Wu Jiaru @ Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong - To the Naiad's House

Wu Jiaru: To the Naiad's House

Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong

Through 12 November 2022

WU JIARU

daycare_twoWaitresses (2022) 

Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 x 3.7 cm

© Wu Jiaru, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

WU JIARU

Parasympathetic_HK_1 (2016)

Video with sound, 10'28"

© Wu Jiaru, courtesy of Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery presents Wu Jiaru's first solo exhibition To the Naiad's House with Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong. "The Naiad's House" is a place featured in the 18th century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin. It is also the name of a room in the restaurant Wu Jiaru's mother owned (known as a Jiu Lou) where she spent most of her childhood. This exhibition showcases a series of recent sculptures, video works and paintings, which integrate elements of mythology, science fiction and family archaeology.

The artist grew up in a typical Guangdong city in southern China, which was shaped by the entertainment, aesthetic and lifestyle influences entering the mainland through Hong Kong in the 1990s. The Jiu Lou referred to by Wu functioned as both restaurant and entertainment venue, which she describes as an aesthetic hybrid inundated with optimism and desire resulting from economic expansion and the pursuit of individual freedom brought on by social transformation.

Wu's work examines cultural exchanges between mainland China and Hong Kong alongside questions of identity and belonging, through revisiting personal memories and adapting Hong Kong aesthetics. Through the exhibition, she constructs a memory palace, drawing on her own childhood memories while also reflecting the shared fragmented memory of millennials in Southern China. The sculpture beige_objects (2020) brings together a cluster of items from daily life, such as toys from fast food meal-deals, Apple keyboards and fashion accessories. The surface is unified by a grey dust-like coating, which on closer inspection shimmers silver under the light. The playful manipulation of material highlights the ambiguity of reality, and questions the authenticity of memory and history. Throughout this exhibition, Wu continues her explorations of decentralized ways of writing and recording history, noting: "I wish to present the possibility of historicizing the individual memory." Some works in the exhibition can be moved freely, symbolizing the fluidity of individual memory and identity and immersing the viewers into the exhibition as they can reposition the artworks themselves.

Wu often examines this entangled period of economic development through her analysis of the aesthetics of entertainment complexes and interior decoration. Her painting daycare_the Tower (2022) is inspired by one of her childhood adventures after school, while the color tones of daycare_twoWaitresses (2022) are from sofas in "the Naiad's House." Video works such as Parasympathetic_HK (2016-2022) and 21c_movingimages_collection_water (2022) are described by the artist as collages relating to her nomadic way of living.

Wu Jiaru says, "I try to introduce a system, an emotional device and to share a way of documenting individual perception, also, to construct a safe island carrying personal memories. I wish to share some sort of emotional conflict and connection with viewers under the umbrella of accelerations, 'the Southern' and 'the special economic zone.'"

WU JIARU (b.1992) is a Hong Kong-based artist who received her dual BA degrees in Fine Arts and English Language from Tsinghua University in 2014, and her MFA from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong in 2017. Her work is in the collection of M+, Hong Kong. She recently received the New York fellowship grant from the Asian Cultural Council. 

FLOWERS GALLERY

49 Tung Street, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

www.flowersgallery.com

Wu Jiaru: To the Naiad's House

Flowers Gallery, Hong Kong

29 September - 12 November 2022

Contemporary Kogei Art Craft, Kanazama, Japan, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art

Art Crafting Towards the Future
21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Curator: AKIMOTO Yuji, Museum’s Director
April 28 - August 4, 2012

Artwork by MITSUKE Masayasu, Untitled, 2009
Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts
Private collection
Image Courtesy of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Since becoming director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, in 2007, Yuji AKIMOTO has had contact with the vital spirit of Kanazawa's kôgei

Art Crafting towards the Future inquires into the contemporary validity of kôgei (Japanese artisan craft) and universalness of its appeal. The exhibition, this is to say, asks: Is kôgei an art genre expressive of our times, capable of speaking to people everywhere? Like other visual media, today’s kôgei is subject to the post-modern trends of the times. Like animation, manga, design, and contemporary art, it is an expressive medium used to create compelling new images. To this end, it employs methods specific to kôgei, and it references kôgei’s historical vision. Yet, today’s kôgei takes a clearly different approach from past kôgei.
In its visual imagery, for example, today’s kôgei resonates with animation, manga, design, and contemporary art—genres from which it has previously stood apart. In its attitude towards exhibiting, as well—while exhibit methods differ contingent on the creativity of each artist—today’s kôgei is turned to face the world at large. There is, thus, a clear trend of kôgei artists working in widely varying styles who are showing their works as art of the present day.
For this exhibition, I would like to refer to kôgei work of such character as “futurist,” in the sense of “kôgei of a new age” and “future-oriented kôgei.” The exhibits by the 12 featured artists are all kôgei, but I would like viewers to see and enjoy them as today’s art."

AKIMOTO Yuji, Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Exhibition’s curator

CONTEMPORARY KOGEI FEATURED ARTISTS
AOKI Katsuyo, b. 1972, Tokyo
HAYAMA Yuki, b. 1961, Arita, Saga
IKURA Takashi, b. 1962, Toki, Gifu
KITAMURA Tatsuo, b. 1952, Wajima, Ishikawa. Unryuan (lacquer craft studio)
KUWATA Takuro, b. 1981, Fukuyama, Hiroshima
MITSUKE Masayasu, b. 1975, Kaga, Ishikawa
NAKAMURA Kohei, b. 1948, Kanazawa, Ishikawa
NAKAMURA Shinkyo, b. 1957, Fukuoka
NOGUCHI Harumi, b. 1948, Tokyo
OHI Toshio, b. 1958, Kanazawa, Ishikawa
TAKEMURA Yuri, b. 1980, Nagoya, Aichi
YAMAMURA Shinya, b. 1960, Chofu, Tokyo

Art Crafting towards the Future is organized by the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (Kanazawa Art Promotion and Development Foundation)

21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan
Museum's Website: www.kanazawa21.jp

Chen Jiagang: Abandoned Fable. A retrospective exhibition at Han Art Gallery, Montreal, Québec

Chen Jiagang Retrospective: Abandoned Fable, Han Art Gallery, Montreal (Westmount), Québec, November 4 - December 3, 2011
 

CHEN JIAGANG was born in 1962 in Chongqing, Sichuan, China. The artist lives and works in Beijing. Han Art Gallery in Westmount (Québec) presents a retrospective exhibition featuring fifteen photographic works by Chen Jiagang. As one of today’s most renowned Chinese contemporary artists, Chen Jiagang is featured at the 12th Annual Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF 2011) through October 31, 2011 before his debut at Han Art Gallery.  Abandoned Fable opens on November 4th and concludes on December 3rd, 2011 

CHEN JIAGANG, Bridges, 2008. Photograph from The Great Third Front series. Courtesy and ©2008 Chen Jiagang. Courtesy  Han Art Gallery, Montreal

Chen Jiagang is a distinctive contemporary artist who consistently weaves a phenomenal historical analogue into his imagery.  In allowing time itself to disappear from space, Chen Jiagang composes a visual language full of complexity and contradiction that adds to this historical contemporary fable - a spatial narratology and an art form that relies on the cultural inheritance. His works narrate the impact of power and politics on environment, human inhabitation, gender balance and family development - all social perspectives that are systematically disseminated into the peoples’ spiritual realm of senses.  The artist utilizes language between certainty and uncertainty to rebel against dogmatic mainstream perspectives in a society where images are becoming increasingly standardized, to discard with the trend of commercialization in art, and to obtain independence with direction.   

In the past few years, the artist made many trips to the factories, mines and small villages in the mountains and in the valleys of Yuanan, Guizhou and Sichuan.  These provinces in particular, which once served as a strategic epicenter of industry in the 1960s determined by Chinese national politics, now find themselves in a vastly different circumstance. 

Trained as an architectural designer, Chen Jiagang regards memories as the most authentic source in human life and believes that images act to preserve these memories.  Aside from bringing to attention intensely social and political issues, his works explore these issues from various perspectives, taking a distanced standpoint to explain history, enabling him to express his aesthetic need on the basis of an intensely personal experience.     

In regards to technique, Chen Jiagang often chooses to capture his images when the sun has just set, immediately after the clouds have emitted the last rays of light and warmth over the deserted and abandoned space.  It is common for him to portray a powerful contrast between subject and space, as demonstrated in his depiction of young women dwarfed by industrial ruins from the past. For example, in one of his works, a woman is portrayed pacing back and forth, seeming reluctant to leave the place she finds herself. Sinking into the darkness and disappearing into her surroundings, the woman is a subtle sign and yet a vibrant creature who breathes life into the remaining walls and majestic ruins filled with traces of the past. The corner store is now deserted, and the path leading towards the space serves only as a football field. These oft-frequented places of the past now remain abandoned and forlorn. Chen Jiagang uses this imagery to compose the bitter sound of a mournful elegy without emitting a single sound. A period which would otherwise be forgotten as history is captured in a moment where people and space observe one another silently with indignation. 

In a country that is presently experiencing one of the highest rates of development in the world, it is not surprising that the works of Chen Jiagang prompts the viewer to question the usefulness and absurdity of this mad race towards development that humanity has been pursuing for decades. His works are deeply entrenched in the new preoccupation of Contemporary Chinese artists, preoccupations that are social, political, and environmental.  As a successful architect and contemporary art collector from the start, Chen Jiagang now exhibits his most recent accomplishments - a monumental photographic product that is entrenched in a powerful aesthetic and conceptually loaded with meaning and inquiry. 

The works of Chen Jiagang have been exhibited in renowned museums and galleries across the globe—including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and the Art Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.  His works have been consistently purchased by private collectors throughout his career.  Most recently, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured in the Red Flag exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. A landmark exhibition, Red Flag served as the first show to bring Contemporary Chinese Art and Quebecois aesthetic together under one roof.  During this exhibition, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured alongside some of the most well-known Contemporary Chinese artists, including Gu Wenda, Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Wang Tiande and the Gao brothers.  

In this retrospective solo exhibition at the Han Art Gallery in Québec, fifteen major works have been selected to showcase the essential and integral value of Chen Jiagang’s creativity in the first several chapters of his career. 

HAN ART GALLERY
Westmount, Québec, Canada  H3Z 1P6www.hanartgallery.com

ACAW 2011 NYC Asian Art Celebration

Asian Contemporary Art Week 2011

New York City 

March 21 - 31, 2011 

Now in its seventh year, Asian Contemporary Art Week celebrates and promotes Asian contemporary art through artist conversations, panels, screenings, book launches, exhibitions, and curator tours at over 35 museums and galleries. This year, ACAW take place throughout New York City, and opened on the first day of spring: March 21, also celebrated as the New Year in many countries of Central Asia. Events take place at various locations around NYC for ten days, ending on March 31. 

RACHID RANA

Rashid Rana, Aar Paar. 2000-2004. 

Collaborative project by Shilpa Gupta and Huma Mulji in Karachi.

“Asian Contemporary Art Week highlights the latest trends in contemporary art while recognizing that contemporary art in Asia doesn’t come out of nowhere,” says Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “This year’s program showcases emerging artists and work never seen in the U.S., and also recognizes the enduring importance of influential artists such as M.F. Husain and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, both participants in our series of artist discussions.” 

As part of its mission to educate the public and to increase the visibility of artists, ACAW 2011 features DIALOGUES IN ASIAN CONTEMPORARY ART, a series of talks with more than 25 leading artists and professionals in the field. “Over the course of the week, ACAW Dialogues will strive to disseminate broader, more thorough knowledge of art communities and artists’ activities within and outside of Asia,” notes ACAW director Leeza Ahmady. “Enthusiasm for this project continues to build and expand, with a U.S. West Coast-based consortium now coming together to plan similar initiatives in San Francisco.” 

With numerous exhibitions and artist dialogues, ACAW 2011 includes artists from the US and Asia. Among the countries represented are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. 

MONIR SHAHROUDY FARMANFARMAIAN

Monir Farmanfarmaian, Untitled, 2010. 

Mirror mosaic, reverse glass painting, 210 x 130 cm. 

Courtesy of the artist and Haines Gallery San Francisco 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ACAW DIALOGUES include: a discussion with Mariam Ghani at the Museum of Modern Art (March 21); Rashid Rana and Pooja Sood at Sotheby’s (March 22); M.F. Husain  and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at Asia Society Museum (March 23); David Elliott, Massimiliano Gioni and Suzanne Cotter at the Guggenheim Museum (March 25); Ushio Shinohara and Tomokazu Matsuyama at Asia Society Museum (March 28); Liu Xiaodong at the Guggenheim Museum (March 29); Xie Xiaoze interviewed by Robert Hobbs at China Institute (March 29); a discussion with Asian Cultural Council 2011 grantees/contemporary artists Rahraw and Manizhah Omarzad, Firoz Mahmud, Chaw Ei Thein, and Fong Wah Phoebe Hui led by Leeza Ahmady at Location One (March 29); Yang Jiechang and Zheng Shengtian in conversation with Jane DeBevoise at Museum of Chinese in the Americas (March 31) and Almagul Menlibayeva at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art (March 31). Another highlight is a dramatic installation by New York-based Korean artist ATTA KIM, who will create a 5 and 1/2-ft-tall, 1,300 pound ice sculpture of a seated Buddha that will slowly melt in Rubin Museum of Art’s spiral lobby, from March 25 through 27. ACAW Dialogues program is sponsored by Asian Cultural Council, New York.  

ACAW 2011 PARTICIPATING VENUES include: Aperture Gallery; Asia Art Archive; Asian Cultural Council; Asia Society and Museum; Bose Pacia; China Institute Chambers Fine Art; Ethan Cohen Fine Arts; Gallery Korea/Korean Cultural Service; Indo-American Arts Council; Jack Shainman Gallery; Japan Society; Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery; Location One; Meulensteen; Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA); Museum of Modern Art; Priska C. Juschka Fine Art; Queens Museum of Art; Rubin Museum of Art; sepia EYE; Sotheby’s; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Sundaram Tagore Gallery; Taipei Cultural Center; Tally Beck Contemporary; Thomas Erben Gallery; Tyler Rollins Fine Art; and Zürcher Studio. 

Asian Contemporary Art Week is an initiative of the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium, which includes: Melissa Chiu and Miwako Tezuka, Asia Society Museum; Steve Pacia and Shumita Bose, Bose Pacia; Agnes Hsu, China Institute; Ethan Cohen, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts; Jean Kim, Gana Art Gallery; Jack Shainman, Jack Shainman Gallery; Joe Earle, Japan Society; Leila Heller, Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller Gallery; Esa Epstein, sepia EYE;  Alexandra Munroe and Sandhini Poddar, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Barbara London, The Museum of Modern Art; Thomas Erben, Thomas Erben Gallery; Tyler Rollins, Tyler Rollins Fine Arts; Jack and Susy Wadsworth, Collectors; Xiaoming Zhang, Private Art Consultant; and Leeza Ahmady, ACAW Director (Independent Curator).

ACAW web site : www.acaw.net