is further cast into question by the fluidity of the artist’s painterly technique, which at times resembles watercolor.

Yan Pei-Ming, All Crows Under The Sun Are Black!, 2012; Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 inches (280 x 400 cm)

Black Paintings is a title derived from a late series of wall paintings by Francisco Goya, since transferred to canvas. In these works, not originally intended for public view, the Spanish artist offers haunting visions of humanity’s darker side.

Among the paintings on view in the present exhibition, one refers directly to a work by Goya. Exécution, Après Goya (2008) offers an interpretation of The Third of May 1808 (1814), which depicts the execution by firing squad of Spanish civilians who had taken part in an uprising against the French occupation of their country. Using blood red paint and bold brushstrokes with visible drips, Ming’s version of the subject matter dramatically isolates the figures from any background, thus separating the action from its historical context. The painting is the only one in the exhibition to use a color that is not black, white, or gray.

Yan Pei-Ming, Pablo, 2011; Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 110 1/4 inches (280 x 280 cm)

Also on view is Pablo (2011), which shows a young Pablo Picasso kneeling before an unknown object or presence. The background is indeterminate and dark, and again provides no contextual setting. A somber, if ambiguous, mood is intensified by the boy’s downward gaze and the impossibility of telling whether his awkward pose is indicative of a religious act or perhaps signifies a punitive measure about to take place. By depicting arguably the most famous painter of the modern era as a humbled adolescent, Ming’s painting includes a reference to its own medium, while its black-and-white palette underscores a sense of nostalgia.

A more recent history is evoked in Invisible Women (2011), a multiple portrait of burka-clad women. Standing closely together in a large group and looking straight ahead, the many pairs of eyes have a hypnotic quality and form a disquieting horizon. The subject matter may be a reference to the democratic undercurrents of the Arab Spring, which has led to an increased focus on women’s rights in the region. Although the title is borrowed from H.G. Wells’s famous novel The Invisible Man (1897), which told the story of a scientist whose experiments made him an invisible murderer, the women portrayed by Ming each have identifiable characteristics despite revealing little flesh.

Yan Pei-Ming, Gadhafi’s Corpse – October 20th 2011, 2011; Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 inches (280 x 400 cm)

While the historical significance of Ming’s chosen subjects is readily apparent, his works resist the traditional heroic connotations of history paintings. The artist’s aforementioned reliance on often blurry mass media source material and personal memory combine to present a sense of elusiveness that is underscored by exaggerated brushwork. Rather than documenting separate events, the paintings suggest an ongoing history in flux.

Yan Pei-Ming joined David Zwirner in 2006 and had his first New York solo exhibition at the gallery the following year. Over the past decade, the artist has had solo exhibitions at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Musée du Louvre, Paris; San Francisco Art Institute (all in 2009); Musée d’art moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint-Étienne, France (2006); Shanghai Art Museum; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China (both 2005); Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany (2004); Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon, France; and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva (all in 2003).

Yan Pei-Ming, Moonlight, 2011; Oil on canvas, 110 1/4 x 157 1/2 inches (280 x 400 cm)

Ming’s work was featured in several group exhibitions in 2011, including the Fonds régional d’art contemporain Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France; Musée Anne-de-Beaujeu, Moulins, France; and the Musée des beaux-arts de Dôle, Dôle, France. He participated in the French Pavilion for Expo 2010 in Shanghai and other international group exhibitions including the Istanbul Biennial (2007); 2nd Seville Biennale, Spain (2006); Venice Biennale (2003 and 1995); and the Lyon Biennale, France (2000 and 1997).

Work by the artist is represented in museum collections worldwide, including the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and the Shanghai Art Museum.

About the Exhibition

Location: David Zwirner 519 West 19th Street

Artist: YAN Pei-Ming

Date: 4 May – 23 Jun 2012

Courtesy of Yan Pei-Ming and David Zwirner Gallery, for further information please visit www.davidzwirner.com.

Sponsored by the Baiyaxuan Cultural & Arts Organizations, Meteorological China—the Exhibition of Eight Contemporary Printmakers is going to be held from May 13th through to 30th, 2012.

This exhibition features representatives of eight contemporary masters in printmaking including Wu Changjiang, Xu Bing, Tan Ping, Su Xinping, Wang Huaxiang, Chen Qi, Hong Hao and Kong Guoqiao all of which have systematically obtained professional training from top art institutions in China. Moreover, they are courageous in overcoming all kinds of limitations and find their own unique language in their separate art careers. As Mr. Shao Dazhen, the academic who presides over this exhibition has described their artistic achievements and characteristics in the preface, “These eight middle-aged artists who has grown with the Reform and Opening up can well represent the new generation of printmakers. They have their own expertise in printmaking with different species of technology, skills and even their own aesthetic trends. Although they share something in common with their reflections of the modern meteorological China, that is they present profound descriptions of the essence of contemporary human and social reality rather than the superficial phenomena of society. They deeply explore the innovative resources from national cultures and traditions rather than hunting for the novelty of traditional symbols of art. They learn from the advantages of foreign modern art through their analysis rather than blindly copying others and making oneself look foolish. They hide their cultural thinking into their unique language of art rather than playing with the idea or form.”

It is reported that the opening ceremony will be on May 13th, 2012 and it will be accompanied with a seminar.

Baiyaxuan 798 Art Center is directly affiliated to Baiyaxuan Art & Cultural Institute and is a flagship gallery of Baiyaxuan’s program of chain galleries. Opened on December 18, 2010, Baiyaxuan 798 Art Center is located at an intact historical building in the northern part of Beijing 798 Art Zone. The building, constructed with assistance by architectural institution of German Bauhaus school, was previously public communal dining hall and auditorium of 718 Joint Factory (predecessor of 798 Art Zone) and is one of the few landmark buildings in 798 Art Zone.

Baiyaxuan 798 Art Center, based on the value orientation of being “subject” & “venue”, “classic” & “creative” and “diversified” & “open”, is committed to building an important art promoting platform and influential art market position in Contemporary China and is devoted to domestic and foreign cultural exchange and innovative practice of art industrialization.

About the Exhibition

Duration: May 13th–30th, 2012

Venue: Baiyaxuan Art Center

Opening Ceremony: 4:00 p.m. on May 13th, 2012

Artists: Wu Changjiang, Xu Bing, Tan Ping, Su Xinping, Wang Huaxiang, Chen Qi, Hong Hao and Kong Guoqiao.

Tel: 86-10-5762 3018

Fax: 86-10-5762 3058

Courtesy of the artists and Baiyaxuan Cultural & Arts Organizations, for further information please visit www.art100.org.

In 2010 Xu Longsen’s large-size landscape paintings were exhibited in the Palace of Justice, Brussels. In this 100 meter high space, ten scrolls with a height of 20 – 30 meters and a width of several meters hung in the air following the structure of the building, forming a complete installation that worked together with the entire space.

The exhibition was entitled High Mountain and the mountain was the theme of each and every work there. All the peaks were high, up to the sky, alone, or in a group. The painting on Xuan paper was somehow translucent because they hung up in the air, and people could enjoy them from both sides. With the flow of air, the giant paper moved slightly, and the landscapes on the paper moved too, like a dream. In such a grand space for installation painting, the audience were walking and feeling. With traditional materials, the traditional Chinese paintings created by Xu Longsen were presented in a way that was totally different from that of normal traditional Chinese paintings. He designs and creates works for modern residential public spaces. When Xu Longsen saw the space at the Palace of Justice, Brussels, he felt the space and his works could add glory to each other and were perfect for each other. It is sure his landscape paintings were not overwhelmed by the splendour of the Palace of Justice. On the contrary, they looked more spectacular in this magnificent building and brought new vitality to this regal space.

Landscape plays a key role in Chinese art history and it is the pinnacle of the art world. The mountains and waters are at the core of any Chinese landscape painting; water is the water from the mountain, along the mountain. However, in China, a country of countless high mountains, every mountain has a different shape and a unique style. People have always loved mountains. The mountain stabilizes the land with giant volume, symbolizing stability and permanence; the mountain nourishes all lives as a symbol of reproduction and richness. The mountain is so high and closest to the temple of the heaven worshiped by Chinese people, though there are threats and dangers inside. Every mountain is a holy land for offering sacrifice to god. Confucius has said “the benevolent enjoy the mountains” which means the mountain is the symbol of peace, benevolence and the social moral system pursued by Confucians. China’s Buddhists and Taoists also deem the mountain as the best residence for the discovery of the hearts. The Buddhists built temples on the mountains and devotional

Buddhists worship the Buddha on the mountains. Taoism has the most far-reaching influence on the Chinese landscape painting. The Tao of nature is from nothing. People can feel the essence of the nature, the infinity of the universe and the beauty of emptiness and nature on quiet mountains. The Chinese character for “immortal being” is a combination of two characters, “people” and “mountain”. So the character literally means people within mountains. The mountain is a centralized reflection of aesthetics and the world view of Chinese people during their long history.

Xu Longsen respects traditional culture and his landscapes remind people of the integration, freedom and emptiness in Chinese traditional landscapes. However, his mountains are not the mountains where people live. There is no house, no people, even less plants, not to mention any literal inscription, but these giant installation paintings have a power to spiritualize the space. The rising peaks constitute pure visual compositions and such pure images seem to symbolize an ideal. Is it the imagination of the way of nature? Is it the pursuit for supreme art? The landscapes here are grand, but not heavy; they’re vivid with a free style, reflecting the view of the artist on the art-grandness, endlessness, loftiness and harmony.

The sheer size of Xu Longsen’s paintings means that he must have some novel painting skills. The artist pastes the paper on a very tall, very wide wall and then creates on an elevating platform. By this method, the work breaks the limitation of the creative method for traditional water ink paintings and shows fresh painting skills.

He never needs a draft when he creates a large-size painting. Instead he directly draws on the paper with a giant brush. He’ll rip off the part of the paper he feels dissatisfied with and remakes the paper for redrawing the part. His paintings are featured with layers of water polishing and he even creates work over a few years. He said his works were irrepeatable. Like an ancient artist, Xu Longsen likes to climb the mountains to make the landscapes from his heart. Sometimes he may be inspired by the structure or texture of some ordinary articles so that he can create his landscapes in a different way. For instance, inspirited by Taihu rocks, he created the fresh and unique work series “Rocks” which show strange giant abstract blocks with a dense composition of images.

Xu Longsen also creates small-size works. Sometimes he intentionally uses traditional forms, like round, fan-shaped, or long scrolls. He shows his talent in painting in the same layout, but with a brand-new abstract landscape. He has focused on sculpture, so he is good at the composition of image and he is able to create changing exquisite compositions with layers of inks, dense or light.

Invited by Italy, Xu Longsen exhibited in the summer of 2011 ten of his giant works above the cultural relics of ancient Rome in the Museum of Roman Civilization, a grand palace building. Entitled as Xu Longsen—On Top of Two Empires, this exhibition built a dialogue between China and Italy, two representatives of Oriental and Western civilizations.

It is a huge challenge for Xu Longsen to transcend tradition while inheriting it and to create a new modern painting context in the form of a traditional Chinese painting. It is fair to say that his works not only represent some of the most astonishing breakthrough in Chinese painting, but also bring out an exciting new outlook for modern art.

Copyright © 2011 Beyond Art Space All rights reserved.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

Pace Beijing is pleased to present a solo exhibition by multi-media artist HIROSHI SUGIMOTO. This will be Sugimoto’s third exhibit with The Pace and his first solo exhibition in China.

Gelatin silver prints will constitute the entirety of the exhibition, elegantly demonstrating the value Sugimoto places on the technical aspects of photography. Through a keen understanding of the nuances of silver-print making, Sugimoto captures the medium’s full potential for tonal richness in his seemingly infinite palette of blacks, whites, and grays. His iconic photographs have bridged Eastern and Western ideologies, tracing the origins of time and societal progress along the way.

Sugimoto’s practice is fundamentally grounded in conceptions of time. Beginning in 1975, Sugimoto launched what David Elliott called “the artist’s fundamental trinity of genres out of which all of his other work has grown.” The force of time activates and connects the subject matter for these three iconic and ongoing series, Dioramas, Theaters, and Seascapes. The completed series Henry VIII and His Six Wives from 1999 will also be on display, capturing the art historic moment of the Renaissance portraiture tradition.

Hiroshi Sugimoto-Dioramas, Theaters, and Seascapes

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Henry VIII and His Six Wives

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Day After, The Pace Gallery © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy The Pace Gallery

Lightning Fields, Sugimoto’s most recent series, features structures resembling organic, primordial forms. There is an unrestrained sense of movement and energy in these images suggesting the origin of life at its first spark of inception. The largest of his photographs, these works demonstrate Sugimoto’s commitment to the study of science and his experimentation with photographic methods. He created the photographs in a darkroom without the use of a camera, subjecting unexposed film to different voltages of electrical currents with devices he designed.

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Lightning Fields 163, 2009 – © Hiroshi Sugimoto, Courtesy The Pace Gallery

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Lightning Fields 168, 2009 – 545 West 22nd Street

Hiroshi Sugimoto – Lightning Fields 198, 2009 – gelatin silver print – © Hiroshi Sugimoto, Courtesy The Pace Gallery

The series Conceptual Forms will also be on view, showcasing Sugimoto’s interest in photographing mathematical models, a practice inspired by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. Sugimoto has said that he is drawn to the purity of form and fragility of these vintage nineteenth-century plaster objects. These works contextualize Sugimoto’s grounding concept of time in mathematical space, charting cultural development.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948 and has lived and worked in New York City since 1974. He has had solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; MOCA, Los Angeles, CA; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; MCA Chicago, IL; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, among others. His work is in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The National Gallery, London; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Smithsonian Institute of Art, Washington, D.C., and Tate, London.

Pace Beijing promotes a program of international contemporary art entrenched in an Asian context. Showcasing the work of esteemed Japanese artist Sugimoto demonstrates its efforts to expand the presence of greater Asian art to the world. We will continue these efforts with the first solo exhibition of Yoshitomo Nara in China, further illustrating our dedication to utilizing the established Pace platform to broaden international understanding of Asian art.

Duration: May 12 – July 7, 2012

Opening reception: Saturday, May 12, 16:30 – 18:30

Tel/Fax: +86 10 59789781

Courtesy of Hiroshi Sugimoto and Pace Beijing, for further information, please visit www.pacebeijing.com or contact pr@pacebeijing.com.

In 2010, the Depatment of Visual Studies at University at Buffalo(UB) embarked on a very exciting academic and cultural exchange with the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. It has now grown into a full collaborative effort between the two institutions, resulting in the opportunity for Visual Studies MFA graduate students to work closely with their Chinese counterparts at CAFA in realizing intensive, productive residencies and high caliber art exhibitions in both countries and, to be published soon, an ambitious project publication. Originated from this program, “Beijing Buffalo: Translation” presents the complicated evolution of this international exchanges which will offer new possibilities for future exchanges and cooperation between emerging artists in China and U.S.A. It opened in Beijing for display at the Today Art Museum/Today Print Arts Center (Mar.18-Apr.1, 2012). The last element in the current exchange project is now underway and slated to be completed this summer: a 400-page publication that charts the challenging and complex process of cross-cultural collaboration, and documents the impressive artworks.

During spring of 2010, the pilot exchange between Visual Studies and CAFA took place: three senior CAFA faculty members, Professors Wang Huaxiang, Li Xiaolin and Gao Rongsheng, came to UB for a one-week residency in the Dept. of Visual Studies; subsequently, three VS faculty members, Profs. Millie Chen, Joan Linder and Stephanie Rothenberg traveled to Beijing with the first group of UB Study Abroad students. Profs. Rothenberg and Linder used CAFA as a base from which to teach graduate and upper level undergraduate students of both UB and CAFA, and explore the cultural environment of Beijing. This first residency culminated in a dynamic UB/CAFA student exhibition at CAFA and, later, at UB.

In March 2011, Profs. Millie Chen, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Ben Van Dyke, and eleven Visual Studies MFA students traveled to CAFA to participate in the second exchange, starting an intensified academic exchange and the generation of research/creative collaborations between Visual Studies MFA graduate students and advanced undergraduate CAFA students. This year’s exchange was developed by Profs. Millie Chen and Li Fan (CAFA) to support the production of new student artwork generated by cross-institutional and cross-cultural collaborations, and to result in a student exhibition of professional caliber for presentation in Fall 2011 at the University at Buffalo Art Galleries and at the Today Art Museum in Beijing in Spring 2012.

Two weeks prior to the opening of the resulting exhibition Buffalo Beijing: Translation at UB Art Gallery (Sept.16-Oct.22, 2011)*, Prof. Li Fan and his seven students arrived in Buffalo; the students continued working with their Visual Studies partners in finishing their projects. Collaborative art making is complex in and of itself. Despite the fact that cultural divides and language barriers were added to this mix, all participating artists rose to the challenge, even surpassing it in many cases. The result is profound cultural exchange, the blossoming of lasting friendships, and a professional exhibition of high caliber.

The participating faculty and Chairs, with nods from their Deans, at both UB and CAFA intend to continue this fruitful cross-institutional, cross-cultural academic and artistic collaboration. After a successful pilot exchange in 2009/10 and an exhilaratingly productive and rewarding full-year exchange in 2011-12, what is planned for future development of this exchange program is the continuation of artistic collaboration at the graduate level, resulting professional caliber exhibitions in both cities, and potential faculty exchange.

Buffalo Beijing: Translation is co-sponsored by the Dept. of Visual Studies (UB), Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing), The Confucius Institute at the University at Buffalo, University at Buffalo Art Gallery.

Related Reports

1. Department of Visual Studies, UB & Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing | Academic Exchange Program and Art Exhibitions by Department of Visual Studies, UB

2.Beijing Buffalo: Translation by The Confucius Institute, UB

Qian Weikang_Ventilating the Site

The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale Organized by OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) is going to be held from May 12th through August 31st.

Exhibition / Performances / Artists’ Talks / Screenings

Exhibition

Curated by Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Su Wei, the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale is a research-based exhibition consisting of various components: Unexpected Encounters, an examination of individual practices in China from 1989 to 2000; What You See is What I See, a grouping of recent works made by Chinese artists and artists from all over the world; Public Projects, four special commissions for public venues. In the exhibition, artworks made from 1989 to 2000 in China in Unexpected Encounters and recent works by Chinese and international artists in What You See is What I See will intermingle with each other in the exhibition rather than being presented in two sections. The exhibition opens on May 12, 2012.

Opening Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-17:30 hrs (Monday closed), Admission Free.

Address: OCAT Hall A/B & B10, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Tel: 86-755-26915102

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS & DOCUMENTATIONS:

(1994) Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Project Agenda (*1994, a publication of artists’ proposals edited by Wang Luyan, Wang Youshen, Chen Shaoping, and Wang Jianwei) and, 45 Degree as a Reason, Agree to the Date November 26th as a Reason (*1995, 1994, two postcard-based exhibitions curated by Geng Jianyi), Black Cover Book, White Cover Book, Grey Cover Book (*1994 – 1997, a publication initiated and edited by Ai Weiwei, Xu Bin and Zeng Xiaojun), Josef Dabernig (*1956, Austria), Chen Shaoxiong (*1962, Shantou/China), Chen Zhou (*1987, Zhejiang/China), Josef Dabernig (*1956, Austria), Ding Yi (*1962, Shanghai/China), Fang Lu (*1981, Guangzhou/China), Laura Oldfield Ford (*1973, Halifax/UK), Simon Fujiwara (*1982, London/UK), Gu Dexin (*1962, Beijing/China), Guan Xiao (*1983, Chongqing/China), Hao Jingban(*1985, China), Hu Yun (*1986, Shanghai/China), Huang Ran (*1982, Xichang/China), Huang Yongping (*1954, Xiamen/China), Lee Mingwei (Taiwan/China), Li Yongbin (*1963, Beijing/China), Li Fuchun (*1983, Jilin/China), Li Ran (*1986, Hubei/China), Li Yu (*1973, Wuhan/China) + Liu Bo (*1977, Shishou/China), Lin Yilin (*1964, Guangzhou/China), Liu Shiyuan (*1985, Beijing/China), Lu Zhengyuan (*1982, Liaoning/China), Darius Mikšys (*1969, Kaunas/Lithuania), Haroon Mirza (*1977, London/UK), Nástio Mosquito (*1981, Angola), Qian Weikang (*1963, Shanghai/China), Kelly Schacht (*1983, Belgium), Shi Chong (*1963, Huangshi/China), Song Dong (*1966, Beijing/China), Sui Jianguo (*1956, Qingdao/China), Tsang Kinwah (*1976, Shantou/China), Katleen Vermeir(*1973, Belgium) & Ronny Heiremans (*1962, Belgium), Danh Vo (*1975, Vietnam), Wang Jianwei (*1958, Sichuan/China), Wang Gongxin (Beijing/China), Wang Guangyi (*1957, Harbin/China), Wang Luyan (*1956, Beijing/China), Wang Xingwei (*1969, Shenyang/China), Wang Youshen (Beijing/China), Wild (*1997, a publication of site-specific projects curated by Song Dong and Guo Shirui ), Wu Wenguang (*1956, Kunming/China), Xu Bing (*1955, Chongqing/China), Yan Xing (*1986, Chongqing/China), Yu Honglei (Inner Mongolia/China), Zhang Enli (*1965, Jilin/China), Zhang Peili (*1957, Hangzhou/China), Zhang Xiaogang (*1958, Kunming/China), Zhou Tiehai (*1966, Shanghai/China), Zhu Jia (Beijing/China).

Performances

Yan Xing

4:.30 p.m., May 12

OCAT Hall B10, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Nástio Mosquito

5:.30 p.m., May 12

OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Artists’ Talks

What You See is What I See

Lee Mingwei

Date: May 10, Thursday

Time: 7:30 p..m..

Moderator: Liu Ding

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Dahn Vo

Date: May 11, Friday

Time: 7:30 p.m.

Moderator: Su Wei

Language: English, with Chinese translation

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Josef Dabernig

Date: May 13, Sunday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Liu Ding

Language: English, with Chinese translation

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Individual Narratives: Contemporary Art Practice in China from 1989 to 2000

Ding Yi

Date: June 22, Friday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Liu Ding

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Wang Gongxin

Date: June 23, Saturday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Liu Ding

Language: Chinese

Venue: Hua Art Salon,OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Sui Jianguo

Date: June 24, Sunday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Liu Ding

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Wang Luyan

Date: July 21, Saturday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Fang Lihua

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Song Dong

Date: July 22, Sunday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Fang Lihua

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Zhang Peili

Date: August 18, Saturday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Su Wei

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, ChinaOCT-ART, Shennan Blvd. 9009#, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China

Chen Shaoxiong

Date: August 19, Sunday

Time: 2:30 p.m.

Moderator: Su Wei

Language: Chinese

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Screenings

Josef Dabernig

Date: May 19, 20, Saturday, Sunday

Time: 2:30p.m.

Venue: Hua Salon, XXXOCT-ART, Shennan Blvd. 9009#, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, China

Date: May 26, 27, Saturday, Sunday

Venue: OCAT Hall A3+, OCT-LOFT, Enping Road, Overseas Chinese Town, Shenzhen, China

Free admission for all events.

Artist Statement

My recent work is about a return to nature, which takes the form of a couple of fruit trees or a mountain. I feel that only by being in nature will one feel extremely peaceful; where one can find a serenity that emanates from the inner self. It is a place free of slogans and there is nothing to fathom. By returning to this boundless inner sanctum, one can access a life force. Perhaps it is only that for me? I feel closer to myself as I channel this internal energy into my painting.

Preface

Red Gate Gallery is pleased to present Chen Ke’s first solo show of oil paintings. Chen was nominated by Wang Yuping as part of the Two Generations exhibition celebrating Red Gate’s 20th Anniversary in 2011, which is now touring Australia.

Chen’s rich red paintings describe the utopia of the late 50’s and early 60s when the republic was emerging from the revolution and building a New China. Everyone was pulling together, everyone was equal and everyone thought the future was bright, and Red. This nostalgia for the simpler times is in stark contrast to the China of today, which is anything but united or equal. The future may still be bright, but who knows which colors will be used to paint the future canvases of Chen Ke.

Chen Ke is a Beijing-based artist who is inspired by old photographs of the bygone Mao era. Using impasto technique, under Chen’s palette knife the nostalgic black and white prints become flaming contemporary scenes which appear teleported from the revolutionary years of the 1950s and 1960s to the present. There has been a sentimental revival of the Mao era in recent years in reaction to the economic boom. Chen represents a generation which spent part of its childhood growing up under the Mao regime but were not traumatised by social upheavals like the Cultural Revolution. For Chen, the Mao era represents a certain innocence where life was simple and as everyone was poor, it was a fairly egalitarian society. For artists of Chen’s generation there is perhaps a need to reconcile the conflicting ideologies that marked their childhood and adulthood. Chen’s art could be seen as a testament to this psyche.

About the Exhibition

Duration: April 28th–June 3rd

Gallery Hours: 9 am – 5 pm Everyday

Venue: Red Gate Gallery

Address: Levels 1 & 4, Dongbianmen Watchtower, Dongcheng, Beijing

Tel/ Fax: (86 10) 6525 1005

Courtesy of Chen Ke and Red Gate Gallery, for further information please visit www.redgategallery.com.

Face Contact Beijing, the thematic exhibition of Photo España Festival 2011, frames the concept of “Interfaces: Portraiture and Communication” to which this Spanish event was dedicated in its last edition. This leading project, to be presented at Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, can be seen as a continued exploration of the universal significance of portraiture and communication in our everyday life. In the active context of China, the discussion about photography, art and the contrast of what is both old and new, will create a humanistic effect different from that in the West.

When working with an interface as a kind of portraiture, the “face”, underlined in this exhibition as a means of human communication, tries to communicate with the viewer’s face producing a new meaning derived from this communication. The viewer will work on the information from the portraiture and will be projecting his (her) understanding and interpretation onto the “face” of the portraiture. The aim of this exhibition, as the focus of this extended field, is to examine the possibility of the communication between portraiture and the face by means of “interface” as a metaphor.

Face Contact Beijing will show the works of twenty nine international artists from different countries and backgrounds and working in different ways, but all devoted to the exploration of the multiple meanings of portraiture using a concerted effort. Faces in images have long been used in communication to show dialogues between entities, and as an indication of the practical function of the face and portraiture in semantics.

Face Contact Beijing completely rejects the view that it is an encyclopedic exhibition or that it presents one simplified theme, but it’s the result of a new curatorial practice. Moreover, this practice has changed the exhibition format in the museum’s permanent collections. Like many other cultural discourses, the contemporary curatorial concepts, greatly influenced by post-structuralism and post-modernism, escape from the big narratives and focus on fragments, micro-politics and the heterodox and pluralistic tendencies.

As a conclusion, this exhibition focuses on the means of communication through portraiture from its interior elements, thus revealing the diversity, complexity and intensity of modern portraiture and aesthetics — the artists construct and deconstruct these portraitures with great freedom. Beyond their own space and significance, the images are also displayed for the double “face contact”, which, like the project, can be viewed as an effort to build the continuity of vision in order to respond and to explore the discourse and imagination involved in contemporary portraiture.

PHotoEspaña link: http://www.phedigital.com

About the Exhibition

Title: FACE CONTACT–Beijing

Artists: LILIANA ANGULO   ANANKÉ ASSEFF   BEAUTIFULAGONY.COM( LAUREN OLNEY & RICHARD AWRENCE)   JORGE BRANTMAYER   NANCY BURSON   LUIS CAMNITZER   JEANETTE CHÁVEZ   COLECTIVO MR MR   LUCFOSTHER DIOP   EUGENIO DITTBORN   HANS-PETER FELDMANN   JÉRÔME FORTIN   SHADI GHADIRIAN   SIMRYN GILL   SHILPA GUPTA   MONA HATOUM   JOSÉ IRAOLA   KAN XUAN   PEDRO LEMEBEL   JARBAS LOPES   CRISTINA LUCAS   DULCE PINZÓN   LILIANA PORTER   LIBIA PO

Curator: Gerardo Mosquera

Opening Ceremony: Saturday, April 28, 2012, 4:00 p.m.

Date: 2012.04.28 – 2012.06.24

Address: E06, 798 Art Zone, 4 Jiuxianqiao Rd., Chaoyang Dist., Beijing

Long March Space is pleased to present Zhang Hui’s solo exhibition Groundless curatored by Colin Chinnery. Following the solo exhibition 21st Floor and a Half at Long March Space in 2009, Groundless represents artist Zhang Hui’s 3 years of profound creation of works. The exhibition is structured by key words ”onlookers”, ”neon”, “life buoy”, “listen” and “dialogue”.

In Heidegger’s words, the work of art “sets up a world and keeps it in force”. This is a good description of Zhang Hui’s painting process. Zhang Hui constantly denies existing objects attributes, giving the ontology new possibilities. Common material like buoys, ears and shoes are floating above the black background on canvas demonstrating a real existing presence and uncompromising contradiction on visual terms.

Zhang Hui searches for the space where reality and the subconscious, the normal and the abnormal interact. In his recent work, Zhang continues his performance exploration of duration and its relationship to ideas of time and space through an investigation of painting. Zhang’s subjects move from the rituals of banality which are anchored in everyday life, to the quest for dreaming – two primary components of this artist’s evocative dramas. His surfaces full of gestures scale human existence on a spiritual and psychological level, employing elements of the theatrical (through color and scale) to create a dreamscape whereby his subject’s vulnerability is exposed to the viewer, often triggered by lines of text, seemingly borrowed from traditional fairytales and folklore, floating amid the landscape.

Zhang Hui’s suspicion of our reality is shaped by a reverence for existence itself, and it is through this reverence that an attempt to describe it is possible. By a process of a constant negation of his own practice, Zhang Hui has found the earth Heidegger wrote of that conceals infinite potential, from which an alternative world can emerge. With his black canvases, Zhang Hui’s work tries to describe a world that has just begun.

Curator Colin Chinnery:

“Groundless”, the title of Zhang Hui’s solo show at Long March Space, is a word that denotes a lack of foundation, a lack of rational basis for something. Reality is tangible, but at the same time it is constructed. Although it is real, it doesn’t have to be believed in. The basis for which things are the way they are cannot be taken for granted, and the more one examines the structure of the man made world, the more one can question the foundations it depends on. The supermarkets, apartment blocks, social structures, and new beliefs all appears to have emerged to fill the void left by the decay or death of traditional culture in the wake of failed revolution. As an artist, how does one describe a reality that appears so emptied of meaning? This is the central question for Zhang Hui as he approaches his canvases, and this question has driven him to renounce his own work over and again as he has attempted to build a world that doesn’t rely on the artificial construction of today’s fragile reality.

About the artist:

Zhang Hui (b. 1967, Heilongjiang Province) is a significant member of the post-89 generation of Chinese artists trained in stage and set design at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. Whether it is the act of performance itself, or human interrelationships evidenced through painting and the construction of sculptural installation, Zhang Hui’s practice makes continual reference to the theatre as a sense of physical awareness, but also as a mental space through which we further understand our relationship to ideas of lived and imagined realities. He was a key figure, alongside prominent artists such as Liu Wei, Zhu Yu and Qiu Zhijie, in the collaborative artistic activities of the ‘Post Sense: Sensibility’ Group of the late 1990s.

Zhang Hui was recently featured in 21st Floor and a half (solo) at Long March Space, Beijing, 2009; Farewell to Postcolonialism: the Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, 2008; Partial Zone, Long March Space, Beijing (solo), 2007; Buzz…, Multimedia performance, Taipei Museum of Art, Kao-Chung Museum of Art, Taipei, China Taiwan, 2005 and Shanghai Biennale, 2004. His performance explorations have taken place extensively across China and throughout Asia and the USA.

About the Exhibition

Date: Apr 28, 2012 – Jun 17, 2012

Opening: Apr 28, 2012, Saturday

Venue: Long March Project (Beijing, China)

Courtesy of Zhang Hui and Long March Space, for further information please visit www.longmarchspace.com or contact lm@longmarchspace.com.

Xiang Jing's Work

Part IV Art: Satisfying the self or saving the world?

Xiang: I agree with what you said about restraining yourself and ascertaining it within the artwork. Artwork is like an object that stands as evidence of your thinking in a certain period of time, at least for the artist as an individual. What I’ve always worried about is, aside from its significance to me, can artwork carry anything else? I’ll use myself as an example. Art is a profession where it is easy to realize your individual values and satisfy your need to express. In this era, you can gain yet more benefits, the “success” you mentioned. Sometimes you of course feel that your own artworks are good, and when you made them, you were in a very closed state, persisting for a very long time. It’s like when someone says a lot of things, and he of course hopes to be heard by others, hopes that what he abides to can be spread to others and influence others, or at least be shared. On the other hand, we always have a lot of issues with this world, thinking that this or that is bad or not good. When you create an artwork that you think is good, you are hoping that while you criticize the world, you can also produce something constructive. Through this effort, you can feel that the world won’t become too bad. When you have this “power,” you sometimes can’t distinguish between the two. Art is the best way to realize your own self-worth, but it isn’t necessarily a good way to save the world. I’m often caught between these two things. Every time I complete an exhibition, it is like depression – I feel drained for a period of time, wondering whether this thing was significant for myself or for this world. I’m cast into major doubt, my confidence has been hollowed out, and I can’t continue.

Chen: I feel that the question of “why people create” isn’t posed very well. When other people ask why I do what I do, I don’t do it for you, I don’t do it for profit, and not, in this sense, for the masses. All I can say is that I write for myself. The main issue is that the question of “why do you write” isn’t posed very well.

I recently wrote a short essay on the matter. For any spiritual activity, you can’t ask “why” or “who is it for” on any meaningful level. In the essay, some simple things like jumping in to save someone that is drowning. Why did he do it? He didn’t do it for any reason. If you must ask why he did it, then he’d say he did it to save that person. In the same way, if we ask why you made this artwork, I would guess it was to make the artwork. Why do you want to make your artwork like this? In the end, it comes down to what kind of a person you are. Back to the man who jumped into the water. Why did he jump inwhen others walked away or just stood there and watched? He’s not the same kind of person as they are. When you are already making the artwork, in a fundamental sense, you are not making it for the public or for society. To say that artworks with concrete social significance were made out of the artist’s sense of social responsibility is quite misleading. It’s just like the man who jumped into the water. He didn’t save that person just because he wants to fulfill his responsibility to society.

As to what significance your artwork has for society, I think that for the most part, it doesn’t have a lot to do with you. It’s not up to you. That’s basically what is meant when people say that artworks have their own destiny. You’re not thinking about how society should react to your artwork; you’re just doing what you want to do. You may have always cared about social issues, and this concern is connected to your artwork in another way. You’re not necessarily trying to solve some social issue with every artwork.

Though when we create artworks, we are thinking about what we should do rather than how society and the audience should react, once the artwork is complete, I believe that we all care about how society and the audience react. I don’t think that this is a contradiction. Your description just now was very realistic. You say that you make your artwork behind closed doors, and when the artwork comes into being, it marks an end to a period of certain sentiments. At this time, I listen to the audience’s reaction.

But there are many different ways to listen, and this is connected to what kind of person you are. The more internalized the listening is, the more connected it is to what kind of person you are. You’re not necessarily happy just because the social reaction is good. What’s more important is that you are not so much examining the reaction the artwork provokes, you are looking introspectively upon yourself, because you made that artwork, and you want to know whether or not it is any good. When you listen to that reaction, you don’t really care about whether the response is positive or negative; you are examining yourself through the reactions of others, trying to find out whether or not you truly succeeded in making what it is you wanted to make. When you are making it, in a certain sense you are one hundred percent confident in yourself, certain that you must do it this way to get it right. But you might actually be seeing it wrong, or fooling yourself. You thought that this is what you wanted to do, but when a weighty criticism comes, you realize that it wasn’t that there are faults with the work. When you react to these critiques, you still aren’t directly responding to the criticism, but hopefully, through this criticism, you have become more profound, richer, and you continue, as this new self, to make more artworks again. I’m not sure if that was very clear, but that is the basic process.

This is half the story. As for my understanding of the other half, you say that each exhibition is the result of a process of three years working behind closed doors. I think that there are two aspects to this experience: one is the joy of finally completing something, of putting something down; the other is a feeling of being drained. A lot of people compare it to giving birth. You could use another analogy, such as sending a child abroad. A lot of the time it is more like the latter, because you have fulfilled your responsibilities, having raised and educated the child to become an adult. Sometimes it’s not like giving birth. Once you give birth, for the mother at least, that means things have just begun. It is still in your hands, and has no power of its own. It is a part of you. But when you send your child abroad, it’s kind of like what they say about artworks having their own destiny. At this point, the mother and father have a sense of accomplishment, even of relaxation, but then there is the other aspect – it has left, it is no longer connected to me or a part of me. A child and an artwork have emptied you out and left.

Xiang: Sometimes I really like using another analogy. When an artwork is finished, it is like a mirror. It is a mirror for me, as well as for the audience – everyone sees nothing but himself in it. I’m often startled by my works, because of this strong sense of unfamiliarity. When you’re making it, it comes from your body. All you have to do is focus on what you are thinking and feeling, and strive to transform it, letting it out through a good channel. When it is in the exhibition space, it is like you’re facing a life that you don’t know. Sometimes it startles me. Its power is something that the artist has no way of imagining. At this point, a distance grows between you and the artwork. You couldn’t imagine it, and it can’t be controlled, the feeling of the unfamiliar power of the artwork that works against you. I use the analogy of the mirror because it shows yourself, and this can be surprising.

Chen: I think that everyone has this kind of feeling towards their works to a certain extent. But your works, especially to us outsiders, appear to particularly belong to this category. People often say that your works are kind of existentialist, and there is something in that.

Xiang: I don’t know. My new works this year might be a bit different. I don’t know if I’ll have such strong feelings.

Chen: Next time we meet, I’d like to hear what you feel. This is interesting. You’re kind of like Flaubert. Flaubert has been described as the coldest of authors, and they were at least half right. I remember seeing the first caricature of him, where he was wearing a doctor’s coat and wielding a scalpel, as if he created his work by calmly doing autonomy with the scalpel. But Flaubert had another side, he is said to have said that Madame Bovary was himself. That’s quite similar to what you just said. When he wrote, it was much like creating a work of art, but when the artwork comes out, it’s something you can’t even imagine yourself.

To be continued…

About the author

Chen Jiaying was born in Shanghai in 1952. He entered into the Western Languages and Literature Department of Peking University in 1977, studying German, and began studying in the United States in November 1983. He received his doctorate in 1990 with his thesis Name, Meaning and Meaningfuless and then went to work in Europe. He currently teaches philosophy as a Professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing. His works include Introduction to the Philosophy of Heidegger, Philosophy of Language, The Irreducible Eidos, Philosophy Science, Common Sense, Zephyr, Beginning with Sense and Dianoesis; his translations include Philosophical Investigations, Being and Time, Linguistics in Philosophy and Sense and Sensibility among others. He is considered to be one of the most influential philosophers of the contemporary age.

Courtesy of Xiang Jing and Chen Jiajing.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

You who live safe

In your warm houses,

You who find, returning in the evening,

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man

Who works in the mud,

Who does not know peace,

Who fights for a scrap of bread,

Who dies because of a yes or a no.

Consider if this is a woman

Without hair and without name,

With no more strength to remember,

Her eyes empty and her womb cold

Like a frog in winter.

…

—Primo Levi, If This is a Man, 1947

Guangdong Times Museum has the pleasure to present Jiang Zhi: If This is a Man from April 28 to June 24, 2012. It is the first solo exhibition organized by Guangdong Times Museum since its inauguration, and the first of Jiangzhi’s solo presented by a museum in China. The exhibition revisits the concepts about artist, exhibition making and solo exhibition, which triggers a process of “re-viewing” and “reproduction.”

Today, the influence and decisive power of the entire art system over artistic practices has already far surpassed that of any single person. The difference between an artist and a non-artist is perhaps only determined by whether or not “the man” is—either actively or passively—situated within this very system. When one restores the images of an artist from the previous ones, such as the prodigy, the lunatic, the nobleman, the hero, the recluse, the star or the great man to a man; and set aside the idea of the “art system”, “the man” insofar could be disenchanted to just “a man.” The interaction between the museum public, the artist and the curator have made the subject of this exhibition no longer the artist as an individual but instead the field of a multiple “everyone.” Possibly the most interesting, however, is that a fabricated character, “Mu Mu,” has also entered into the subject of the exhibition. “Mu Mu” can be any person, including a member of the audience.

In this exhibition, Jiang Zhi takes on the role of a curator and reflects on the concept of the “artist” and his/her persona. There are four exhibitions under the title of “If This Is a Man”: Jiang Zhi’s solo exhibition curated by the curators; The Man with the Eye-white and Landscape of the Very Spirit curated by Jiang Zhi; and the museum constructed for “Mu Mu”; there is no linear relationship of subordination between them, but four paralleled mirrored worlds.

Is artist “a man”? Under such a construct, who is “a man” is hard to say at this point. Is it Jiang Zhi the individual? Is it Xiong Wangzhou, his fellow painter from hometown? Is it “Landscape of the Very Spirit”, the once closely watched blog identity? Or is it “Mu Mu”, the doll and mask? Of course, “a man” can also be someone connected to Jiang Zhi’s works, such as the poet Forefinger, the actress Ah-Jiao, or Jiang Zhi’s friends and relatives. “A man” might appear in a written passage, a recorded segment, a video or a photograph. “A man” could be in the exhibition hall looking at the artworks, or reading this text right now.

Jiang Zhi was born in 1971 in Yuanjiang City, Hunan Province and graduated from the China Academy of Art in 1995. Jiang spent his early years in the city of Shenzhen and currently lives in Beijing. Jiang uses video, painting, photography, installation, writing and other mediums, blurring the boundaries between fictional documentary, mediated images and private narratives to reveal the intersections and segmentations between the body, desire and emotion of different individual and its representation or imagination in contemporary society. Selected exhibitions include: The Power of Doubt, Photo España, Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid, Spain (2011); Super-Organism CAFAM Biennial, Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing; Attitude, Shanghai, Arario Art Space, Shanghai and Platform China, Beijing (2009–2010); The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou (2005); Techniques of the Visible-The 5th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Museum of Art (2004); The 5th System, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen (2003); Zone of Urgency-The 50th Venice Biennale (2003); Pause, The 4th Gwangju Biennial, Korea(2002); Fantasia / Under Construction, Space imA, Seoul, Korea(2001); Post-Sense Sensibility, Beijing (1999).

The publication If This is a Man will be released at the opening of the exhibition. This publication collects a selection of the artist’s writings as well as essays and interviews by the curators. Aside from a selection of critical essays, the publication has also collected various writings about the artist by Qiu Zhijie, Chen Tong, Chen Xiaoyun and others. This publication is presented by the Guangdong Times Museum.

Round-up Events

Sun. April 22, 2012, 14:30–17:00, What is Artist, Artist is What- Talk by Bao Dong

Mon. April 23, 2012, 20:00–22:00, A Talk of No Talking- Artist Talk by Jiang Zhi / Venue: Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts

Sun. April 29, 2012, 14:00–16:00, Terrace Conversation: Yang Fudong, Chen Xiaoyun and Jiang Zhi on Video Arts; Moderated by: Du Qingchun

Fri. June 22, 2012, 20:00–21:30, Art Overtime “Jiang Zhi: If It is A Man” Friday Late Art

Learn and Experience (during the exhibition)

- Mu Mu and Me

5 masks of Mu Mu will be shared with 4 local universities and provided for the audience at the museum’s reception. Each participant can spend three days to construct his/her own story of Mu Mu by photography. 10 to 15 photos and a introductory text less than 1000 words should be sent to info@timesmuseum.org by June 10, and a selection of six groups of works would be on view within the Museum of Mu Mu in the last week of the exhibition ( June 17-24, 2012).

- See With Them

4 to 8 special guests would be invited by the museum to select one of their favorite works in the show, and share their ideas and thinking with the audiences.

Date: Apr 28, 2012 – Jun 24, 2012

Opening: Apr 28, 2012, Saturday

Venue: Times Art Museum (Guangzhou, China)

Curator: Bao Dong, Cai Yingqian

Artist: Jiang Zhi

Organizer: Times Art Museum (Guangzhou, China)

Courtesy of Jiang Zhi and Times Art Museum, for further information please visit www.timesmuseum.org.

Since its founding, CAFA has built an extensive collection of the outstanding work by its alumni. To this day, the collection has become an integral part of the history of fine arts education in China. Many of our alumni have emerged as leaders and representatives of the development of Chinese art. In this sense, the CAFA alumni have a crucial place in Chinese art history: it is the unique art treasure that foresees future evolution.

In recent years, CAFA has embarked on many experiments in order to transform the academy and its teaching. The efforts have broadened our artistic boundaries, our students’ vision and their artistic thinking with significant success. In 2008, CAFA founded a new contemporary art museum, which has allowed our alumni’s outstanding works to expand. As the organization of the CAFA Art Museum becomes more refined, the graduation exhibition of the Central Academy of Fine Arts can be taken as the summarization of postgraduates’ study at the campus as well as the starting point of their new journey, which continually reveals the uniqueness of our era and CAFA’s accomplishments in education.

About the Exhibition

Duration: April 28th—May 13th

Venue: CAFA Art Museum

Opening Ceremony: 3:00pm, April 28th, 2012

Address: No.8 Hua Jia Di Nan St., Chao Yang District, Beijing, 100102 P. R. China

Tel: 8610-64771575

Fax: 8610-64771699

Arrangements:

April 28th—May 4th: School of Chinese Painting, Department of Oil Painting, Department of Printmaking, Department of Mural Painting, Foundation Program, Department of Experimental Art, Research Institute of Plastic Arts;

May 7th—May 13th: School of Design, School of City Design, School of Architecture, Department of Sculpture.

Library No.6, 2012; Books, wood, steel and hardware, 450×280×120cm

Entitled Foreign, Liu Wei’s first solo exhibition takes place at Almine Rech Gallery from April 14th through to May 16th, 2012.

Born in Beijing in 1972, Liu Wei was the subject in 2011 of a solo exhibition entitled Trilogy at the Minsheng Art Museum of Shanghai, and in that same year he took part in the exhibition Liu Wei and Ai Weiwei at the Faurschou Foundation Beijing. In 2010 he was included in the Shanghai Biennale and contributed to DREAMLANDS, a show held at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Exhibition View of Foreign Liu Wei’s First Solo Exhibition in Paris Presented at Almine Rech Gallery

Library No.3, 2012; Books, wood, steel and hardware, 180×170×120cm

The installations, paintings and videos of Liu Wei, the artist spearheading the new Chinese art scene, constantly oscillate between order and disorder. Through his work, Liu Wei translates the chaos of his native city, a city that is in a permanent state of development, that keeps reinventing itself to fill the exponential needs of its hyper-productivity. Made out of schoolbooks, his at times sprawling installations waver between utopia and dystopia. They depict cities in a state of metamorphosis, home to a range of iconic buildings, from the Pentagon to Saint Peter’s Basilica, among others. Liu Wei refuses the ruling principle of an identifiable style and conventional aesthetic criteria. His work is an attempt to perpetuate the precepts of a country with a Confucian tradition, as can be seen in the series of paintings Purple Air (2005-2011) and Meditation (2009- ). At first sight, the works in Purple Air resemble a reflection on the typically Western notion of a univocal, horizontal landscape. Besides being a homage to Richter, the series conveys above all the fragmented vision of a polluted and gridded city, somewhere between a kaleidoscope, a TV test card and a bar code, a vision which brings to light more or less perceptible worlds. The paintings in the Meditation series, on the other hand, revert to a horizontal vision of the world. Consisting of broad-brush strokes, these canvases, depicting both the break of day and night itself, reflect the growing distance between Liu Wei and an urban architecture that is both alienating and stimulating. Above all, these canvases evoke the notion of perspective in the pictorial field and the manner in which the artist positions himself in relation to his own artistic practice.

Colors No.1, 2012; oil on canvas, 180×440cm

Exotic Lands n°6, 2011; Door, wood, stainless steel, 223×127×5cm

Exotic Lands n°7, 2011; Door, wood, stainless steel, 205×92.5×5cm

About the Exhibition

Duration: 14 April – 16 May, 2012

Venue: Almine Rech Gallery, 19 RUE SAINTONGE, F-75003 PARIS

Tel: +33 (0)1 45 83 71 90

Fax: +33 (0)1 45 70 91 30

Courtesy of Liu Wei and Almine Rech Gallery, for further information please visit www.galeriealminerech.com or contact PARIS@ALMINERECH.COM .

Artist Statement

Fragrance of the dust, the dust of a lifetime: In Chinese, “dust” represents the “past”. Every moment we experience also instantly becomes a part of our history, leaving behind traces of memory including memories of smells that belong to the past.

I have been living abroad for quite some time, far away from my hometown and father and mother, which fills me with a deep attachment for Hunan, the place of my birth. Looking at those familiar and unfamiliar people and street scenes in Hunan, I always experience for an instant the fragility of memory. After every visit and departure of mine, I cannot help recalling the scenes and smells left behind, but details always allude me, dissolving into the vast grey matter of one’s many memories.

I would like to rouse some kind of feelings in the heart of the audience with my works, as we all try hard to recall long-forgotten faces, often to no avail, with a remaining feeling of helplessness. My solution is to willingly spend a great amount of time carefully putting down the faint traces of my memory on paper with my pencil. Of course, I use photos to aid my work; most of these photos were taken by me. These images define the scenes that I have experienced. I don’t depict memories with purpose; rather, I attempt to express the feelings brought about by my recollections, in the way I know best.

In my oil paintings, I choose to use the canvases’ original surface as the main subject of my composition, reversing the traditional process. The unpainted areas are my subject matter, and the background shadows remain like a photo negative, using thin layers of white paint I can highlight the areas of the canvas deliberately left empty. In this way, like the painting technique of leaving blank areas in traditional Chinese painting, with almost no paint in the darkest sections, I can reveal the subtle passage of time, emotion and traces of life.

Luo Mingjun: Dust, Solo Exhibit at Pekin Fine Arts

Opening Reception: 2 – 6 pm, 21 Apr, 2011

Exhibition Dates: 21 Apr – 3 Jul, 2012

Venue: Pekin Fine Arts, No.241 Cao Chang Di Village, Cui Ge Zhuang, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Tel: (8610) 5127 3220

Courtesy of Luo Mingjun and Pekin Fine Arts, for further information please visit www.pekinfinearts.com or contact info@pekinfinearts.com .

A Hunger for Life–The Preface to Flowers

by Huang Yaji

In the mass grave, the pistil of higanbana(also known as Equinox Flower) faded among the dead polar, which was like an aging prostitute’s private parts. In 1967, Araki Nobuyoshi took pictures of Higanbana at the Net Free temple with a white backdrop and this was his initial meeting with the flowers. In 2004, Nobuyoshi painted on the flowers as if was he putting on lipstick for his mother in her coffin, he took his mother’s last photo just before her life was sucked totally out of her by death. The black setting set off the gorgeous image of death, just like flames blooming in the darkness, like a fierceness in the eroticism and dissected internal organs. Colors dripping from the flowers are hungers for life.

The painted works were therefore even more real, the works destroyed by the painting became a mirror, under which, could be seen glittering the splendor of life and sex. Erotic flower is the same, dampened pistil and petal, which beyond the senses, are both destruction and praise. Beneath Nobuyoshi’s annular flashlight, desired life, death, sex, the shore and the other side combined to a whole. What is called aliveness is from being alive to death, the love of life and death is photography.

After Yoko died, the first thing that Araki Nobuyoshi took were the withered flowers. On 17th of May, 2007, Yoko’s birthday, Araki presented one thousand love flowers to his wife, the magnolia, the tulip and the anthurium, which symbolize life and death, between which fortune and misfortune made Nobuyoshi became a photographer, isn’t it all in the world?

“Yoko performed an operation due of fibroids, but then she was found to have uterine neoplasms. The doctor said she only had 6 months to live. But I cannot talk to her about it. Almost every day I went to the hospital to see her with flowers, because I love her very, very much.”

“In order to comfort me, my husband always brought a bunch of flowers full of vitality to see me, the sunflowers are so beautiful. After my husband left, I looked at the yellow sunflowers, feeling his posture, temperature and smell, so I kept on looking at them. I felt that deep yearning does exist, really. It can cure the body and mind of patients. I cannot stop the tears rolled down my cheeks.”

“Looking at the works, these flowers remind me of plentiful of memories,” Nobuyoshi said.

About the Exhibition

Duration: Apr. 28-May 28, 2012

Venue: Aura Gallery

Add: #8502, 798 East Street No.2, Jiuxiangqiao Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Tel/Fax: 8610-59789280

Courtesy of Aura Gallery, for further information please visit www.aura-art.com.

LEO XU PROJECTS is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Shanghai of Hangzhou-based Cheng Ran, a young artist critically acclaimed for his distinctive visual language and style that connects the cinema with relevant cultures of the time. The show runs from April 22nd through to May 27th 2012 and will be accompanied by a catalogue and off-site projects initiated and produced by the artist.

WHAT WHY HOW, 2011, Single channel video with sound, 7 min.

Named after a video Cheng Ran made in 2010, the exhibition “What Why How” premieres four of the latest videos produced over the past year. “What Why How”, as the artist observes, refers to both a pattern for study and the analytical thinking adopted in the stock market. Parodying the way Western films’ titles are translated into Chinese in Hong Kong, Cheng Ran transliterated this three-word term and lends it identity of a fictional male character. As the video “What Why How” examines the significance of life and belief through the protagonist repeatedly questioning and conversing with himself, the show—with a deliberate absence of this eponymous video—continues the artist’s recent probe and narrows the focus onto his philosophy of motion pictures.

For this exhibition, the ground floor gallery is transformed into a cinema with a presentation of two single-channel videos that mark the centerpieces of the show. “1971-2000” (2012) opens up a box of memories of the cinematic classics that have left an enormous impact on Cheng and his peers who access contemporary cinema through second-hand resources, bootleg products and more recently the internet. Appropriating iconic elements from “A Clockwork Orange” (Stanely Kubrick, 1971) and “The Million Dollar Hotel” (Wim Wenders, 2000), the artist created a new film of a young man throwing himself off a rooftop, which however reconciles the contradicting beliefs and viewpoints in these two classics.

Cheng Ran: WHAT WHY HOW 01

Cheng Ran: WHAT WHY HOW 03

The other video “Angels for the Millennium (#6)” (2012) filmed an unlikely rescue in deep water. When projected upside down, the whole process—the drowning man ascends peacefully and slowly, later attended by lifeguards—only makes for a tranquil and sacred rite. Mimicking Bill Viola’s historic video installation “Five Angels for the Millennium” (2001), the work voices the response of Cheng Ran as a young Chinese artist to the parameter of video art set by Western pioneers, whose works are becoming more popular among the Chinese. The video also references the British thriller “The Prisoner” (Patrick McGoohan, 1967), in which the protagonist a secret agent named “Number Six” makes every effort of escaping from the mysteriously isolated dystopian “village” he is held captive in. Confessional and redemptive, Cheng’s Angel Number Six marks the line between belief and indoctrination.

Also on view are two other videos projected in the white and well-lit second-floor gallery, both containing eruptive moments of drama. “Lostalgia” (2012), as the title suggests, plays a word game on Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Nostalghia” (1983). The story develops from the opening act of the latter, with a fabricated scene of fire and Cheng’s reinterpretation of lines. “The Eclipse” (2011) filmed the hypnotizing light effects caused by the vibrating cymbals in a three-minute drum session at his friend’s studio.

Cheng Ran: WHAT WHY HOW, April 22nd through May 27th, 2012

Cheng Ran: WHAT WHY HOW 02

Concurrently, Cheng Ran is included in various exhibitions. On view at Rockbund Art Museum Shanghai is his ten-channel video installation “Dark Red (The Deepest Red)” commissioned for the museum’s ongoing exhibition “Model Home: A Proposition by Michael Lin”. A presentation of his installation “Midnight Art Museum” in the foyer of Bund 18 runs for three months. This installation was featured in “Immersion and Distance”, a two-person show curated by Yang Fudong at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Beijing in 2009. Also a selection of Cheng Ran’s videos is included in the exhibition “Day and Night: Between Reality and Illusion” at The City University of New York, presented by BMCC (CUNY)/ Center for Ethnic Studies in collaboration with Art21: Season 6.

Cheng Ran (b. 1981, in Inner Mongolia) graduated from China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Cheng Ran lives and works in Hangzhou. Cheng’s videos project the innermost world of young Chinese and capture the living experience shaped by the globalized cultures and cultural policies. They integrate elements of the performative, the visual from electronica and rock’n’roll music, and in a few cases, the aesthetics of Chinese ink painting into his cinematic language that is informed by the late 20th century cinema.

Cheng has exhibited at many galleries and institutions in China and abroad, such as “Moving Image in China: 1988-2011” (Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2011), “Farewell to Post-colonialism: The Third Guangzhou Triennial” (Guangdong Art Museum, 2008), “Immersion and Distance” (Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2009), “Yi Pai–Century Thinking” (Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2009), “The Tell-tale Heart” (James Cohan Gallery Shanghai and New York, 2010 and 2011), “In A Perfect World…” (Meulensteen Gallery, New York, 2011), and “Boy: A Contemporary Portrait” (Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai, 2012), etc. Cheng Ran has recently been awarded Best Video Artist of 2011 by the online art journal Randian.

About the Exhibition

Date: Apr 22, 2012 – May 27, 2012

Opening: Apr 22, 2012, 16:00, Sunday

Venue: Leo Xu Projects (Shanghai, China)

Courtesy of Cheng Ran and LEO XU PROJECTS, for further information please visit leoxuprojects.com.

As spring awakens in April, PIFO New Art Gallery is happy to present a dual exhibition: 70′s generation artist Kang Haitao’s “A Burning Within” and a young oil painting professor from Luxun Academy of the Arts Yu Aijun’s “Ink.” This exhibition will continue until May 26.

After 30 years of contemporary art in China, the current era has been called materialistic, hollow, post-modernist, etc. No matter what you call this era, our spirits depend on being moved, and painting gives us that opportunity. Kang Haitao’s work is very important in this regard, as he has gone beyond the confines of the conceptual symbols of contemporary art, and returned to pure and simple painting.

Unlike art that relies on “pictures” to speak, Kang Haitao speaks through the language of painting, using the “act” of painting to express himself. This “act” is a process that he experiences, and this process emerges perceptibly in his works. The works take us in two seemingly opposite directions, but clearly show us the process of the “act” of painting that he experiences, thus differentiating him from other artists of his generation. This “act”, in the release achieved through the works’ details, gives Kang Haitao a special place amongst his contemporaries—he displays painting at its pinnacle, imbues the language of painting with his own experience, and even demands a metaphysical understanding. In the tide of today’s popularized images, this is especially rare, and deserves our continued attention and interest.

Kang Haitao was born in Chongqing in 1976, graduated from the oil painting department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2000, and lives in Chengdu.

In a time of undifferentiated and deficient imagination, Yu Aijun’s works give us a new understanding of originality. How do artists both follow the pulse of the age and maintain a discernible individual quality? In today’s excessive production and conspicuous ambition, Yu Aijun’s art is a bold “return” that gives us hope. Yu Aijun resides in a remote city, is content with being on the fringe of society. This is his conscious choice for his life, and a prerequisite for his unique reflection. The almost 1000 ink paintings created in the past three years illustrate a strength of expression, and reflect an unusually exceptional value system and confidence; they share something with reading and realization, and are grounded in the artist’s innate character and cultivation of gifts.

Yu Aijun was born in 1971 in Liaoning province, graduated with a master’s degree in 2004 from Luxun Academy of the Arts’ Oil Painting Department, and currently lives in Shenyang.

About the Exhibition

Artists: Kang Haitao,Yu Aijun

Duration: April 27th—May 26th

Opening: April 27th 16:00~18:00(Friday)

Address: PIFO Gallery

B-11, 798 Art Area, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Tel: 86 10 59789562

E-mail: info@pifo.cn

Web: www.pifo.cn

The Release of “Painting”–Kang Haitao’s Visual Composition

by Hang Chun Xiao

When Kang Haitao painted a group of abstract works, people familiar with his “night scenes” were astonished: how could he go from his “representational” works to this? It became an oft-asked question, but is not all that strange. Because most people’s comprehension of painting enters directly through the images, they are used to the imagination given by “forms”. As soon as the forms on the canvas transform, comprehension suffers from inertia and lags behind, which is what happened with Kang Haitao’s two series. Kang Haitao has realized this situation and put forth a clear answer: these seemingly abstract works are really what is left over from his “night scenes”; it’s a casual painting, expressing an individual understanding of painting at rest.

Is this really what happened? Are these abstract pieces really not at all connected with his “night scenes”, just the product of an idle hand? The answer is that it’s not necessarily that simple. Of course, some people will doubt this conclusion—the artist himself put forward this explanation, so why should we complicate the issue? There’s no question, the doubt is fair. But the artist’s explanation is not the whole story. For one thing, the artist’s intuitive way of thinking makes it difficult sometimes to express things clearly. For another, in the process of completing a canvas, he often doesn’t use visible logic, but proceeds into the hidden subconscious mind. Therefore, face to face with his works, it’s true that the artist’s own explanation is important, but it’s not a standard answer. This interpretation is not in order to negate, but to explain—let us break away from a fixed “description”, and look again carefully at the paintings to uncover a different kind of visual experience. Actually, the answer is not important. What is important is whether we can discover an even richer experience. This is, perhaps, the highest value of art.

So, facing Kang Haitao’s two seemingly unconnected series, how should we launch a completely new expedition of vision? The starting point, of course, is the canvases. First, let us turn our attention to these abstract works. In terms of the visual result, they are in line with our customary concept of abstract art. But looking more closely, we discover: they are not simply formalistic abstraction because the pieces don’t have a specific abstract goal, but a kind of process of “revision” through constant overlaying. These particular works have kept traces of the “original sketch”, but this blueprint often has no relation to the finished work. In other words, when Kang Haitao was creating these works, the ongoing painting process altered the original plan over and over again. Of course, the revising effect of “the process of painting” on the “original plan” is not new, but generally, we don’t pay attention to those “process” traces—they are forgotten as inconsistencies, or it might be that they are blocked, thus guaranteeing that all we reflect on is the finished product. However, Kang Haitao is clearly different. He intentionally destroys our expectations, and maintains all the marks of revision—even if they have nothing to do with the finished work. Thus, in the constant adjusting and changing of his painting process, Kang Haitao gives us a “transparent” visual composition; in revising again and again, the value of the act of painting emerges, not just painting as a means to an end.

In terms of “painting” as a personal experience, not just a tool of expression, perhaps Kang Haitao is trying to convey some essential information. The so-called abstract pieces indicate that the artist is infatuated with “painting” for himself. They don’t necessarily have a specific visual goal, only to release him from the use of painting as a tool. And through this “release”, we can delight in painting’s original experience in a new way. These abstract works are, in Kang Haitao’s infatuation with the experience of painting itself, an attempt to show us a transparent vision.

So, how is this kind of attempt at transparency connected his “night scenes”? To answer this question, we have to return to the differences between Kang Haitao’s particular “night scenes” and normal night visions. In regards to the visual result, his “night scenes” transform normal visual experiences into unfamiliar visual paradigms, and in this uncertainty, create a kind of calm and distant mental projection. But how does he get from the things we see at night to these projected “night scenes”? Returning to the canvas, we can see that Kang Haitao’s “night scenes” are different from night scenes in reality because he gives us night with disorganized layers of shadow and light. This is an extremely distinctive way of viewing things. Logically, the appearance of images at night depends on some kind of focused light source, and the concentrated area of contrasting shades. But this logic is not what we see with our own eyes. To our eyes, light is not necessarily that focused, but soft and diffused. Kang Haitao grasps and emphasizes this point, giving us a different kind of “night scenes”. So, the question is, how does the artist utilize this angle of observation?

Once this question is put forth, the relationship between Kang Haitao’s two series of works begins to become clarified. The reason is simple: the pervasive layers of light in the “night scenes” depend precisely on the multiple-level revision and layering style in the abstract works. Actually, the unique visual characteristics of the colors of night under Kang Haitao’s brush originate in his unique language of acrylic application. Looking at the surface, this kind of language serves painted forms, like landscapes of trees and walls. But this process of layering the details is not necessarily “re-creation”, but the rhythm of painting language itself. We have a hard time seeing concrete representations of objects; it’s more a process of layering accumulated colors. This feeling is exactly the same as the multiple-layer revision of painting language in his abstract works: it is process of experiencing “painting”, and this process emerges perceptibly in his works. Even though Kang Haitao’s works take us in two seemingly opposite directions, they clearly show us the process of the “act” of painting that he experiences, thus differentiating him from other artists of his generation. Looking from a certain angle, this “act”, in the release achieved through the works’ detail, gives Kang Haitao a special place amongst his contemporaries—he displays painting at its pinnacle, imbues the language of painting with his own experience, and even demands a metaphysical understanding. Unlike art that relies on “pictures” to speak, Kang Haitao speaks through the language of painting, using the release of painting to express himself. In the tide of today’s popularized images, this is especially rare, and deserves our continued attention and interest.

April 10, 2012, Wangjing

Art’s Cool of Night

by Chen Lingyun

At some point, I don’t remember when, Yu Aijun started emailing me photos of his ink paintings. He modestly called them “little works”, and then gave them all sorts of graceful names: “Hidden Spirit”, “Extinguished Fire”, “Empty Valley”, “Tangled”, “Evening”. Whenever he came to Beijing we would eat and talk, speak of these “little works”, speak of exhibitions and collecting. Now, finally, his dream is coming true. When I edited Jiang Xun’s “Six Talks on Loneliness”, I used some of Aijun’s paintings for the illustrations, which he readily agreed to. Looking at the finished book, I think the paintings fit perfectly with the articles about loneliness.

Aijun doesn’t talk much. We’ve never spoken in detail about his “little works”. I was asked to write an article for his exhibition, and as I am not very involved in art, when I tried to use “artistic” words to discuss these “little works”, it ended up feeling stiff. As I was thinking about the article, before I knew it, night had fallen. Outside the window the bright moon was high above, and in a flash I returned to the sleepless nights of my youth.

I thought about Heinrich Heine’s poem: “Our death is in the cool of night/our life is in the pool of day/the darkness glows, I’m drowning/the day has tired me with light”, and how I fell in love with its quiet waning. Thinking back, youthful nights are not necessarily all peaceful coolness; they actually bubble with secret, bright desires. In the jumble of indescribable distress, ripe shame and unrestrained self-pity, sometimes, in the moment before dawn, you can hear the far off train’s whistle, and in a second it seems you understand yourself, understand the world.

I’ve long forgotten those nights. When I see these paintings, I think to myself: In Aijun’s heart, there might reside a love of the nights of youth. He wrote in his “notes”:

“All eyes, every cell, all distracting thoughts are shut, deeply hidden, there are only corn leaves steaming, unfolding, spreading, like a green pestilence. Besides the pumping of my own blood, there is no other sound, only wind—only wind, like a sob. The corn field surrounded by black mountains, all eyes on the corn field. The black corn field hides a secret.”

For me, Aijun’s paintings have accumulated the secrets of northern country nights, and they hold a youthful desire and loneliness. I tend towards the pure imaginative scenes, pinks, deep blues, washed rings of light. Some of his works have strong overtones of symbolism, less silence. I don’t know how Aijun transmits northern desolation through this intricate screened beauty–perhaps the secrets come from the nights, from the village, from the ink and the paper.

I will say that Aijun’s paintings are “art’s cool of night”.

What is “art’s cool of night”? It is the water marks left after the tide has ebbed out; the first breath of wind on the earth after it cools; what is left between the eyebrows after worry has dissipated; the gradual exposure of everything after the fire is extinguished; the souls muttering to themselves after the falling of silence. It is the world returning to the earth, ART returning to artistry, art returning to action. In this adrift and disconnected moment, painting returns to painting.

What significance does today’s painting have? This is the question that every painter must face. The answer may be clever or earnest, but all are somewhat adrift. Aijun has tried his hand at many different forms of art; when I listen to him talk about it, I don’t entirely understand, but get a vague Don Quixote-like melancholy.

I am happy for Aijun, for in this kind of painting he has discovered a way to communicate with himself. I can’t begin to imagine his mood while painting these 1000+ works—the painters of pre-historical cave murals drew wild cow forms in endless darkness and dread.

And now these nighttime paintings will be exhibited in daylight, and here they will be gathered together. We must approach them quietly and gently, not be alarmed at these little works, allow them to remain in the starry night side-by-side with youthful desire, to smolder undisturbed.

April 8-9, 2012

Courtesy of the artists and PIFO Gallery, for further information please visit www.pifo.cn.

It is the Year of the Dragon, considered the most auspicious of the twelve ancient Chinese zodiac symbols. In celebration, the Katonah Museum of Art presents Rising Dragon: Contemporary Chinese Photography, showcasing images over the past ten years by Chinese artists working in their homeland –a period of astounding social and economic transformation. Several of the photographers have long careers and are established names, but have only recently been discovered by American and European museums, galleries, and curators. Exploring landscape, portraiture, architecture, and images of daily life, the artists capture moments that expand our knowledge and understanding of modern-day China. Many of the 80 photographs on view have never before been displayed in the United States.

“I see it as organized chaos,” says curator Miles Barth. “It’s like China itself – a mass of humanity going in every direction at the speed of light. The artists are responding to every aspect of society, everything they see and live.” Subjects addressed a range from the rapid urbanization of the country to the opening of the information age through the Internet. Also included are photographic tableaux with a reference to religion, politics, cultural identity, and the radically changing attitudes towards these societal pillars. Among the photographers represented are Liyu +Liubo, Li Wei, Muge, O Zhang, Tian Taiquan, Yang Yi, Yu Haibo, Zhang Huan, and Zhang Xiao.

About the Exhibition

Date: March 25 – September 2, 2012

Venue: Katonah Museum of Art in New York

Curator: Miles Barth

Courtesy of the artists and Katonah Museum of Art, for further information please visit www.katonahmuseum.org.

Disappearing Traces is the first solo exhibition of Yuan Goang-Ming’s work in Beijing, and it provids an overview of his past and recent works, dating from 1992 to 2011. In these photographs, videos, and new media installations Yuan delves into his life experiences, and simultaneously attends to memory and the removal, breaking down, and separation of context, to tell these stories. His works appear distanced from reality, which he transforms into an illusion, as in the uninhabited streets of the photograph City Disqualified — Hsimen District at Night (2002). The exhibition will be on view from April 21 until May 27, 2012.

City Disqualified--Hismen District at Night, 2002; Digitally Altered Photography, 300X240cm

Fish On Dish, 1992; LCD Video projector, white plate, DVD player, H 240XW 500XL500cm

A pioneer of new media art, Yuan’s works, such as Fish On Dish (1992) and The Cage (1995), show his experiments with vision and video art. In his most recent works he continues his explorations of a state of displacement, all the while, experimenting and pushing the limits of his chosen mediums. In Disappearing Landscape — Passing II (2011), for instance, the cameras dive forward and retreat back, allowing Yuan to build a virtual “passage” of imagery, in an attempt to connect life and death, the “visible” and “invisible,” and to retrace his memories of his father. The traces of portraits, and of memory, remain on the phosphorous-covered boards of the multi-media installations, Disappearing Portrait — Mio and Disappearing Portrait — Ming (both 2011). In each of these two works, the image remains out of focus, up until the very last second, when the figure becomes clear and the projector shuts off. The cycle of appearance and disappearance, of focusing and blurring, is indicative of memory’s nature, and alludes to the inherent fear, darkness, and loneliness produced by changes in the family. From the micro-narratives he creates in his works, to his combination of cinema and video art to capture the every day, the works of Disappearing Traces provide a captivating overview of this ground-breaking artist’s practice.

Disappearing Landscape — Passing Ⅱ, 2011; Digital Photography

Disappearing Portrait — Mio, 2011; Digital Photography

Smiling Rocking Horse, 2011

Born in Taipei, in 1965, Yuan Goang-Ming is Associate Professor of New Media Art at the Taipei National University of the Arts. He received a Diploma in Media Arts from the Staatliche Hochschule fur Gestaltung, Karlsruhe, Germany (1997) and a BFA at the National Institute of the Arts (Taipei, 1989), in addition to attending the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt (1994). Yuan’s work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including the Gwangju Biennale (1995 and 2002), the Taipei Biennial (1996, 1998, and 2002), Translated Acts (Berlin, New York, and Mexico City, 2001-02), 01.01.01: Art in Technological Times (San Francisco, 2001), Luna’s Flow: The 2nd Seoul International Media Art Biennale (2002), Culture Meets Culture: Busan Biennale 2002, the Venice Biennale (2003), the Liverpool Biennial (2004), the Guang- zhou Triennial (2005), the Singapore Biennale (2008), Taiwan Calling (Budapest, 2010), the Asian Art Biennial (Taichung, 2011), Moving Image in China: 1988-2011 (Shanghai, 2011), and the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions (Tokyo, 2012). He has also curated several exhibitions, including SlowTech, held in 2006 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei.

TKG+(Beijing) has presented a seminar for this exhibition, which is given by artist Yuan GOANG-MING, QIU ZHIJIE, and Philip Tinari about “Yuan Goang-ming’s past and recent work” during the opening reception of Disappearing Traces on April 21, 4:30-7:30pm.

About the Exhibition

Date: 2012.04.21-2012.05.27

Venue: TKG+Beijing

Add: B106, Unit2, YongHe Garden 2nd Phase, No.3, DongBinHe Rd., AnDingMen, Dongcheng District, Beijing 100013, China

Opening Hours: Tuesday-Friday: 10:00am-7:00pm, Saturday-Sunday: 11:00am-7:00pm

Courtesy of Yuan Goang-Ming and TKG+, for further information please visit www.tinakenggallery.com or contact info@tinakenggallery.com.

My encounters with Lai Sio Kit began with his paintings, which usually portray Macao buildings from a high angle. In particular, they depict close and numerous rooftops of low-rise buildings as if they were squeezing each other, which then form the main composition of his paintings. Today, with high-rise buildings everywhere, his works endow us with a sense of familiar and cordial sensation, revealing the unique features of this small yet densely populated city.

In this exhibition, Sio Kit has once again captured the urban scenery of Macao from a high angle. This time his focus has no longer lingered on a great host of rooftops or buildings but a single structural space -a roof terrace. As Sio Kit stated a roof terrace was somehow a private but exposed area. Some people might use these spaces for storing miscellaneous old items while others plant flowers; some roof terraces are more organized and some are in disarray. Even though different families arrange their roof terraces in different ways, these areas are always full of the breath of life and a human touch. Or borrowing Sio Kit’s term, they are “The Secret Gardens”.

Sio Kit used his brush to paint the environment of the individual roof terrace, one after another. It seems a realistic recording but actually, it is distinct with an exquisite personal interpretation. Potted plants, furniture, miscellaneous items et al appear to be placed there randomly but actually they are not. The allocation of these various objects and even the texture of the tiles on the ground are suggestive of the delights and traces of life and also, the rhythm of tranquility. These roof terraces are not luxuriously designed, merely ordinary dribs and drabs. There is no exaggerated or scary tableau, no grand images, but it is worth the audiences while to linger and savour them. Potted plants are no longer just plants; the miscellaneous items are not all just miscellaneous: they represent the painter’s trajectory of thought and state of private dialogue. The composition and content of these paintings are reflections of his personal traits; the delicate strokes are like his art-making character, growing slowly but surely in maturity. Not built in a moment of passion or impulsive, they are accumulated bit by bit in a creative journey which gradually heads towards maturity through repeated attempts and recognition. Each of his works is an affirmation of his personal pursuits and ideals, each an expression of his full devotion to the process of creativity.

Furthermore, this collection of roof terrace works is painted from the bird’s eye view, the angle of which changes the audiences’ psychological position of sight. Although they look at these paintings from eye-level, the images give the feeling that they are actually being overlooked from a height, thereby confusing the audience’s sense of space. Audiences seem to have become giant men, meandering through the streets of the small city and enjoying these ‘secret gardens’ which, originally were hiding quietly in certain corners of our city, have now been unveiled carefully by the painter. Amidst the rapid development of the city, these are exactly the moments and scenes we desperately need to cherish.

About the Exhibition

Curator: Bianca Lei

Venue: AFA Macau

Add: Estrada da Areia Preta No. 52, Edificio da Fabrica de Baterias N.E. National, 10th Floor, Macau

Date: 2012.04.14-05.27

Opening Hours: 12:00-19:00 from Monday to Saturday (Closed on Sunday and Public Holiday)

Tel: (853) 2836 6064

Courtesy of Lai Sio Kit and AFA Macau, for further information please visit www.afamacau.com  or contact afamacao@gmail.com.

This symposium is organized as part of the EU-China Year of Intercultural Dialogue, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the People’s Republic of China, the Institut Français in China, the Danish Art Institute, and the Cervantes Institute in China. It is part of EUNIC activities in China to foster professional exchanges in the field of creative industries between European and Chinese specialists.

At a time in China when culture is viewed positively because of its increasing social, commercial, and educational value, it is useful to discuss public policy’s role in supporting contemporary creation, in particular the visual arts. How can public policy best help artists, institutions, and contemporary creators? In Europe, years of experience have resulted in original public policies for culture. Experts from France, Spain, and Denmark will present examples of these policies from their home countries. In a stimulating dialogue, Chinese and European experts will discuss different cultural policies, including the specific examples of artists’ workshops, public commissions, and public collections, to advocate culture both locally and internationally.

The EU-China Year of Intercultural Dialogue aims to promote mutual understanding between the EU and China through cooperative projects supported by the European Commission. Each European participant will present an original example of successful public policy based on practical experience. Chinese participants will take part in the discussion and share their experiences. The objective is to foster dialogue on specific public cultural policies.

Venue: Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Auditorium

Date: April 24, 2012, 10:00-16:00

Organizers: Caochangdi PhotoSpring-Arles in Bejing, EUNIC in China

SCHEDULE AND PARTICIPANTS

Morning Session: Two European cases of cultural public policy.

Moderator: Ma Chenfeng (China), Vice-chairman of Millenium Art Museum.

9:30-10:00

Registration

10:00-10:15

Introduction by He Qian (China), PhD candidate, Centre for International Studies and Research,

Sciences Po Paris, research on Chinese contemporary art, institutional transformation and cultural policy of China.

10:15-11:45

- Daniel Ramponi (France)

Topic: French cultural policies and decentralization.

The impact of decentralization on cultural institutions’ development. Interest and stakes of territorial authorities in this cultural policy: development creation on an area, diffusion of art for a large audience, communication tool, increase tourism…

- Tine Colstrup (Denmark)

Topic: Principles of funding for visual art in Denmark.

A short presentation of the history of the public funding system for visual art in Denmark and some of the fundamental principles governing this system from the 1960’ies and until today. Presentation of a few examples of recent works and projects that have received public funding.

11:45-12:15

Open Discussion

12:15-13:15

Break and lunch

Afternoon Session: Two European institutions created by a public initiative.

Moderator: He Qian (China), PhD candidate, Centre for International Studies and Research, Sciences Po Paris, research on Chinese contemporary art, institutional transformation and cultural policy of China

13:15-14:00

Laurence Gateau (France)

Topic: The Regional Funds for Contemporary Art (FRAC) thirty years after its creation: a successful example of cooperation between central and local governments, in the decentralization approach, to foster contemporary art.

The FRAC of Pays de la Loire, like the others, is dedicated to contemporary artists by buying their work, by working with “Les Ateliers internationaux”, by exhibits its art collection all over the world thanks to the FRAC’s network “Platform”, and by helping and promoting these artists.

14:00-14:30

Open Discussion

14:30-14:45

Break

14:45-15:30

Enrique Martinez Goikoetxea (Spain)

Topic: A museum in the Basque Country.

Presentation of art in the Basque Spanish country with a focus on ARTIUM’s project, its strategies, networks and cultural practices in the economic crisis context.

15:30-16:00

Open Discussion

16:00

Symposium’s End.

PARTICIPANTS’ RESUME

Daniel Ramponi

He began to work in the electronic field. In 1970, in Annecy, he started working in the cultural field for the Youth and Cultural Center (Maison des jeunes et de la culture) and later for the Cultural Center of the city. From 1981 to 1995, he was co-director of The National Theater of performing arts – Scène nationale – of Annecy and also member of the Syndeac – National Syndicate of Artistic and Cultural Companies). After, he was Director of the Scène nationale of La Roche-sur-Yon from 1996 to 2006. Since 2006, he is member of the green French party (Europe écologie – Les Verts). Since 2010, he was elected as Vice-President of Regional Council of Pays de la Loire, Member of the Culture and Visual Arts Commissions, and also as Member of the board of directors of the FRAC-Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of Pays de la Loire. Since 2012, he is Vice-President of the performing arts higher education center of Bretagne-Pays de la Loire. Born 1941.

Tine Colstrup

Master of Art in Art History from Aarhus University, Denmark. Has since 2009 been employed as senior advisor in the visual arts department at the Danish Agency for Culture working primarily with international relations and exchange. Has prior to this worked as curator on independent projects and several Danish art museums and institutions such as Aarhus Art Museum and Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, and latest at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk as co-curator of the contemporary group show The World is Yours in 2009. Has given talks, conducted interviews and written articles on contemporary art and has functioned as editor on books and for a number of years of the art historical/theoretical journal Passepartout, published by the Art History department at Aarhus University. Born 1975. Lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Laurence Gateau

Master degree in Art History from University Paris Panthéon Sorbonne. She worked as Director of the Contemporary Art Center Le Creux de l’enfer in Thiers from 1988 to 1999. In 1996, she was the French curator for the Sao Paulo Biennial Show. In 2000, she became Director of the contemporary Art Center in Nice, Villa Arson. Has since 2005 been Director of Collections of FRAC – Regional Fund for Contemporary Art – of Pays de la Loire. From 1992, she is member of IKT – International association of curators of contemporary art.

Enrique Martínez Goikoetxea

Enrique Martínez Goikoetxea is the curator of the permanent exhibition in the ARTIUM Museum in Álava where he has built his career from its opening ten years ago. Graduated in Fine Arts and having obtained a master in Modern Art Curatorship, he worked in the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao before he joined to ARTIUM. Among other duties, from 2005 to 2009, he has been the curator in charge of the temporal exhibitions, where he has signed projects like Gravity or Agitar antes de usar (Shake before using) to take charge of the collection afterwards. He regularly participates with essays in the museum catalogues and he curates different presentations of the collection.

Ma ChenFeng

He graduated from the Ecole d’Art de Cambrai, with a DNSEP in visual communications. He is Curator, Vice Director of the China Shijitan Contemporary Art Centre. For many years, he has researched culture, managed public and official art institutions, and planned and produced art events.

He Qian

Graduated from Department of French Literature at Peking University, He Qian had gone to Canada for art studies. She had served as social science editor and participated in EU-China cultural exchange activities. Now she is a PhD candidate at Centre for International Studies and Research, Sciences Po Paris. Her research focuses on Chinese contemporary art, Chinese institutional transformation and public diplomacy of China.

He Qian specializes in extreme performance art in China in the late 1990s, and has published several articles in art journals such as Critics and Yearbook of Chinese contemporary art. She has also been a contributor for several books edited by French Association of Sociology and some French scholars on art sociology. Canadian government, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese Ministry of Education have offered scholarship to support her research.

INSTITUTIONS’ WEBSITES

-  Regional Council of Pays de la Loire: http://www.paysdelaloire.eu

-  Danish Agency for Culture: http://www.kulturstyrelsen.dk/om-os/english

- FRAC-Regional Fund for Contemporary Art – of Pays de la Loire: http://www.fracdespaysdelaloire.com

-  ARTIUM Museum in Alva: http://www.artium.org

Courtesy of Caochangdi PhotoSpring-Arles in Bejing, EUNIC in China.

Zhan Wang, a leading figure in contemporary sculpture literally breaks new ground at Singapore Tyler Print Insitute (STPI). Wielding a Herculean sledgehammer, he smashes boulders of rocks into an explosive spectrum of rocky debris flying across the studio floor. Zhan’s new body of work “Universe” created in collaboration with STPI, reimagines Humanity’s fascination of the “Big Bang Theory”, where in an inexplicable moment, a tiny dense state expanded majestically into a colossal cosmic plane.

Zhan’s shattered rocks are recreated into celestial, metallic rock clusters assembled on paper slabs made with mineral silt, recalling surreal, arid landscapes of distant planets, customarily depicted in science fiction. Zhan’s deconstructions mark a dramatic shift in his conceptual explorations of traditional Chinese ‘scholar’s rocks’, believed to be prehistoric entities of pure qi, or vital energy.

To accomplish the artist’s grand cosmic vision, STPI’s workshop expertise pushed beyond their limits in an intensive array of artistic production. Up to 20,000 stone fragments right down to minuscule specks were measured and reproduced in the original likeness, as synthetic rocks coated in metallic chrome. These pieces were meticulously assembled onto STPI handmade paper or highly polished mirrors to replicate the complex matrix of obliterated rocks captured in photo documentation.

All remnants of the original rocks were pounded by hand into fine sediment and mixed with cotton pulp to produce a solid paper base, which reveals the natural mineral pigments of clay, slate and granite. The use of mirrors as an alternative base, adds a three-dimensional twist to the visual plane where metallic rock mass seem to float in space and superimpose viewers’ reflections on the artwork.

“Zhan Wang’s creative collaboration with STPI brings fresh insights into the artist’s practice in fascinating paradoxes of emulating natural phenomena, solidifying moments of flux and reimagining the origins of time to envision new creative possibilities,” said Emi Eu, Director of STPI.

Constantly pushing the envelope with unconventional ideas, Zhan Wang has scaled Mount Everest to put a metal rock sculpture at its summit, set adrift a hollow mountain in the ocean, tried to launch a stainless steel “meteorite” into space and recently detonated a large boulder in mid air for “My Personal Universe”, an installation of 7,000 suspended stones replicating a moment of stillness in its explosion.

About the Artist

Zhan Wang (b.1962 Beijing, China), graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Sculpture) from The Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. He has exhibited extensively in major museums and galleries across the world including the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; Saatchi Gallery, London; Kunst Museum, Bern; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and the Asia Society Museum, New York. Works in major public collections include, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Art Museum of China, Beijing and the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago.

About the Exhibition

Dates: March 31st–April 28th, 2012

Venue: SINGAPORE TYLER PRINT INSTITUTE, 41 Robertson Quay, Singapore 238236

Tel: +65 6336 3663

Fax: +65 6336 3553

Email: stpi@stpi.com.sg

Courtesy of Zhan Wang and Singapore Tyler Print Institute, for further information please visit www.stpi.com.sg.

Year after year I paint tirelessly with only one goal – to present to people my own handwriting, and that is my secret. What makes a painting special is neither its title nor the image itself; it’s the enchanted personality, and the fascination of painting lies in the process of conceiving and recording your personal view. What I have been trying to present in my art works, if I have to put it in words, is ‘preaching to myself – by myself’.

 –Ye Yongqing 2012

As Shanghai welcomes the warm sunshine of Spring, Longmen Art Projects, located in Sinan Mansions, will launch a highly anticipated exhibition for the world-renowned artist Ye Yongqing. Sparrow God Funky Bird – Ye Yongqing 2012 will be the first solo exhibition of 2012 for both the artist and Longmen Art Projects. The show features over 20 recent works by the artist. Though parts of the exhibition comprises of Bird themed works of recent years such as: Fly, Solo Flight, Marshland, Melancholy, there will also be new works which are inspired by traditional Chinese landscapes and literati motifs with birds and flowers, such as: Homage to Zhao Ji: Winter Sweet and Mountain, A Pair of Birds, Draw a Bird, and a 400 x 150 cm landscape work, Homage to Wu Zhenlu: Wintery Plains. The show not only represents the closing of Ye Yongqing’s Draw a Bird series, which he has worked on for the past decade, but also sets the stage for the next stage in Ye Yongqing’s artistic career, as his expression evolves into a more astute and peculiar fashion. Sparrow God Funky Bird – Ye Yongqing 2012 will be on exhibit from March 4 to May 31, 2012.

“Sparrow God Funky Bird” is slang from the Yunnan province. It is used to describe someone who is quite eccentric in his or her temperament, and treats ordinary things in an extraordinary, odd, and peculiar way. As the title for this exhibition, it is intended to illustrate the continual impact of Yunnan – the birthplace of the artist; and also it can describe Ye Yongqing’s unique spiritual perspective on life.

The famous art historian, contemporary art and cultural critic, and curator Gao Qianhui has said: Ye Yongqing’s bird portrait series is becoming a recognized symbol in Chinese contemporary painting circles. We can clearly see that he was enlightened by Western modernism and influenced by street graffiti, and finally he found his own way of expression. It may seem simple but it took him a long time getting there.

The liberty of expressionism, the deconstruction and collage of cubism, the pace of futurism, modern objects collage and doodle of Dadaism, conception and deconstruction of post-modernism all became Ye Yongqing’s Western “diet”. As such, the seed of Ye Yongqing’s birds is a variation of Chinese literati art, but what irrigates the seed is the spring of Western modernism. I don’t know how exactly Ye Yongqing found it, but I do know how intriguing it is.

Ye Yongqing spent most of the past 10 years painting flowers and birds. However, his focus lies not on painting birds, but rather on expressing his impressions on the ambiguity of what is Contemporary and what is Chinese. It is also an expression of his mind, and his charm. Creating that familiar spacial void of traditional Chinese ink and wash paintings, but in a modern minimalist style, through seemingly rational yet emotional brushstrokes. This method, which is purely intentional, uses the meticulous scribbling of traditional Chinese brushwork to render a simple line; creates a seemingly accidental image resembling doodles or casual sketches. Ye Yongqing has described his intentions and inspiration: “Year after year I paint tirelessly with only one goal – to present to people my own handwriting, and that is my secret. What makes a painting special is neither its title nor the image itself; it’s the enchanted personality, and the fascination of painting lies in the process of conceiving and recording your personal view. What I have been trying to present in my art works, if I have to put it in words, is ‘preaching to myself – by myself’”.

It is precisely this contradictory and eccentric artistic expression that places the artist as an avant-garde, mesmerizing the art world over the past few decades, and continuously generates debate and praise. Across the country, many of the top art critics have all delved into the subject and written countless dissertations to disseminate and explore the topic with their own ideas and perspectives. Sparrow God Funky Bird – Ye Yongqing 2012 promises to provide another platform for the masses to further exchange their impressions.

About the Exhibition

Dates: 4 Mar – 31 May 2012

Location: Longmen Art Projects

Address: No.515, Fu Xing Zhong Road, Lu Wan District, Shanghai 200025, China map

Tel: +86 21 6472 2838 Fax: +86 21 6472 1258

Courtesy of Ye Yongqing and Longmen Art Projects, for further information please visit longmenartprojects.com.

Entitled All That Flies High up are Not Birds and All That Dives Deep down are Not Fishes, Han Shaoguang’s painting show is considered a presentation and discussion of the artist’s recent work. Several pieces of his new series were presented in Painting after Art Goes Abstract: Graffiti, Image Reproduction and Multiple Themes organized by Himalayas Art Museum in September last year. In face of the fact that theme and methodology of contemporary Chinese painting were getting increasingly unitary, the show aimed to shed some new light on how to open more possibilities for or restore the essence of painting. On 21 April, 2012, this series of Han Shaoguang’s will be put on display at Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, which will be an opportunity to take a look at the conception and development of his painting.

Han’s early oil paintings were influenced by non-figurative oil painting which integrated the form of oil painting with traditional Chinese painting subjects and became a mainstream in the history of modern Chinese oil painting. Non-figurative ink brushwork was replaced by oil colors, and landscape in a sketching style, non-figurative landscape. The sense of writing lying in the brushwork and the non-spatiotemporal nature of composition laid the foundation for such replacement. From Han’s early non-figurative oil paintings to his recent works, how the language of modern painting develops in his work and how ideas are rearranged can be perceived. What will be displayed at Duolun MoMA features both a linkage to early non-figurative oil painting and a brand new pattern of painting – the painting after art goes abstract.

Man and nature and our attitudes toward them are a long-term theme of his thinking. Eventually, he presents us with a conclusion: illusion. The development and changes in Han’s painting reveal how figurative landscape has been made into a land of illusion via intervention of modern painting. Modern painting features two-dimensional language on the one hand, and surrealistic combinations on the other. The collages of contours and images finally make illusion come true. Han puts his ideas into practice not only in the form of painting but also in words. The somewhat fragmented writings give out a similar sense of his fragmented paintings. Floating clouds and bathing in heaven highlight the two core themes, which, together with all kinds of emotions and scenes derive from them, make All That Flies High are Not Birds and All That Dives Deep down are Not Fish. A Quest, Art Myth and Wilderness, the three chapters in his book, compose a trilogy of the artist’s work.

“Heavenly Bath” is a significant element featured in Han Shaoguang’s recent painting, which, naturally, is closely related to the images of mountains, waters, clouds and human figures. An absence of a central focus could be perceived in his work from 2008 to 2011: the image of bathing in the heaven is gradually localized; mountains and clouds are turned into geometric lines, and human figures, contours.

Thanks to Cezanne and Matisse, the two-dimensionalization of painting has become the fundamental ideal of modern painting. Baudelaire’s attempt to see Delacroix’s painting as Arabic decoration was concluded as formalism in Roger Fry and Clement Greenberg’s critical theories. The value of decorative patterns in modern painting was recognized. Visual geometric relationships rather than a literary theme feature in this kind of painting and critical theory. In his recent works, a connection to modern painting and the reuse of the legacy of modern painting can be perceived. His painting shows how images are dismantled and reassembled. To some extent, to look at his painting is like looking at a kaleidoscope. The somewhat fragmented images give out a sense of constant fluidity and uncertainty, mixing up different times and spaces. It’s a new start for Han’s journey with art. Since 2008 Han has started to explore subjects like bathing in heaven and mountains surrounded by clouds. Such exploration could be seen as having been fulfilled in 2011 when the transition from three-dimensional space to two-dimensional space was realized. In a sense, the plane he creates in his painting is different from Clement Greenberg’s idea of plane due to his use of surrealism.

All That Flies High are Not Birds and All That Dives Deep down are Not Fish is an introduction to Han Shaoguang’s exhibition. The aircrafts and submarines in his painting are more than visual signals. Despite the sense of weirdness and intensity generated by the appearance of aircraft and submarines in the middle of the images of bathing in heaven and mountains surrounded by clouds, it effectively highlights the sense of contrast between nature and the man-made. At the very beginning, “all that flies high are not birds and all that dives deep down are not fish” is just a dream of human beings, but now it has come true. Such a land of illusion turns out to be the theme of Han’s painting. What on earth is the world supposed to be like? What else would happen? Probably the answer to these questions lie exactly in the sense of surrealism in his painting.

About the Exhibition

Curator: WangNanming

Opening: 21 April 2012 at 15:00

Date: 21 April-25 April 2012

Venue: Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art

Address: Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art

Tel: 021-65875996

Courtesy of Han Shaoguang and Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, for further information please visit www.duolunmoma.org or

contact xyxy_me@hotmail.com.

“Ash-Scape: A Solo Exhibition by Zhang Huan(張洹)” takes place on April 14 at Gallery 100 Taipei. In his early years as a conceptual performance artist, Zhang Huan believed that the meaning of existence was to be found in the way the human body interacted with the physical word, and he searched for a foundation on which to carry his spiritual strength. After spending seven years in the US, Zhang returned to China and not long after discovered incense ash as his unique artistic practice, an exquisite semiotic language infused with his own signature style.

The title of this exhibition “Ash-Scape” alludes to a literary story that dates back to the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368 A.D.). It is said that one day after finishing a sumptuous meal of wine and food Qian Xuan, a master painter of birds and flowers as renowned as Zhao Meng Fu, collected together all the leftovers and fish bones and used them to create a freehand horizontal Chinese literate scroll painting on the table. In this context, “ash” refers to something that would never be used to paint, but that through the eye of the artist is transformed into alternative art expression, rich in appeal and interest. For Zhang Huan “incense ash” refers to what is left after burning incense sticks. However, when looking at this ash what Zhang sees is its hidden strength. It is this that led to his decision to embrace “incense ash” as an artistic medium and to experiment with its expressive power. For the artist ash art is an article of faith that dovetails with “the wishes of people praying to the God/Buddha.” Given the deep and lasting influence of Buddhism on eastern civilization, incense ash is imbued with the hopes and dreams of people in the past for the future and the unknown. As such, whether it is an image in a painting or a sculptured character, incense ash infuses a piece with “spirituality” and in so doing reawakens in viewers a deep respect for historical memory. In addition, the fact that the inorganic ash itself easily scatters and collapses means that hidden within it is an allusion to time, namely what viewers perceive in the real world has a limited lifespan and becomes a part of history eventually. This exhibition showcases important changes in Zhang Huan’s ash work. His painting style has recently transitioned from photorealism to a new approach that is informed by Chinese literati work, as well as sculpture and installation pieces.

About the Exhibition

Dates: 14 Apr – 27 May 2012, 11:00am – 7:00pm / Closed on Monday

Location: Gallery 100

Tel: 02-2731-0876 / 02-2731-0786

Fax: 02-2731-0862

Courtesy of Zhang Huan and Gallery 100, for further information please visit www.gallery100.com.tw or contact service@gallery100.com.tw.

FDNY by Martin Wong, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48, 1998, Courtesy of Danh Vo

Taiping Tianguo, A History of Possible Encounters is the first exhibition co-organized by A Future Museum for China and Para/Site. From May 12th through August 12th, 2012, this exhibition is an attempt to think of actual and concrete, as well as tenuous or even possibly non-existing connections between Ai Weiwei, Frog King Kwok, Tehching Hsieh, and Martin Wong who, in recent years, have come to prominence in different ways in the heady days of the 1980s and the early 1990s in the New York art scene. While all of them are “Chinese,” they hail from different locations, contexts, and lineages and are situated in wildly varying art historical narratives and discursive matrices. Ai arrived from mainland China, Hsieh from Taiwan, Kwok from Hong Kong, and Wong from San Francisco: all arrived in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s and lived there until the early 1990s. Ai, Kwok, and Wong all left the city to their homelands in the early 1990s, while Hsieh continues to live in New York. Wong died in 1999.

Between these four artists, certain connections are documented or remembered. For instance, Hsieh appears in Ai’s photographs from this time, along with many other future Chinese cultural luminaries; Kwok provided critical assistance for Hsieh for his One-Year Performances; and Kwok also recalls meeting Wong at his Kwok Gallery, which he ran in Soho. New York in the 1980s and early 1990s represented an open time-space, which realized or incubated their artistic visions and imaginations. The artists’ New York years have been discussed in separate ways, and somewhat mythically, and this exhibition is an attempt to propose an alternative narrative to those that locate these artists in distinct and disparate contexts and disregard personal connections in favor of city or nation-specific histories. It proposes a possibility of thinking about a casual community, a network of acquaintances, and an underground economy that brought them together. This exhibition eschews an authoritatively historical stance and instead reveal the propositional and provisional nature of its endeavor in its structure and presentation. By doing so, it hopes not only to shed a new light on the work of each artist but also to suggest the possibility of thinking, transnationally and trans-discursively, about the art of this period—the first decade of contemporary Chinese art that was also a prelude to the widely celebrated, albeit problematically, era of globalization in contemporary art.

The exhibition includes select works by the artists from this period, along with various documents and archival materials, which together highlight their separate contexts and spaces as well as map their lives and possible encounters and connections between them. In addition, Danh Vo, who has contributed to the research on the work of Martin Wong, participates in the exhibition through a special project and contemporary dance curator Tang Fu Kuen organizes an artist intervention. The exhibition will be accompanied by a film program and a symposium.

“Taiping Tianguo” (Heavenly Kingdom of Eternal Peace) was the name of the domain in Southern China occupied by the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century during the late Qing dynasty period. The rebellion represented a historic precedent of heroic revolution against a premodern, corrupt feudalism both for the Nationalists and the Communists in China. Without this historical specificity and politicized reading, the name was the inspiration for Wong’s posthumous exhibition in San Francisco in 2004, and here, it is borrowed as a metaphor for the time-space of New York in the 1980s and early 1990s, which was crucial in the lives and works of the four artists in this exhibition.

Courtesy of A Future Museum for China and Para/Site, for further information please visit www.para-site.org.hk.

As the first nonprofit “civil design research institution” in China, Ideaworks Synthesis Design Research Institute formally announced its establishment on the afternoon of April 15th, 2012 at the cafacopy of Today Art Museum. Based on the trial operation and attempts in various fields in last year, the conference of to establish Ideaworks made its first public publication geared towards the needs of the entire commercial design industry and academic circles. Taking “Promotion of Academic Development with Non-government Strength” as its motive, Ideaworks for the first time made public over a hundred pieces of micro-study, more than 50 reports of research projects and four large-scale research projects at the press conference.

Mi Shijie and Zhang Zijian, founders of the Ideaworks Synthesis Design Research Institute, expressed their hope that it was founded to “let the Chinese people design something of their own”, “bring the Chinese-style visual sensation to the Chinese people”. All the achievements in design and academic theories will be freely shared and used, with no rights reserved, so that design will actually penetrate into the daily life and work of ordinary front-line design practitioners. When talking about the “origin” of Ideaworks, Gu Fancheng, research consultant, renowned photographer and professor with the Department of Photography, Central Academy of Fine Arts revealed his expectations for this design research institute, “Nowadays, the era of major advertising has turned to small ads and the boundaries between non-mainstream and mainstream has increasingly become blurred. Art for promotion requires precision and should represent a self-conscious introspection. As many grains of sand piled up will make a pagoda, converged hands will promote the development of experimental art along with an image strategy. Gu Peng, research consultant, designer and visiting professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, reviewed the communications and cooperation of these two founders and looks forward to the significance of its establishment for the whole design circle in China.

Mr. Laurence NG who is known as the founder of IdN Magazine, “International Design Bible” paid a special visit from abroad to attend this press conference. Not only did he introduce the development of IdN Magazine and the current situation of design in the world, he also anticipated future cooperation with designers in China. Moreover, Mi was remarkably sanguine as The General Assembly of Designers sponsored by IdN Magazine will have a chance to be launched in China and the preference is for it to be held in the Art Museum of CAFA which is still being negotiated.

Drawing attention and support from IdN(International Association of Designers), IAI (Asia Pacific Designers), Graphic Designers Association of Shenzhen, Graphic Designers Association of Zhengzhou and other institutions featuring design, the press conference of Ideaworks Synthesis Design Research Institute together with over 60 celebrities from all walks of life such as the communities of visual design, fine arts and culture witnessed the ceremony of unveiling the nameplate as well as its new platform.

Courtesy of Ideaworks Synthesis Research Institute, for further information please visit www.id-works.org or contact idworks@163.com

Address: 7-1-302, Long Beach Wangjing, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100102

Tel: 08610-57170214

Sponsored by Chinese Academy of Oil Painting and the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, the solo exhibition of Duan Zhengqu reviews his art career during the past thirty years and will draw its curtains at 3:00 pm on April 22nd, 2012 at the Art Gallery of the Chinese Academy of Oil Painting. This exhibition will showcase over a hundred pieces of oil painting, drawings and sketch works that Duan created in the past 30 years, which is also the most systematic and comprehensive exhibition displaying his achievements in art.

Story and Legend: Thirty Years Art Pursuit of Duan Zhengqu belongs to the series of “Exhibitions on Oil Painters’ Academic Research” which selects artists who have made outstanding contributions to oil painting and establishes three-dimensional art research on these artists through exhibitions, publications, transmission, and by means of communication. In the purpose of bringing intensive study to each individual artist, it sorts out the academic thread of Chinese contemporary figure oil painting, draws on its great prospects and contributes to the promotion of Chinese oil painting through the healthy guidance of the partial to the whole.

In the patterns of Chinese oil painting, Duan Zhengqu’s work features the spirit of Central Plains(comprising the middle and lower reaches of the Huanghe River), vigorous and firm. Based on the realism, his language of painting belongs to the scope of the Figurative Expressionism which strengthens the symbolism in the expressive force and conveys plain and profound feelings. His representations are full of passion brewed from the loess of the Central Plains, torrential Yellow River and deep feelings for the citizens while his symbolism is deeply rooted in the culture of the Central Plains, affected and fostered by the feelings on the loess of China, and upgraded from rustic life.

Duan Zhengqu and his rough and passionate plateaus of Northern Shanxi have developed into a specific cultural landscape of contemporary Chinese painting. Different from many painters who have depicted the themes of Northern Shanxi, Duan Zhenqu takes his observations and performance of the northern natives as his starting point, along with his inner feelings instead of from the needs of ideologies or from the form of painting.

Duan bases his style of oil painting on his free and fresh experience of rural life and expressive form of painting. Drawing using Chinese characteristics which are also the most international languages of painting, Duan expresses his deep emotions and ardent love of the lands and the people with his unique language.

It is worth mentioning, that most of the works in this exhibition have never been exhibited before. Duan Zhengqu hopes that this exhibition will present his artistic development of the last 30 years which will make his sequence of thought on his style clearer for the audience.

Duan Zhengqu was born in 1958 in Henan Yanshi and graduated from the Oil Painting Department, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1983. He is currently a member of the Chinese Artists Association, professor at Fine Arts Academy of Capital Normal University.

He won the Bronze Award at the 7th National Art Exhibition (1989), Award of Excellence at the 1st Session of the China Oil Painting Exhibition (1991), Award of Excellence at the 8th National Art Exhibition (1994), Toward the New Century—China Youth Oil Painting Exhibition Award (1997), the Bronze Award at the 9th National Art Exhibition (1999), Nomination Award at the 11th National Art Exhibition (2009). His publications include Duan Zhengqu Selected Works, Self-selected Works of Contemporary Oil Painters—Selected Oil Painting of Duan Zhengqu, Academic Fine Arts for 30 Years, Duan Zhengqu Volume and other catalogues.

About the Exhibition

Organizer: Chinese Academy of Oil Painting, Chinese National Academy of Arts

Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio

Sponsor: Art Gallery of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting

Co-organizer: Shandong Yinzuo Art Museum

Academic Supports: Chinese Art Association,

Department of Fine Arts, Capital Normal University,

Art Committee of Oil Painting, Chinese Artists Association,

China Oil Painting Society

Opening Ceremony: 3:00 pm, April 22nd, 2012

Exhibition Dates: 9:00-17:00 from April 22nd through May 5th, 2012

Venue: Art Gallery of Chinese Academy of Oil Painting

Address: Gaobeidian Cultural and Arts Street 1704, 100124

Caochangdi PhotoSpring – Arles in Beijing is an annual photography festival that brings together local and international photography in the vibrant setting of the Chinese capital. It was initiated in 2010 by two Beijing-based organizations, Thinking Hands and the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre. Its mission is to create and develop a high-profile platform in China entirely devoted to photography. Caochangdi PhotoSpring began with a three-year collaboration with the most important international photography festival, Les Rencontres dʼArles. The event is organized in conjunction with the French Embassy in China and is part of the Croisements Festival.

PhotoSpring 2012 is the third edition of this long -term collaboration with Arles. The festival has continued to broaden its international photography network as well as maintaining its emphasis on young Chinese photography. From the international photography world, PhotoSpring will feature 2011 Nadar Prize winner Jean-Christian Bourcart, Singaporean photographer Stefen Chow, and Japanese photographer Hisaji Hara. The Three Shadows Photography Award Exhibition will showcase the talents of a new generation of Chinese photographers while other exhibitions will allow young curators to share their views on contemporary Chinese photography . Caochangdi PhotoSpring will celebrate its relationship with the festival Les Rencontres d ʼArles through a special exhibition curated by its director François Hébel, who will present Brian Griffinʼs latest series, The Black Country , for the first time in China. The photography collection of the French region Pays de la Loire will also be a highlight of this year’s programme. In order to develop a productive networking platform for professionals and amateurs, we have also planned exciting activities during the opening week such as screenings, the PhotoFolio Review, and artistsʼ talks. Partners in Caochangdi, the 798, and beyond will strengthen the PhotoSpring’s diverse programming by hosting more than 20 of the festivals shows.

This year, Caochangdi PhotoSpring features about 30 exhibitions in partnership with galleries and institutions in Caochangdi, the 798, and beyond. This year, the opening weekend will take place on April 21–24 with events such as the PhotoFolio Review, conferences, debates and projections, including ‘The Mexican Suitcase’, a documentary by Thrisha Ziff about the discovery of legendary negatives from the Spanish Civil War shot by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour. PhotoSpring will run from April 21 to May 31 and showcase the work of more than 200 Chinese and international artists.

About the Photography Event 

Opening Ceremony: 3:00 pm on April 21st, 2012

Location: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre

Directors: Bérénice Angremy, Rong Rong & inri

Guest curator: François Hébel, director of Les Rencontres d’Arles

Courtesy of Caochangdi PhotoSpring, for further information please contact  www.ccdphotospring.com.

Curated by the well-known UK curator Karen Smith, Platform China is delighted to present the solo exhibition of Ma Ke. “Life Most Intense” is Ma Ke’s first major solo exhibition and for anyone who owns a particular appreciation of painting, the exhibition will have been well worth the wait.

Ma Ke was born in Shandong [Zibo] in 1970. Graduated form oil painting department of Tianjin Art Academy in 1994. Then he got an opportunity which took him abroad to Africa as a volunteer teacher. When Ma Ke returned to China in 1999, he chose to pursue a second period of study under the revered abstract expressionist painter Yuan Yunsheng, at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Compounded with his experiences in Africa, this renewed experience of learning—which was one that included a specific focus on classical Chinese painting and culture—shaped a new direction and ambition in Ma Ke’s painting. Here he turns to an established literary convention of using past examples, here classical moral fables, to point to predicaments of the present.

I Look Up To You I, 2006; ink on paper, 109x78.5cm

I Look Up To You I, 2006; ink on paper, 109x78.5cm

I Look Up To You, 2011; Oil on Canvas, 150x200 cm

His paintings explore the ugly, occasionally distasteful, side of reality and human nature, but he presents it in a way that is compelling. The paintings are visualisations of the feelings he has when experiencing ‘life most intensely, before routine, time and distance dull the shock and veil the memory.’ Ma Ke has got us thinking and created myriad paths for our thoughts to pursue. As they do, we find he has created a mechanism for exchange and communication all too rare in today’s experience of art. Ma Ke never has need of illustrating the act itself. We instinctually add up the clues he provides to arrive at the intended emotional sum. It is this conflagration and the structure within which they are presented and are balanced that sets up a mood of instability in the paintings. An acrid scent of bitterness that underscores the sorry moral tales each painting is conceived to convey. This paradox of painterly perfection is the root cause of instability in Ma Ke’s painted world.

Out Doors, 2009; Oil on Canvas, 133x236cm

Overpass, 2009; Oil on Canvas, 236x133cm

Sand Storm, 2010; Oil on Canvas, 133x236cm

About the Exhibition

Curator: Karen Smith

Opening Party: 2012, Friday 20th of April, 3pm-6pm

Exhibition Time: 20.04.2012—18.06.2012

Venue: Platform China

Courtesy of Platform China, for further information please contact www.platformchina.org.

The exhibition opened with a public outdoor explosion event, Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, on the exterior wall of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (facing Temple Street) at 7:30pm on Saturday, April 7.

Mystery Circle, a site-specific work created for MOCA, contains four stages of special pyrotechnics. At the moment of ignition, 40,000 firework rockets formed a string of crop circles and launched perpendicular to MOCA’s north wall, toward Temple Street, before falling onto the ground. Amidst a curtain of smoke, approximately 100 spinning pyrotechnic UFOs sporadically appeared from the parking lot grounds, while an imaginary alien – god figure on the left side of the wall was outlined from bottom to top by gunpowder fuses. When the burned fuses reach the “halo” of the figure, mini Titanium Salute rockets shot into the air followed by a grand finale. The rockets have created a burned imprint on the museum wall, leaving an outdoor drawing. While Cai’s signature explosion events, Project for Extraterrestrials, have been dedicated to creatures from outer space, his new project at MOCA is the first time an imaginary alien figure actually appears.

Related Report: “Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder” features his new works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Courtesy of Cai Guo-Qiang Studio and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for further information please visit www.caiguoqiang.com.

The Hall of Supreme,1976; oil on paperboard, 18.7 x 25.6 cm

After its successful introduction last year of Zhang Wei’s historic abstract works in the group show “Breaking Away”, Boers-Li Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Zhang Wei’s solo exhibition, “Zhang Wei-The Abstract Paintings 1979 – 2012” on April 12th, 2012. The show traces Zhang Wei’s artistic path from his early “underground” years as a painter during the Cultural Revolution, to his avant garde development of the abstract style in China in 1980, and into a survey of his recent and contemporary work. Zhang Wei’s work reveals an exceptionally inspired visual artist whose paintings have survived the years by remaining strong and convincingly contemporary.

OR29(Series: works with no series), 2008; painting, Paint, mixed materials, linen, 1500x2000mm

OR42,2008; oil, mixed media on linen

Zhang Wei (born 1952 Beijing) was one of the first abstract painters in today’s China. In 1972, having been excluded from any educational artistic programme, he joined a self-organised group of young painters known under the collective name, “No Name”- a group that worked collectively to develop their own artistic practice and exhibition ideas. Beginning as a realist in the modernistic tradition of painting-after-nature, Zhang Wei felt the need to respond to his inner creative force and set his painting free from the common subjects of still life, land and cityscape- the joy of painting – in the tradition of Matisse’s “Joie de Vivre”. At a time when artists were prohibited from individual expression and guided towards politically framed visual propaganda, Zhang Wei pursued a vision of Pure Art and charged forth towards abstraction.

5.Blow-up: People's Daily 1976 #05,2011,oil on canvas printed with old Chinese national newspaper ,132 x 96cm

The artist’s breakthrough came during the post-Mao era, at a time that was more open culturally and allowed for international exhibits and artists to visit China. Zhang Wei saw the abstract work of Jackson Pollock in the first shows of American paintings and subsequently met Robert Rauschenberg during his legendary visit to China in 1984. With this new exposure and further experimentation, Zhang Wei’s career erupted with an extremely productive period in which he produced an extensive series of non-realistic, non-representational paintings expressing his uncompromising, unconventional and spontaneous attitude. Painted on the floor of his tidy 12 square meter apartment, all of his works bare the traces of “Action Painting,” a form of painting using spontaneous uncontrolled action. From those years and continuing on throughout his stay in the USA (1986 – 2001), his abstract works bear characteristic aspects of western oil as well as Chinese ink painting. Zhang Wei’s more recent work is a vibrant return to his early experimentations, transferring them to canvas with underlying newspaper clippings of Political highlights from the 1970’s Mao era.

“Zhang Wei – The Abstract Paintings 1979 – 2012″, shows for the first time, the ground breaking moment at which abstract art appeared in China’s contemporary art history. Visually organised to include the context of his artist friends, studio and archival documentation, it is not difficult to see here that the Chinese avant-garde indeed was already in full swing before the ’85 Movement even began.

About the Artist

Born in Beijing, 1952, Zhang Wei grew up in the old style courtyard home of his paternal grandfather, a wealthy business man, with his mother and siblings. During the cultural revolution the Red Guard destroyed the courtyard. His grandmother was beaten to death and her possessions burned. Wei’s father died in prison in 1968. That same year Zhang Wei was sent to Lingqi Province, Shanxi, for re-education. He returned to Beijing in 1970 with a foot injury and in 1972 he met Ma Kelu and joined helped form the Wuming (“No Name”) Group. In 1985 Zhang Wei and friends organized the Graffiti Exhibition, but the police closed it down before it had a chance to open because the artwork was seen as transgressive by the Chinese government. In 1986 Zhang Wei traveled to America to participate in the exhibition Avant-Garde Chinese Art, organized by MIchael Murray from Vassar College. In 2005 he returned to Beijing, and now has a studio in Suojiacun.

About the Exhibition

Opening: Thursday 12 Apr, 2012; 16:00 – 19:00

Exhibition dates: Friday 13 Apr– Sunday 27 May, 2012

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Sunday; 12:00 – 18:00

Courtesy of Zhang Wei and Boers-Li Gallery, for further information please contact www.boersligallery.com.

Moth-eaten Books 03, 2009-2011; aquatint, 30x16x1 cm

Moth-eaten Books is the newest series of woodblocks in aquatint created by the young printmaker Jiang Chao. Each set of works consists of a small library of 84 books and each of these books is composed of hand-woven ribbon, Phoebe Wood letters and soft rice paper. Each book is inscribed with a different wooden plate and formed its own unique pattern and texture an each page of these books describe the story of books when they are gradually etched by worms, water marks, tears and stains as time goes by. In the process of printing, the wood is polished a little by little while the printed patterns on the paper become increasingly blurred, and ultimately they disappear at the end of the books. This book tells a touching story about the beauty of Chinese civilization, which also manifests as it fades away.

Moth-eaten Books 01; 2009-2011; aquatint, 30x16x1 cm

Moth-eaten Books 02, 2009-2011; aquatint, 30x16x1 cm

New City Series Photo, 2009; aquatint, 76x54cmx16

The elegance of Moth-eaten Books lies in Jiang’s profound creative thinking and his consummate skills. Each element in his creation has undergone comprehensive and integrated consideration. It took him two years to accomplish this huge project, and during this time he spent a lot of time in Suzhou and worked with senior printmaking workers who did not do much but are experienced in the control of the watermark pigment. Jiang Chao has completed a total of 10 sets of works with nearly 900 individual works in the past two years.

Jiang Chao

Organized by the Yun Gallery in association with the January Contemporary, this exhibition is the first solo exhibition of Jiang Chao and covers many of his representations so far, which have mostly been created after 2007 when he graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The highlights of this exhibition include his graduation work—“Landscape” the silkscreen printing which won the first prize of the Gradation Exhibition at CAFA in 2005, “Stories” and “New City” series which presents fencers used in construction fields in China.

About the Exhibition

Dates: 21st to June 20th, April 2012

Opening Ceremony: 3:00pm on 21st, April

Address: Yun Gallery, 3818# 798 Art District, 2 Jiuxian Qiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Tel: 8610-8459 9329 13366860824

Courtesy of Jiang Chao and Yun Gallery, for further information please contact yungallery@sina.com.

Xiang Jing: Are A Hundred Playing You Or Only One, 2007; Fibre-glass, painted, 140x240x240cm

Part III: Monumental Methods

Chen: It seems that we no longer use those monumental methods to perceive the achievements of an individual. Instead, we look for the traces they leave behind. When a pop star becomes famous, everyone sings his songs for a while, and then a few years later he leaves just a trace. That monumental way of viewing world history and individuals is gone. It seems we no longer use this way to look at the world. Of course, this is just a perspective, and there are many more perspectives. It’s like you said in your letter, how you can’t ignore disadvantaged groups and social inequailty. I’m like that too, as are many other people. This is a real problem. I think that people like Michelangelo, though I haven’t researched it, I think that in principle they weren’t bothered by such things. Their eyes were more focused on god, the great artworks of history, the tastes of the Medici family, or other things. They could live purely in this lofty world of art, but contemporary people can’t be like that. All of our education, the world we live in, all of it over the past two or three hundred years has come to focus more on the masses and issues of social responsibility. I would guess that if you asked artists of the Renaissance about these issues, they would feel it had nothing to do with them.

Xiang: Mr. Chen, I want to return to an highly individualized experience, something that may be related to what you are saying. The changes in China were very short and quick, taking place over just the last few decades. People my age were probably the last ones to catch the tail end of the elitist educational approach. I’m not very clear about this, but I have this notion. I went to the High School attached to the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1984. At the time, very few people could go to that High School; it was a highly elitist educational approach but I wasn’t aware of it then. There was a high ratio of teachers to students, and we were all in this small building right next to the National Art Museum, and overlooking Longfusi Commercial Street – private businesses and small merchants were just starting to pop up. We could hear them playing the songs of Zhang Qiang and Zhang Xing every day. The wall of our compound divided two completely different worlds. We were up there painting and taking classes right next to that street. We spent every day immersed in the library, and our education was driven by a kind of infatuation with classicalism. At the time I felt that I couldn’t accept the mass culture, and I had to maintain a distance from it. And though I didn’t have any notion of the term “mass culture” back then, I still detested it and rejected it, and had to be wary and keep my distance. At the time, I was constantly aware that I was part of a rare few. But in later education, this awareness virtually disappeared. Not only did the students lose this awareness, the entire education lacked this mentality and training. You were no longer part of the few. Today’s kids grow up entirely in a mass culture environment. Do you think this notion is connected at all to democracy?

Chen: I think it is connected.

Xiang: After that, we slowly entered into a flat world.

Chen: This is an interesting topic, there’s a lot to be said about it. There is a young female scholar at Tsinghua University by the name of Liu Yu. She’s one of the hottest writers in political science, with a lot of magazines clambering to her to ask her to write columns. Her influence on the Internet is even greater than that of her column. She is a bit over thirty, with a very open mind. She has lived abroad for a long time, and is a very outstanding young woman. A few of us were chatting one day, and I was talking about how many things had been lost. She didn’t quite agree. She said, “Mr. Chen, you’re talking in comparison to old society. Today’s society is more equal, with all of the lofty things being pulled down. Why don’t you think about how, through this equality, our overall level has been raised?” This topic popped up a bit late that day, so we didn’t go too deeply into it. She and I just laid out each one’s different viewpoint. Now that you’ve brought it up. It’s not about who is right or who is wrong. There’s a lot to discuss in that. In part, it’s about the relationship between the many and the few. Sometimes it’s not about one being lower or another being lifted up, The few are the few; they will always be the few, no matter how high or low they are, it is this feeling, this state of existence, that of the few.

The notion of the elite was mainly significant in the 80s. The term is still being used now, but as I understand it, it has come to mean successful people. There are common threads between elite and successful people, but they are also quite different. The relationship between the two is something worth pondering. On the extreme side, the elite are the elite, and it has nothing to do with success, but that’s not really the case. There are some very strange paths through them, which are connected to success. We were just talking about Ding Fang. As I see it, Ding Fang is a top-level elite, but he is certainly not successful in the current painting scene. There is a problem here. I’m not saying that you must follow the changes of the times, but on the other hand, what am I persevering for? I could say that what I persevere for is what I think is good, and it has nothing to do with the times or anything else. If you say that what you persevere in is good and that only by my persevering in it can you achieve. It can subsist to the end to show to people that it is really good then we’re back at the problem of whether or not it will after all be accepted. If the people eventually come round to your way of thinking, then you are clearly connected to success. After all, you cannot use failure to educate people. You start out thinking that what you have is good, but you are very lonely, and you are still waiting for success.

I’ll raise another somewhat connected example, that of faith. Ascetic monks don’t care what is going on with people. They have a direct relationship with god and faith, and they take the ascetic path. But sometimes people are inspired, and word spreads, and the monk is venerated for his great virtue. There was a monk in the Middle Ages named Anthony. He ran off to the deserts of Egypt, as far away from civilization as possible, to engage in contemplation, but he was too famous, and a lot of people followed him out there. He wanted to be all alone, but he couldn’t. Later, it became a tradition, the tradition of solitary contemplation, and it lasted until the 20th century. You must remove yourself from the world and meditate, but then you become a great monk. Once the virtues of the great monk are established, then people come to donate money and create golden idols. Even though Buddhism renounces the world, the most influential temples are full of gold-plated bodhisattvas, pure gold bodhisattvas, gold-plated shrines and the like. These famous temples attract more people to burn incense offerings, and in this way, this world-renouncing spirit becomes intertwined with vulgar society. On the one hand, this lofty, sublime stuff is accepted by the world, elevating the world in a sense, but on the other hand, the world is for the most part using its own standards to define what is good and what is high.

Xiang: From an individual perspective, I think it comes in two parts. He is an individual, someone cultivating himself for his faith. His self-cultivation leads to a harvest for himself, and after reaping this harvest, it goes on to influence the world. As for this part, I don’t think it can be fully restored for the individual who engages in self-cultivation, or at least it’s more complicated than that.

Chen: Right. It is more complicated, with a lot more levels. I can actually lead this into my own world. I have a friend named Zou Jingzhi who is very talented and dedicated. He is a great person, and he is also a successful person. His dramas have been performed at the National Center for the Performing Arts. I have another friend named Ah-Jian, who is a famous marginal figure. We were all the best of friends, and we all had ideals. Massive changes took place in society in the 1990s, and how did we deal with them? Someone asked us to write television screenplays. Zou Jingzhi accepted, and Ah-Jian didn’t. TV series are of course a bit vulgar, but there are good and bad ones. Zou Jingzhi didn’t just write TV series, he went on to write plays, movies and musicals, becoming extremely successful. Some of his works are outstanding, such as I Love Peach Blossoms. Ah-Jian has disdained this success. With success, it is hard to avoid vulgarity. I’d even venture to say that Ah-Jian has stuck to the path of anti-success. For him, whoever succeeded was finished. In the end, in later years, the two of them drifted apart. For me, standing in the middle, I lean a little more towards Zou Jingzhi. I’m on better personal terms with Ah-Jian, because he has nothing to do, while Zou Jingzhi and I are both busy, and rarely have a chance to see each other.

The reason I said I lean towards Zou Jingzhi is because he actually went out and produced these artworks. Did he compromise his art for his audience? There is a distinction here, the one between accommodating an era and engaging in dialogue with an era. How do we distinguish the two? You need to look at each artwork. Zou Jingzhi presented his artworks, and they are very good artworks for our contemporary era.

Was there ever an era where even when you produced a relatively good work, it wasn’t very good? If that were the case, would all creative efforts be futile, to the point that I’d rather not do anything at all? Of course, Ah-Jian writes, mostly poetry. Some of his poems are quite outstanding, and he is influential in poetry circles. If we are to idealize Ah-Jian, we could say that he doesn’t care what everyone else is chatting about, that he persists in his own things, things that he can determine. If you think that I’m good, then you should follow me, because I make no compromises. But the real situation is much more complicated. If you’re really Anthony, that’s okay, but you still live in this mortal world. Perseverance is a very concrete process. Perhaps in the end it is not that you hold on to your original ideals, but rather you give up any obligation of yourself. That is because success is not only an external thing. It is also a restraint, something that must be ascertained within the artwork. You must strive in your work, constantly pushing yourself to respond to the issues of society, and constantly reshaping yourself through this interaction, creating outstanding artworks marked by your own unique traits within this constantly changing world. If you say that you don’t care about what’s going on in reality, then you have dropped your own restraints, letting yourself go.

About the author

Chen Jiaying was born in Shanghai in 1952. He entered into the Western Languages and Literature Department of Peking University in 1977, studying German, and began studying in the United States in November 1983. He received his doctorate in 1990 with his thesis Name, Meaning and Meaningfuless and then went to work in Europe. He currently teaches philosophy as a Professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing. His works include Introduction to the Philosophy of Heidegger, Philosophy of Language, The Irreducible Eidos, Philosophy Science, Common Sense, Zephyr, Beginning with Sense and Dianoesis; his translations include Philosophical Investigations, Being and Time, Linguistics in Philosophy and Sense and Sensibility among others. He is considered to be one of the most influential philosophers of the contemporary age.

Courtesy of Xiang Jing and Chen Jiajing.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

Arario Gallery Beijing is honored to introduce 8 pieces of video and film works by 7 artists from China, Iceland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden at its first exhibition in 2012, Memento Mori.

Memento Mori, which is a Latin Phrase, means “remember your mortality” or “remember you will die”. Art works involved in death could trace back to the beginning of the art history, most of which are religious and emphasize the emptiness and fleetingness of earthly life while celebrating the peacefulness and sweetness of afterlife. As Socrates’ famous saying that death is the separation of soul and body, all these artworks inquire life and death in the sense that they compose a binary opposition, for death is considered to be the ending of life. While the Western place the meaning of life on the afterlife, Confusious believed that we would have no idea about what death is before we get to know what life is. Confusious instructs the masses to be content with what life is and live a meaningful life when alive, and leave peacefully when death comes. However, such oblivions or ignorance of “death” can easily lead life to a kind of existence without depth. It is until the 20th century when the great philosopher Martin Heidegger brought forward the concept of “being-toward-death” that we get to understand existence in a broader dimension.

Being-toward-death reveals that life is not a linear process from alive to dead. Rather, death is always and definitely intrinsic to life as another state of being. The certainty that death is an insurmountable destiny and the uncertainty that one never knows when to die constantly exists in one’s every moment of being. Death is no longer the end of life or an event someday happening to the body, but a process never ends as long as life goes on. Meanwhile, it is this certain feeling of death that makes human beings has an insight on the authenticity of existing at every very moment. Therefore, what being-toward-death illuminates is a life integral with death, a life dancing with death. And what’s more, being-toward-death liberates and frees being in its authentic meaning in the dimension of time.

The forthcoming 8 video works all involve in the theme of life, being and death, which make the exhibition carry the Northern European aesthetics and also embody the Chinese young artists’ philosophical thinking. Chen Qiulin (b.1975, China) records the disastrous scene of Wenchuan after the earthquake in 2008 and reveals the feeling of big loss in <Peach Blossom> via video record and performance. Cheng Ran (b.1981, China) recreates the classical chapter of the tragedy <Hamlet> (To be or not to be,This is a question), employing improvisational modern dance, in his <Ghost (Hamlet) >. Jiang Pengyi (b.1977, China) films his <Sudden> in a pathless forest in Nantes, France. The video presents the surroundings and spectacles there, and how the feelings of the isolate interact with the environment. In fact, there’s no difference between the surroundings and oneself in a sudden. Guido Van der Werve (b.1977, the Netherland) draws out the restricted state of human being when we try to shed our limited in the face of the great unconquerable Nature. In his No. 12 <Nummer Twaalf>, the extensive landscape is in sharp contrast with the lonely figure of the man standing in front of this scene. Sigurður Guðjonsson (b. 1976, Iceland) demonstrates a pioneer going deep into an endless glacier. In <Deathbed>, he ambiguously points to a post-apocalyptic situation which relates to our nowadays life in some sense and questions our perception constantly. Ulla Von Brandenburge (b.1974, Germany) films <Chorspiel>. In this video, music as the centerpiece of the setting, resembling mixed chorus hymns or classic elegies, reminds the viewers of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. The four actors, serving as family, peacefully carry on their own lives, but the harmony of the family is disrupted by a dangerous young vagabond. Maria Nordin (b.1980, Sweden) creates her animation <Two Seconds of Pain> and < Behind the Laughing Veil> according to Pedro Almódovar’s <All About My Mother>. The broadly smiling face of the character becomes mottled, and the audience sees how the emotion of joy turns into pain. A freeze shot of a suspending screen, drawings of these moments, animations where the same moment is varied in form – shared time is unpacked in different ways.

The seven artists of various culture backgrounds inquire the nature of being and the conditions we live on. Their poetic and profound works endow this exhibition frosty and elegant aesthetics as well as alienated sensations, which invariably derives from the artists’ inherent ethos and gift.

Date: Apr 13, 2012 – Jun 3, 2012

Opening: Apr 13, 2012, 17:00, Friday

Venue: Arario Gallery (Beijing) (Beijing, China)

Artists: Chen Qiulin, Cheng Ran, Guðjonsson Sigurður, Jiang Pengyi, Maria Nordin, Guido Van der Werve, Ulla Von Brandenburg

Organizer: Arario Gallery (Beijing)

Courtesy of the artists and Arario Gallery Beijing, for further information please visit www.arariobeijing.com.

The Realm of YI, a term developed in traditional Chinese culture, has two aspects. One lies in one’s peaceful and leisurely state of mind; the other lies in the unrestrained, free and natural style.

Many people scratch the surface of modern Chinese calligraphy while only a few have a deep understanding and make a real achievement. Among the latter, Shao Yan is one. He distinguishes himself with his unique style and technique.

Traditional calligraphy, modern calligraphy, Shuxiang in paper, Shuxiang installations and Shuxiang actions, he delves into them one by one, and then out the other side. So uninhibited, open and versatile is his art in terms of form and concept that it saves him any possibility of being hindered in art expression and adds indefinite versatility to his work. He plays well with different forms and concepts, in his own way. This demonstrates a peaceful and leisurely state of mind.

Shao Yan-Chaos No. 1; ink on paper, 246x120cm

From writing brush to medical injectori, whatever tool Shao Yan uses, the consistent aesthetic style of his art is YI.

Western aesthetic categories like grace, lofty, tragedy, comedy, beauty in ugliness, the flower of evil, etc. could well explain most aesthetic phenomena in China, except YI. One cannot find YI in Western aesthetics; YI is specially generated and developed in the calligraphy and painting of the Chinese literati of the past. As an aesthetic category, YI does not wither when the literati paintings and calligraphy have become history; instead, its contemporary energy has been recognized and diffused by insightful Chinese artists. For Shao Yan, what remains unchanged following his twenty years’ trials in different art expressions are his LINES—lines that are like lighting, lines that break out in a flash, and lines with coherence and with the beginning and end corresponding with each other, extending freely and done by a wielding of the brush. Wielding brushes is like throwing punches and injecting inks brandishing swords. It reminds us of the old story of Zhang Xu, the famous Chinese calligrapher who made great progress in cursive script after watching Madame Gongsun brandishing her sword. We cannot recognize every word of the Shuxiang works, thus their meanings cannot be obtained, but we can still feel the artistic conception of calligraphy flowing through these works.

Shao Yan-Chaos No.5, 2011; ink on paper, 246X120cm

YI, and what YI means to Shao Yan, need further and more detailed illustrations. The emptiness, spirit, void, tranquility, oblivious of self, simplicity, trance, detachment, nature and all other features in Shao Yan’s art are all components of YI, and the sum total of them, is what I call the unrestrained, free and natural style.

Shao Yan-The Tranquil, 2010; ink on paper, 200x200cm

About the Exhibition

Curator: Zhu Qingsheng

Academic Director: Liu Xiaochun

Organizer: Today Art Museum

Opening: 3.00pm, April 21, 2012

Duration: April 15—May 15, 2012

Open Hours: 10am-4:30pm, Monday-Sunday

Venue: 2nd floor exhibition hall of Building No.1, Today Art Museum

Address: Pingod community, No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Tel: 8610-58760600-100

Courtesy of the artist and Today Art Museum, for further information please visit www.todayartmuseum.com.

The multiple-faceted realism has always been neglected while the pattern of art has been variously focused on. Consciousness has been drifting between the ideal romanticism and realism; while the phenomenon emerged out of the process, all the activities of consciousness seemingly has become meaningless. The depth of exploring the consciousness out of art works naturally became a kind of overwhelming risky adventure, in which audience can certainly enjoy the fun and humor. At this point art has become no longer far from us, instead, it has become refreshingly magnificent to us.

The exhibition includes various artistic forms: paintings, sculptures, videos, and many other forms of mixed media. One could find rich elements which constitute different consciousness in all of the works. These elements may press, overlap each other, some of them even have been repetitively destroyed and rebuilt. The mechanical exhausting process of art creating shares the common with meditation, only the one who understand could be keenly aware of its meaning.

About the Exhibition

Title: Blind Spots–Group Exhibition of Young Artists

Duration: 2012.04.12 – 2012.05.18

Curator:Simon Wang

Opening Reception: 2012-04-12

Artists: Guan Xiao, Hu Qingyan, Han Bing, Hu Xiaoxiao, Yuan Yuan, Li Qing, Song Jiayin, Zhang Xinjun, Zhang Yexing ,Zhan Chong,Dong Yuan

Courtesy of the artists and Gallery Yang, for further information please visit www.galleryyang.com.

Hosted by MOCA@Loewen in Singapore in association with the Linda Gallery, “Fang Lijun: Documenta” offers a fascinating inside into the career of this important artist and the evolution of his work. The exhibition will be held from 8th March 2012 to 30th April, 2012.

One of China’s most influential contemporary artists, Fang Lijun is perhaps best known for his paintings of shaven-headed young men, looking bored, indifferent or disillusioned with the world around them, thereby depicting a post-1989 generation without ambitions and idealism, slightly lost in a ‘new’ China. A large part of the exhibition is devoted to these works from the late 1980s onwards. Since Mr. Fang Lijun maintains a good collection of his earliest works, hand drawings, photographs and other records of his creative journey in art, he can be said to be the epitome of the spirit of a professional artist in his dedication to documentation. Since the early 1990s, he would meticulously register each sale, and almost perfectly documented records of past exhibitions and collectors, for ease of tracing in the future. This exhibition showcases a systematic selection of the progressive stages in the artist’s learning experiences and creation processes, as well as a series of important information, to strongly reflect, how an individual’s life is shaped and influenced by the major transformations of the Chinese society, as well as to reflect on how the portrayed specific historical background caused an impact on artistic creations.

Through the artist’s sketches and notes, this exhibition presents how over time Mr. Fang Lijun has developed his thoughts and his extraordinary creativity. After examining “documents of his artistic creations”, we can better understand in perspective, the special significance of the society the artist was born into, and how he would cast certain moral judgments and ideals under this socio-historical background.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA@Loewen) aims to bring the public the very best in contemporary art from across the region. Set in the lush surrounds of Loewen Road, the cutting-edge artworks contrast magnificently with the colonial-era building in which they are housed. As the only museum in Singapore devoted entirely to contemporary works, and by hosting continuously changing exhibitions and installations, MOCA@Loewen has positioned itself as one of the most up-to-date sources available on current trends and movements within the Asian art world.

Courtesy of Fang Lijun and MOCA@Loewen in Singapore, for further information please visit www.mocaloewen.org.

Entitled “The Layer”, Xie Fan’s latest solo exhibition held at White Space, Beijing shows his recent series of gorgeous paintings on silk. The artist mixes modern painting techniques with the Chinese artistic tradition of painting on silk for a stunning effect.

Since 2009, the young artist Xie Fan started trying to shift the oil painting on canvas onto silk. The seemingly simple decision did not aim at going back to embrace the cultural delight of traditional Chinese paintings, but was based on his consecutive form on a visual level. Compared with his works on canvas, the translucent silk could highlight the immaterial – a physical diffuse reflective space composed of light, silk, frames and pigments, physically transcending the regular figure-ground relationship of 2D paintings – of the visual sense itself which was pursued by Xie Fan. Thus, it seems that the viewers could see the moment when the object projected onto their retinas, and their eyesight turns back to Plato’s “cave”, demonstrating the nature of a visual sense in a dialectical way.

In the scope of optics, especially in the context of video-recording or photography, “Jing Shen” (Chinese Pinyin of “the layers”) means the depth of field within which one can make clear images. The exhibition employs this concept to indicate the visual relation between Xie Fan’s art practice and modern optics, and also to remind the viewers to notice the structure of the works themselves – the English title of this exhibition also manifests this.

Xie Fan was born in1983 in Jiangyou,Sichuan Province and graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Currently living and working in Beijing.

About the Exhibition

Date: March 25th – April 24th, 2012

Venue: White Space Beijing

Address: NO.255 Caochangdi, Airport Service Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Tel: +86 10 84562054

Fax: + 86 10 84562749

Email: info@whitespace-beijing.com

Opening Hours: Tues–Sun 10am — 6pm

Courtesy of the artist and White Space Beijing, for further information please visit www.whitespace-beijing.com.

As a medium carrying strong oriental cultural inheritance, paper, with long and profound history, has been rich resource for artistic inspiration. This exhibition presents eight female artists and architects from diverse backgrounds; their works are focused on paper’s different characteristics and materiality. Paper inspires their fresh imaginations and innovative concepts, demonstrating potential extendibility in different creative contexts. These artists hope to treat this exhibition as an experimental platform, by which they can explore new possibilities revealing their subconscious thoughts on this material.

Special thanks to Directors of Amelie Gallery for their generous supports and passionate encouragement for this experimental project.

Dates: 2012-03/24~04/15

Venue: Amelie Gallery

Address: 797 East Street,798 Art District, No.2 Jiu Xian Qiao Road., Chao Yang Dist.,Beijing, China

Opening Reception: 03.24, 15:00

Artists: Wang Min, Li Xiaoming, Kang Lei, Zhu Liye, Gan Yu, Zhang Ying, Zhang Wenjuan, Kang Ni

Courtesy of the artists and Amelie Gallery, for further information please contact longyibang.com.

When Zhao imagines and faces intellectual work it is always fuzzy and full of disputes, as if it is a continuous smear, cover up, and tears at the intention of the people portrayed by hidden souls excited and forced out from the flesh. There is a silent stop when the viewer is in front of his works, the line of sight penetrates the surface of the facial features and faces directly into the inner self. Thus we realize that the artist is seemingly confused, calm, controlled and the construction is in a painstaking self-art order with the lines and colors intertwined.

Zhao Nengzhi’s series “Blue”, maintains the structures and elements of his earlier works, the body and expressions became the carrier of the artist’s creations such as “Big head” or the half man figures. Zhao Nengzhi always uses the exaggerated and transformation of focus to show his works to us, also emphasizing the characteristics of partial figures. The partial features of his works are just a kind of media, which arranges the massive chaos into a combination of everything. Whether it might be judged as twisted, terrifying, painful, stressful, or blind, we cannot deny that the expressions shown are the same characteristics we all share as a human being. The artists show our “true” conditions through this form of violent creation.

Zhao Nengzhi’s creations are very progressive and full of unknown characteristics, how far can the artist dig into his potential to express his intellectual structures. Zhao places emphasis on his coincidental experiences, “I prefer to focus on the brush works and the line elements in my work, those images might seem to be created from the mistakes during the process of painting and in fact this is true, but I like the coincidental mistakes made during my painting process, it’s interesting to retain them.” The obsession of pure and unstable nature was the true form of Zhao’s inner self. Therefore, he often remains cautious and sensitive towards the “pure abstraction” forms.

About the Exhibition

Curator: Dai Zhuoqun

Exhibition Director: Sun Yongzeng

Assistant Curator: Li Yunxia, Xie Jinyuan

Public Relations: Wu Wei

Project Cooperation: Liu Chenya, Wu Ling

Organizer: White Box Museum of Art

Opening: Saturday, April 9, 2012, 3p.m.

Dates: April 9, 2012 –May 7, 2012

Museum Opening Hours: 10:00 – 18:00, Tuesday – Sunday

Venue: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, 798 Art Dist

Address: 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Tel: +86-10-59784800

Fax: +86-10-59784801

Courtesy of the artist and White Box Museum of Art, for further information please visit www.798whitebox.com.

Cai Guo-Qiang in front of gunpowder drawing Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012; Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com, courtesy of the artist and MOCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art(MOCA) presents Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder, the first West Coast solo exhibition of the New York–based artist, known for his gunpowder drawings, installations, and explosion events at The Geffen Contemporary from April 8–July 30, 2012. It will feature new works commissioned by MOCA, including three gunpowder drawings and an outdoor explosion event created onsite at the museum.

Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder explores Cai’s lifelong fascination with the unseen forces in the physical and metaphysical worlds. His view of the universe is one Cai came to on his own, through popular books, folk traditions, his curiosity about cosmological phenomena, and realizations about life. For Cai, time and space are one entity because the word for “universe” in Chinese, yuzhou, consists of space (yu) and time (zhou). His explosion events and installations aptly incorporate both temporal and spatial dynamics, and the creative process is also part of the finished work. The spontaneity and unpredictability evident in his site-specific, community-based works reflect the principles of feng shui and Chinese medicine adapted in his artistic methodology, which allow nature to take its course and the artist to make the most of a given situation.

From March 3 through 10, the artist collaborated with local volunteers to make three new gunpowder drawings for MOCA’s exhibition. In order of production, the first gunpowder work to be exploded on canvas, Chaos in Nature (approx. 11 x 49 feet) depicts uncontrollable forces in nature such as earthquakes, tsunami, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes. The second gunpowder work on canvas, Zero Gravity (approx. 11 x 39 feet) portrays mankind’s undying fantasy to defy gravity and its unsuccessful challenges by naïve measures since antiquity. The last gunpowder drawing, Childhood Spaceship, made on Japanese hemp paper, is monumental in scale (13 feet high x 108 feet wide), and presents imagery of related figures, memories, and objects that have sparked the artist’s curiosity about the universe since his youth. Cai draws inspiration for these fantastic mural-like drawings from his homeland, family members, Chinese medicine, feng shui, QiGong, modern astrophysics, space voyages, natural and supernatural phenomena, as well as from images of Project for Extraterrestrials.

Ignition of gunpowder drawing Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012

Ignition of gunpowder drawing Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012 02

Ignition of gunpowder drawing Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012 03

“Cai Guo-Qiang fuses historical references and a futuristic vision to create art that is totally contemporary,” commented MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch. “His work engages his audiences both experientially and visually. It is spectacular but also intimate. Cai draws the viewer into his imagined world.”

Cai sees his art as a “time-space tunnel through which the visible world communicates with the energy from the unseen world.” Museum visitors will have the chance to witness Cai’s versatility through the exhibition and surrounding events—he uses different materials and art forms to visualize the invisible forces in nature, in imaginative and playful ways.

“This is a pivotal event for the contemporary art scene in Los Angeles,” said Dominic Ng, chairman and CEO of East West Bank. “We are honored to be partnering with MOCA to bring the world-renowned work of Cai Guo-Qiang to our city. To experience Cai Guo-Qiang’s work is not only visually compelling and thought provoking, but represents the fresh and distinctive nature of contemporary Chinese art as it becomes an increasingly dynamic force in the international art world.”

Cai Guo-Qiang sketching detail for gunpowder drawing Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012

Cai Guo-Qiang touching up ignited Desire for Zero Gravity, Los Angeles, 2012

The exhibition will open with an outdoor explosion event, Mystery Circle: Explosion Event for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, on the exterior wall of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA (facing Temple Street) at 7:30pm on Saturday, April 7. Mystery Circle, a site-specific work created for MOCA, will contain three stages of special pyrotechnics. At dusk, a myriad of flying saucer girandolas will rise from the rooftop. At the moment of ignition, countless mini rockets forming a string of crop circles will launch toward the audience before falling onto the ground in a matter of seconds. Subsequently, an imaginary alien-god figure on the left side of the wall will be outlined from bottom to top by gunpowder fuse. When the burned fuses reach the “halo” of the figure, mini rockets will shoot upward to the air. The rockets will leave a burned imprint on the museum wall, creating an outdoor drawing. While Cai’s signature explosion events Project for Extraterrestrials have been dedicated to the creatures from outer space, his new project at MOCA will be the first time an imaginary alien figure actually appears.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Black Ceremony explosion event. Commissioned by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2011, courtesy Cai Studio, photo by Hiro Ihara

Crop Circle is an installation made with reeds, mimicking the patterns of mysterious crop circles around the world. It will occupy the center of the gallery and be suspended from the ceiling, suggesting an inversion of time and space.

Three videos will also be presented, including a compilation of Cai’s past explosion projects, documentation of the gunpowder drawing creation process at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, and documentation of Mystery Circle.

The exhibition is curated by MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch and MOCA Associate Curator Rebecca Morse, in close collaboration with the artist.

Photo by Joshua White/JWPictures.com, courtesy of the artist and MOCA, for further information please visit www.moca.org or contact www.caiguoqiang.com.

Transition, 2012, photo on plexiglass, acrylic, red shawl, 90×70×5 cm

The Russian born artist Julia Winter chooses the title ‘PresentpasT’ for her exhibition in Beijing. It refers to the way she deals with several realities that she combines at the same time in her work. Sometimes she uses old photographs that are covered with objects or other layers of images of our time by which new realities are visualized. It might also have to do with the fact that in Russian daily life many realities coexist at the same time. It is as well a way of visualizing our actual dealing with a load of information that has to be filtered and rearranged in order to understand or to question a certain kind of truth. In her installations, paintings, photographic assemblages and performances the content might vary from political issues to subjects that portray persons or cityscapes or it deals with censored contents in visual or written information. In the way she reconstructs our world in a new or modern reality she evokes poetic meanings that seduce us to interpret and to rearrange our own vision in life. The exhibition ‘PresentpasT ’parallels with the exhibition ‘Made in Russia – Nine Contemporary Russian Artists’ that OTHER GALLERY | Shanghai Space has organized.

Qui Pro Qua, 2012,watercolor, photo, cord, 30×19 cm

Elena, 2012, photo, black paint, 80×60cm

About the Exhibition

Title: PresentpasT

Artist: Julia Winter

Curator: Maarten Bertheux

Duration: Mar 11th- Apr 22th, 2012

Vernissage: 4 – 7 pm, March 10th, 2012

Venue: OTHER GALLERY l Beijing Space

North 3rd Street 706, 798 ART District, Chaoyang, 100015 Beijing

Courtesy of Julia Winter and Other Gallery, for further information please visit www.othergallery.com.cn

Zhan Wang viewed from behind while he was preparing for his solo exhibition in April, 1994.

by Liu Libin

Part II You Too Lose Sometimes!

In the Chinese translation of Romain Rolland’s Life of Michael Ange, translator Fu Lei wrote at the end of the Life of Michael Ange “I don’t expect everybody could survive on the summit. But they should prostrate there once a year. They could change breath in their lungs there, and the blood in their veins. There they show feeling closer to eternity. After that, when they return to a plain of life, their heart shall be filled with courage to fight.”(5) Rolland considered that heroes are capable of living on summits. Rollan of the 19th and 20th century was always a writer who was passionate about heroes, he depicted heroes and successfully represented heroes through text and the broadcasting of heroes.

Zhan was very fond of Romain Rollan when he was in training school. He read his representative work Jean-Christopher thoroughly and role played the book with a classmate and debated in the voice of the character in the book. In Zhan’s retrospective words The Age Eighteen of this period, he said “Frankly speaking, we learned more about how to discuss art and culture from figures in the book, especially by discussing with a critical view and tone of voice and we think of ourselves as very insightful and outstanding! I guess my Rollanish idealism came from that period and cultivated my cultural passion and ambition.”

In fact Zhan was a ‘tricky’ boy when he was a child who liked playing harmless pranks such as pouring hot water on plant sprouts of his neighbors and teasing classmates in class. He also liked swimming naked, especially when girls passed. Such ‘playfulness’ is based on the fact that he always considered himself cleverer than other people. In the training class, only one classmate could ‘converse’ with him.

Identification of his EQ established the ‘aerial view’ gesture of Zhan. Mocking and ironic, his usual attitude produces a sneer on Zhan’s face. Looking through and stripping the false skin then they stick to set the uncontrolled normality and exploit an embarrassing situation this might be the most favorite of his behavior during this period.

Such state continued through Zhan’s freshman year. September 1984, Zhan had a liver problem in Beijing after he returned from a sculpture project. He couldn’t continue his sophomore year and took a 6 months break. During this time, Zhan experienced the pain of illness in one respect, while on the other he had a transition in his mind. The proud boy felt left behind by his classmates —— “Like falling in a ditch, with no strength” The illness changed Zhan from a satirist and critic into a ‘level headed’ person. He realized that “You too lose sometimes!” In his own words, he “saw the world as round, not only one aspect at a time.” Knowing what he was good at and what not so, therefore he established another objective view of himself and the world he lives in.

After Shostakovich’s’ death, the Soviet Union announced him as “most loyal son of the nation” while western countries deemed him “greatest composer of 20th century, loyal believer of Soviet regime” yet he himself said “Waiting for execution by shooting is a subject that tortured me for my whole life.” “Stalin liked to put a person face to face with death and let the man dance with his own melody.” During his illness, Zhan’s friend introduced him to Shostakovich’s biography to solve his contradicted mind at that time. Such contradiction, in Zhan’s view is a common contradiction of his time —— the mode of existence of ‘double-faced person’.

On the one hand he knew himself as reading “Laozi and Zhuangzi” and studying Zen from Suzuki Roshi, on the other hand he wished for and did find the way to authentic nirvana, which is viewing this world objectively without any bias. Zhan sees it as “doctrine of the mean” by his understanding. In the beginning of The Book of Rites •Doctrine of the Mean it “Lets the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and so a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish.” Related to this saying, there are two interpretations. Ye Shi, the bellicose general of South Song dynasty interpreted it as “Ancient people use the perfection of equilibrium and harmony for themselves. Therefore heaven and earth are ordered accordingly and all things are nourished.” It means that decent people should change reality with a moderate attitude; then rebuild the order of nature. There are also scholars who focus on the negative aspect and interpreted it into “After heaven and earth gained their order, all will be nourished accordingly.” After his illness Zhan was inclined to the latter. In conversation of Zhan Wang and Gao Minglu there are “I never emphasized that I believed the doctrine of mean. In fact I only felt it as a natural revelation. I don’t like those intended premature actions, neither did I like general conventions and conservative ways. I always do some tricks, but my tricks are not meant to make you angry.”

Obviously, at this time Zhan’s state is further away from the critical and ironic Zhan.

Part III Giving Up the Pursuit of Style —— Zeroing for the First Time

When at training school, Zhan had been introduced to works of modern artists such as Rodin, Picasso, Emile Antoine Bourdelle and Henry Moore etc. and the works of those artists had more or less influenced his early works. Those influences are mainly reflected in his imitation of a work style. Zhan was vexed on this. He said in retrospect that “When I express my life, the molding language I used is mostly others, mostly learned from albums, such as Picasso’s male (shepherd), Marinian female body, colourful consecrates in Chinese ancient temples. When you don’t have your own vocabulary (or you haven’t been taught to find your own vocabulary), you have to borrow others’ when you need to express.” In fact, in Zhan’s graduate creation “Streets” in 1988, there is an obvious trace of Marino Marini. At the time he had not found his own language.

What marks the maturity of an artist is the setting up his own art language. I think Zhan at the time must have realized this problem, otherwise he couldn’t be so vexed and depressed. Predominated by this cognition, Zhan made a desperate decision: reduce the expression (work style as we usually say) to ‘zero’. Under such circumstances, any learned style, no matter Chinese or western, ancient or modern, became his potential enemy.

Actually, when artists of ’85 New Wave were still indulging in ‘modernism art’, Zhan Wang, who entered in the Central Art Academy in 1984 was introduced to ‘post-modernism’ through reading. The earliest book which inspired him was Western Post-modernism Architecture. In the Chinese art field, the word ‘post-modernism’ was first brought into architecture, at the time ‘post-modern art’ are rarely mentioned, which makes when Zhan felt ‘modernism’ and ‘’85 New Wave’ as outdated. Doubtlessly, ‘Superrealism’ (especially George Segal’s Pop sculptures) of post-modernism art remarkably influenced Zhan’s later creations (1988 – 1993).

"Sidewalk" by Zhan Wang, 1990; sculpture

In 1990, Zhan adopted the superrealism concept into his work “Sidewalk”. Among the sculptures, Zhan initially made a complete body model out of clay, then he put clothes on the model and fixed them and molded it to hard material and coloured it. He used this creation to empty, zeroing himself and forgeting all the language of sculpture as accumulated by predecessors. Starting all over again from the unknown. On another level, from the life around him, he learnt to use his own eyes (rather than ‘colored glasses’ made of others’ styles) to view the world. Zhan created colored a sculpture series “The Moment”, among which there is “The Mao Suit”, “Sitting Girl”, “Woman Lost-Weight” etc. The latter two made Zhan an outstanding artist in sculpture field.

‘My own eyes’ as Zhan said remind me of Gerhard Richter’s creative concepts. In Richter’s view, an individual artist’s understanding to the real world and their reappearance or expression of the real world are based on prejudiced ‘ideology’, or reformed by ‘style’ from education and lost objectivity and partially covered by the abundant information of reality itself. Richter found a way to get rid of ‘ideology’ and any influences from the past, which is to put ‘photography’ in between the real world and the subject, then regard it as the real ‘objective’. His purpose of painting was not as a cross objective of ‘photography’, and connect it with the real world in any way; but satisfied with confronting the objective of ‘photography’ and aimed at discovering abundant information of ‘photography’. Therefore we are not surprised that Richter said that he doesn’t express the photo, his painting is infinitely approaching photo. Based on the same reason, he chose the ‘famous’ flat paint technique. In fact, Richter wanted to learn to observe the world like a camera lense and get rid of the shadow of ideology influenced by the skills he learned.

He began to realize the effects of image, the image effect was randomly captured by point-and-shoot camera —these images contain realistic information. His objective is “to view the world like a point-and-shoot camera!”

Sitting Girl, 1990; Bronze Sculpture 8-2, 130×110×49cm

If Zhan was ‘expressing’ in the style of modernist masters, he is ‘representing’ a superrealism style. Having experienced such transition from ‘aerial viewer’ to ‘eye level viewer’, Zhan’s angle of view is different from the norm.. This transition coincides with the transition of the 80s and 90s and the 20th century. Described by critic Yi Ying, it is “from ode to heroes to commonplace world”. In  1991, the “New Generation Art Exhibition” was held in the Chinese History Museum of Beijing, Zhan Wang’s “Sitting Girl” was the only selected sculpture. Artists of this exhibition didn’t care much about ‘ideal’, ‘sanity’ and the grand narrative they concentrated on the personal experiences. It enables them to express people around them ‘in close distance’. The works are extremely ‘objective’ on the surface. However if we look closely, we can find works of the ‘New Generation’ artist Liu Xiaodong and Zhan Wang that have things in common: quiet and objective.

"Woman Lost-weight" by Zhan Wang, 1992

Two reprehensive works of Zhan at the time was “Sitting Girl” and “Woman Lost-weight”. The former chose the embarrassing moment of a girl standing up while she was experiencing her menarche and the latter presents the moment when a plump woman fell. Capturing the moment of the two who lost weight (the former psychologically and the latter physically) demonstrates Zhan’s typical ‘tricky’ attitude on the one side along with his usual point of view; on the other side the freeze frame of an abnormal moment is actually ‘stick’ to daily life — people experience regular reality in irregularity. Such regularity also echoes his art language ‘superrealism’. Moreover, using such extremely striving creations, Zhan Wang wanted to sink into a still state (using only his hands rather than his brain) through a detailed description to the object. It’s his ‘zeroing’ state.

The Manufacturing Process of New Art Quick Training Workshop, 1998

In 1991, Zhan Wang participated in the “Traces of Existence: Internal Observing of Contemporary Art” Exhibition curated by Feng Boyi and Cai Qing at Yaojiayuan, Beijing. Zhan exhibited his new performance work that involved participation of the audience “New Art Quick Training Workshop”. It’s written in “Operating Rules and Precautions”: “You don’t have to keep confident of whether there’s original copy in the clay sculpture sedulously, but if not being asked, you could pretend to be careless and not talk. It’s very important to learn about the labor, for example mix the clay thinly; it’s better to wipe the mud on the original copy by yourself, then your traces would be kept and prove it’s your work. Don’t forget to take photos.” — The irony for ‘original copy,’ is the doubt it produces on the value of ‘traces’ and ridicule of the empirical. Here Zhan offers a cruel irony to academic education and idols in art history. Speaking of continuity, after 10 years, Zhan had totally ruptured the style he imitated.

To be continued …

Green Wall:The Study No.1 by Zhang Xiaogang, 2009; stainless steel plate, silkscreen prints, oil and silver pen, 150× 200 cm

July 22nd, Cloudy, the weather feels very heavy

There will be a total solar eclipse today that only occurs once every few decades, and one can see it in Shanghai (too bad I have already left), Tibet, India along with other places. Waking up at noon I have already missed it, when I turned on the television set, I have then realized that it had already become history. Although we couldn’t see it from Beijing, I looked out the window and there was a vast expanse of whiteness, seeing this heavy scene I already knew the eclipse was felt world-wide. All of a sudden, I remember what I have once heard my grandmother say when I was a child that an eclipse occurs when “Tian Gou” (a mythical animal) is eating cake (moon). (?) I remember when grandmother told me about this slightly scary story, I couldn’t help taking a look at her feet, which were bound for several decades, and I thought that this was basically another “feudalistic superstition” and related to nonsense. Later I learned from textbooks that an eclipse is related to the sun, moon, earth and shadows. Therefore, I began to become interested in the mysterious feelings surrounding the “shadow” created by light. Later on, I began to read about contemporary western philosophies and religions, I learned that there is also a changeable “shadow” in one’s soul. And when I read about contemporary psychology, while knowing that a person’s soul would forever retain an ever changing shadow, not only that it wouldn’t disappear, but it would have a fundamental influence on a person’s personality, thoughts and thinking, as well as actions. It would even destroy a person’s personality! Yet all these have nothing to do with “light”. With this, the imagination, searching, experience, fear, anticipation, analysis, prevention, oblivion, loathing, helplessness, as well being infatuated with “shadow”, have instead become a new remodeled “shadow”!

I don’t even know if this “shadow” really exists? Perhaps this is merely a certain kind of hint brought by the collective knowledge of human nature? It is fused together with our bodies, which can never be separated. It influences our thoughts, judgement and action, flickering, and unstable. When it’s being explained as some kind of bloodline in “art”, it appears to be so “holy” and intimate; when it emerges in our dreams at night, it appears to be demon-like making people suffocate, and when it shows up under the sun in the crowd, it becomes our excuse to escape and reason to console oneself…

No matter what, I cannot deny that we can no longer get rid of our “shadows”, and have to live with them whether I like it or not. As for where does it come from, what it is, what form and way does it take shape in the deepest part of our souls, we could think about it, judge it, and experience it slowly, but we depend on each other for survival, and we prove ideals to each other, which have assembled the psychological structures we now have, moreover, like a mirror projecting onto other people while projecting onto ourselves. That is the case.

15th, woke up at eleven thirty A.M., water, one cup of cucumber and bitter melon juice / blood pressure at one in the afternoon 110/78P80 / lunch noodles 2 liangs (100 grams) (note: “liang” is a measuring unit, 1 liang equals to 50 grams) / dinner tomato stir fry egg, short rib, eggplant, Chinese cabbage, rice 3 liangs (150 grams) / dinner 2 glasses of red wine (approximately) / all day long a total of 15 cigarettes / went to sleep at around 3 A.M.

16th, woke up at eleven thirty A.M., water, one cup of cucumber and bitter melon juice / blood pressure at one in the afternoon 127/78P80 / lunch noodles a little more than 2 liangs (a little more than 100 grams) / dinner at home, mushroom, beef, egg and bitter melon, white spirit a little more than 1 liang (a little more than 50 grams), rice 1 liang (50 grams) / a total of 15 cigarettes, went to sleep at around four

17th, woke up at twelve thirty, water, one cup of cucumber and bitter melon juice / blood pressure at 2 in the afternoon 122/81P78 / lunch noodles 3 liangs (150 grams) / had a little dinner on the air plane, then had Shanhainese cuisine, white spirit 3 liangs (150 grams) / dinner about 4 glasses of Western wine / a total of 15 cigarette, (or maybe 17?), went to sleep at around four.

Courtesy of Zhang Xiaogang and all rights reserved.

Entitled “Gu Dexin: The Important Thing is Not the Meat,” this major retrospective exhibition of Gu Dexin spans three decades of this artist’s vast and varied output and it marks the first comprehensive attempt to showcase and elucidate one of China’s most complex and original artistic voices.

“Gu Dexin: The Important Thing is Not the Meat” traces the full arc of Gu’s solo career, from his amateur paintings in the late 1970s through his climactic final piece of 2009, bringing together nearly 300 works. In doing so, it presents Gu’s work as an alternative history of the development of contemporary art in China: his early paintings toggle readily among the Western styles then being digested, just as his later performative installations foreshadowed larger debates over acceptable forms and materials both inside the Chinese art world and in the nascent international interpretive community around it.

Elements and sequences that appear in his earliest work recur throughout his oeuvre—apples and sides of meat first depicted in paintings resurface later as real objects in installations; the fantastical humanoid figure world of his earliest watercolors, pen drawings and embroideries forms the basis not only for later sculptures but for the flash animations that became part of the artist’s daily practice starting in the late 1990s. His ultimate decision to end his career and return to “normal” life in the same Beijing residential compound where he grew up and made nearly all of the work on view has been read by many commentators less as a rejection of art than a protest to society.

The exhibition takes its title from a 2003 article by the artist and critic Qiu Zhijie, the title of which was itself a response to the 1996 article “The Important Thing is Not the Art” by the curator Li Xianting. In this article, Li wrote on behalf of a then-marginalized group of painters and sculptors (including Gu) whose significance he saw in terms as much social as aesthetic. Qiu wrote in defense of his own later generation, the “Post-Sense Sensibility” artists, a group which provoked public ire and official censure with their gory experiments involving animal and even human flesh around the turn of the 21st century. This title, like this exhibition, positions Gu as the missing link between these two generations and their respective concerns.

Since Gu left art for good in 2009, this exhibition has been assembled entirely by loans from private collections in China, Europe, and the United States. Curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari, it draws heavily on the collection of the Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation (Geneva), which holds over one hundred of the artist’s works from every stage of his career. Other lenders include the DSL Collection, Tim & Ellen Kim Van Housen Collection, Guan Yi Collection, Xin Dong Cheng, Weng Ling, Shanghai Gallery of Art and Galleria Continua. This is the second time Gu’s work has been featured at UCCA, the first being the center’s inaugural 2007 exhibition ‘ ’85 New Wave: The Birth of Chinese Contemporary Art ’.

About the Artist

Gu Dexin was born in Beijing in 1962 and received no formal art education. He lives today in the same chemical-factory housing compound where he grew up and made most of his work. His breakthrough exhibition of paintings and works on paper was staged at International House in Beijing (1986); he then continued developing his conceptual practice throughout the 1980s, founding the Tactile Sensation Group in 1987 and the New Analysts Group with artists Chen Shaoping and Wang Luyan in 1988. Recognized as a principal representative of China’s ’85 New Wave movement, Gu was one of three Chinese artists invited to participate in “Les Magiciens de la Terre” at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1989, making him one of the first Chinese contemporary artists to be shown in a global setting. Gu continued to exhibit widely through the 1990s and 2000s, participating in shows abroad like “Next Phase” (London Docks, London, 1990) and “Another Long March – Chinese Conceptual Art” 1997 (Fundament Foundation, Chasse Kazerne, Breda, The Netherlands, 1997), as well as seminal exhibitions in China like “Fuck Off” (Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, 2000) and the First Guangzhou Triennial (Guangdong Museum of Art, 2002). He also participated in the Taipei Biennial (1998), Chengdu Biennial (2001), Gwangju Biennial (2002), and Venice Biennale (2003). Gu became increasingly frustrated with the art world, though, and in 2009 he decided to quit. After a final show, “2009.05.02,” at Galleria Continua in Beijing, Gu left the scene. He continues to live with his wife in Beijing, but no longer participates in exhibitions or events.

About the Exhibition

Venue: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (798 Art District, No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road, P.O.Box 8503, Chaoyang District, Beijing)

Dates: March 24 to May 27, 2012.

Opening: Saturday, March 24, 11 am.

Related Program

smart Artists’ Talk SeriesDebating Gu Dexin-The Important Thing is Not the Meat

Time: April 8 (SUN) 13:00 – 15:30

Venue: UCCA Auditorium

Moderator: Philip Tinari (UCCA Director)

Guests:

Karen Smith (writer, curator, critic)

Qiu Zhijie (artist, curator, educator)

Fei Dawei (curator, critic)

Feng Boyi (curator, critic)

Language: Chinese with English Translation

Courtesy of Gu Dexin and UCCA, for further information please visit www.ucca.org.cn.

Film Still of "Summer Palace" 02

by Kong Xiangyun

When someone asked director Lou Ye why the movie was called “Summer Palace”? He said, because he felt that in the Summer Palace, through the lens when Yu Hong and Zhou Wei were boating on the sparkling lake was the most beautiful scene. .

I looked at the college students of the 90s in the film , regardless of gender, they unscrupulously danced, loved gathered, rocked ,smoked and made love, they were able to freely access the male and female dormitories , meeting with this or that group of people thus encouraging freedom and passion, while praising decadence and a seemingly crazily confused state. In the year I was born, the group of young people who are the same age as I am now enjoyed such freedom and passion.

Film Still of "Summer Palace" 03

I think the development of social history has always been rising like a ladder from conservative to civilized, but if we look at the greenhouse generation, even in the Art Academy which is supposed to be full of treason and resistance, absenteeism is considered deviant, students just draw neatly, regarding teachers’ sentences as the Bible, neither caring about politics nor the orientation of social development. Even the so-called art circle is also poorly understood, they often feel nothing, think about passing examinations and being assigned to a good department, then graduate, then fear what they are to do after graduation. We grow up in an era of reform and opening up which is committed to the growth of the economy, the biggest feature is pragmatic. How to find a good job? How to earn more money? Finding purpose and reason full of practical significance for all our actions, ideals and spirit become as pale and ridiculous as orchid fingers.

There is no Hai zi in our generation, neither Gu Cheng! Ideal is pale! Faith is absent!

The Poster of "Summer Palace"

But, in the upper portion of the “Summer Palace”, it is a kind of spiritual symbol. Yu Hong met Zhou Wei who impressed her through her whole life in Tsinghua University, like other young men of that era, they soon fell in love, made love crazily, and also suffered the feelings of the bottleneck, silently bore the emptiness and desperation brought by the over-expansion of freedom. When the music sounded, the young group rushed out of their bedrooms and classrooms wave after another wave, jumped on trucks. While watching they wave posters and banners, singing, dancing, embracing acquaintances and strangers, my tears suddenly drop – not because of the political tragedy, but for the freedom and spirit that existed in such a pure but warm way!

After the events, many lost young people chose to go abroad, Zhou Wei and Yu Hong’s girl friend Li Ti went to Germany, while Yu Hong went to the Shenzhen, Yu Hong encountered several men of different identities, but when she was with them, her heart still couldn’t get rid of Zhou Wei. Life in Germany bored Zhou Wei, so he decided to return home to find Yu Hong, after returning home, he found that Yu Hong was married, they embraced and kissed as before in a highway service station by the sea, but suddenly stopped, Zhou asked Yu to buy cigarettes for him , when Yu went over the bridge, Zhou roared past her in his car without saying another word.

Film Still of "Summer Palace" 01

What I care about is that age, a lot of angry youths, the love of that era, because it is romantic. Zhang Yiwu said that communism is really just a good idea and a romantic commitment, extreme ideal is extreme unreality, it may never come true, but we cannot deny the process of human beings to follow it.

However，our generation forgets about this, living in the moment has become mainstream thinking, Over-stressed individuals did not liberate humanity, but contributed to the desires of indulgence, this era’s indifference is chilling. Proliferation of the media causes the stagnation of our thinking, the brain is blocked by outside messages and opinions, self-reflection and inward vision become so difficult. Inundation of the internet is full of kitsch, such as verbal abuse, all kinds of silly gossip and speculation, apart from the need of adequate clothing and food, money and position, is there no other reason to exist?

It is necessary to stop and think about this era.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

Comparisons between A Half-naked Woman collected in CAFA Art Museum and Historical Publications of Li Shutong's Masterpiece with the same title

In the afternoon of March 27th, 2012, CAFA Art Museum convened a meeting of experts on the “Identification and Seminar of Li Shutong’s A Half-naked Woman” and Shao Dazhen, Zhong Han, Lang Shaojun, Li Shusheng, Tao Yongbai, Liu Xilin, Shang Jinlin, Yin Jinan, Yi Shuangxi, Zhu Qingsheng, Zheng Gong, Li Weiming, Liu Xin, Li Chao, Chen Xing, Zhao Li, Cao Qinghui and Ye Yonghe were present. At the meeting, Prof. Wang Huangsheng, Curator of CAFA Art Museum announced the details of this discovery as well as the results of related research on Li Shutong’s A Half-naked Woman. At the same time, he put forward some questions that needed to be further clarified for experts and scholars from whom he received a partisan as well as a professional perspective.

Li Shutong, A Half-naked Woman; Oil on Canvas, 91x116.5cm(collected in CAFA Art Museum)

A Half-naked Woman(collected in CAFA Art Museum) contrasted with the version with lines made by folding

A Woman(oil painting collected by Shanghai Normal School), Aesthetic Education 01 issued by China Aesthetic Association on April 20th, 1920

In the second half of 2011, CAFA Art Museum sorted out the serious and in-depth collections created during the period of the Republic of China and confirmed lots of important works by Li Yishi, Wu Fading, Zhang Anzhi, Sun Zhongwei and other masters of China, some of which are large in size and belong to their collection of masterpieces. However, the most significant finding is this “A Half-naked Woman” by Li Shutong (oil painting). It ranks among the major events in the cultural history and art history of China and it is significant for research on Li Shutong and Chinese oil painting origins.

Hong Yi (1880–1942) (Chinese: 弘一大師 Hóngyī Dashi), born Li Shutong (李叔同) was a Chinese Buddhist monk, artist and art teacher. He also went by the names of Wen Tao, Guang Hou, and Shu Tong, but was most commonly known by his Buddhist name, Hong Yi. He was a master painter, musician, dramatist, calligrapher, seal cutter, poet, and Buddhist monk.

Li Shutong

Li Shutong was born in Tianjin to a banking family originating in Hongdong County, Shanxi, that migrated to Tianjin during the Ming Dynasty, though his mother was from Pinghu, Zhejiang province. In 1898 Li moved to Shanghai and joined the “Shanghai Painting and Calligraphy Association”, and the “Shanghai Scholarly Society” while he was attending the Nanyang public school. In 1905 Li went to Japan to study at Tokyo School of Fine Art in Ueno Park where he specialized in Western painting and music, and met a lover by the name of Yukiko who was to become his concubine. In 1910 Li returned to China and was appointed to Tianjin’s Beiyang Advanced Industry School. The next year he was appointed as a music teacher in a girl’s school in Shanghai. He went to Hangzhou in 1912 and became a lecturer in the Zhejiang Secondary Normal College. He taught not only Western painting and music but also art history. By 1915 Jiang Qian hired him as a teacher at Nanjing Normal College (renamed in 1949 to Nanjing University), where he taught painting and music. He also taught at Zhejiang Secondary Normal School, the predecessor to the famous Hangzhou High School.

During these later years, Li’s reputation grew, as he became the first Chinese educator to use nude models in his painting classes, not to mention the first teacher of Western music in China. Li Shutong himself was also an accomplished composer and lyricist. Many of his compositions are still remembered and performed today. In 1916, Li underwent a 21-day fast at a temple in Hangzhou, and experienced the benefits of a spiritual life. The following year, he took refuge in the Three Jewels of Buddhism. After spending another year there, Li began a new chapter in his life by choosing to be ordained as a monk, and thus began a holistic life dedicated to propagating Buddhism and its code of conduct. After becoming a monk he practiced only calligraphy, developing a simple and unadorned, yet unique style, which was treasured by everyone who received a sample. He became known to all as Master Hong Yi. In 1942, Master Hong Yi died peacefully at the age of 63 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province. A special 130th anniversary celebration of Master Hong Yi showcasing his calligraphy and painting works took place in 2010 in Shanghai, partly sponsored by the Pinghu Municipal Government, and attended by a granddaughter of Hong Yi.

Xu Yiwen (also known as XU Hongwen) was born in 1960 in Beijing and graduated from the department of Chinese Paintings, the Central Academy of Fine Arts and obtained a Bachelor of Art degree in 1985. He is now an Associate Professor in the Design & Art School, Beijing Institute of Technology, a “Marginal” architecture designer, a member of the Association of Chinese Poetry, a member of the Chinese Universities Design Association, a governor and an executive committee for the arts in the China National Public Relationship Association.In 1986, his work “Evening Breeze” won the special award for excellence in the World Youth Painting Exhibition.

Selected Group Exhibitions

1990 “Six Person’s Water Ink Art Exhibition”, Beijing

1991 “Twelve Person’s Painting and Art Exhibition”, Beijing

1993 His work “View Lotus in Rain” participated the Research Institute art exhibition in the Chinese Painting Academy

1994, he together with Master Zhou Sicong published in Hong Kong special featured videos for learning Chinese Painting techniques “Impressionistic and Realistic Figures”

From 1993 to 1998, his calligraphy works participated the annual exhibition every year, “The Anti-nuclear” Peace Calligraphy Exhibition—Nuclear Explosion Anniversary Exhibition”, Japan

2003 Beijing “Eastern platform Library” project architectural design, environmental planning and design

2003 His paintings were selected to represent the College of Design and Art, Beijing Institute of Technology, to participate the China—South Korea cultural exchanges exhibition

2009 Guan Ying Tang, First China-ROK Exchange Year, Beijing

2010 “Aloof Lotus”, “South East Asia Chinese Ink and Wash Exhibition” hosted by Chinese Ministry of Culture

Selected Solo Exhibitions

1992 “Yiwen and Laoshi Painting Art Exhibition”, Beijing; the same works were exhibited in New Zealand and Australia in the same year.

2007 His personal painting and art exhibition held in “Gallery 99”, Frankfurt, Germany

2009 “Peaceful World”, Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Hong Kong

2011 “Xu Hongwen’s Chinese Ink and Wash art & Architecture Studies”, Beijing Institute of Technology

2011 “Personal Chinese Ink and Wash Exhibition”, Gallery 99, Aschaffenburg, Germany

Publications

In 2004, he was invited to visit France; Germany and in the Berlin University of Arts for cultural exchanges discussions

In 2005, the “National Museum of China” published a 2005 special edition for his personal arts “the Prestige”

In 2006, the “Chinese Painting Family” journal published a special edition for his personal poetry and painting works.

In 2007, the “Chinese Painting” published a special edition for his personal paintings.

In 2008, the Beijing Post issued a series of postcards on his paintings

Courtesy of Xu Yiwen and all rights reserved.

Xu Bing, Book from the Ground, Mixed media, (2003–ongoing) exhibited at Courier, the group exhibition from Oct. 5th through Dec. 4th, 2010 at University Art Museum

Book from the Ground is a novel written in a ‘language of icons’ that I have been collecting and organizing over the last few years. Regardless of cultural background, one should be able to understand the text as long as one is thoroughly entangled in modern life.

Xu Bing has written in the brief introduction on Book from the Ground.

Xu Bing is a prominent figure in the global contemporary art world, and one of the giants of Chinese contemporary art. His early groundbreaking re-interpretation of Chinese characters, Chinese calligraphy and printing history, and his engagement with the installation medium, re-defined the way many subsequent Chinese artists approached their aesthetic traditions. A recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, he has shown at numerous important exhibition spaces worldwide, including The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Joan Miro Foundation in Spain, and the 45th, and 51st Venice Biennials, among others.

Xu Bing’s exhibition at Albion Gallery, London

Screen Shot of Xu Bing's "Book from the Ground"

Xu Bing's Book from the Ground

This solo exhibition of Xu Bing  will coincide with the publication of his new work, Book from the Ground, a book that tells stories through the icons common in our contemporary experience. This work continues Xu’s longstanding interest in the link between the written symbol and visual communication. The exhibition will highlight the text; showcasing works made in conjunction with the book, and will show previous pieces which reveal the history of Xu’s engagement with these themes.

For further information on Book from the Ground, please visit www.bookfromtheground.com.

Website of Xu Bing Studio: http://xubing.com/

About the Exhibition

Dates: 2012.04. 21-05.29

Venue: Shanghai Gallery of Art

Add: 3rd Floor, No.3, the Bund, Shanghai 200002, China

Tel: 86-21-63215757, 86-21-63233355*8758

Fax: 86-21-53500059

Email: gr@on-the-bund.com

Website: www.shanghaigalleryofart.com

This spring Faurschou Foundation presents a solo exhibition by Chen Zhen, one of the best known exponents of Chinese avant-garde art. He was born in Shanghai in 1955 and died in Paris in 2000. Like other artists of his generation (Huang Yong Ping, Ai Weiwei, Xu Bing, and Cai Guo Qiang) Chen Zhen left China in the late 1980s, and rapidly attracted international attention for his remarkable mixed-media installations. Though Chen Zhen exhibited extensively all over the world, he never had a solo show in China while he was still alive. The exhibition at Faurschou Foundation presents a variety of Chen Zhen’s sculptures and installations produced between 1992 and 2000 – most of them made out of all kinds of everyday objects like cloth, candles, chairs, fabric, bicycle tubes and other objets trouvés.

Transexperiences

The title of the show, Même lit, rêves diffèrents, stems from a large installation in the exhibition which poetically encapsulates Chen Zhen’s art. Même lit, rêves diffèrents (1999) is a complex installation with a large piece of fabric suspended from the ceiling, a cage with a landscape, a grid with medical glass retorts and a TV screen. The piece gathers many of the themes central in Chen Zhen’s art: the harmony between body and spirit, the fraternity between different peoples and cultures, the resolution of conflicts, and fruitful engagement between East and West.

Chen Zhen lived in Shanghai and Paris and travelled a lot in USA, South America, Middle East, and Australia. At a time when neither multiculturalism nor globalization had yet become dominant discourses, Chen Zhen was interested in cross-cultural social dynamics. His own experience of being between cultures and his great interest and engagement in the various cultures he constantly met, made him coin the concept “transexperiences”. This is a central concept in Chen Zhen’s work and expresses his striving to create harmony by acknowledging difference. His work is an existential and intellectual experience somewhere between Eastern and Western thought.

The Material and the Spiritual

When he was 25, Chen Zhen began to suffer from haemolytic anaemia. This illness greatly influenced his art, which is often inhabited by an iconography of the body – cocoons, organs, skin, medicine, and clothes. Using the concept of the organic whole, derived from Chinese medical theory, Chen Zhen explores the intricate and often paradoxical relationship between the material and the spiritual, between community and individual, and between interior and exterior.

Chen Zhen-Landscape of Inner Body, 2000

Chen Zhen-Landscape of Inner Body(detail), 2000

Landscape of Inner Body (2000), made of pieces of clear blown glass shaped as internal organs, addresses opposing approaches in Eastern and Western medicine. It also reveals the value and fragility of life. Several works deal with various forms of synergy, disinfection, and cleansing– also of our landscape and environment. Exciting Delivery (1999) is a puppet-shaped sculpture made of bicycle inner tubes which seems to be giving birth to hundreds of small black toy cars. Chen Zhen did several works and installations with bicycle tubes and toy cars, commenting on the ecological and environmental problems involved as the Chinese go from using bicycles to driving cars.

Chen Zhen-Exciting Delivery(detail), 1999

Buddhist spirituality and the bipolar dialectic of yin and yang form the background for Six Roots / Memory- a patchwork of different fabrics from around the world hanging from the ceiling in the shape of a yin/yang symbol. The title alludes to a Buddhist term for the six main senses of the body (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, consciousness).

Chen Zhen-Six Roots Mémoire-Memory 2000, fabric, iron, ink, 205 x 415 x 256 cm

Chen Zhen-Six Roots Mémoire(detail)-Memory 2000, fabric, iron, ink, 205 x 415 x 256 cm

In this kind of thinking, body and mind are never separated – and at first sight La Désinfection (1997) seems to be a steam cooking system, but instead of food books are being steamed–material and spiritual nourishment being equally important.

Chen Zhen-La Désinfection, 1997; hot plates, aluminum pots, steam bamboo ovens, books, iron, H 100×120×42cm

Exchanges

Often Chen Zhen uses highly interactive elements in his works, thus fostering an exchange between the artistic space and the viewer. Un-interrupted Voice (1998) consists of two large drums made of chairs covered with animal skin – realized in the same period as Jue Chang, Fifty Strokes to Each–one of his most famous installations. Using sound and everyday materials, Chen Zhen links the physical world to the spiritual, ritualistic one. Beating drums is a way of caring for yourself, cleaning yourself, driving out stress and rediscovering a physical and emotional balance. It is also a way of experimenting with your own energy and your own violence through an act that is at once physical and symbolic, material and spiritual.

Chen Zhen-Jue Chang, Fifty Strokes to Each 1998 wood, iron, chairs, beds, skin,

Network of Relationships

Chen Zhen’s work reflects his fascination with different cultures, social contexts and aesthetic approaches in an increasingly globalized world. With an avant-garde belief in the function of art, Chen Zhen saw art as a vital tool in a network of relationships among people – among ethnic groups, peoples and nature, between human beings and science/technology, between Western and non-Western cultures.

All of this is equally strong and even more relevant today.

About the Exhibition

Dates: 24/3/2012 – 3/6/2012

Venue: Faurschou Foundation Beijing, Beijing

Address: Faurschou Foundation Beijing, 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100015 China

Tel: +86 10 59 78 93 16

Email: beijing@faurchou.com

Courtesy of Faurschou Foundation Beijing, for further information please visit www.faurschou.com.

Qian Weikang, “Ventilating the Site,” Installation, 1995.

The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale will take place from May 12 to August 31, 2012 at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) in Shenzhen, China. The Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (formerly known as Shenzhen International Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition) has been supported by Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Corporation Ltd. since its first edition in 1998. Previously, the main organizer of the Biennale was He Xiangning Art Museum. This year, the exhibition will be organized by OCT Contemporary Art Terminal and is officially named Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale.

OCAT is pleased to announce the appointment of Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu and Su Wei as the curators of the Biennale. The curators have chosen “Accidental Message: Art is Not A System, Not A World” as the exhibition title, in an attempt to acknowledge the incidental, the unclassifiable, the organic, the inexplicable and the individual nature of art making, and that of the imaginary elements of our world, and to reiterate the possibility of the individual and independent spirit to overcome the systematic forces and the existing structures.

“Accidental Message: Art Is Not A System, Not A World” is conceived to include two subthemes: “Unexpected Encounters” and “What You See is What I See”. As the starting point for their research, “Unexpected Encounters” focuses on experimental art practice in China from 1989 to 2000. It is an observation of local history, trying to look back on individual practices and art itself during this period. “What You See is What I See” presents current practices from all over the world. This component of the exhibition attempts to envision a kind of connectivity that consists of individual spirits, manifested through individual artists’ creations, transcending regions, systems, mechanisms, norms and art historical narratives. “What You See is What I See” proposes not the magnification of the effectiveness of any existing system, universal order or experience of others but an emphasis on the serendipitous, organic, stochastic, internal, perceptive and instinctive growth and reproduction of art within itself.

“Accidental Message: Art is not a System, not a World” uses a scattered perspective method to engage in the observation of the self and the world we live in, incorporating the limitations of direct observation, experience and fields of vision. Nearly twenty years since the establishment of the Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial, the curators are committed to carrying on in its original intent: to focus on artistic experimentation and to boldly expand the exploration of sculpture into an exploration of various artistic forms including sculpture as well as creation itself.

About the Curators

LIU DING

Liu Ding was born in 1976 in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. He is an artist and a curator based in Beijing. Curatorial work is integral to his artistic practice. His conceptual art project Liu Ding’s Store, begun in 2008, is a continuing project that discusses and presents the various visible and invisible mechanisms in the art system for the formation of value. Liu has shown his works in art institutions including the Turner Museum and the Arnolfini Gallery in the UK, the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria, the Astrup Fearnley Modern Art Museum in Norway, the Sao Paolo National Museum of Art in Brazil, the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, the RasquArt Center in Switzerland, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Italy, the Seoul Municipal Museum of Art in Korea, among others. He was chosen in 2009 as a representative of China at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Little Movements: Self-Practices in Contemporary Art, the project he and Carol Yinghua Lu initiated and curated together, was exhibited at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal in Shenzhen in September 2011, and will go on an international tour from 2012.

CAROL YINGHUA LU

Carol Yinghua Lu was born in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province in 1977. She is a critic and curator based in Beijing. She is currently a contributing editor at Frieze Magazine, and sits on the editorial board for the Arnolfini Art Center’s Far West magazine. She was a jury member for the 2011 Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion Award, and is one of the co-artistic directors for the 2012 Gwangju Biennial.

 SU WEI

Su Wei was born in Beijing in 1982, and is a Beijing-based critic, curator and China Academy of Social Sciences Foreign Literature Institute doctoral candidate. He was the assistant curator of Little Movements: Self-Practices in Contemporary Art at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal. The focus of his work is theoretical practice and writing on contemporary art.

About OCT Contemporary Art Terminal

Founded in 2005, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) is located in the creative cultural space of Overseas China Towns in Shenzhen. It is one of China’s leading contemporary art spaces known for its in-depth survey shows on individual artists, research-driven curatorial practice, annual summer theatre and dance workshops, screening and lecture series, as well as its international artist and curator residency programme.

Courtesy of The 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale, for further information please visit www.ocat.com.cn.

This video collects and presents the exhibition view of Tong Cragg: Sculptures and Drawings at CAFA Art Museum, March 2nd through April 15th, 2012. It was shot and edited by CAFA ART INFO, footage courtesy of Tong Cragg and his team.

A renowned British sculptor and the 1988 Turner Prize winner, Tony Cragg plays a leading role in the remarkable generation of sculptors that emerged in the late Seventies and he serves currently as the director of the respected Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. This major exhibition, part of the event UKNOW, offers the first full survey of Cragg’s work in China, which also has been exhibited in Scotland, Venice, Duisburg, Paris and Dallas. Featuring nearly 50 major sculptures, the show is focused on work from the past 15 years, with some earlier pieces.

Tony Cragg ranks among the most internationally exhibited of his generation of British sculptors which includes Anish Kapoor and the Richards Wentworth, Long and Deacon. “His work is various and versatile yet immediately recognizable…”as commented on by Laura Cumming from The Observer, “Each piece is charged with a characteristic strength of power and direction.”

An artist of great international acclaim and immense energy, Cragg has developed more possibilities in the making of sculpture than any other sculptor since Henry Moore discovered the “hole” as a positive space. Cragg’s contributions to contemporary sculpture practice are beyond challenge. According to Cragg himself, his sculptures are “fictional entities where decisions are made entirely on an aesthetic basis,” and, somewhat contradictorily: “The material finds itself in a new form and the sculptor finds himself with new content and a new meaning.”

The solo exhibition of Ye Hongxing, Common Wealth, showcasing her new series in addition to earlier repertoire of paintings and sculptures presents from March 9th through April 29th, 2012 at Art+ Shanghai Gallery.

Ye Hongxing works reflect on the contradictions within society by representing a more personal struggle of the penetration of desire pitted against a longing for spiritual reclusion. In her earlier works she borrowed the visual mode of commercial billboards and light-boxes, which could easily communicate a message of modern-day consumption through advertising. By combing popular ads and icons with cultural motifs and symbols, her work could access the senses of her audience, who recognized a juxtaposition of contemporary society against more traditional culture values.

In her more recent works, Ye Hongxing uses the language of decorative symbolism, from both traditional and popular culture, to illustrate an increase of materialism in developing societies. Her latest paintings are concerned with contradicting definitions of wealth and progress, not only the commoditization of culture, but also the development of class divisions and national elitism within contemporary society. The simple and direct use of Chinese currency against a backdrop of her black and white portrait contemplates on the desire for and contradiction of, common wealth.

About the Artist

Born in Guangxi province China, Ye Hongxing graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing with her master’s degree in the painting department. After graduation she returned to Guangxi province where she was invited as an artist-in-residence to live and work in the Yuzile Sculpture Park in Guilin. After working with sculpture for a few years she left the park and moved permanently to Beijing in 2004. She is the recipient of several awards including the Dragonair Emerging Chinese Artist Award. She has exhibited and participated in art fairs throughout China and abroad with solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States.

Courtesy of Ye Hongxing and Art+ Shanghai Gallery, for further information please visit www.artplusshanghai.com.

The Embassy of Mexico is pleased to announce the presence in Beijing of the Mexican artist Manuel Felguérez, a well-known painter and sculptor from Zacatecas, who opened his exhibition “Manuel Felguérez: Recent Works” at the Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, CAFA Art Museum, on Thursday 22nd March at 5:00pm. This exhibition is part of the celebrations of the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of Diplomatic Relationships between China and Mexico and is greatly supported by the Ministry of Culture of China.

Manuel Felguérez is a major artist in Mexico. As a member of the “Rupture Generation”, Master Felguérez has always stood for the universal flow of shapes and ideas with a cosmopolitan vision. A versatile artist, Master Felguérez works with various media including paintings, sculptures, bass and high relief and graphic works. His creative personality can be seen through his rigours research and experimentation. Thirty four recent works including paintings, sculptures and graphic works by Master Felguérez are presented as proof of the maturity and significance of his artistic work and offers the Chinese audiences a great opportunity to discover one of the finest Mexican abstract artists.

Courtesy of Manuel Felguérez and CAFA Art Museum

Photo by Hu Zhiheng/CAFA ART INFO

The exhibition was opened by the artist and Ms. Zhao Shaohua, Vice Minister of Culture of China and Mr. Jorge Guajardo, Mexican Ambassador. “Manuel Felguérez: Recent Works” has been curated by Dr. Wang Chunchen, Head of Department of Curatorial Research at CAFA Art Museum and can be visited from 23rd March to 19th April 2012, Tuesday to Sunday, 9:30 to 5:30 pm. Free entrance.

For more information, please contact the Embassy of Mexico in China to prensa@embmx.cn.

Establishing itself as an international platform for artists to demonstrate their creativity and talents, the Art Revolution Taipei (A.R.T.) is launching its second edition. With applications for the sections of Taiwan Contemporary Art and International Contemporary Art overwhelmingly full, A.R.T. 2012 will present from March 22nd to 25th in total 1500 pieces of artworks by 227 artists from 37 countries – many of them are highly respected world-renowned artists, such as Philippe Pasqua. Pasqua was recently honored as the French Best Artist 2011 – this will be his premiere exhibition in Taiwan.

Upholding the spirit of constant innovation, A.R.T. curates the art fair based on the dual axis of “placing the artists at the center of the exhibition stage” and “designing the entire art fair as a colossal artwork.” It launched its first edition in May of 2011, which was hailed as a great success. The whole event took the art circles by surprise; it achieved an astonishing record that 89.66% of the exhibiting artists (i.e., 182 artists) had transactions. In merely one month after the event, there was no more vacancy for the section of Taiwan Contemporary Art. The numbers of exhibiting countries and artworks exceed last year – and two thirds of them are new to the A.R.T.

The Art Director of A.R.T., Lee Sun-Don, who made the selection of every exhibiting artwork, remarked that whether an artwork to be selected into the A.R.T. depends solely on its originality and collectible potentials, instead of its popularity or market values. With “My Art, My Show” as the theme of the art fair, which varies annually, every booth will be designed as a solo exhibition of the concerned artist’s latest creations. This allows the viewers to capture and connect to each artist’s personal characteristics. On the other hand, each exhibiting artist is expected to demonstrate how s/he has elevated herself/himself creatively in front of the viewers. To explore the potentials of the young talents, Lee Sun-Don, an artist himself, also takes a bold step in recruiting some promising new stars who and whose creations have attracted not much attention. What A.R.T. has presented before us is therefore not only the art of our “current” time but also the art of the “future.”

Philippe Pasqua-Baby with Red Hair, 2011; oil on canvas, 200X220cm

Courtney J. Garrett-The Emergence, 2011; mixed media on with resin on birch panel, 122X152.5X7.6cm

Gibo Katsuyuki-Dream in Childhood, 2010; wood, 36X35X36cm

Liu Baojun-Pipe-Smoking Woman, No. 109, 2011; oil on canvas, 70X70cm

Of all exhibiting artists, some are truly prestigious masters of the world. Philippe Pasqua, for example, was recently named France’s best artist 2011 by French magazine Art actuel. The section of “The Greats vis-à-vis the Greats,” specially designed by New York Contemporary Art Fund, is also characterized with world-renowned artists, such as Richard Young of the Royal College of Art (RCA) in England and Cassandra Gillens from the United States. Richard Young uses painting knife to exquisitely carve the rhythmic strength and elegant silhouette of ballad dancers with photo-like realistic appeal. Cassandra Gillens, born and educated in Boston of Massachusetts, is closely connected to the culture in the historic land of South Carolina. She depicts some of her fondest memories as a child, and also of good old southern living and images of various life styles found on the Sea Islands, with vivid saturated color and simplification of forms, keeping her true to style of fauvism. These great artists mutually illuminate one another’s marvel and mastery.

The exhibiting artists of A.R.T. come from not only those popular countries in Europe, America and Asia, but also those we are less familiar with, such as Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, Peru, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Mozambique and Iran. This is truly an international-scale and world-class art fair. The art lovers can take advantage of this opportunity to sample the culturally diverse creativities and expand their horizons of contemporary art. Art Revolution Taipei 2012 features leading and emerging galleries and artists around the globe. Hundreds of artists, ranging from the established to the latest generation of emerging figures will be represented in the show’s multiple sections.

Courtesy of Art Revolution Taipei 2012, for further information please visit www.arts.org.tw.

Model Home is an exhibition of new conceptual work, made by Michael Lin in collaboration with fellow artists and craftspersons from a variety of different milieu. The exhibition has its origins in a partnership between Lin and Japanese architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow and has been brought to completion with the cooperation of invited building workers, furniture makers and musicians, film-makers and urban studies researchers based in Shanghai. The exhibition is an experiment in composite creative work, combining a variety of mediums including painting, sculpture, installation, music, film and performance.

Inspiration has been drawn from the history of the Rockbund Museum itself and events that occurred at the same time as the building the gallery is housed in was constructed in the early years of the twentieth century, also from the Bauhaus manifesto with its emphasis on the social functions of art. The artist and architects hope to be able to give a response to the Bauhaus call for architecture to be a vehicle for multi-media art and their advocacy of the combination of architecture, painting and sculpture as a single unity that is suited to the cultural context of contemporary Shanghai and the Rockbund Museum. It is also hoped that through a range of art experiments rooted in cross-disciplinary collaboration, a debate can be inspired about the modes of production and social practise of art, the relationship between site specificity and the cultural landscape of its given locale, and creation-as-dialogue and the public sphere.

RAM( painting on walls) by Michael Lin, 2012; emulsion paint

Striped Room by Lou Nanli, 2012; electronic sounds, 2'00'' 6 loop

Workers' Club--the set of dinning-table by Michael Lin, 2012; oak

Model Home(work shed) by Atelier Bow-Wow and Michael Lin, 2012; steel, wood and battenboard etc.

Image Courtesy of www.cnarts.net

About the Curator

Lai Hsiangling has over 20 years experience in art curation and management in Taiwan. She received her M.A. in Art History in University of Kansas, and completed a postgraduate course in Museum Studies in George Washington University.

She had been Curator in National Taiwan Fine Arts Museum and Taipei Fine Arts Museum，and later on, Director in Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei. Apart from that, Ms. Lai has extensive experience in management in not-for-profit arts institutions, as Executive Directorof Dimension Endowment of Art and Director of Grant Department of National Culture and Arts Foundation.

In 2001, she was granted joint award by National Culture and Arts Foundation and Fulbright Foundation of the United States.

About the Artists

Michael Lin is an artist living and working in Taipei , Shanghai , and Brussels . Lin turns away from painting as an object of contemplation toward one of painting as a bounded, physical space, one we can settle into and inhabit (Vivian Rehberg). Lin orchestrates monumental painting installations that re-conceptualize and reconfigure public spaces.

Using patterns and designs appropriated from traditional Taiwanese textiles his works have been exhibited in major institutions and international Biennials around the world, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo , 2007, UCCA, Beijing , 2008, The Lyon Biennial 2009, The Vancouver Art Gallery, 2010, and most recently at the Singapore Biennial and the Towada Art Center . Transforming the institutional architecture of the public museum, his unconventional paintings invite visitors to reconsider their usual perception of those spaces, and to become an integral part of the work, giving meaning to its potential as an area for interaction, encounter, and re-creation.

Atelier Bow-Wow is a Tokyo-based firm founded by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima in 1992. The pair’s interest lies in diverse fields ranging from architectural design to urban research and the creation of public artworks, which are produced,based on the theory called “behaviorology”.

The practice has designed and built houses, public and commercial buildings mainly in Tokyo, as well as Europe and The USA. Their urban research studies lead to experimental project ‘micro-public-space’, a new concept of the public space, which has been exhibited across the world.

About the Exhibition

Date: 10 Mar – 3 Jun 2012

Venue: Rockbund Art Museum

Address: 20 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai 200002, China

Tel: +86 21 3310 9985

Fax: +86 21 6321 3352

Courtesy of the artists and Rockbund Art Museum, for further information please visit www.rockbundartmuseum.org.

A featured installation by artist Bashir Makhoul entitled “Enter Ghost, Exist Ghost” is exhibiting at Yang Gallery in Beijing and it will last until April 15th, 2012. Makhoul has filled the gallery with a large-scale maze of walls extending over 100 metres. These walls are clad with shifting photographic images of other walls, windows, doors and passageways that capture Palestinian villages/ neighbourhoods interlaced with Israeli military training sites. Produced using lenticular micro-lens printing, this allows the images to be visible and interchangeable by movement. The slightest movement within the maze of this installation is enough to transform and relocate your surroundings completely; it pushes on the limits of the relationship between movement and narrative.

As with the play within the play of Hamlet, and the moral imperative for resolution and justice figured within the apparition whose stage directions offer the title for this ambitious installation, Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost offers us a compelling illusion within an illusion; an installation which asks its occupants how we are figured within the fundamental ambiguities of the spectral spaces of occupation and the political rhetoric of security and defence used to justify them, along with the control and suppression of civil life and human rights they bring about.

The ever-changing images of the maze in Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost further heighten the fragile line between the playful enjoyment and disturbing anxiety a maze’s disorientation effect already induces. Emerging from the labyrinth, viewers find a sudden shift in scale and material when confronted by a cardboard city. Although calling to mind haphazardly stacked boxes in an abandoned warehouse, or models of dwellings, this is no ‘model town’. Evoking the image of a town or refugee camp crowded on a hillside, this could be the unregulated architectural chaos of the Shu’fat refugee camp, parts of Ramallah, or the favelas of Brazil or Hong Kong.

The lenticular images consist of Makhoul’s photographs of buildings and streets in East Jerusalem, Hebron and some of the larger Palestinian refugee camps such as Shu’fat, interspersed with images of the cardboard model based on Israeli military training sites. Incorporating questions of theatricality, virtuality, and representation, Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost invokes the childish pleasures of the maze and the model, combined with reference to dystopic urban warfare video games, to draw our attention to the perverse pleasures of the military imagination where training and playing are merged with actual killing.

Makhoul creates from simple means a complex and immersive experience. The work confronts issues of social, political and geographical displacement in a non-confrontational but insistent way. Enter Ghost, Exit Ghost questions what type of spaces are these and what can they tell us about our relationship to power and technology in the spaces we are compelled to enter and exit in our neo-colonial age of global late-capitalism.

About the exhibition

Location: Yang Gallery Beijing

Date: 17 Mar – 15 Apr 2012

Curator: Gordon Hon

Exhibition Producer: Ray Yang

Critics: Jonathan Harris

Critics: Ryan Bishop

Project Manager Beijing: Summer Lin (Lin Xia)

Art Consultant: Richard Zhang

Courtesy of Bashir Makhoul and Yang Gallery, Beijing and Image Courtesy of www.artspy.cn.

My work is about social leveling. It tries to communicate how art and culture are used to disempower people. People use art for self- empowerment and to destabilize other people from their own pasts. People fear that they need to acquire taste or they have to like certain things, so art functions to disconnect them from their own true experience, which is the only thing that can really verify their own existence.

Jeff Koons said in an interview made by David Bonetti/ San Francisco Chronicle

Jeff Koons’ lecture on his art career as early as from 1978 will take place at 6:30pm on March 21st in the lecture hall, the Art Museum of CAFA. Pan Gongkai, President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts will chair the lecture. What do you expect to know about Jeff Koons? Will you be inspired by his experience? Please join us tonight and you may have an opportunity to communicate with him personally. The lecture is free to attend (from the western entrance of the art museum of CAFA) and we do recommend arriving as early as possible.

Jeff Koons Rabbit 1986 with Jeff Koons posing at the Tate Modern (profile picture)

Jeffrey “Jeff” Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces.

Koons’ work has sold for substantial sums of money including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. The largest sum known to be paid for a work by Koons is Balloon flower (Magenta) which was sold at Christie’s London, on Monday, June 30, 2008 (Lot 00012) in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, where it sold for £12,921,250 or $25,765,204. Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising.

Since a 1980 window installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Koons’ work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. In 1986, he appeared in a group show with Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, and Meyer Vaisman at Sonnabend Gallery in New York. In 1997, the Galerie Jerome de Noirmont organised his first solo show in Europe. His Made in Heaven series was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1990.

Jeff Koons has several pieces on top of the Met, including one of his famous Balloon Dogs.Image Courtesy of erikjsommer.com

His first museum solo shows include the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2000), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2001), the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (2003) and a retrospective survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2004), which traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005). In 2008, the Celebration series was shown at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Considered as his first retrospective in France, the 2008 exhibition of seventeen Koons sculptures at the Chateau de Versailles also marked the first ambitious display of a contemporary American artist organized by the chateau. On May 31 – September 21, 2008 Koons retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, which was widely publicized in the press, broke the museum’s attendance record with 86,584 visitors. The exhibition included numerous works from the MCA collection, along with recent paintings and sculptures by the artist. The retrospective exhibition reflects the MCA’s commitment to Koons’s work as it presented the artist’s first American survey in 1988. In July 2009, Koons had his first major solo show in London, at the Serpentine Gallery. Entitled, “Jeff Koons: Popeye Series,” the exhibit included cast aluminum models of children’s pool toys and “dense, realist paintings of Popeye holding his can of spinach or smoking his pipe, a red lobster looming over his head.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Koons

For further information, please visit www.jeffkoons.com.

March 5 2012, for Jingzhe (the 3rd of 24 solar terms in traditional Chinese calendar, literally “Awakening of Insects”), a particular day characterized by germination and revitalisation, ShanghART Gallery is delighted to present a group exhibition entitled Revitalising, A Gathering upon Awakening of Insects. It features new works by Birdhead, CHEN Xiaoyun, MadeIn Company, PU Jie, SHAO Yi, SHEN Fan, SHI Qing, XIANG Liqing, YANG Zhenzhong, ZHANG Ding and ZHANG Enli etc.

Date: Mar 05, 2012 – Apr 06, 2012

Venue: ShanghArt Gallery

Courtesy of artists and ShanghArt Gallery, for further information please visit www.shanghartgallery.com

Liu Bolin Hiding in New York No. 5 Tiles For America 2011xl

In recent years, Liu Bolin has garnered a particularly high level of international acclaim. Both his most recent and his upcoming series have centered on a concept of “hiding in the city,” wherein the artist paints himself into the background of various notable locations in China, France, Italy and New York, in order to investigate the often contentious relationship between the individual and society and between man and nature.

In keeping with this project, Liu Bolin will be showing new photographs from both his Hiding in the City and Hiding in New York series. The works show Liu Bolin painted into a range of culturally and historically significant locations, conveying social commentary through various different aesthetic compositions. With Info Port, Liu Bolin speaks to the unprecedented level of unemployment faced by today’s Chinese youth. The increasing pressure placed on young adults competing for jobs in densely-populated Beijing’s meager job market is made conspicuous to the viewer by Liu Bolin’s concealing himself in work postings on a bulletin board in the city. Another new work addressing the problems faced by this rapidly growing society, Yellow River, uses environmental damage as its focal point. Here, Liu Bolin hides in the river, the land of his childhood home visible behind him. This river, now so polluted that its water is no longer suitable for drinking, acts as a site of conflict between man and his environment in which the objects man creates wreak havoc on the place of man’s genesis. A more direct critique of China’s changing society, Panda examines the Chinese newfound preoccupation with commercialism. The work confronts the viewer with a palpable materialism, whereby the viewer can sense an infatuation with commodity that has recently supplanted many elements of traditional Chinese culture. Through the numerous identical stuffed pandas, Liu Bolin forces us to acknowledge the pull of material objects and the power that they wield in contemporary China.

Liu Bolin-Lost in Art on view through May 11, 2012

The two newest releases from Hiding in New York convey different perspectives on the legacy of September 11th. The composition of Ground Zero is serene, its colors seeming rather quiet and subdued. The new Freedom Tower appears barely visible through the fog, its shadowy presence reflecting our trepidation about recovering from the trauma of this event. The photograph denotes our cautious, slow process of healing while also preserving the memory of trauma. Conversely, Tiles for America demonstrates a more direct response to the tragedy by featuring tiles whose images memorialize September 11th. Each tile is an art project in its own right, but together the tiles compose a unified visual message reflecting on the importance of patriotism, courage and unity. Through his use of the tile wall as a site of camouflage, Liu Bolin preserves these socially and historically significant sentiments, thus transforming history into art.

Liu Bolin HITC No. 97 The Yellow River 2011 xl

In his sculptural piece for this exhibition, Liu Bolin constructs a peony flower using only cellphone chargers that he himself crafted. In Chinese tradition, the peony represents prosperity, and its symbol represents a desire for the attainment of such prosperity. Similarly, in global contemporary culture, the cellphone serves as a technological and commercial manifestation of this desire. In this particular reincarnation, people constantly seek to buy the latest version of a product, to outdo others around them, to replace the quickly outdated with the new best thing. Through this piece, Liu Bolin provides commentary on the eternal human quest for affluence and success, the appearance may be ephemeral but the essential driving factors remain constant and unchanging.

Liu Bolin, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pier Paolo Piccioli for Valentino 2011 xl

In collaboration with Harper’s Bazaar, Liu Bolin met with Jean Paul Gaultier, Elber Albaz of Lanvin, Angela Missoni, and Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli from Valentino, as they became the latest subjects of his camouflaging performance. The designers underwent the process of becoming nearly invisible within a background of their most celebrated signature designs. Creating four fantastic photographs, this collaboration stands as a true and marvelous beacon of the merging of fashion and art.

Liu Bolin was born in China’s Shandong province in 1973, and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Shandong College of Arts and his Master of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His work has been exhibited in museum shows around the world including recent solo exhibitions “The Invisible Man,” Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm (2011) and “The Invisible Man,” Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow (2012).

About the exhibition:

Venue: Eli Klein New York

Artist: Liu Bolin

Date: 20 Mar – 11 May 2012

Courtesy of Liu Bolin and Eli Klein New York, for further information please visit www.ekfineart.com.

Red Gate Gallery presents Tous Mes Voeux!curated by Gallery Manager Liyu Yeo who is leaving China after a two and half year stint at Red Gate. For several years Liyu Yeo has been covering events at the amazing Red Gate Gallery, set within the former Ming Dynasty Watchtower at Dongbianmen and he is about to leave, for a career advancement in Paris. Liyu actually worked in Paris before he came to Beijing and feels really torn between both cities.

“I had dreamt of an involvement in the vibrant Beijing art scene and what better dream than Red Gate Gallery and its legendary Brian Wallace. But even great dreams must come to an end and what better ending than Tous Mes Voeux! my swansong which represents all the stars of Red Gate. I leave Beijing with some sadness as I move to Paris but I know there will be no turning back for China’s contemporary artists today. It has been fun and very rewarding. Thank you and a bientot!”

The group exhibition Tous Mes Voeux! begins on Saturday, March 17 at the Dongbianmen Watchtower and the exhibition will run till March 30, 2012.

Liyu Yeo

February 2012

Courtesy of the artists and Red Gate Gallery, for further information please visit www.redgategallery.com

Ma Qiusha’s solo show “Static Electricity” presents her latest installation, video works and watercolor on paper at the Beijing Commune and it will last until April 9th, 2012.

Static electricity is one of the most common physical phenomena in everyday life, it comes from the “bright flash” of the friction between objects. The works shown in this exhibition display topics and memories from everyday experiences in comparison to abstract concepts and theories, Ma Qiusha believes in what she has experienced in real life.

Red/White/Yellow, 3-channel video; 4'30'', 2011

The three-channel video Red/White/Yellow respectively records the process of three ice “bricks” from solid into liquid. The five-minute-work is an enrichment of 12 hours of shooting. The three pieces of ice bricks are made of frozen blood, urine and milk, which are all body fluids and are abstracted into rectangle forms. The outer layer of the film suggests a state of always being wrapped, and during the process of the melting ice bricks, the existence of film becomes more and more clear.

Token, single-channel video; 7'25'', 2011

The single-channel video Token was shot during the night: the internal organs emitting hot air were thrown from nowhere, with the noise of the unknown cat in an excited and amplified snore offers a distortion effect. The fresh visceral organs seemed to live but actually are just evidence of death.

To S, freezer, cucumber, eggplant, carrot, white yam; 458x 55.5x 83cm, 2012

To S is composed of four ice tanks with tidy shelved cucumbers, eggplants, carrots and yams; these are all good quality and low price vegetables representing the four seasons, and relatively easy to store. Ma Qiusha took a root vegetable from each group as a standard body, then according to its length, cuts from head to tail with the other vegetables, and finally made all four groups into a neat and tidy visual effect in line with the norm. In this way, MaQiuSha simulated an easily realized order.

Fog No. 3, watercolor on paper; 112x 99.5cm, 2012

Paper work Fog originates from Ma Qiusha childhood memory of a “window”, she used gauze with different patterns on watercolour paper, kept brushing “dark night” over and over then finally took off the gauze.

Ma Qiusha was born in 1982 in Beijing, China, and graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts(BA) and the Alfred University(MFA); now she lives and works in Beijing. Since 2002, Ma Qiusha’s works have been shown in the domestic and international contemporary art exhibitions, video fairs and film festivals. In 2009, she had a solo exhibition in Beijing Commune and received widespread attention. Her works were also exhibited in Tate Modern in London (2010), and important group shows including “Soft Machines” (2011) at The Pace Gallery in New York, “Move on Asia 2010″ at the Loop Gallery in South Korea.

Courtesy of Ma Qiusha and Beijing Commune, for more information please visit www.beijingcommune.com

“Scenery-Borrowing: Li Di Solo Exhibition” will be presented by Being 3 Gallery from March 24th through to April 13th. Featuring new works Li Di has created over the past year, the exhibition unfolds from the hind running leg of the diptych Fleet (Kuang Biao), as the front leg, on a grant stride, marks Li Di’s entrance into a pure state of being as an artist. The step that he takes creates an intellectual and cultural space from his travels through time and various locations.

In the 1980s, Li was deeply attracted to pioneer Expressionist art. Driven by enthusiasm for a unique artistic career, this became his goal so he pursued further education in Germany. In his two decades in Europe, a distinct style of calligraphic writing emerged from Li’s painting experience. This calligraphic writing originates from the artist’s emotional and ethnic bond with his Chinese roots, and reflects his search for and confirmation of a certain self-identity. For Li, perhaps, to “write” is to find a ground on which to settle. Li’s brushstrokes in Fleet, free of any restraint, depict a vigorous leg running through a vast field. Like the artist’s life experience, the foot lifts up to cross continents and oceans.

Li’s sensible and humble personality as an artist makes his borrowing of scenes during his twenty years in Germany a series of pictorial narrations pertaining to sincere thoughts and feelings. Meanwhile, Li composes his sense of self-identity as a Chinese artist through appreciative portrayals of subjects familiar and intimate to everyday life.

The exhibition unfolds from the hind running leg in the diptych Fleet, because the front leg, to a grant stride which is already hidden in the thunders of Jingzhe (the Waking of Insects solar term) and the mists of spring rain.

Every element that we see on Li’s canvas is fascinating: luminous rivers and trees in the summer, the taste and smell of hot air; fall matures from passion to confusion; in an instant winter hay burns on bare branches. The front leg on a grand stride extends into the travel of time within seasonal circles. Two legs fleeting, eyes are affected by seasonal colors, ears retain residue with nature’s voice, and fingers dance around the canvas – Impressionist painters loved to capture fleeting moments in life, while Expressionists attempted to embody happenings in one’s inner world – Li borrows from mother nature, combining with energetic colors and brushstrokes, to compose sensual rhythms of time and space as experienced on a daily basis.

New Fauvism paintings’ with non-rhetorical expressions are the context in which Li, as a constant learner of artistic creativity, grows and develops. This context is a stage on which the artist performs, but certainly does not define the artist’s dance. The details in Li’s work, like Williem de Kooning’s graffiti-style masterpieces, seem to develop a calligraphic language of its own. The skill and grace of this language, as the basis of Li’s work, makes it possible for Li’s to borrow scenery. Such a means recalls, in many ways, Pollock’s calligraphic language in paintings such as Autumn Colors.

Rain is vague. Thoughts Flame generates forward momentum. The Last Green Apple contains meditation, perhaps accompanied by a slight sigh. Li’s series of scenery generates a whirling motion, sparing no time for stagnation. These scenes also echo particular feelings. Li does not use any individual scene to convey the entity of time, space and emotion. On the contrary, every scene is filled with subtle yet simple detail. We are attracted to and touched by these familiar details. With this intimacy between the viewer and the works, the viewer completes a cycle of running through the four seasons like a free – spirited child. This freedom is the essence behind Li’s brushstrokes. The accumulation of each trace of color engenders warm encounters. Li’s clever decision – making, as well as his calmness and confidence, also come from this freedom. This freedom is both Li’s creation of scenes and emotion, presenting a carefree and simple attitude that accompanies his travels.

The so-called calligraphic writing finds roots only in Li’s creative process. Every stroke is connected with one specific emotion, as well as one particular point in time and space that existed in Li’s personal history, either during his two decades in Germany or in his present life here in China, the span between time and space underlies Li’s paintings. In turn, this exhibition is also the borrowing the scenery of the audience. The artist’s adventures and self – identity, full of power and change, invites constant thinking, unveiling moments captured by his works.

Curator: Wang Yitong

(BA Art History, Franklin & Marshall College, USA)

Scenery-Borrowing: Li Di 2012 Solo Exhibition

Curator: Wang Yitong (BA Art History, Franklin & Marshall College, USA)

Opening: 3pm, March 24th, 2012

Duration: March 24th—April 13th, 2012

Address: Being 3 Gallery, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Beijing, China

Blog: http://blog.sina.com.cn/being3art

Tel: 86-10-59789875

Chen Danqing-Mothers and Children, Series of Tibet, 1982; oil on canvas

by  Pan Gaojie

Some time ago, I saw Chen Danqing’s exhibition –the print art entitled “Tibetan Group Picture”. The print “Tibetan Group Picture” is not Chen Danqing’s authentic work and it is made by a teacher from the print studio of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in accordance with the old series.

Back to the historical background of this group of paintings, the “Tibetan Group Picture” caused an uproar in the art world in 1980, critics believed that it stepped over the trend “scar art” and switched to focus on a kind of simple and unadorned localism , then came the “local realistic painting” wave which refreshed people at that time.

In 1980, Chen Danqing mentioned in his “seven of my paintings” that “art made a big circle, the original can go to paint what my eyes see’ “, it is conceivable that in the early eighties that this kind of revolutionary trend would cause a stir in art circles. A long time before that, painting was presented in the attitude of “helping enlightenment, helping ethics” in various periods in China. And in the seventies and eighties, the mission of painting was to serve politics and the revolution, to some extent then prevalent “scar art” was also the continuation of side-effects of political movements, but the political extension made people nervous in a state of tension for a long period , people would inevitably be tired of thinking and reveal disgust, whereas the emergence of the “Tibetan group picture” happens to fulfill the dual needs of people’s longing for new vision and new spirit.

Pilgrimage

Go to Town I

Go to Town II

When Chen Danqing’s “Tibetan Group Picture” received success, a constant stream of artists entered the Tibetan area for life drawing which still continues today. It is understandable that the city’s modern industrial civilization is tiresome, artists hope to recombine their visual structure to provoke a different kind of inspiration in Tibet’s original ecological environment and different customs. But compared to Yunnan, Guizhou which also has an original ecology, the inspiration is particularly popular in Tibet. So, this phenomenon will be referred to as a follower strategy, Chen Danqing’s “Tibetan group painting” is a successful precedent that attracts groups of artists or “fans” throwing themselves into the “Tibetan theme”. Tibetan group pictures renouncing the world due to historical circumstances reflect its meaning and value, but can the following “Tibetan theme” painting demonstrate their worth? Most artists would not think about this problem, just as Chen Danqing said – I only pay attention to form. “But if it is an art form, it has always been ‘a significant’ form, ‘naturalistic’ form that is relevant to the era focusing on psychology and ‘collective unconsciousness’ and returning to the basics, otherwise, why did the” Tibetan group picture “and” father ” that came out at the same time while separated by thousands of miles in the north and south ? ” Gao Minglu said it did..

Chen Danqing-Sheepherder, Series of Tibet

Kamba Men

Wind-swept Pastures

Whistling Wasteland

So, by following the trend of the “Tibetan theme” is there a manifestation that artists intend to pursue formal beauty? Tibetan costume and plateau ecological environment can be shown as more complicated and varied lines, colors, levels than normal subjects. The “Tibetan theme” is easy to show, but the abuse of it, blindly following the trend and the deliberate arrangement, is dropping into the “theme model” just as Gao Minglu cited in the “The genre of oil painting’s development in recent years”—like pastoral and grassland, farmers and cattle, mother and child (feeding) and other examples, they have become a “quasi-interest in life” and “Pan natural” program.

In the foreword，Chen Danqing gave a higher rating to these sets of prints. The drafts, the “remaining dream traces”, incidental or consequential, created a group of works engraved by history which became part of the evidence of China’s modern art history. An era long gone, it is pleasing that we can feel the remnants of breath then from this evidence.

Throughout each historical period, there will always be a sensitive outstanding person who is at the forefront of the trend, followers as a foil of doozer is also understandable, but being buried in the era of the torrent. All that is real is rational and all that is rational is real, it’s better to wait and see.

About the author

Pan Gaojie

Born in Guangxi Province，China in 1990

Grown in Guangdong Province since 1995

Currently studying in Beijing

Education

2009—— ，Study in Art History Department of Humanities Institute，Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.

Constellation

Sagittarius

E-mail: pgj1211@gmail.com

Blog: http://blog.163.com/pgj1211@yeah/

Weibo: http://weibo.com/pantea

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

“Everything: The 6th A+A” will open on March 23. Having begun as PIFO Gallery’s annual exhibition, A+A adopted a biennial format in 2010. In seven years and six exhibitions, 92 artists have participated, and 25 have participated more than once. Many of these artists have become known through the A+A platform.

This exhibition has invited 12 artists: Detlef Waschkau\Gao Bo\Jiang Ji’an\Li Daiyun\Lu Zhengyuan\Ma Wenjia\Meng Zhigang\Tian Tian\Wang Junyi\Yuan Jia\Zhang Yexing\Zhong Zhao.

“Everything” is possible; all ideas are expressed. It’s not a convergence of style and method, or a similarity in subject and content that makes this continuing exhibition possible. It’s the attitude A+A conveys—facing head on individual independence and individual differences. This is the attitude of the participating artists, the attitude of the curator in choosing the pieces, and the attitude of the pieces A+A displays. As we move along on our journey, we can’t just sit back and accept what comes; what we need to know now is how to march to our own beat.

Step to Your Own Beat

I.

A+A, beginning as an annual exhibition at PIFO Gallery, adopted a biennial format in 2010. In seven years and six exhibitions, 89 artists have participated, and 25 have participated more than once. Many of these artists have become known through the A+A platform.

A+A got its start from the requests of CAFA students for a place to exhibit their work, but over the years it has become a space for new creations and given works a voice. The boundaries between opportunities for exhibition, discussion and creativity have melted away, and the true theme has emerged: “expression of individual approach”.

From 2006, A+A has witnessed and participated in the changes in Chinese contemporary art. As various fads and imitations dominate the contemporary art market, the exhibition has chosen an independent road of determination and non-conformity.

II.

The sixth A+A has invited Detlef Waschkau, Gao Bo, Jiang Ji’an, Li Daiyun, Lu Zhengyuan, Ma Wenjia, Meng Zhigang, Tian Tian, Wang Junyi, Yuan Jia, Zhang Yexing and Zhong Zhao. As they observe each other, the question is asked how to make comparisons between artists from a mixture of different cultural cores and backgrounds, and the exhibition thus becomes a kind of dialogue.

Lu Zhengyuan’s creative medium is rich with color. Beyond pure realism, his realistic skill has become the subject he wants to express. The pieces are the end result of a process passing through time.

Jiang Ji’an examines the existence of individualism by repeating strokes again and again on rice paper. As time propels itself forward, bringing us along with it, a high level of mastery is achieved, and the spirit of the canvas swells with a calm awareness of extreme individualism.

While analyzing the concept of “time”, Tian Tian discovered the pervasiveness of specific “moments” in time. The intelligent gears of emotion infuse each second of our lives with consciousness.

Detlef Waschkau shows us scenes specific to one location during different periods of time. From a German perspective, he captures visually scenes of contemporary Chinese life.

There are secrets held within Gao Bo’s works, and this is exactly what he wants to express, an acceptance of all that is known and not known. His romanticism and ambiguity is an aloof acknowledgement of the complexities of the world.

Everyday objects enlarged under the lens are the subjects of Wang Junyi’s artistic method. The enlargement of ordinary seen objects gives familiar materials a new appearance, inviting reflections on visual understanding.

Meng Zhigang undertakes an exploration of spatial perspective that exists only in the view of its inhabitants.

By portraying realistic objects, Zhang Yexing avoids the possibility of both manipulating and being manipulated, while he slowly conceals himself within his ideas.

There persist in Li Daiyun’s works multiple observable viewpoints, as the forms on the canvas become a vehicle to transmit her personality. She both uses form and at the same time transcends form itself, making it possible to view the works from different angles. The canvases exude a natural intensity, with the combination of repeated strokes and an external roughness; the finished product is a sigh of release after painstaking work.

Zhong Zhao’s choice of media, old wooden doors and bricks from demolished houses, turns everyday objects into art pieces. The social significance of these original materials in transition has been re-interpreted, the cast-off door and jagged bricks synonyms for the changing circumstances we find ourselves in.

Two more artists working with wood are Ma Wenjia and Yuan Jia. Ma Wenjia emphasizes the investigation of replicated and classical forms in sculpture, and all the while the pieces are taking on a human aspect. With eyes hidden in wooden books and file folders, we can say that the existence of objects is an existence of consciousness. Yuan Jia’s pieces, on the other hand, are humorous, the assembled structures like large toys. Yuan Jia’s works don’t take us through the same process of awareness as Ma Wenjia’s, but place more importance on how the objects are understood in relation to their atmosphere. In the relationship between the leading and supporting roles of the objects, the pieces resemble an intensely theatrical and romantic fantasy.

This passionate exploration of different forms reveals a multitude of artistic expression. In the continuous linear development of Chinese contemporary art, “Everything” is possible; all ideas are expressed. It’s not a convergence of style and method, or a similarity in subject and content that makes this continuing exhibition possible. It’s the attitude A+A conveys—facing head on individual independence and individual differences. This is the attitude of the participating artists, the attitude of the curator in choosing the pieces, and the attitude of the pieces A+A displays. As we move along on our journey, we can’t just sit back and accept what comes; what we need to know now is how to step to our own beat.

Jiao Xueyan

About the exhibition

Curators: Wang Xinyou and  Jiao Xueyan

Artists: Detlef Waschkau, Gao Bo, Jiang Ji’an, Li Daiyun, Lu Zhengyuan, Ma Wenjia, Meng Zhigang, Tian Tian, Wang Junyi, Yuan Jia, Zhang Yexing and Zhong Zhao

Duration: March 23th— April 21th 2012 10:00～18:00（Except Monday)

Opening: March 23th 2012 16:00～18:00（Friday)

Address: PIFO Gallery

B-11, 798 Art Area,No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Tel: 86 10 59789562

E-mail: info@pifo.cn

Web: www.pifo.cn

Forward

Hailed as “The Mother of French New Wave,” Agnès Varda’s new exhibition in China reveals far more than her identity as a filmmaker: the unique retrospective sets out to be a broader showcase of her powerful aesthetics as a filmmaker, photographer and installation artist.

In her early years, Agnès Varda studied and practiced photography. In 1954, she made her film debut with La Pointe Courte, which pushed the boundaries of traditional film-making. It was later considered to be a precursor to the “New Wave” revolution for its ground-breaking concepts, formula and execution. Agnès Varda also stood out as the only female filmmaker in this cultural revolution.

“New Wave” and “Femininity” have brought distinctive cultural significance and artistic perspectives to Agnès Varda’s work. As the creator of the concept of “film narrative,” she explores the randomness of events, coincidence, desire, need and alienation in her film narratives, while her style highlights the tension between realist documentation and poetic imaginaries. As a “female director,” her films express a deep passion and hope for life. With great sensitivity, visual exploration and subtle narrative drive, she depicts the world of women with sharp and daring yet polished touches. Her most memorable heroines are the ones who take control of their own fates, and pursue their freedom fearlessly in life. The films reveal their social idealism, their loneliness and anxiety, as well as a true vitality and optimism. For this reason, Agnès Varda has been called a “great, yet down-to-earth” filmmaker and woman.

In recent years, Agnès Varda continues to draw inspiration from her experience as a filmmaker and photographer in voyaging into new artistic realms. A highlight of her exhibition in China, the photography/installation art piece “China Gate” is testimony to the endless creativity of this 83-year-old artist.

We would like to thank Agnès Varda for visiting China. Your visit will be wonderful stimulus to the new era of filmmaking in China as we reflect on and learn from your work.

We would also like to thank the French Institute in China, and all other organisations and individuals that have contributed to the success of this exhibition.

Wang Huangsheng

Director

Art Museum of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts

As the opening exhibition of Minsheng Art Museum in 2012 Chinese lunar New Year, The “Face” will be rendered between March,10 and April,28. The exhibition will present a total of 76artists’ works as the first part of a special series of easel paintings mainly to reunderstand portrait painting.

Until 1980s, the realistic traditional Chinese portraits, represented by Luo Zhongli’s “Father” of the early 1980s, occupied a dominant position.,. After the 1990s, this mirror-like realism gradually changed. “The middle-aged men and women in silent” by Zhang Xiaogang, “bored young people” by Liu Xiaodong, “vain bald” by Fang Lijun are deformations of the portrait in both exaggerated and convergence, outbreak and repression, enthusiasm and indifference. These portraits have little difference with Luo Zhongli’s “Father”. The difference falls in the way of leading people to the introversion. They just differ in intrinsic and human nature. After them, the portraits soon entered another state: in the new century, you could barely see the portrait of a portrait painting. Realistically Abandoned, all portraits are distorted and deformed for a true portrait–the distortion of the various organs, face distorted, the distortion of the body. Following this transition, the painting is no longer just recording and reproduction, but had the other goals. This is what today’s the background of the portrait.

Li Dafang-The Great Scarlet, 2011; oil on canvas, 250x350cm

Looking at the contemporary Chinese portraits, we can outline a simple pedigree: a realistic portrait, but no intrinsic (from the 1950s to the 1970s); lifelike portraits, while the intrinsic (1980s); realistic portraits, but also filled with the inner (1990s); realistic portraits, there is no inherent – this is the situation today. Past portraits exercised the functions of the record, replication of the 19th century machine technology and camera to the portrait began to retreat. But portraits own particularity, as Benjamin said, painting a unique glow to glow in the given object at the same time also received their own Halo, which is an important difference with the machine simply copy the object.

The “Face” ,does not intent to find a worship location for the portraits in the palace of art, but to open up more possibilities as an important resource for the portrait, how to use historical resources, develop portraits, rather than digest portraits. So, the portrait is not just to paint a person, but rather to explore how to draw a person; not going to show all the existence of this person, but to explore all the possibilities of this appearance; how to draw a person becomes much more important than what you’ve painted. This is an important turning point in contemporary portraiture. Today’s portrait is intended to decode the portrait, and thus become a testing ground for a painting, the exhibition has become the best portraits of the test site.

Wang Luyan-The other self

Painting plays a crucial role in one of the earliest carrier experiments of the avant-garde art. To video, installation and other artists for the creation of vector, the earliest use of painting language express concepts. Therefore, in this exhibition, the curators invited video, installation artists regain the brush, and create many rare easel works. We hope that through this exhibition, to explore the portraits of contemporary artists’ eyes and viewers to take a taste of the eternal charm of the painting.

Date: Mar 11,2012 – May 20,2012

Venue: Minsheng Art Museum

Curator: JuXin He, Xiaoli Guo

Organizor: Minsheng Art Museum Minsheng Contemporary Art Research Center

Courtesy of Mingsheng Art Museum, for futher information please visit www.minshengart.org

This is a party for an art home, which is also the microcosm of the development of Chinese art. Here, you can find not only art works but also an inter-generational dialogue and tacit agreement.

China Academy of Art, the predecessor of the National Academy of Art was founded by Mr. Cai Yuanpei and Mr. Lin Fengmian in Hangzhou in 1928. From 1983 to 1996, Mr. Xiaofeng was the tenth president China Academy of Art. During his tenure of thirteen years, which coincided with the period of China’s reform and opening-up policy, he made great achievements in the development of art education in China. Mr. Xiaofeng has now retired, this 80-year-old man gazed with a deep feeling at his wife Song Ren who has accompanied him through his life with their “restless” daughters—Xiao Lu and Xiao Ge who will jointly present their exhibition in Singapore for the first time in the name of “home”.

Xiao Feng and Song Ren have celebrated their golden wedding to honour their long union. They were born in the same year during wartime when the country was defeated and their home was lost and they bravely embarked on the battlefield of national liberation. Since then their fate and their art have been closely related to the destiny of the Chinese revolution. Xiao Lu, their eldest daughter has quite a different experience in art from their parents. She witnessed an era of vision and passion when she studied at the Art School of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Fine Arts). Though she was young, as she was only 26 years old and had just graduated, she had the honor to participate the China Modern Art Exhibition in 1989 at the China National Art Museum, Beijing with her work “Dialogue”, which became a prophecy of that particular historical period.

Xiao Ge, their second daughter is an intelligent and clever girl. At a young age, she became attached to fashion. As was her wish, she went to the capital of fashion and studied atécole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris. Now she prefers to combine art with fashion and she loves the life pace of metropolises, Beijing and Paris are her favorite cities.

Thanks to the Ngee Ann Cultural Committee and the China Academy of Fine Arts, a special family exhibition will be presented for them. Funded by Lin Fengmian Art Park, a catalogue will be published along with this exhibition by the Publishing House of China Academy of Fine Arts. “Traditional and avant-garde” which literally seem opposed but in essence this is a development of the word combination. Each generation has its mission, which perhaps is the significance of this exhibition.

Traditional and Avant-garde

Chief Curator: XIAO Ge

Executive Curator: YING Xiangyun, Li Guohua

Historical and Critic Support: Shao Dazhen, Xi Jingzhi

Artist: XIAO Feng , SONG Ren , XIAO Lu , XIAO Ge

Works: paintings, prints, form images, photographs, device, behavior

Exhibition Dates: March 16, 2012 – April 1st

Host: Ngee Ann Cultural Centre – Singapore

Organizer: China Academy of Fine Arts

Supervised by: Chinese Artists Association

Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries

Co-organizers: Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Landscape and Cultural Relics Lin Feng Mian Art Industry Park

Media Relation: Ding Hui

Graphic Design: Wu Weihe

Duration: March 16, 2012 – April 1st

Opening Hours: 9am – 5pm (Monday to Friday)

9am to 12 noon (Saturday)

Closed (Sunday & Public Holiday)

Address: Ngee Ann Cultural Centre – Art Museum

97 Tank Road Teochew Building

Singapore 238066

This exhibition is a trans-boundary cooperation with contributions from Hao Lei known as the Queen of Chinese artistic films and Wei Bing, one of the founders of the well-known photographic brand “Black Ice” as well as an outstanding fashion photographer.

It comprises of 26 photographs and a documentary shot in India and Nepal which spans from May 30th to June 14th, 2010. In the daytime temperature of up to fifty degrees, they walked on the same path as where Buddha preached and entered the realm of Nirvana. Abandoning the original experience of photography, they make each shot lose the pleasure of inertia and try to decide the moments of the indistinct and the uncertain, thus their creations turn out to be images without the need to find bright highlights.

A graduate of Shanghai Theatre Academy, Hao Lei is a Chinese actress that belongs to the National Theatre of China. Hao has starred in numerous television productions such as Don’t Cry, Seventeen(1997), Young Emperor(2003) and others. She first gained international prominence as Yu Hong, the heroine in Lou Ye’s film, Summer Palace. Empire of Silver(2009), the film Hao acted in won the Best Film Award at the 29th International Film Festival. In November 2010, she won a Taiwan Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Chung Mong-hong’s film The Fourth Portrait.

Wei Bing, Photographic Artist

Graduated from the Department of Sculpture, the Central Academy of Fine Arts,

One of the founders of renowned studio of photography, Black Ice (Hei Bing)

Published a Catalogue named “Black Ice Photography Studio”

Photographed numerous celebrities and stars from China

Judged many Model Contests

Shot and curated by himself a work called “Thought, Done, Loved and Laughed”

Participated in the exhibition entitled “Wh0 do you think who you are”

About the Exhibition

Dates: March 10th–27th, 2012

Venue: Inter Art Center

Address: Sevenstar Main Street 798 Art Zone No.4 Jiuxianqiao Road Chaoyang District Beijing

Mailing Address: P.O.Box8502 No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road Chaoyang District Beijing ,100015

T: ＋86-10-5978 9029

F: ＋86-10-5978 9028

Courtesy of the artists, for further information please visit www.intergallery.cn

BILL VIOLA-Tempest (Study for The Raft), 2005; Color High-Definition video on flat panel display mounted on wall, 43 x 26 x 4 inches; 109 x 66 x 10.2 cm

From March 9 through May 6, 2012, James Cohan Gallery Shanghai is pleased to present a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed American artist Bill Viola. For over 35 years Bill Viola has been instrumental in the establishment of video as a vital form of contemporary art, greatly expanding its scale, creative scope and historical reach. He has created video films, architectural video installations, flat screen pieces, sound environments, electronic music performances, as well as works for television broadcast, opera, and sacred spaces. His works focus on universal human experiences—birth, death, the unfolding of consciousness—and have roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions. They employ state-of-the-art technology and are distinguished by their emotional power, precision and direct simplicity.

On view will be several flat-screen pieces from the Transfigurations series that originated with Ocean Without a Shore and was created for the 15th century Church of San Gallo during the Venice Biennale in 2007. The title, Transfigurations, refers to the moment when a person or an object is transformed not by external means but from within. Viola says “the transformation of the Self, usually provoked by a profound inner revelation or an overwhelming sensation of clarity and fathomless emotion, overcomes the individual until literally a ‘new light’ dawns on him or her… Some of the most profound human experiences occur at times like these, arising at the outer limits of conscious awareness.” In Viola’s Transfigurations works, black-and-white images of ghostly figures emerge slowly from total darkness eventually passing through a threshold of water into a world of color and light. Reacting with a range of emotions from surprise, to confusion, fear and anger, often with a desire to linger, the figures are finally drawn back through to the other realm. Viola combines images recorded in grainy analog video using an old surveillance camera with those shot in High-Definition video to bring the viewer to the intersection of obscurity and clarity—from death to life—and back again.The works being shown from the Transfigurations series are The Return (2007), Anika (2008), The Far Shore( 2007), Melina (2008).

BILL VIOLA-The Return, 2007; Color High-Definition video on plasma display mounted on wall; stereo sound, 47.5 x 28.5 x 4 inches; 120.7 x 72.4 x 10.2 cm

BILL VIOLA-Anika, 2008; Color High-Definition video on LCD panel, 24.8 x 14 x 2.36 inches; 63 x 35.5 x 6 cm

BILL VIOLA- The Far Shore, 2007; Color High-Definition video on LCD panel, 24.8 x 14 x 2.36 inches; 63 x 35.5 x 6 cm

BILL VIOLA-Melina, 2008; Color High-Definition video on LCD panel, 24.8 x 14 x 2.36 inches; 63 x 35.5 x 6 cm

Other works included in this exhibition are Poem A (2005), a triptych, in which images function as a three-part visual poem incorporating themes fundamental to Viola’s oeuvre: elements of earth, air, fire and water. The images are intimate and transform gracefully: A woman alone slowly walks away and disappears into a desert landscape; a tree fluidly morphs into a blood-red and fiery underwater scene; a third screen evolves from an image of moonlight reflecting off the surface of water in which a male figure emerges from the water’s depths, then disappears once more. Also on view will be the work Tempest (Study for the Raft) (2005). Unlike the Transfigurations series that focus on individual figures or couples, Tempest, with its references to both Shakespeare’s play and also the painting The Raft of the Medusa (1818–1819) by French painter Théodore Géricault, is an epic ensemble piece. As described by Bill Viola, “a group of nineteen men and women from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds are suddenly struck by a massive onslaught of water with tsunami-like force from a high-pressure hose. Some are immediately knocked over and others brace themselves against the unprovoked deluge. Water flies everywhere as the group clings to each other for survival. Then, as suddenly as it arrived, the water stops, leaving behind a band of suffering, bewildered, and battered individuals. The group slowly recovers as some regain their senses, others weep, and still others remain cowering, while the few with any strength remaining assist those who have fallen. The work is recorded in high-speed film and unfolds in extreme slow motion to reveal subtle nuances of light, color, and individual expressions and gestures of the figures.”

BILL VIOLA-Poem A, 2005; Color video triptych on LCD flat panels mounted on shelf, 14 x 51 x 10 inches; 35.5 x 129.5 x 25.4 cm

BILL VIOLA-Unspoken(Silver & Gold), 2001; Black-and-white video projected diptych on one gold and one silver-leaf panel mounted on wall, Overall dimensions 24 12 x 76 x 2 14 inches; 62.3 x 193 x 5.

The earliest work in the exhibition is Unspoken (Silver & Gold) (2001), from Viola’s highly acclaimed series The Passions, created after the artist’s work as a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in 1998. Projected on two panels, one gold and one silver, Unspoken focuses on the range of emotional states–joy, fear, sorrow, anger, and rapture–expressed by two people. There is a striking similarity to devotional and sacred paintings of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as the work becomes an intense examination of the complex human physical and psychological condition, becoming both timeless and eternal because of its universal theme. Drawing further on the art historical and spiritual, the gold background refers directly to Christian icon paintings in which gold symbolizes the holy and celestial, where a person is not merely depicted but is literally present, attaining sacred status. The gold panel also refers to the golden light in the paintings of Rembrandt and especially to the painter’s late self-portraits. The silver panel alludes to Christian mysticism and one of the crucial relics, the Veil of St. Veronica, which is said to carry the mark of Christ’s face. The portrait on the silver panel bears a resemblance to the imprint of the face of Christ visible on the cloth veil. Thus the Unspoken becomes a compelling meditation on worldly suffering and spiritual hope. As Viola has stated, “Art can have a healing function. What is on the screen can be part of a life process that enters the body, and you can take these things and use them.”

Since the early 1970′s, Viola’s art works have been exhibited worldwide and are included in the collections of international museums and important private collections. Exhibitions include: Bill Viola: Installations and Videotapes, MoMA, NY, 1987; and the travelling exhibition Bill Viola: Unseen Images, 1992-1994, organized by the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Kira Perov. Viola represented the U.S. at the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995 with the exhibition Buried Secrets. In 1997 the Whitney Museum organized Bill Viola: A 25-Year Survey that traveled to six museums in the US and Europe. In 2002, Going Forth By Day, a five part video “fresco” cycle was presented at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and the Guggenheim, NY. In 2003, The Passions, originated at the J. Paul Getty Museum, CA and traveled to the National Gallery, London; the Fondacion “La Caixa” in Madrid; and the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Other important solo exhibitions have been mounted at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo in 2006 and at the Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw in 2007. In 2008, Bill Viola: Visioni interiori, a survey exhibition organized by Kira Perov, was presented in Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni. His exhibition Intimate Works was presented at De Pont, Tilburg, Netherlands in January, 2010.

Viola is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most recently receiving the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award in Tokyo in 2011. He received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989; the first Medienkunstpreis in 1993; the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Government in 2006; the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts, MIT in 2009; and the 2009 Catalonia International Prize. In addition to several honorary doctorates, Viola was invited to be a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles in 1998. Bill Viola and Kira Perov, his wife and long-time collaborator, live and work in Long Beach, California.

Location: James Cohan Gallery Shanghai

Artist: Bill VIOLA

Date: 9 Mar – 6 May 2012

Courtesy of Bill Viola and James Gohan Gallery Shanghai, for futher information please visit www.jamescohan.com

“Disruptive Desires, Tranquility and the Loss of Lucidity” is a series of multimedia works from artist Ran Huang and the title of his first solo show at Long March Space. This young artist is already known as an aggressive and progressive artist, and this exhibition comprises of his completely new works. Long March Space will also feature Ran Huang’s works as an one-artist presentation at the Frieze Art Fair New York, May 2012.

Staged in the Long March Space main gallery, the exhibition Disruptive Desires, Tranquility, and the Loss of Lucidity presents a new film and various installation/sculptures that continue to respond to Ran Huang’s feverish interest with the temptation and intoxication of inextricable corruption of aesthetics and morality.

The film “Disruptive Desires, Tranquility, and The Loss of Lucidity” elaborates upon the archetypal love story between two teenagers, whilst colluding with a deeply hidden ominous history underneath. The film tries to secure an ephemeral moment of beauty, while alluding to the illegibility of an experience that is solitary, brutish, nasty, short and pure. The ostensibly tranquil image of the film contradictorily involves an orgiastic approach to delirium and ecstatic perplexity. By substituting a dubious sense of romanticism for any actual image of transgression, Ran Huang urges us to communicate with the incompatibility of our aesthetically value and moral will, at the same time denying this possibility within the same system. The plausible image of beauty suited to our very taste of contemporaneity is ironically secured by the very insecurity that is denied by the aesthetical system itself.

The installation/sculpture piece “The Weakness of Will, and The Fear of Society” is a stable composition of intensely fragile materials gleaming and dizzying with gluttonies that conspire with risk and chance to indulge in the adultery between intolerable physical security and psychological insecurity. Huang’s dissipation of the inherent syntax of the materials visualizes human conditions such as indifferent laughter, weakness, fear, confidence, love and will power into a cold moment of materialization.

Occupying an ever shifting and unstable ground in which we paradoxically seek permanence and stability, Ran Huang describes his work as an attempt to, “examine the point where we are voluntarily gelded by a secured experience of aesthetical insecurity. Like with religious enthusiasm, we choose to believe in some sort of aesthetical pragmatism rather than understand the inherent inadequacies and inextricability of the situation on our own. It seems that art never really cares about things around, what it really cares about is perhaps just an intoxicated feeling that comes from caring about things. ”

Born in Xichang (Sichuan), China in 1982, Ran Huang has quickly established himself as a powerful young voice in the art scene in China with an impressive and critically acclaimed body of work that includes films, sculpture/installation, photographs and prints. Although Huang draws inspiration from a variety of philosophical and historical sources, his practice does not seek a promise or pretext for understanding by absorbing into any philosophical or critical thinking. Imaging the human conditions from within, his work can be a desire itself to battle with，which is replete with possibilities, but also frightening in its perishable security.

Ran Huang graduated with a first class BA Fine Art degree from Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (UK) in 2004. In 2007, after graduating from Goldsmiths College in London in 2007, Huang established his artistic practice in London where he shifted his wide-ranging practice into a more dynamic dimension, for the first time intertwining his works with the complexity of film language.

Ran Huang has participated in several international exhibitions and group shows including: the 13th Videonale, KunstMuseum, Bonn, Germany (2011), CREDIT SUISSE Today Art Award, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China (2011), Super-Organism CAFAM Biennale 2011, Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, Beijing, China (2011), Videonale Touring, GoMA Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, UK (2011),Basel Film, curated by Marc Glöde, 42th Art Basel, Switzerland (2011), Beijing Voice: Together or Isolated, Pace Beijing, Beijing, China (2010), Projectables, 7th Mercosur Biennial, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul Ado Malagoli, Brazil (2009), and MOVE, Werkleitz, Halle, Germany (2009).

Opening Preview: 17:30 March 15, 2012

Dates: Mar 16, 2012–Apr 16, 2012

Venue: Long March Space

Courtesy of Huang Ran and Long March Space, for further information please visit www.longmarchspace.com

When we’re talking about art and creation, initially, we take the most delicate part of human mind and experience into account; if we desire a perception of art, we may wonder–whether such a thing called “art” exists, if it is not approached by means of observation, comprehension and corroboration–the answer is obviously “no”.

Minicon, a modern scientific concept, indicates a motion process and system for the calculation of the mechanism, the electronic element and the digital logics in terms of the fundamental units and functions, which is responsible for the control and management over the entire system through the control, management and operation of the minimum unit. Our daily life is running, in almost every aspect, on the basis of Minicon, from traffic controls to vehicular travel, from computer to refrigerator, from electronic lock to online game, etc.; to our social system, Minicon is big enough to steer the state structure and political system, or may play a small but crucial part in our daily routine. When it comes to our human existence, its vitality exists in every circulation, every cell and every gene under the control of Minicon. Metaphorically speaking, Minicon has become an embodiment of social control itself which, much to the credit of netizens, is often deemed as a certain complex (simplified as the word “con”). For example, a “twitter-con” might use twitter for so many times a day that it has become his subconscious addiction. People are becoming addictive to different “cons”, in fact, the word “con” is so popular that it was ranked in the top 10 buzz words in 2011. However, such phenomenon is abnormal and has even degraded politics, rather than the simple and normal hobbies. All segments of society are forced to strive for more followers (the “cons”), otherwise, they may become the slave of “cons” themselves. “Con” has become the theme of our age.

Now let’s take a look at modern art, the unprecedented diversification of society has caused modern art to be a rather controversial topic nowadays, more than that, art has been shackled by so many different schools that it has lost its free will. Still by putting an emphasis on “Minicon” here, we face the prevalence and danger of “cons”, hoping to break its political implications, so that one day we may grow to become the master of “cons” rather than following the steps of others. The “Minicon” based on self-control is where the intellect, the will and the value of an individual truly lies, and is also the essence for achieving outstanding art. As for art, it rejects controlling others or being controlled. It only stands for an individual to observe the world, scan the world and reveal wholeheartedly the spirit of this world. Only by raising the “Minicon” to such a height, can art become a methodology of the mind—the coexistence of the individual and art, and the value and beauty of independence cannot be manifested unless our human existence is driven by the force of free will. “Minicon”, in the realm of art, should exert self-control, and should allow us to get rid of the confusion and torture of being controlled by others, thus enabling us to explore the infinite space of the human mind. Only by feeding “Minicon” with the nutrition of art, can we avoid the possibility of ideological violence.

The popularity of “cons” heralds the coming of the “con” era. Still, art will no longer exist with the absence of self-control based on free will. This ideology must always be the center of our artistic pursuit.

2012-1-15 Huajiadi, Beijing

 About the exhibition

Curator: Wang Chunchen

Artists: Gong Pengfei, Eun-Hyung-Kim(Korea), Li Hongbo, Lu Ming, Liu Lining, Xie Lisi, Takahiro Iwasaki(Japan)

Organization: Chunchi Gallery

Opening: 3pm 18/3/2012

Duration: 18/3/2012—5/5/2012

Address: 20ku,798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Contact: 010-59789491

Email: chunchiart@vip.163.com

Web: www.chunchigallery.com

This is the first exhibition of the SO Art Group that has five members who have studied under the guidance of Su Xinping, Wang Huaxiang, Zhou Jirong and Li Fan at the Department of Printmaking, CAFA. It showcases the life and creative experiences after their graduation from 2006 to 2011. With their works, life photos, literature in art, writing and other forms, it combines and presents the lives and creations of these five artists as an organic whole to explore how these young art practitioners have grown from undergraduates to individuals with their own independent artistic creations, how they coordinate their creations and lives, how they persisted with their own artistic viewpoint when affected by external factors.

From the perspective of the academic director and curator of this exhibition who are both renowned artists and firm practitioners of art education. The five members of this artistic group SO on the one hand were their students and have been influenced by them while on the other hand, they represent their own independent points of view in art. Their tutors have been the closest witnesses to the process of the formation of their own ideas. Taking five of their most familiar works to exemplify their skill will take their study to the maximum level, close to reality. These vie with different types of cases that inspire other young artists, people who are engaged in art education and those who are concerned with the training of young artists.

For the five members of this art group, Interrogation can be taken as a transformation from individuals to a group with a common ideal in art. On the one hand, the summary on their previously independent creations, with which they share their own experience, access and errors with the audience; on the other hand, it commences the beginning of their journey to seek common ground while reserving their differences during their joint creations. Curated by their respectable teachers, this exhibition is a starting point from their alma mater which has a special significance for them.

 Preface by Li Fan

With their different styles, the five young artists stick to “painting” for five years following on from their satisfaction at the academy to a tough life after their graduation, from hopeful persistence to doubts about their previous endeavor. They suffered nervous and uneasy decisions along this path of growth. Circumstances conflicted with the inner heart while artistic phenomena contradicted with their artistic ideals. The behavior of the star artists embarrassed their persistence and they felt confused about the social orientation of art. Although it is a personal matter to choose “painting” they cannot stand the pestilential atmosphere that so many “artists” suffer who attach themselves to the bigwigs in art to become celebrities after their five years since graduation.

Thus they choose a relatively simple environment, a relatively academic atmosphere, a relatively plain venue for their exhibition. For the time being they would like to shield themselves from the so-called “popularity” to showcase their experiments during different stages in the five years. They hope they can encourage their junior followers with their real process of growth and get sharp guidance from masters of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

We sincerely wish for an authentic attitude and genuine communication among cordial people during this exhibition.

Thus we “interrogate”…

Introductions on SO Art Group

It consists of five undergraduates from the Department of Printmaking, the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Members: Shi Haopeng, Qin Guanwei, Xu Hongxiang, Wang Guozhao and Wu Haonan. Their works focus on art-based activities in the nature of creation. Each separate creation of SO was planned by team members and participated in by them except for the documentary exhibition. The core philosophy of their creations lies in “Persistence in Being Not Consistence”.

Interrogation: The First Round Exhibition of SO Art Group

Curator: Li Fan

Artists: Shi Haopeng, Qin Guanwei, Xu Hongxiang, Wang Guozhao and Wu Haonan

Venue: the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

Dates: March 26, 2012 –April 8th, 2012

Opening: 15:00 March 26th, 2012

Symposium on Interrogation

Academic Director: Su Xinping

Location: the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

Time: 10:00 March 26th, 2012

An ordinary family

A solidified sensibility

A sealed temperature

A period of tangible, fluctuating time

Some appearances, words and pictures erased from memories

A block of an object filled with the most authentic and richest records

——Shen Liang

Shen Liang’s “Material, Engraving, Picture” Solo Exhibition planned by Bao Dong was opened at Space Station on 10th March, 2012. The exhibition will display up-to-date oil paintings of the last two years created by a member of N12-Shen Liang. At the exhibition, a veranda-like mode of appearance will be structured to circuitously present the fondness for old things by artists. Within the dark colour and indistinct walls, a feeling of shuttling between normal objects and ancient stone tablets is constructed.

From the early years of the 21st Century, the trend of “Photographic Painting” or “Graphic Painting” formed a kind of limited aesthetic interest while distinguishing itself from realistic painting. Artists emerged from the trend of shaping general pieces, and started to learn how to surpass the general and propel their artistic practice which had become the major problem that they were facing.

Shen Liang’s recent works demonstrate the opportunity to change the situation. He highlighted the existence of pictures when using old photos, and involved the picture itself in the structure of the plane of existence as a material object. The relationship between photos and pictures is more like the relationship between “original” and “erased”, a physical connection between the body and the brush stroke. The thickness of the relief sculpture is like a pigment covering the graphic character of old pictures, and releases the memorial essence of the object itself.

These art works created by Shen Liang are pictures as well as objects. They not only point to a certain feeling of nostalgia and an aesthetic atmosphere but also decline any possible interpretation; they need a concentrated gaze as well as an idle glance. The possibility of considering the relationship between a painting and the picture, art and the object is also involved.

Time: 2012.3.10-3.31

Artist: Shen Liang

Curator: Bao Dong

Opening: 2012/03/10 16：00

Venue: Space Station, NO.4 Jiuxianqiao Rd, 798 Art District

Current social contexts are clearly present in my work, but I still search for a kind of self-supporting approach that can provide structure for my life experience and the world I encounter, although I am fully aware of my own distance from this goal.

–Sui Jianguo

Sui Jianguo ranks among the most important Chinese contemporary artists and is widely considered, as critic Huang Zhuan states, the “Chinese sculptor who took the conceptual route the earliest and the farthest.” This is the first solo exhibition for Sui since joining The Pace Gallery, Beijing, bringing together representative works from the artist’s various stylistic periods. The exhibition will run from March 3rd through April 14th, 2012.

Courtesy of Sui Jianguo and Pace Beijing

Photo: Hu Zhiheng/CAFA ART INFO

]]> http://en.cafa.com.cn/take-a-visual-tour-of-sui-jianguo-solo-exhibition-at-pace-beijing.html/feed 0 http://en.cafa.com.cn/these-years-solo-exhibition-of-sun-xun.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=these-years-solo-exhibition-of-sun-xun http://en.cafa.com.cn/these-years-solo-exhibition-of-sun-xun.html#comments Mon, 12 Mar 2012 01:52:04 +0000 Sue Wang http://en.cafa.com.cn/?p=8903

On March 17, 2012, the Asian Arts Center will hold “These Years” – Sun Xun, a Solo Exhibition. As the first exhibition this year, the exhibition will exhibit nearly 20 works created by him from 2000. From his middle school, college, when he was a master then a doctor then a professor, Sun Xun was always in a close relationship with the Central Academy of Fine Arts. It did not matter whether he was a teenager or an adult, he has always being a member in the “academy”. For some time, outside his private and teaching life, painting became a habit for Sun Xun. However, in “these years” of which its definite starting date is unknown, painting to him was no longer a habit, but a way of making him fond of being alone and reading and thinking more. Indeed, in “these years”, you can feel the “unexpected feelings” Sun Xun wants to deliver to you as an artist – he found the individuals, objects and events intending to break up the “customs” of daily life, and which also enabled us to look back to and think over memories, poetic quality and the sense of touch conveyed by his circumstances of “these years” when witnessing his painting scenes during these years.

Recently, Sun Xun has been exploring his own painting road by “looking around”. The style of his earlier works is partial to realistic depiction. In reality, he pays close attention to people and tries to catch their external emotions and internal activities with his painting brush. By recording people’s happiness or sadness, the universal social characters can be discovered. Although he has received flowers and applause for his portrait painting, he never feels satisfied. The painting style he desires is one closely linked with real life. In other words, create beyond reality and reflect the aesthetic taste of modern people. Under the positive influence of family education, he persists in exploring the integration of Chinese traditional culture and western painting. The education system received by Chinese people is close to the western system, direct and concrete with instruction in traditional culture which is indirect and subtle and more like a birthmark to us.

The works of Sun Xun swim in time and space, they have a mighty visual impact. In addition, the painter has an unique understanding about the use of multiple materials. Plastic Tablecloth, this painting depicts an ordinary scene: a round wooden stool around the round table, revealing the memories of a big family. In the scene filled with light is a sense of homesickness, a plastic disposable tablecloth is untidily covering the table. The rapid development incurs with the inconsistent coexistence of different factors of people’s life, which is the reality of Chinese social style. The round table is easy to arouse your memory and the tablecloth brings you back to reality. The feeling not only exists in the scene but also beyond it, which is similar to visual games. However, we have to admit that this is exactly the exploration of real life and the emotions of Sun Xun. In another flower painting, Sun Xun doesn’t draw a withered aloe but a new aloe by using multiple materials. Although it is a new aloe, it looks withered more than a withered one. In addition, Sun Xun also tries to use multiple materials in figure paintings: with deep green background, a father is lying in his bed but the white quilt is prominent in the whole scene. Through the quilt, you can observe the gestures of the father. Suddenly, the space seems to be far away. Then you are surprised with the modeling skill of the painter, which is beyond the form and material. Everything in his painting is appropriate and reveals the simple unfailing charm and heart-reaching happiness and elegance.

At the very beginning of 2012, the Asia Art Center, Beijing will cooperate with Sun Xun to demonstrate his achievements through his life: easel painting using multiple materials and wonderful old works that have never been shown before. Just like what Sun Xun said, “I want to show people some years, and some paintings.”

Date: 2012-03-17 ~ 2012-04-22

Opening: 2012-3-17 (Sat) 3:00pm

Venue: Asia Art Center (Beijing)

Courtesy of Sun Xun and Asia Art Center, Beijing, for further information please visit www.asiaartcenter.org.

The first postcard in history was launched in 1865. It originated from a beautiful picture painted on thick paper by a German artist. Since then, postcards have become widely popular as a way of posting a card with a powerful image. Using postcards, people recorded various moods, thoughts, memories, and hopes, and then shared them with others. Postcards have reflected a wave of nostalgia, in which feelings for the past lingered on and on. It was due to the nostalgia of postcards that Eastation Gallery staged this exhibition and named it “Postcard”.

Zhang Hui, who has lived in New York for many years, expresses his homesickness in his paintings, the recollection of the harmonious early spring of Beijing, and at the same time the illusion of the innocence of oriental women.

Guo Sun, uses a splash-ink painting style, portraying the nostalgic childlike delight and the festivity of the melting snow.

Liu Xiaohui, uses the style of a cartoon strip, recording an autobiographical private life. Two contradictory clues combine and form a kind of unique reading experience.

Hao Qiang, a man of few words, portrays ordinary things in our daily life. The quiet ordinariness produces a deep emotion and extends in an uninterrupted whisper.

Wang Qing, who is of Kaifeng ancestry, keeps portraying the scenes of his hometown. Although his paintings depict the flowing rivers and desolate roads of daily life, they are filled with bitterness and strong poetry.

Wang Qiao’s field of vision never goes beyond her home. Ordinary things within her vision are turned into little poems with her feminine mood.

Opening Time: 2012.3.10 16:00

Venue: Eastation Gallery, 9#, 1st Building,

Northern District, Pingod Community,

No.32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District,

Beijing, P.R.China, 100022

T: +86 10 5876 9741 F: +86 10 5826 3452

www.eastationgallery.com

info@eastationgallery.com

Chapter 3 of Wang Jianwei's "Yellow Signal": Internal Conflict

by Xu Tong

Preface

Low repeating sound, oppressive walls, a strong but slim bundle of Yellow Light source… contemporary Chinese artist Wang Jianwei who owns a variety of titles exhibited his new works “Yellow Signal” at the Ullens Center on April 1st, 2011.

Film, Play, Multimedia, Public art, Painting ……through all these art forms, Wang Jianwei has been using multiple art forms and making interdisciplinary explorations. The new work “Yellow Signal” was another experiment, but this experiment was established using his own personal art language which he has gradually developed.

In the “Yellow Signal” as in some of his previous works, Wang Jianwei’s personal language is increasingly clear. He always used to borrow knowledge from other areas, borrowing common daily experiences and objects belonging to people to shape something which belongs to himself and also this society. In addition, Wang Jianwei is also very good at using ambiguity. Both his art language and his way of expression embody the characteristics of ambiguity and vagueness.

Wang Jianwei was at the opening ceremony.

First, Borrowing

Wang Jianwei has been concerned with the theater for a long time. The very arrangement of “Yellow Signal” is borrowed from the theater.

“Yellow Signal” is divided into four sections just like a four-act play which has been staged for nearly three months. The clusters of basketballs, transformed old furniture and videos playing in a loop ,the video device as the protagonist of the entire theater, always on at that stage , and waiting for the entrance of the audience.

Wang Jianwei’s “Yellow Signal” borrows not only elements of the theater but also numerous of objects , his past works, as well as people’s daily experience, such as basketballs, and old furniture he has collected from the 1950s.

Wang Jianwei’s works hide familiar daily experiences which are then modified and makes the viewer’s experience uncomfortable.

In fact, Wang Jianwei has always been looking for a kind of public experience, of course, this experience initially comes from the artists themselves. Then, based on this common experience, he gives people a kind of familiar odor, but from this familiar feeling, he creates ambiguity. Visual and auditory feelings combine in a moment then lead the audience back to a past experience, the yellow light is dim, shining on an old dream.

Chapter 1 Making do with Fakes, mixed media installation

Chapter 2 We know what we are doing…

Second, Ambiguity

Wang Jianwei’s “Yellow Signal” borrows from the theater; borrows objects shaped by work; borrows some of people’s daily experiences to contribute to the overall experience. It is worth emphasizing that Wang Jianwei is borrowing rather than embezzling. Borrowing is in order to transform, add or change something beyond the familiar experience to create an effect which is both strange and familiar. When facing the works in the “Yellow Signal”，people will always feel in the middle of a dualistic state. What Wang Jianwei pursues is exactly the ambiguity which is hard to speak of and the contrary condition between “yes” and “no”.

The old furniture, for example, reveals various traces of the past, we see in the mirror’s reflection something new along with ourselves today. The old furniture is useful and their function is complete, however the new furniture after processing loses its function as a piece of furniture and become “useless”.

In fact, all ambiguity of Wang Jianwei is in manufacturing illusion which results in viewers getting lost in the known world. This awareness has the character of both Kafka and Borges. All these works are all in an attempt to imply the meaning of “Yellow Signal”.

Yellow Signal, as the intermediate state of the traffic lights is indeed between the “red stop” and “green go”. What is Yellow light in the end? It is an artificial concept. The world’s first traffic lights which appeared in 1868 in London only have two colours: red and green and the Yellow Signal’s joining was in the late 1920s with the help of a Chinese person – Hu Ruding’s contribution. He felt that the alternating conversion between red and green was too sudden and a transition was necessary.

Chapter 3 Internal Conflict(detail)

Chapter 3 Internal Conflict(detail), mixed media installation

Chapter 4 Go to the Conference Room on the 13th Floor for Free Films, mixed media installation

Third, The Limits of Ambiguity?

Wang Jianwei’s “Yellow Signal”, in fact, is not meant to stay ambiguous and vague, but the conversion process between the dualistic or even multivariant is bound to be vague. Wang Jianwei’s self-interpretation of the “Yellow Signal” is vague too. However, what is the limit of ambiguity?

When Wang Jianwei was faced with opposition to dualism he attempted to transform but not to deconstruct. He is raising questions. As an artist in constant exploration .Wang Jianwei creates all kinds of illusions on the basis of borrowing from daily experiences. He always maintains the attitude of questioning and suggests possibilities of depth. The ending he left is open. In the process and ending of others’ intervention thus continuation is necessary.

About the author

Xu Tong is a graduate student who majors in art history at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. She is good at writing and has written art criticism on modern and contemporary art, contemporary poetry and book reviews for websites like CAFA ART INFO and magazines like The Star Poetry (Monthly), newspapers like China Times and so on.

The Young Artists Projects at the Iberia Center for Contemporary Art will make its debut with Symptoms, the first exhibition at the center in 2012. This is a long-term project of the center to be held in different ways once or twice a year, Becoming Peninsula aim is to follow, study and hold discussions about young artists, including their art practice and achievements. The catalogue for this exhibition will include curatorial articles about each artist and interviews.

This exhibition features eight artists born around the 1980s: Lu Yang, Yan Heng, Cheng Ran, Ren Hang, Li Wei, Yan Xing, Yuan Yuan and Zang Kunkun.

Reanimation!Underwater Zombie frog ballet! from LuYang on Video

Yan Xing- “DADDY Project”2011 behavior, video installation, dimension variable

These artists are different from the previous generation who were mostly idealists in their youth who were obsessed by a vision of a changing destiny and building a bright future. After the social transformations in the 1990s, the aura of idealism disappeared. Business culture took root in China. This period coincided with the initial stage of the apprenticeships of the young artists as featured in this exhibition. The highly specialized division of labor and the elaborate social structure can only allow everyone a tiny position. No doubt young people can only inwardly expand their space, therefore greatly expanding their world as individuals. In the meantime, the highly developed media and technology give young people easy access to knowledge and information, greatly diversifying their own knowledge structure, so their complexity and diversity began to be highlighted. Growing up in this background, the young artists are diversified in their terms of interest.

Yan Heng, green software with peach hardwar, oil on canvas and devices,150×400cm, 2011

Yuan Yuan-Beauty, 140×180 cm; oil on canvas, 2012

Cheng Ran, Anonymous，Imitation and Imagination of Man Ray's Tears(1930-1932), single-frequency audio recording, 11 min 33 sec, 2010

Will such inward reflection lead to isolation from society as far as their art is concerned? It is just the opposite. These original works not only depict the symptoms found in individuals but also those in society. It is a mumbling monologue, a mixture of the dream land, sociological reflections, narration of individual experience, or unique tastes. In the spontaneous aphasia, silent and blank, it is easy to find the symptoms in an individual or society. On the one hand, we understand, to some extent, the meaning revealed in these works, and we have to find the answers to the problems these artists unconsciously hide in their works. These works are symptoms that help us to read our age, society, art, as well as these artists’ concerns.

Zang Kunkun, Brown Series of Electric Blanket, propylene and other mixed media, 80×160×1cm, 2011

Li Wei, A Bag of Trash, behavior photography; Photo-Zou Sehngwu, 170×100cm 2012

Artists: Cheng Ran, Li Wei, Lu Yang, Ren Hang, Yan Heng, Yan Xing, Yuan Yuan, Zang Kunkun

Curator: Iberia Exhibition Department

Opening: 4 p.m. Saturday March 3, 2012

Duration: March 3, 2012—April 3, 2012

Venue: Iberia Center for Contemporary Art

Courtesy of the artists and Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, for further information please contact www.iberiart.org.

"Green Wall: Rest Room" by Zhang Xiaogang, 2009; stainless steel plate, silkscreen prints, oil and silver pen, 200 x 150 cm

July 20th, Heavy rain last night, it’s starting to get sunny today, but still hot and humid

I came back to Beijing from Shanghai yesterday. Just the same as before, this time going to Shanghai was to participate in my friend’s exhibition opening — had dinner, drank, exhibition opening, shook hands, photos taken, interviewed, met up with old friends to see if there were any new topics to discuss? Met some new friends, and wondered if we could become old friends in the future. Then I ate more, drank more, and switched to another place to continue drinking… Deep in the night, I was worn out and returned to the hotel, turned on the television set, and faded off to sleep — all this seems to be an already fixed pattern, which makes people excited, yet exhausted. Eventually, I got up, went to the airport and back to where I have come from. Yet, the city I have just been to didn’t leave me with much impression. This could be regarded as a certain lifestyle that everybody has already got used to and believed exists in recent years. Imagine if there were no longer such a lifestyle, just go back to the past of being a hermit withdrawn in my own little room, repeating my fantasies, or attempting to live the “healthy lifestyle” that mainstream public approve of — work, work, go back home and have dinner, take care of a child, watch television, and occasionally go out to a restaurant, see friends, go to sleep and wake up early, think of ways to accumulate wealth, or strive to win the boss’s attention, to have more opportunities. Perhaps this could also be the kind of life which makes people happy? I am not sure. My brain is drawing a blank now. Each time I return home after these “vigorous” events, it is just like I have landed on the moon, zero gravity, blanked out, and feeling light headed from the lack of oxygen. Turn on the television and be absorbed in the programs, the feeling of being filled with passion and loneliness are no longer some sort of “breakdown”, but progressively becoming our daily and psychological need. Desire and selflessness, greed and “anorexia”, “nostalgia” and pursuit, destruction and reconstruction…, these cease to be our reasons of confusion. What then is a genuine life? Or what is the life we all desire? In today’s world, perhaps we don’t need to search anymore. That is not to say the meaning of life is not important, it’s just that we should do a good job living as we are as we are already in the midst of life.

I will write down another kind of life, for a few days for record keeping and future reference.

19th, woke up at half past eleven, a cup of water / blood pressure at twelve noon 128/80P85 / lunch noodles 3 liangs (150 grams) (note: “liang” is a chinese measuring unit, 1 liang equals to 50 grams) / dinner fish head hot pot, skin of tofu, lotus root, animal stomach, noodles 1 liang (50 grams), white spirit a little more than 1 liang (50 grams) / a total of 12 cigarettes, went to sleep at 4 A.M.

18th, woke up at twelve, a cup of water / blood pressure at one o’clock in the afternoon 125/80P85 / lunch Spanish cuisine, salad, rice 1 liang (50 grams) / dinner Shanghainese cuisine, red wine about 5 glasses, white spirit about 3 liangs (150 grams) / a total 15 cigarettes, went to sleep at around 2 A.M.

Courtesy of Zhang Xiaogang and all rights reserved.

Liu Xiaohui-The Winter of Circular Railway, 2011; tempera on wood, 30x40cm

How closely can the basic necessities of life be drawn in paintings? In thinking about this question, you may get inspired by Liu Xiaohui’s paintings.

Liu Xiaohui is an artist focusing on painting. Almost everyday of his life, he is searching for the themes of his paintings thus ideas revolve around his smooth daily life which naturally becomes the object being observed. His way home, his parents’ lives, the tone of the fog and haze, red brick buildings, reflective light of the floor, a metal pot and the light shadow of all scenes can be touched on his canvas. It seems that Liu Xiaohui takes the life around him as a decorated still life and he is the recorder who stands aside with his easel and calmly strings everything together.

Liu Xiaohui-A Day Being a Model, 2011; acrylic on canvas, 31.5 x 41 cm

Liu Xiaohui-Friendship Hotel 05, 2011; acrylic on paper, 255mm x 205mm

Liu Xiaohui-Cableway on the Chang Jiang in Chongqing, 2011; oil on canvas, 51 x 40.5cm

Every epoch has its emblem, prosperity or decline, confusion or vitality. For Liu Xiaohui, his life history can be referred to as the brand of his paintings. Along with the changes in his age and status, variation happens naturally in his paintings. Painting, for Liu Xiaohui, is like a “verb” which is taking place through which he experiences this world. Perhaps what really attracts him is this kind of change, which is brought about by the accidents of life.

Liu Xiaohui, born in 1975, graduated from the Department of Murals, the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Bachelor’s degree in 1990 and Master’s degree in 2010. Currently teaching there, he lives and works in Beijing.

About the exhibition

Opening Ceremony: 16:00-19:00 February 25th, 2012

Date: February 25th—April 2nd, 2012

Venue: Hemuse Gallery

Address: 3-038, North Area, Pingod Shequ, 32 Baiziwan Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Courtesy of Liu Xiaohui and the Hemuse Gallery, for further information please visit www.hemusegallery.com

Carving

By Shu Kewen

When he darkened the wall-sized printing plate with black ink, he was dedicating himself to unbounded obscurity. His previous work, together with all the artistic conceptions that had challenged his work, was buried in the darkness, which interrupted his train of thought for working, questioned whether to meet the challenge or not, and eliminated things to be expressed. How could he fight the darkness and return in face of this pent-up and obscure moment alone? Groys once criticized that melancholy and solitary modern meditation did not lead to any conclusive and well-founded aesthetic judgment. At the moment, only action spoke louder than words. What he reserved for himself was merely the covered wooden plate, a woodcut knife in hand and skilled techniques. That was Yang Hongwei in the winter of 2008.

How could the printing plate and woodcut knife, as a tool and material, guide the artist? How could he establish his relationship with the plate? Those questions occurred to him countless times. In his twenty years’ of work in printmaking, he often focused on conceiving printed out images and ignored the plate itself when he was working on a piece. How to reestablish the understanding of the plate has become the stance for his work. First of all, he needs to scatter the darkness over it, recognizing the existence of the plate. But the problem of carving techniques emerges when he starts to carve, and the texture of wood is exposed like a wound. The predecessor Li Hua has summed up 48 skills, all of which Yang also masters. But how could he make the most of these skills so that the carving doesn’t fail the texture and nature of wood?

The response to the texture and nature of wood is just the response to carving techniques. All has brought about a pure and solid feeling. He finished Water All in One in 2010. But when he first faced the obscure darkness, he could not fill up the large space on the plate no matter how he framed it. He imagined numerous dots, which were related to the plate rather than any graphics, lines or expressions. He also attempted to probe into the dots for the nature of wood, but suffered for one year and a half, just like a prisoner, to endure, assume and wait, together with the plate, for the dots to diffuse like water. The tardy, pure and mild changes were simply created by the structure of dots. Compared with tempestuous storms, or waves, the boundless water was peaceful, without any promise at all, but embodies a sense of time and unpredictable depth and energy. Therefore, what the work presented was no longer the structure, but the pervasion of actions and the outcome of the accumulation of time. The pieces of carving marks broke through the darkness and obscurity set up by himself, in the same way that chaos was broken. It was estimated that he carved the plate 36 millions times, which revealed his mild commitment to work, as well as a kind of mechanical poetry.

The solemn stand toward sensibility enables him to carve a plotted story that he attempts to rely on. His much devoted self-worth also endows the work with the desire of resistance to the “now” that we are trapped in, or the grace that is put aside. What is truly resisted is the ultimate and realistic manner of experience, or the Utopian experience of salvation.

The contemporary depiction and illumination of reality leads to a mental evasion of reality. In The Storyteller, Benjamin analyzed novels in post-modern times and concluded that illustration was no longer used to express one’s own concern for present human existence, but an incommensurate experience was emphasized instead. One of the clues might lie in the fact that modern writers have disassociated themselves from nature and history, consuming themselves in vain. There are a number of attempts to resist this in contemporary art, aiming to involve themselves in an exterior world and history, and break through the dual isolation of the exterior world and interior experience.

The carving we are talking about here turns out to be an attempt like this. Carving is not a contingency or accident that can be remedied, nor is it a kind of solitary superorganic experience. Instead, it’s a daily apperception, an acknowledgement of visible things, and a basis on which artists could cooperate with the visible. Therefore, carving doesn’t apply to recurrence, narration, or opinions, doesn’t paraphrase, is not a mark, but is a state of being. Carving implies a way of woodcut, with vision tracing hands, rather than hands selecting something correspondent to vision. As a result, the world is where techniques are. It might be similar to the situations discovered by John Berger when he commented on Sammallahti’s photographs. There is more suffering and solitude, but expectation still persists. There might be sudden and fancy phenomena in everyday life, but daily scenes are still familiar to us, which corroborates that fancy phenomena are not necessarily the reopening or culmination of history. They could bring us a glimpse at a new order, and remind us to search for the corroboration once again.

Elements like water, stone, and fire in the “Carving” exhibition, act as a clue, which belong to the traditional motif of nature and history, so are similar to labor and seasonal changes. They are involved in the natural torrent, open both in time and space, and infinitely extensible in logic, to the work, and to the layers of wooden meal. They are not deployed narratively, but the encounter of objects is assured with the movement of hands. He cannot bear to regard the wooden meal as a remainder. Fag ends do not exist in natural history. The way to assurance is not well guided by cognition. Neither is it so dramatic. Therefore, the ink and wash style picture is never covered by plots even after it is printed out.

In the long work of The Millennium Monument, Yang starts the human stories with wood engraving. The 12 episodes, all of which are dramatic scenes, are placed in a consecutive and repeated narrative chain, but the drama vanishes in the changing combination of abstinency and arrogance. The power to stir the drama seems to come from exterior spontaneity and interior obtrusion of ourselves. The experience is quite similar to daily perception. A sea of information informs us of incidents in every corner of the world, no matter whether they are related to us or not, no matter if we realize where we are or not, things just carry on their own ways with punctuality. The closure with a beginning and an end in the long work can be comprehended as an infinite repetition of palingenesis, and wood engraving provides a technical possibility for the palingenesis, with numerous and complicated, particular and omnipresent traces.

In Carving, what is presented is the dynamic state of weathering and erosion, and the accumulating and repetitious carving, which interestingly contrasts with the complexity in The Millennium Monument. The two works serve as a foil to each other in dynamic and static states. The dramatic scenes in The Millennium Monument become more limited and temporary, as its dynamic state counts for little in contrast to Carving, whereas the sense of history and sadness embodied in the peace and loneliness in the carved Carving echoes time in contrast to The Millennium Monument.

However, I feel that Yang’s work is far away from the speculative thinking of contemporary art. When his work is interrupted by speculative modern conception and schema, he even evades passivity so that his experience will not be dominated by any judgment as long as he is with materials and tools that he is familiar with. His techniques could guide him in work, and the wood and woodcut knife he is familiar with are trusted as a part of his daily experience. But as the procedure of carving requires strict control of his hands and emotions, detention in time and space emerges in the carving and structure of the picture. Herein, he discovers a freedom and solid sense of action.

The freedom, as well as the works exhibited here, have nothing to do with plot, just with coexistence.

Feb., 2012

Translated by Lou Yuanling

Courtesy of Yang Hongwei and Shu Kewen.

About the exhibition

Exhibition: Carving

Opening Time: 16:00, March 4th, 2012

Exhibition Period: March 5th to 20th, 2012

Artist: Yang Hongwei

Curator: Shu Kewen

Organizer: Today Art Museum

Operator: Purple Gate Cultural Development Co.Ltd

Exhibition Place: Floor 2 Exhibition Hall, No.1 Building, Today Art Museum

Poster of With You, I'll never feel lonely

A solo exhibition of Chen Ke’s work curated by renowned curator JuJu opened at Today Art Museum on March 3rd. The exhibition features nearly one hundred paper images created as part of Chen Ke’s autobiographical series: “With You, I Will Never Feel Lonely”. It showcases her own journey from a little girl who loved to paint to one of the representative contemporary female painters of this generation, all explored through the intriguing and priceless memories of Chen.

All About My Grandpa Who Loves Life(travels, fine food and gardening)

The Shell Seekers 53,Woodblock Print, 2011

Fortress Hill (in Dalian, China)02 by Chen Ke

Chen Ke’s autobiography, published in tandem with the exhibition, offers the public a further opportunity to observe the development of this member of the new generation of contemporary artists. Through her own words and images, the public can piece together the jigsaw puzzle that is Chen Ke’s maturing and growth as an artist. Published by China Youth Press and designed by the design studio “Xiao Mage & Cheng Zi”, “With You, I Will Never Feel Lonely” features a forward by curator Ju Ju and an endorsement by the artist Liu Ye, with original portraits by Chen Ke as illustrations.

Chen Ke

Organizer: Today Art Museum

Curator: Zhu Zhu

Duration: March 3-12, 2012

Venue: 1st floor exhibition hall of building No.3 Today Art Museun

Courtesy of Chen Ke and Today Art Museum, for further information please visit www.todayartmuseum.com.

A “new” face has appeared in the corridors of the Department of Experimental Arts, School of Plastic Arts of CAFA at the very beginning of the new term in 2012. He is the leading figure of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers and one of international cinema’s most celebrated artists who has directed Xiao Wu (1997), Platform (2000), Unknown Pleasure (2002),Still Life (2006), 24 City (2008) as well as others.

During “The Conference on Art Education of Experimental Arts in China Academies” held in May, 2011, director Jia Zhangke was specially invited by the School of Plastic Arts to be a visiting professor. Jia was impressed by the sincere invitation of Professor Lv Shengzhong, the Head of the Department of Experimental Arts before he decided to teach at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. This is the first time for Jia Zhanke to return to the campus environment as well as being a teacher to impart on his knowledge of films. In his own words, Jia is very pleased to teach at CAFA, also he was very excited and hopes to share with students here his many years of practical experience of film making and his perception of images.

Jia Zhangke was directing graduates in the class.

As one of the mediums of contemporary art, the art of the image has been involved in many areas of sociology, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, psychology, archeology, geography, etc. It’s such a complicated subject and has been widely utilized by artists. There are few projects in the Chinese academies of arts which contain professors who teach the creative language courses of filmmaking even though its importance is unquestionable. It’s difficult to invite such an artist who is endowed with both the practices of creative experience and a profound insight on image.

The course Professor Jia Zhangke teaches for six weeks is “Visual Language” for the first grade of graduate students from the Department of Experimental Arts. Taking the characteristics of “video coping of the objective reality” as its starting point, this course will combine a variety of video art works from the aesthetics of videos and documentaries. Jia will tease out the history of filmmaking, then analyze and summarize the authoring language and aesthetic theories of filmmaking. In addition to the theoretical knowledge, Jia emphasizes the need for interactions with graduates, for example, they discuss their memories of the first film they saw then the video as a non-visual “image” will appear again in everyone’s mind. Of course, graduated students pay much attention to the many years of practical experience from Jia and they look forward to receiving guidance from him in their operations of the actual shooting and post-clip works.

Jia Zhangke was communicating with graduates.

Currently, Jia Zhangke is shooting a new movie and he has a busy daily schedule. He takes this course seriously and arrives at the classroom half an hour before the start and prepares the computers, projectors and other equipment for the class. Graduates feel grateful for this opportunity and they actively participate in the discussions. A group of filmmakers come together to talk about filmmaking in the classroom for the graduated students in the Department of Experimental Arts, they are exploring the future of video art as well as the new possibilities of filmmaking as a contemporary artistic creation.

Jia Zhangke (profile picture)

Jia Zhangke (b. 1970, Fenyang, Shanxi, China) has emerged as the leading figure of the sixth generation of Chinese filmmakers and one of international cinema’s most celebrated artists. Merging gritty realism with elegance and originality, he tackles contemporary subject matter in both documentary and fictional projects—and often fuses the two approaches to great effect. In little more than a decade he has created a body of work that reflects the enormous changes of the past fifty years of Chinese society. Much admired by critics and an inspiration to fellow filmmakers, Jia has developed an original, ever-evolving style marked by fluid camera movement and a porous, symbiotic relationship between the real and the imagined. His films—characterized by their plainspoken directness and postmodern aesthetics and peopled with amateur as well as professional actors thus illuminating the transformations taking place in China’s environment, architecture, and society by placing everyday people in the midst of a landscape in turmoil. Aiming to restore the concrete memory of place and to evoke individual history in a rapidly modernizing society, the filmmaker recovers the immediate past in order to imagine the future. His films reflect reality truthfully, while simultaneously using fantasy and a distinct aesthetic to pose existential questions about life and status in a society in flux. Through rigorous specificity, his art attains universal scope and appeal.

Xiang Jing's Recent Creation; Photo:Zhang Yanzi/CAFA ART INFO

Part II: Mankind was like a young person, or someone in the prime of his life

Chen: As for art, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you my impression. I’ve seen a lot of artists ask this question. I say that in the past, art was always changing, but sometimes I feel like there’s a lot of commonality among all of the art before the 20th century. And then, perhaps beginning with the Cubists, the Futurists, or the Dadaists, it just suddenly changed in the early 20th century…

Xiang: The big changes started with Impressionism.

Chen: Impressionism seems to be the tipping point.

Xiang: Right. The methods suddenly changed.

Chen: There were great changes in Impressionism, but it still relied on tradition. Once Impressionism was finished, in the early 20th century, suddenly all of the new schools popped up, ones whose names I can’t remember. Before that, the schools such as Raphaelite and Pre-Raphaelite, only the experts could tell the difference between them. But now it’s different. One thing is like this, and the other is like that.

Xiang: Limitless possibilities.

Chen: Once these schools did their thing, there is not much left that one can do on-canvas any longer. Art became entirely different from what it was before. It changed completely.

Xiang: Have you been to any large exhibitions of contemporary art abroad?

Chen: I have, but not very many. When I’m abroad, I will go to see exhibitions, like when there are exhibitions while I’m in New York or Europe.

Xiang: It’s amazing to think about how fast the world has changed over the past few decades. The Internet has changed the way people perceive the world, making it easier to “know” things. Our concepts of technological progress, time and distance have all been changed. If you’re completely in the level of reality, and your attention is diverted by reality, then you will be afraid there’s something you “don’t know.” A concept is rapidly washed away, shuffled out like a playing card. The individual has been emphasized, but what has been washed away with more ferocity is the unconscious collective. Outside of advertisements, there are no longer words like “eternal” or “timeless.” For the individual, sometimes they don’t know what they want to persevere for. This world brings me great pain, and I don’t think I can use what I have now to help the future of the world. Sometimes, art seems like an utopian dream world, where each artist rushes to successfully erect a new world before the old one collapses. I’m always squeezed between such ideals and depressed sentiments. I hold a solo exhibition about once every three years, and every time, the process is the same. Before the exhibition, I shut myself off, steeping myself in a closed world. After that, I spend about a year in a state of hollow doubt, doubting all values. It’s quite scary. I wonder, does someone like you, who works in philosophy, face the same kind of doubts?

Chen: It’s probably quite different, though there are some similarities. You just mentioned the state you’re in for three years. That’s just like my normal state. You have a question, and you continuously follow that question. I also have some students and peers that I discuss things with, just a few of them. Overall, you don’t know what’s going on in the outside world. I finish writing a book, and when it is launched, and I then return to the world, I’ll find the kind of work I do is very much on the margins. When I say margins, I’m not talking about being sad because you’re on the margins of society, but because the significance of your work is marginal – you don’t know where it converges with reality. Not only do I have such feelings, I have them often.

Take Ding Fang, for instance. I don’t have a lot of contact with Ding Fang, but he is a typical case in this respect. He was an important painter in the late 80s, I’m not sure how high he was ranked, but I would consider him a hot artist in the early 90s. At the time, contemporary art was still suppressed by the Chinese government, but by then there were already important artworks. For instance, there was the “85 New Wave” and the exhibition in 89. I happened to be in China for the 89 exhibition, so I went. Contemporary art had already begun to flourish by then.

People drink water by Ding Fang

As for Ding Fang, I don’t know if it was idealism or what he was holding out for, but he stuck with it, kept painting in his old style, with his old artistic concepts. Ding Fang reads a lot of books, and is an intellectual. He is a man of letters, and doesn’t really like being seen as a painter. He is more of an intellectual. It’s been many years now, and those who support him say that he has held out, while those who don’t support him say that he is part of the past generation. I was talking with him in his studio the other day. He felt that Byzantine art, Renaissance art and his art were real art, and nothing else counted as art. Though it is shaking the world, it isn’t art. I think there’s something worthy of respect in this attitude, not being concerned with all of the noise going on outside. It is what it is. Just because it’s happening doesn’t mean it matters. But I do have a problem. It’s not that I doubt him, but I want to understand. The question of what is art is a different kind of question than the question of how far it is from the earth to the moon. There is an objective way to answer the distance between the earth and the moon question. It can be measured. No matter what you say, that is what it is. But when it comes to art, it interacts with the audience, and can you claim that all other people are wrong, taking this stuff as art, they must be wrong. But in a certain sense art needs to be accepted. I’m not saying that whoever is the most accepted is the best artist. I’m not that stupid. But there must be some kind of relationship. Am I being clear?

Xiang: Very clear.

Chen: I’d like to hear Ding Fang explain it to me more, because his views are rather extreme, and he’s read a lot of books and done a lot of thinking.

Xiang: I’ve also heard that he’s very knowledgeable about classical music, and listens to it incessantly. He likes all classical things. Perhaps it’s some kind of “classicalist fetish.” Do people have that?

Chen: A lot of people of my generation have a classicalist fetish, to varying degrees. I think you could count me among them. But, firstly, some people can accept contemporary things to varying degrees, and Ding Fang accepts them less. Secondly, most people probably lack Ding Fang’s self-confidence. For instance, with poetry, we all read ancient poetry when we were young, and a lot of us wrote in the ancient meters. Now I think the ancient meters are outdated. I write in the old meters, and I like them. It’s a personal preference. I don’t go about saying that it’s the only good thing or the only right thing, or that modern poetry is wrong or unimportant. It just happens that this is the only way I can do it. In other words, I am very accepting of the reality that classical poetry has been marginalized. I think that’s normal and proper. I don’t know about painting, and I don’t entirely feel the same way about music. When I’m with young people who write in classical meters, some of them criticize me for being weak. They say that classical poetry is good, better than modern poetry.

Xiang: I may not be all that adept at anything, but as far as I see art, whether it is what I do myself, or the music I listen to, it’s just a bunch of different forms. There is good and bad art, and then there are your own preferences. Maybe something just happens to touch you. From the perspective of art history, there is only good and bad art. There is no such thing as advancement or backwardness. If you look at art through the simple lens of “evolution,” or you pick a classic work and imitate it like the ancient Chinese, then art can basically just stop. If all you like is classical stuff, then you really don’t have anything to do anymore, because there were so many peaks. When I went to Europe, I saw the works of many of the great masters, especially from the Renaissance, like Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Though I didn’t see much of Da Vinci’s works, a lot of what I saw was experimental, and it left an extreme impression on me. When I saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence, I was close to tears.

Michelangelo's David

Next to it was a mound of marble he had worked on late in life. I feel that he completed a large part of art history, or at least sculpture history on his own. His later works could have been associated directly with the cubist school, because he had deep insight and understanding of abstract concepts such as structure and space – after all, he was an architect. For someone like that, you can imagine a young man, only 24 when he made David, a virtually perfect work of art. When you see such an artwork, you certainly get excited, but it is also hard to imagine, all of his ambition, power, strength and determination supporting him. This was a flourishing age for mankind, and such an artist made an extreme masterpiece, something that could never be surpassed. In his later years, his understanding of art was on an even higher level. Though the work was unfinished, he worked on it for a long time, and then just stopped, but his understanding, the concepts spanned beyond the classical era and linked with the modernists, even into conceptualist territory. It’s amazing! I find it really hard to imagine an artist who can span so much. At the time, mankind was like a young person or someone in the prime of his life. The self-confidence and ambition was quite moving. It was a very powerful force. It’s like when you see a very young life. You feel that it is so powerful, so full of power. Standing before him is shocking, like an electric current. You come to believe in ideas like “timelessness.” There is a profound sensibility and an intrinsic lasting value in pre-modern art. That’s why I feel that if you want to make something like that the object of your pursuits, you don’t need to do anything anymore.

Chen: Right. I think that Ding Fang would agree with what you were saying. He really has a feel for it, especially in the past few years. He has been researching Renaissance art again. He will be off to Spain and the South of France in a few days. He is obsessed with this stuff. But as for the latter stuff you said, he’s a bit different from you. He feels that the things he likes should be spread and promoted. On the other hand, he believes it is not possible for these things to be reborn and surpassed. This is not a question of individual talent, though that is essential. Perhaps you should draw nourishment from these things and then do what you can. You can even use classical methods, and even if you do, you are not repeating it. You mentioned the confidence and ambition of the people in that era. If someone were so ambitious today, you would find it laughable. That’s because in this era, we no longer perceive the world in that way.

Xiang: Why would so much ambition be laughable today?

Chen: That is a very good question. I can’t answer it, but I can talk about it, at least what my first impression is. Many years ago, a few of us were reading Wang Bo’s poem Prince Teng’s Pavilion: “Though we are old, we should be ambitious / How can we change our ambitions when our hair is gray? / As withered as we are, we should not lose our youthful ambitions.” Each word is truly a gem. I’m not talking about whether or not such a thing could be written today, but even if it could, who writes like that these days? People would think he was strange. I can appreciate it, but on the other hand, we don’t perceive the world like that anymore. In real life, that’s not how we perceive the world.

Xiang: What has actually changed here?

Chen: I don’t know. But I’ll tell you one characteristic. In ancient Greece, a city-state would have ten or twenty thousand people. At its height, Athens produced so many writers of tragedies and comedies, sculptors, painters, philosophers… all of that came out of a city-state with only tens of thousand people. The peak for Athens lasted about eighty years or so. Imagine living in a community like that. The people had an embracing view of the world, and of their own abilities. They could match talent with the rest of the world. In a sense, they could touch the world. In more physical terms, the painters all knew each other, the painters, the poets and the politicians all knew each other, they were considered the elite. Think about a city-state with ten or twenty thousand people, maybe fifty or sixty thousand at most. I often compare it to a university. Now the universities are very big, with maybe thirty or forty thousand people. The active people, the students, the young teachers, they all know each other. It’s like they live in a highly tangible world, where people’s talents and ambitions appear very real. They constantly run into very real things that will encourage or resist them.

Xiang: The world is bigger now.

About the author

Chen Jiaying was born in Shanghai in 1952. He entered into the Western Languages and Literature Department of Peking University in 1977, studying German, and began studying in the United States in November 1983. He received his doctorate in 1990 with his thesis Name, Meaning and Meaningfuless and then went to work in Europe. He currently teaches philosophy as a Professor at Capital Normal University in Beijing. His works include Introduction to the Philosophy of Heidegger, Philosophy of Language, The Irreducible Eidos, Philosophy Science, Common Sense, Zephyr, Beginning with Sense and Dianoesis; his translations include Philosophical Investigations, Being and Time, Linguistics in Philosophy and Sense and Sensibility among others. He is considered to be one of the most influential philosophers of the contemporary age.

Courtesy of Xiang Jing and Chen Jiajing.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

A renowned British sculptor and the 1988 Turner Prize winner, Tony Cragg plays a leading role in the remarkable generation of sculptors that emerged in the late Seventies and he serves currently as the director of the respected Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf. His first museum show in China has just opened last Friday at the art museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

The afternoon we met Tony Cragg in the third floor gallery at the art museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts to talk about his new show, he was pretty occupied with his preparations for this exhibition. He would not regard it as a retrospective exhibition to summarize his career since he is endowed with boundless energy to create new works. This major exhibition, part of the event UKNOW, offers the first full survey of Cragg’s work in China, which also has been exhibited in Scotland, Venice, Duisburg, Paris and Dallas. Featuring nearly 50 major sculptures, the show is focused on work from the past 15 years, with some earlier pieces.

Courtesy of Tony Cragg and the Art Museum of CAFA

Photo: Hu Zhiheng/CAFA ART INFO

What moves men of genius, or rather, what inspires their work, is not a new idea, but their obsession with the idea that what has been said already is still not enough.

- Eugène Delacroix

Ever since 1893 when, in response to the invention of the daguerreotype, Paul Delaroche famously exclaimed, “From today, painting is dead,” the argument over whether painting is actually dead or not has remained one of the most persistent debates of the modern and post-modern eras. To continue this dispute, much less partake in it, is no longer interesting, nor relevant. It is, however, important to keep this piece of Art history in mind when looking at Contemporary paintings.

Song Yuanyuan-The House of Romance, 2011; oil painting, 250×180cm

Xiao Bo-Microphones, 2010; oil on canvas, 80×60cm

Jia Aili-Untitled, 2011; ink on paper, 80×60cm

Sun Xun-Imperial Theory Of Evolution,2011; ink on paper, 1100×90cm

Ma Ke-Car Accident at night, 2009; oil painting, 124×214cm

Rather than classifying painting as something that is either dead or alive, it would be more appropriate to think of it as a reoccurring medium of expression that is continuously being reinvented. To the viewer, a painting exists only as it is being viewed, but the context of a painting, inconstant and temporal, is at the same time autonomous from and interconnected with the world around it. Thus the painting, as we view it, and the context that we view it under, becomes a moment of transition between past and future in this recurrent cycle.

“Re: Painting” is a group of artists brought together in three separate exhibition spaces under the context of one exhibition. Each exhibition space has work by the same group of artists, creating three different but related directions.

For all that we know and say about painting, it is equally true that there is nothing we can know or say about painting.

Bi Jianye-Heaven's Peach, 2011; oil painting, 20×50cm

Huang Liang-Mirror,Time, 2011; oil painting,100×80cm

Xiao Jiang-Alcohol, 2010; oil on canvas,120×180cm

Qin Qi-Flower Room, 2011; oil painting, 250×150cm

Qi Wenzhang- Untitiled, 2009; oil painting, 90×120cm

Date: March 3rd–April 15th, 2012

Venue: Platform China

Artists: Bi Jianye, Gong Jian, Huang Liang, Hexie Baroque Group, Jia Aili, Jiang Guozhe, Ma Ke, Ou Yangchun,Qin Qi, Qi Wenzhang, Song Yuanyuan, Sun Xun, Wang Xingjie, Wang Guangle, Wu Guang Yu, Xiao Bo, Xiao Jiang, Yang Rui, Zhou Yilun, Zhang Yexing, Zhang Hao.

Courtesy of Platform China, for more information please visit www.platformchina.org.

Still Life (Screenshot 04) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

by Yin Guannan

In referring to the” Three Gorges” , people will blurt out two distinct words: dam or landscape, the Three Gorges Dam is the achievement of industrial civilization, and the landscape of the Three Gorges is a creature of nature. However, if we combine them with force, name it a rash hydraulic project and begin to give praise to the value it creates and the achievement in promoting economic development, forget its own beauty and ancient history, abandon people who depend on the land around the dam for their survival. Perhaps, people have been well relocated, but the noisy chaos when people moved out and their frequent looking back when they left their homeland were sufficient to show their uncertainty about the future and their love of their homeland.

This sentiment shines in the eyes of the 100 million people and is not completely covered, it was recorded by Jia Zhangke who is known as the “most insightful portrayer of contemporary China “, he positioned his camera there.

In general, a film has two kinds of genre: dramatic or prose.

More contemporary films tend to be dramatic, especially in vogue are the “legendary” movie and the “wonder” movie, which goes far beyond life. But Jia Zhangke sticks to the prose playwriting

Structure focusing on common stories. The “Still Life” created on 2004 won the “Golden Lion Award” at the 63rd Venice Film Festival. Jia Zhangke uses his camera to record ordinary people, especially marginalized people, recording their life story, calm but intriguing.

Poster of "Still Life" directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

“Kind People at the Three Gorges”, with the English name of “Still life”, still life? still object ? Why was it so named? Can it also have another significance? With this question, the story starts. The beginning of the movie describes hundreds of people crowded on the narrow bottom of a scow at eye-level perspective, the droning whistle of boats and the beautiful background acts as an extension of the lens for up to four minutes, immediately taking the audience into the dead and restless world formed by numerous ordinary lives. The film follows two themes: First, the coal miner Han Sanming who comes to the Three Gorges to find his wife which he bought six years ago and their daughter, they meet and eventually decide to remarry. In this theme, the plot is depicted mostly by naked busts of middle-aged men including naked busts crowded in a cabin , naked squat busts having dinner in a small hotel and naked sweaty busts at a worksite ,these straightforward bodies are the epitome of the monotonous life of the local general public or migrant workers. Oily skin seems to fight against a pale soul which reminds us that they are alive. Jia Zhangke pays attention to the marginalized people and records their living shadows through the camera lens.

Still Life (Screenshot 02) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

Still Life (Screenshot 03) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

Jia Zhangke lays particular stress on the living conditions of the people living in poverty and an important feature for them is their lack of voice, the poor are the silent majority which is in reality the underprivileged class. Jia Zhangke once said: “what each time of change damages is the interests of all the pipsqueaks and is at the expense of sacrificing them.”

Still Life (Screenshot 06) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

Still Life (Screenshot 07) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

The second theme is of nurse Zhao Tao from Shanxi who goes to the Three Gorges to find her husband who she has not been out of touch with for two years, the two meet in the river and after a romantic dance, they sadly divorce. If Han Sanming’s wife is full of hope and fearless, then Zhao Tao’s husband is more like a deported person with a yoke enforced by emotion, in describing this relationship, Jia Zhangke doesn’t emphasize the female’s distraught mood, but transforms the passive feeling of failure as she has taken the initiative to contact her husband after two years into a kind of feeling of relief, a feeling of rushing to enjoy the state of getting rid of the yoke .

This is different from the people Jia Zhangke has described previously who passively accept their fate, these people’s self-awareness begins to strengthen under the condition of the hard to change environment which he understands as the dignity of man, as a result, the very act of using her initiative in “finding” acts as a major element to enhance the spiritual description of the place. So it is not difficult to offer a new explanation to “still life”. In my opinion, what Jia Zhangke would like is to express “live life”, life is equal for all.

Many contemporary artists’ thinking shown as pseudo-philosophers is more like artificial thinking, as they do not really care about things around them. Still Life’s difference lies in the basis of respecting “primitive” things .Examining the world through the eyes’ of philosophers, revealing society at the point of sociologists and showing the way of artists, Jia Zhangke is a remarkable artist.

Still Life (Screenshot 08) directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006

"New Immigrants of Three Gorges Dam" by Liu Xiaodong

Representation of the ordinary people and their stories impress us like a fresh “primitive” realisation, Jia Zhangke’s concern with “primitive” is a return to the past which concludes with a respect for life, thinking of humanity and social responsibility. He said: “The art is to recognize your sickness, and then describe the feeling of pain.” Artist Liu Xiaodong also constructs a description of pain, his works “New Immigrants of Three Gorges Dam” and “Hot House” were created at the same time as “Still Life “. Figures in “New Immigrants of Three Gorges Dam” are small but also great, small refers to their confusion when their home was submerged, and greatness lies in their hardy character in carrying on with life; The naked squat in” Hot House” is not only a kind of deep power but also a kind of helpless grief which shows man’s robust physique and love of youth and life at the same time. People who are familiar with Liu Xiaodong can easily find that he usually draws directly from nature and most of his works are scrolls, full of “primitive” feeling. “I think that the composition of traditional Western art is too focused that it looks like a drama, but life itself is just like walking in a scroll, to watch while walking, it needs time to understand and to gradually experience, so the scroll is closer to life.”

Artists who focusing on life and take up the mission of the time would shuttle between several roles as artist, sociologist and even philosopher raise the “issues around us” one by one. Issues happen between us, maybe not every time, both film and painting can touch the wound and clean the mind, just like a “primitive” song which floats into reality is deceived by dirt when it moves into our inner world.

About the Author

Yin Guannan

Born in 1991, Currently living and studying in Beijing.

Now a junior student in Art History Department of Humanities Institute , Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing;

Also a contributing editor of the Art Entrance Magazine.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

Beauty Obscured--A Group Show Featuring Wang Xiao Hui, Qian Gang and Yin Zhi Xin

Drawing inspiration from their personal perceptions of beauty, these three diverse styles alternately reveal and conceal the ways in which each artist responds to their muse to create dynamic images of the feminine form. Enigmatic interpretations of the feminine muse are explored in a variety of mediums by artists Wang Xiao Hui, Qian Gang and Yin ZhiXin at Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center. Including photography, painting and sculpture, this exhibition explores three distinct artists’ individual dialogue of beauty in all its obscurities.

Wang Xiao Hui translates her own personal experience of a traumatic event that altered her life, of which she finally emerged out of the chrysalis, transformed. The fluid movement of the self-extrication is at once beautiful and tortured. Qian Gang’s intimate and poetic paintings explore the dynamics of attraction. At first shadow and line create a static image- on closer observation all elements interact to illustrate the mysterious and sensual interaction between masculine and feminine. Yin ZhiXin challenges preconceived ideas of the feminine and masculine form through his playful and ndrogynous sculptures. Voluptuous and serene, the figures’ graceful waltz contradicts and creates a delightful movement.

Artists’ Statement

WANG XIAO HUI

For me, life is art and art is life. Our life and art are inseparable. My creativity is closely related and entwined with my life experiences; locked in a constant dialogue- they are inseparable. The “Self- Extrication” photographic series created in 1992, are images that evolved from a short film I made titled “Broken Moon” These pictures illustrate one of the most extreme experiences in my life; a time of personal and physical transformation.

Though I created the film, I was also fascinated with the still images that I captured from the fluid dance. In this way, I never contain myself to one art medium. I explore all art forms; I have made short films, photography, written novels and created video and installation art. There are no boundaries in my life or my art.

Self-exrication by Xiao Hui WANG, 170x120cm,1992,C-print

QIAN GANG

“Colors can be used as means of manifestation of emotions and feelings. Every kind of color, including white and black, are different elements of life situations. According to different emotions, I will choose different colors to create beautiful pictures with light and shadow.”

Angel by Qian Gang (2007)

YIN ZHIXIN

I was born in the 1970s and always felt I had a strange sense of humor. I like putting this witty humor to my works, for me, it seems to imply a sense of breaking bondage and showing rebellion. I am often asked, “Why do you make them so fat?” “Why are their mouths and eyes closed?” I explain that the dancers themselves are intoxicated, they revel in the beauty of dancing, listening and moving to music; listening to nature breathing in to all things. My sclputures experience the hustle and bustle of city life, the joyfulness and sadness of the world. Everything is so natural, but while they enjoy everything they do not want to tell people of their own difficulties. Instead of speaking out they choose silence.

Dancer (2006) by YIN Zhixin

About the Artists

WANG XIAO HUI

Xiao Hui Wang is internationally acclaimed artist working in a variety of mediums, including photography, sculpture and video. As an author, she is known for her acclaimed autobiography ‘My Visual Diary’. Her works have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and are collected by private and public institutions alike.

Xiao Hui Wang’s photographic works are at once intimate, sensorial, and complex. The artist, who herself endured a radical life-changing accident, brings to her works the essence of the soul, life and death, and the definition of the feminine. She uses her own experiences to feed a continuing process of paradox, of social perception, inner and outer beauty. Her life and work are a journey, which have merited her to be considered by many the Frida Kahlo of China.

Wang Xiaohui

QIAN GANG

Qian Gang was born in Shanghai in 1958. In 1976, the artist was sent to the countryside to be re-educated for the next 5 years of his life. Qian Gang’s father, Qian Da Xing, is renowned for his advertisements and works created during the Cultural Revolution. Influenced by both his forced move out of the city as well as his father’s skill as a painter, Qian Gang became a self-taught artist, following the intuition of his personal experiences to inform his choice of subject matter. In 1981, Qian Gang entered the Shanghai Light Industry Institute. Two years later, he moved to the United States to attend the San Francisco Art Academy, after which he moved to New York. In 2004, Qian Gang returned to China and has resided in Shanghai since.

His works have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the world, including the Edward Hopper Museum, Chas Gallery and Caccoala Gallery located in the United States. In addition he has also exhibited works at Contrasts Gallery (Shanghai) Shanghai MoCA, Singapore Art Museum and the National Gallery of Indonesia.

Qian Gang

YINZHIXIN

Yin Zhi Xin is a sculptor working in a variety of materials including bronze, clay, resin and fiberglass. Born in 1977 in Shen yang, he graduated from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou with a masters of Fine Arts, Yin Zhi Xin was then granted a scholarship at the Tbilisi National Academy of Fine Arts in the country of Georgia, where he further developed his unique and humorous sculptural style.

The graceful poise of ballerinas and practitioners of yoga, whose strength and balance appeared to defy gravity, captivated Yin Zhi Xin. Using this as inspiration as well his witty sense of humor Yin Zhi Xin creates a wonderful new paradox of the physical form; challenging preconceived ideas of beauty through beautiful sculptures.

His works have been exhibited, internationally In Germany, Korea and Thailand and he has been featured in many prominent exhibitions and museums throughout China.

Yin Zhi Xin

About the Exhibition

Venue: Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center

Artists: Xiao Hui WANG, QIAN Gang, YIN Zhixin

Date: 1 Mar – 15 Apr 2012

Courtesy of the artists and Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, for further information please contact Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center

The Pace Gallery, Beijing is pleased to present Sui Jianguo’s solo exhibition displaying 30 works the artist has created since 1987. Sui is one of the most important Chinese contemporary artists and is widely considered, as critic Huang Zhuan states, the “Chinese sculptor who took the Conceptual route the earliest and the farthest.” This is the first solo exhibition for Sui Jianguo since joining The Pace Gallery, Beijing, bringing together representative works from the artist’s various stylistic periods. The exhibition will run from March 3rd through April 14th, 2012.

Sui Jianguo

In this era of great change and uncertainty, Sui Jianguo’s oeuvre is imbued with interpretations of “force,” pressures that are rooted internally and conflicts of external resistance. Critic Li Xianting writes, “As a longtime friend of Sui Jianguo, I can understand that feeling: as he looks deeper into himself, he becomes increasingly sensitive to the pressures of the outside world, just as his inner conflicts grow in intensity. And though Sui Jianguo’s art is diverse, his twenty year creative output is marked by a unifying undertone of confinement and struggle.”

Sui Jianguo-Earth Force, 1994; Sculpture, 200cmX300cmX60cm

In 1987, Sui Jianguo began to focus on the conceptual and symbolic aspects of materials and mediums. Earth Force, a representative work from this artistic phase, uses the mutual intervention between mediums to present a complex relationship of force and resistance. Earth Force, which took two years to produce, is an installation consisting of 20 boulders each weighing roughly 100 kilograms. Each stone is entangled in a web of ribbed steel, creating resistance to the force between these two types of rigidity. First presented in Beijing in 1992, this work instantly became a striking icon of modern Chinese sculpture.

Mao Jacket by Sui Jianguo(profile picture)

Beginning in 1997, Sui shifted towards an exploration of visual and symbolic images of political significance. The “Mao jacket” became the defining image of this phase in Sui Jianguo’s art. Known in China as the Sun Yatsen Suit, the Mao jacket was at first a symbol of the cultural avant-garde. It entered into the mainstream with its adoption as an official formal ethnic costume in the mid 1920’s Republic of China. Later, in an atmosphere of fervent nationalism, it became the symbol of the ‘revolution’ under the socialist system, wherein everyone from officials to intellectuals and even the general public donned the jacket as an expression of the abandonment of individuality and fusion into a unified society. Sui treated this subject as a medium rather than a target of criticism. Utilizing various forms and sizes to simultaneously release the excitement and inhibition associated with this object, the artist used a satirical approach to express the conflict between escape and repression.

Motion and Tension by Sui Jianguo; Installation, 2009

In 2007, Sui Jianguo’s art entered into a more formalistic phase, using form to enact a release of the concepts and forces inherent to the properties of his materials and mediums, a primal momentum. In Motion and Tension, the power of tremendous mass to intimidate magnifies the forces of form, material, medium and motion. This artwork changes its form every time it is exhibited, which is an embodiment of the artist’s focus on development and an extension of the temporal aspect of the artwork’s creation. This solo exhibition will also reveal a new series from Sui Jianguo. Through intimate contact with materials, the artist expresses the infinite vitality of “formal” creation. Through constant experimentation, the artist has explored the complex emotional relationships between man and material, pushing Chinese contemporary sculpture into a more abstract and formalistic phase.

Curator: Li Xianting

Date: March 3rd–April 4th, 2012

Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00 – 18:00

Venue: The Pace Gallery, Beijing

Address: 798 Art   District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

Courtesy of Sui Jianguo and Pace Beijing, for further information please visit www.pacebeijing.com.

Zao Wou-ki-5.09.95(Series works with no series), 1995; painting, Oil on canvas, 1000x1620mm

Taste of the East: Masterpieces of Chinese Art opened on February 26 at Shanghai Art Museum. This exhibition presents a selection of works from the collection of the HOW ART MUSEUM (opening soon). The concept of this exhibition is to show the aestheticism in modern and contemporary Chinese art as well as to present the pieces of art made by contemporary Chinese artists in China and abroad. Located in Shanghai Zhangjiang/ Pudong District, HOW ART MUSEUM is supposed to be a vital cultural centre with a collection of masterpieces of contemporary Chinese art, special exhibitions and educational programs. The mission of HOW ART MUSEUM is to create a base for international communication in the contemporary art sphere via the exhibitions and art projects, interactions between local and foreign artists, art institutions in China and all over the world. In the context of globalization HOW ART MUSEUM also seeks to contribute to Chinese contemporary art.

Chu Teh Chun-Untitled(Series works with no series), 1995; painting, Oil on canvas, 1950x1300mm

Zhan Wang-Furniture with Landscape(Series works with no series), 1998; installation, Stainless steel, stone, furniture set

Liu Xiaodong-Blue Peach(Series works with no series), 2011; painting, Oil on canvas, 2820x2820mm

Zhou Chunya-Peach Blossom in the South(Series works with no series), 2007; painting, Oil on canvas, 2000x2500mm

The goal of the exhibition “Taste of the East” is to set up the value system and to encourage an ever-deeper understanding of Chinese contemporary art. The exhibited artworks have vivid meanings and connotations, such as national self-determination via oil painting, the modernization of traditional ink painting, the internationalization of Chinese art and the Chinese nature of contemporary art. The exhibition shows about 20 contemporary artists of different ages working with different media such as oil painting, drafting ink, sculpture and installation. They show diversified ways of returning to a Chinese tradition; by expressing the feeling of nostalgia in realistic or abstract styles; or by representing their thoughts and feelings about the Chinese traditional value system. Moreover the internal nature of these artworks reflects the artists’ profound knowledge and strong pride in Chinese tradition and culture. The exhibited artworks have been created from the early 1980s until today and reflect the importance of contemporary art within this unique collection.

Date: Feb 26, 2012 – Mar 4, 2012

Opening: Feb 26, 2012, 15:00, Sunday

Venue: Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai, China)

Curator: Li Xu

Artists: Cai Zhisong, Ceng Chenggang, Chen Yifei, Chen Qiang, Chu Teh Chun, Gu Wenda, Liu Xiaodong, Qiu Deshu, Shi Jinsong, Wu Guanzhong, Xue Song, Zao Wou-ki, Zeng Fanzhi, Zhan Wang, Zhang Huan, Zhang Yu, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhou Chunya

Critics: Jia Fangzhou, Li Xiaofeng

Organizers: How Art Museum (under preparation), Shanghai Art Museum

Wang Shu; image © Zhu Chenzhou

As is reported by Robin Pogrebin from The New York Times, the Chinese architect Wang Shu, whose buildings in a rapidly developing China honor the past with salvaged materials even as they experiment with modern forms, has been awarded the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Mr. Wang is the first Chinese citizen to win the prize (I. M. Pei, an American, was the first Chinese-born architect to win, in 1983) and the fourth-youngest. The selection of Mr. Wang, 48, is an acknowledgment of “the role that China will play in the development of architectural ideals,” said Thomas J. Pritzker, chairman of the Hyatt Foundation, which sponsors the prize and announced the winner on Monday.

“The question of the proper relation of present to past is particularly timely, for the recent process of urbanization in China invites debate as to whether architecture should be anchored in tradition or should look only toward the future,” the jury said in its citation. “As with any great architecture, Wang Shu’s work is able to transcend that debate, producing an architecture that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.”

The prize, founded in 1979 by Jay A. Pritzker and his wife, Cindy, to honor a living architect, consists of a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion, which this year will be awarded at a ceremony in Beijing on May 25.

A history museum by Wang Shu in Ningbo, China, a port city, includes local recycled materials. image© Lv Hengzhong

In announcing the jury’s choice, Thomas J. Pritzker said “the fact that an architect from China has been selected by the jury, represents a significant step in acknowledging the role that China will play in the development of architectural ideals. In addition, over the coming decades China’s success at urbanization will be important to China and to the world.” reported by Jennifer Mattson from globalpost.com.

The prize not only honors Wang Shu but recognizes China’s current and future role in architecture and urbanization.

“This is really a big surprise. I suddenly realized that I’ve done many things over the last decade,” Wang Shu said. “It proves that earnest hard work and persistence lead to positive outcomes.”

Wangshu graduated from the Nanjing Institute of Technology in 1985 and followed with his graduate degree from the same program. His completed works include the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum and Ningbo History Museum both located in Ningbo, China. Along with the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art  in Hangzhou, China, his temporary works include a pavilion for both the 2010 and 2006 Venice Architecture Biennales.

"Decay of a dome" created by Wang Shu at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010; image © designboom

"Ultra-light Village" on display in Shenzhen's Civic Square at the 2011 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism;image © designboom

References and Reports related to this:

1. For First Time, Architect in China Wins Field’s Top Prize covered by The New York Times

2.Chinese architect Wang Shu wins 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize covered by globalpost.com

3.Wang Shu wins the 2012 pritzker prize covered by designboom.com

Agnès Varda in “The Beaches of Agnès,” which she composed as a sort of living, moving collage.

Agnès Varda was born on May 30th, 1928 in Ixelles, Belgium. Her father was Greek and her mother was of French origin. A photographer, film director and one of the world’s leading filmmakers, Agnès Varda has been called the “Grandmother of the New Wave” for her key role in modern film history.\

Agnès Varda studied at the École du Louvre with a focus on art history and photography at the École des Beaux-Arts. She then went on to work at the Théâtre National Populaire in Paris as a photographer, which was directed by the famous French actor and filmmaker Jean Villar. Her first feature-length film, La Pointe Courte (1954), which she managed to put together with little money, was an early anticipation of the French New Wave movement and was well received by the French cinema community.

Agnès Varda in the 1950s

Over the years she has received many prizes for her work. Agnès Varda was the recipient of the prestigious 2002 French Academy prize, Prix René Clair, for her overall cinematographic work. On April 12th 2009 she was given the highest French decoration: the National Order of the Legion of Honour. On September 22nd, 2010 she received an honorary degree from Liège University in Belgium.

Usually connected to the French New Wave, Agnès Varda’s work remains particular to her own unique perspective on the world while the themes and issues in her films focus on eroticism and age, death and time, the collective unconscious, and the presentation of social taboos. Agnès Varda is one of the rare directors from the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), and yet she never rejects any attempts at labeling her. Recently, she was inspired by her own experience of being a photographer and filmmaker and keeps searching for the new frontier of films.

Agnès Varda's Publication

Installation Artist Agnès Varda

Over ten pieces of installations she created on the basis of stage design in recent years will showcase how she invents her own world through film and video, where joy and sorrow exist side by side.

The Chinese Door

“The Chinese Door” is an installation created especially for the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which provides an opportunity for the audience in China to view the photographs she has taken during her trip to China in 1957 which have never before been seen in public. She was invited as a full member of a delegation invited by the Chinese government.

Agnès Varda; Photography: Andreas Laszlo Konrath

Photographer Agnès Varda

Her most recent  Self-Portrait belongs to the Broken Portraitseries as well as her photography of celebrities which will be introduced to the public.

La Pointe-Courte

Plages d'Agnès, Les

Director and Filmmaker Agnès Varda

From her earlier films like La Pointe-Courte (1956) and Bonheur, Le (1965) to Plages d’Agnès, Les (2008), a special unit of films will lead audience into a unique world where her free style and ideas have shocked many traditional rules in the history of film.

Entitled “The Beaches of Varda”, the exhibition will open at the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts 4:00pm on March 10th, 2012 and last until April 18th.

Entitled “The Nightmare”, the opening of new solo exhibition of Li Zhanyang will be announced by Galerie Urs Meile to be on March 3rd at its Beijing gallery. Li Zhanyang (b.1969 in Changchun, China) creates sculptures similar to comic dioramas to effectively express his ideas in a subjective manner that address social themes. In “Nightmare”, Li Zhanyang draws inspiration from the school experiences of his daughter and countless other Chinese children, metaphorically transposing it into the two large scale installations featured in the exhibition.

In China, a fast-growing global economic superpower with a population of over 1.3 billion people, being a child means learning from a tender age how much weight is placed on classroom education as a way to distinguish oneself and be successful in life. It means enduring a very busy daily study schedule, an endless stream of exams, and the unceasing struggle in pursuit of outstanding scholastic achievements. It means constant pressure, as well as fierce competition. As an art professor and the father of a nine-year-old girl, artist Li Zhanyang is very familiar with the Chinese educational system.

Li Zhanyang-The Nightmare (Red Scarves) 2011-2012

Li Zhanyang-The Nightmare(Red Scarves), detail, 2011-2012

In the second installation by Li Zhanyang, the artist fills a wall with a multitude of those triangular red scarves that are given to only the highest achieving Chinese primary school students as a symbol of the national flag and the “Young Pioneer” movement. If on the one hand red scarves serve as an incentive for the students to improve their motivation and performances, on the other hand they might be seen as a discriminatory instrument that undermines the self-confidence of the underachieving children. With their ambivalent nature, red scarves epitomize an official label for acknowledgment, excellence and success that every child has to attain.

Venue: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, Beijing

Opening: Saturday, March 3, 2012 – 4 to 7 pm

Exhibition: 3 March – 29 April 2012

Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing, for further information please visit Galerie Urs Meile.

Lin Tianmiao-High, 2001

by Li Shuqiao

Thread can change the value of objects, turn useful into useless and turn useless into useful. Thread can gather and smash strength, reflect gender, change identity. Thread is a process you are experiencing.

This is Lin Tianmiao’s interpretation of thread, as well as her own works. Lin Tianmiao’s use of thread as a medium originates from her visual memories of her own childhood. After seven or eight years of American life then an homecoming, Lin’s mental state was in a complex transforming place that before she had time to handle her feelings there was an urgent need to express them, so she searched her mind for a visual experience from her childhood: “Lots of white clews, my mother often used threads to make clothes, quilts…”.”Thread” thus becomes part of the context for Lin Tianmiao’s artistic creations. In addition, “thread” as depicted Lin Tianmiao’s artistic language lies not only in a memory, but is also reflected in her aesthetic orientation, individual characteristics and social conditions.

Lin Tianmiao’s early works are composed like the process of a thread’s continuous intertwining. Remembering a houseful of clews in her childhood, she was surprised at the texture and strength of them and found a kind of visual experience which could be transferred between the thread and needle. From this, she started art experiments using the contrast and adaptation of art materials. What the “Diffused Entanglement” uses is only needles and threads. Lin Tianmiao winds cotton threads into a continuous series of loops which makes more than 20,000 small thread balls. With the increasing of thread balls, space seems to be slowly eroded by them thus forming a strong visual impact. In contrast, when the opposing factors of the work – the “needles” are displayed in a compact mass, their original sharp sense disappears. This transference between soft and hard gradually emerges in the manual process along with the subtle psychological changes. This is what life gives us: life is always full of unexpected changing levels. This is Lin Tianmiao’s request for a “thread”, she tries to “pull” lost memories back to present life then demonstrate that the previous life offers directions for the present life.

Lin Tianmiao-Bound and Unbound,1997

Lin Tianmiao-Bound and Unbound 02,1997

Lin Tianmiao-Bound and Unbound, 1997(detail)

Following the same idea is “Bound and Unbound,” which means restricting and restricted. In this work, the meaning of “thread” is to not experience the past anymore, this mark which symbolizes family life is used by Lin Tianmiao to change her own life. Therefore, the meaning of “cotton thread” reaches further “Bound and being bound”, “restricting and restricted thus “exactly portraying her early contrary mental state of finding the way of life after returning home”.

Lin Tianmiao-Sewing, 1997

Lin Tianmiao-Sewing 02, 1997

After a contradictory struggle, Lin’s thought gradually becomes clearer and makes her pay more attention to analyzing the relationship between her mind-set and the outside world. The extension of thought leads Lin Tianmiao’s “thread” to the stage of unwinding and weaving. In her work “Sewing”, she seems to organize life, including her understanding of religion and knowledge of society. Thus, the “thread” in her work has unwittingly expanded from a bound state to stretching.

Representing an individual’s “embarrassment and frustration” is the largest theme in the first stage of the works of Lin Tianmiao. In her second stage is “GO”, the theme is deepened further because the awkward feelings in “GO” are no longer her own but extends to other people.

Lin Tianmiao-Go, 2001

Lin Tianmiao-Boys and Girls, 2004

If Lin Tianmiao’s second stage is still entangled with the repetitive process of a thread’s “bound” and “stretching”, then in her third stage, her “thread” has been completely unraveled. What she is concerned with is not only “material language” or “psychological structure”, but also the spreading out capabilities like “weaving webs with threads” to think many ideas in the human ecosystem are within her ability such as women’s responsibilities in birth and parenting in “OVUM”; ideals’ transition to reality in the “HIGH”; believes of nationality under globalization, in “BOY AND GIRL”. Lin Tianmiao treats such staggering themes only with “thread “.What is different is that this time “thread” becomes a concept or thought-provoking sign. Therefore, starting from the “thread’, Lin Tianmiao sees the feature “marginality”. “Thread” makes her feel the boundaries between things but if people break them would things keep their original appearance? Where does the boundary between men and women lie? What kind of mental boundary is there between the elderly and the young? Where does the boundary between birth and death lie? Lin Tianmiao collects these issues together in the work, “Not Zero”.

Lin Tianmiao, Non-Zero, Sleeping, 2004

Lin Tianmiao, Non-Zero, Endless, 2004

“Non Zero” has no meaning which is its real meaning. “Zero” is the middle value of positive and negative, a watershed, “non-positive and non-negative” with the “non” in front, it writes off the “watershed”, that is, nothing. In fact, there doesn’t exist any predetermined boundaries in life, life is just life.

In Lin Tianmiao’s thread theme, thread starts from “intertwining, wrapping” to “unwinding and weaving” and finally to “extending, opening” with power gradually expanding. Her understanding of art and life gradually deepen, meanwhile the vitality of the “thread language” has been opened. The expansion process of “thread” is also the process of Lin Tianmiao’s constant depiction of her inner world. Her reflections on life and art are all released through the language of “thread” which is a warm feeling. At this point, Lin Tianmiao is not seen in art circles as a “female” artist, but is concerned about art and life as a mature artist who owns a unique language of expression.

The views expressed in this column are the author’s own and do not represent those of CAFA ART INFO.

Yang Hongwei-The Millennium Monument

The technical procedures of printmaking require restraint, which makes printmaking quiet, peaceful and brings the feeling of isolation; the space between intelligence and scar has formed the source of Yang Hongwei’s creation.

Poster of Carving-Yang Hongwei Solo Exhibition

Yang Hongwei-Heaven embodied in One gives birth to water（Tian Yi Sheng Shui）

Yang Hongwei-Prairie Fire

Yang Hongwwei-The Love for Stone

Yang Hongwei has been engaged in printmaking creation for almost 20 years. After graduation, he taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He has a delicate and persevering working attitude. His works reflect his mind. Each of his exhibitions demonstrates his improvement in the printmaking field. His works are not only highly appraised by his friends such as Xu Bing, A Cheng, and Li Tuo, but also widely collected by the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Art Museum of China, Today Art Museum, Sichuan Art Museum, Guangdong Art Museum, Guan Shan Yue Art Museum, Yanhuang Art Museum, US New Jersey Culture Center, UK Woodcut Foundation and other institutes of art.

Entitled Carving, the solo exhibition of Ying Shang will display the latest works created by Yang Hongwei: The Water, The Fire, The Stone and the scroll of The Millennium Monument. The carved marks of these works join the natural texture of materials and the spirit of the labor force, which are simple but full of change and slightly abstract. His works show concern and fear about the natural world, especially by his testing himself and different narrative structures that he has been devoted to recent years.

Organizer : Today Art Museum

Co-organizer : Purple Gate Cultural Development Co.Ltd

Duration : March 4-20 ,2012 10:00am-8:00pm

Venue : The 2nd floor exhibition hall of building No.1, Today Art Museum

ADD：Today Art Museum,No.32 Baiziwan Road,Chaoyang District,Beijing,100022

Li Chen creates monumental figurative sculptures informed by a mixture of Buddhist philosophy and contemporary art practices. His first museum exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, Eternity and Commoner, showcases his exceptional clay sculptures, molded over wooden skeletons and conceived of by the artist as living bodies. The exhibition opens on February 18th and takes place in conjunction with NCECA 2012, the annual conference of National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts, being held in Seattle March 28-31, 2012 .

Li Chen: Eternity and Commoner premieres a new series of works by the artist titled The Constitution of Immortality that explores our shared desire for eternity and perfection. In contrast to the spectacular bronze and stainless steel sculptures that brought Li Chen renown, these clay bodies in the galleries of Frye Art Museum are sparse and restrained, transformed as they dry from simple wood, rope, and clay conveying an elemental physical representation.

“It’s a bodily evolution,” Li Chen said. “I have chosen to pursue vicissitude while retaining the mark of the spirit. We are attached to illusion and completeness in appearance and have neglected the beauty of imperfection.” In his large-scale installation Eternity and in the sculpture “body” of Commoner, both specially conceived for the spaces of the Frye Art Museum, Li poses the question: is life determined by the material, and the body, or by spiritual vitality? Can life continue as a legend, a belief, in a form outside of the physical body?

Li Chen began his self-taught career creating traditional sculptures for temples dedicated to the Pure Land tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. In creating sculptural objects / spiritual metaphors within the Pure Land tradition, Li Chen expressed his commitment to a form of spiritual and artistic practice that is accessible to a broad audience. Since the late 1990s, Li has moved away from the traditional aesthetics of Tang and Song dynasty Buddhist sculpture toward a personal, and highly distinctive, iconography of spiritual passage in contemporary times. His figures, viewed from the rear or the side, have also changed their nature: the figurative becomes abstract, the body becomes landscape. Such transgressions in the depiction of the sacred subject matter and the constantly altering “meaning” of Li Chen’s sculptural works—depending on the physical position of the observer—distinguish much of his more recent work.

This transformation of natural materials over time is an important aspect of Li’s recent work, and a reminder that earthly power will crumble and the affairs of the human heart will fade. It is also an admonition from Li that we are fated to wax and wane, are the guardians of treasures that are imperishable: the human spirit and wisdom passed from generation to generation. For Li, the Commoner, holding a husk of wheat, is as tenacious as grass, and as creative and vital as the common necessities of life.