Richard Lin Show Yu Retrospective Exhibition @ Hive Center for Contemporary Art Shanghai

Richard Lin Show Yu

Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Shanghai

November 8 — December 12, 2023

Hive Center for Contemporary Art presents a retrospective of Richard Lin Show Yu at Hive Shanghai. This exhibition is organised by Laura Shao Yiyang, director of International Development at Hive. The exhibition is supported by the Estate of Richard Lin Show Yu, with special recognition to Jean-Claude LIN Lü-Dun, Jean-Pierre LIN Sao Ming, Sumi A R LIN, Katya LIN LODGE, and Malu R J LIN SWAYNE. This retrospective focuses on Richard Lin Show Yu’s significant works from the 1950s to the 1980s. It is Richard Lin’s first major exhibition at a gallery in mainland of China, also his second time showing at Hive, following the 2015 major exhibition of Chinese abstractionists, The Boundaries of Order.

It is a very daunting task to write about Richard Lin Show Yu. This prologue represents a distillation of my own reflections, regarding key aspects of his work experienced as a childhood bystander observer and later musings over the decades. Where possible, within the limitations of this brief account I draw upon archival sources within the Richard Lin Show Yu Estate Archive as pertinent illustrations. For the most part I am attempting to create an image of ideas and influences supporting his creative energy. The Estate of Richard LIN Show Yu would like to thank Hive Center for Contemporary Art, and in particular Laura Shao Yiyang, Director of International Development, and her team, for this exhibition. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with Hive.

Childhood and adolescence for Richard Lin Show Yu was marked by a succession of educational displacements including an early childhood period in a Japanese household; late adolescence boarding in Hong Kong to attend the Diocesan Boys’ School and then boarding at Millfield School in Somerset, UK. In these childhood years away from home, a lasting love for music, singing along to Chinese Classical Opera contributed to the building of a protective inner sanctuary that would later accompany his most creative and productive all-night sessions of painting and constructing in the studio.

If the language of architecture in post-war London taught RLSY about function, space and form, surely calligraphy physically educated his eye and hand to deliver the faultless proportions and spacing with his elegant cursive calligraphy from a young age. Another important influence was growing up in a complex of traditional Chinese compound houses. Freehand architectural sketches, some with water colour washes, notably of the city of Bayeux and its cathedral pre-figure the later and much larger major ‘Dark Sun’ series. Spanning 1933-1958, as a member of Artists International Association (A.I.A), a number of RLSY contemporary works are displayed alongside Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Joan Miro, and many others invited to celebrate the A.IA 25th anniversary.

The atmospheric suns and moons, clouds and forests, deep bold colours ebbing and flowing and bleeding into each other, some of epic dimensions-the ‘old masters’-of his Gimpel Fils days followed by later geometric coalescence into sharp-edged shapes and polished surfaces leading to his multimedia ‘constructivist’ works of canvas, paint, metal and Perspex and the ‘many colours of white’ defining the Marlborough Gallery epoch. Mathematical conceptual frameworks recurred in conversations about structural relationships and proportion, including the geometry of the Golden Mean and the irrational number √2 i.e. the length of a diagonal to a 1×1 square. These mathematical ideas influenced Richard Lin Show Yu’s aesthetics of intervals and the relationships of one space with another. Contemporaneous to his ‘constructivist’ works and in complete contrast are the ‘gestural’ studies comprising instantaneous works of squeezed oil-paint tubes onto stiff glossy paper placed on the floor, literally creating a work in the moment and with great energy or ‘Chi’ in RLSY’s words resulting in neo-calligraphic expressions.

‘The decision is more important than the incision’: a surgical maxim which applies precisely to incision ‘drawing’ but as with gestural works, Richard Lin Show Yu worked slowly to construct his white and mixed media works. By contrast the gestural incision and more classically graphic works depended on rapid spontaneous accuracy. He used an opportunistic economy of time and materials to determine his next works which depended on varying temporal characteristics at different stages of fruition, planning on the blank pages of old catalogues or envelopes. He is said to have worked with multimedia, but the medium he used most was ‘Time’.

Jean-Pierre LIN Sao Ming林少明

London, UK, 14.10.23

HIVE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART | SHANGHAI

First Trust Co.Building, Beijing East Road No.270, 200000, Huangpu District, Shanghai

hiveart.cn

Liu Xiaodong @ Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen

Liu Xiaodong: Painting As Shooting
Curated by Jérôme Sans
Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen
Through December 16,  2016

Photo of artwork ‘Xuzi at Home’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

2010

Oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm.

Collection of the artist

Photo of artwork ‘The Nude Black Maya’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

The Nude Black Maya, 2009,

Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm.

Private Collection

Faurschou Foundation presents the third and final Liu Xiaodong exhibition in its Copenhagen space.

Painting as Shooting is conceived as an exhibition in three chapters, curated by Jérôme Sans and produced by Faurschou Foundation, in Venice, Beijing and Copenhagen. The first step, which took place at the Cini Foundation for the 56th Venice Biennale, was the first major European institutional exhibition to fully explore Liu Xiaodong’s unique practice, as one of China’s most influential painters of the last two decades. The second, presented by Faurschou Foundation in its Beijing space, presented the most recent series of works created by the artist during his stay in Ordos in Inner Mongolia. The last chapter, mixing the first two shows, represents the most updated survey on Liu Xiaodong’s work.

The exhibition, Painting as Shooting, focuses on a unique selection of some of the artist’s most important projects from the last decade. They deal with major global, sociological, cultural, economic, ecological and environmental issues from the past ten years. It is not meant as a retrospective exhibition, but rather as a journey through images of the various worlds and situations he has witnessed all over the world, in locations such as China, Asia, Cuba, Europe, Israel, etc.

Photo of artwork ‘Jincheng Airport’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

Jincheng Airport, 2010,

Oil on canvas,

300 x 400 cm.

Collection of the artist

Most recently Liu Xiaodong reactivated the issue on human migration, which appeared in his earlier "Hot Bed" series. Previously he portrayed migrants within Asia, both in his homeland China and in Thailand. Today Liu focuses on the largest migration and humanitarian problem since World War II: communities taking the most dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea and the most hazardous routes into Europe to escape the wars in the Middle East and Africa, hoping to find a better future in Europe. This issue will not only impact Europe, but the rest of the world.

Liu Xiaodong's projects will also be presented in an extended book, containing large graphical illustrations, sketches, diary notes and texts by Jérôme Sans. In addition to the exhibition there will be shown ten documentaries each following the different projects.

Painting as shooting

Liu Xiaodong is a painter of everyday life. His images are of family and friends set against modest scenery capturing ordinary moments, such as eating, laughing or playing games. However, in-depth exploration of what is hidden behind the small stories that populate the surface of his work reveals a much bigger picture. Xiaodong’s paintings are pointing with simple gestures to the reality of the periphery, the margins and the paradoxes of our contemporary society. It is the reality that no one dares to speak about; the tough reality of daily existence that reaches out to us from displaced communities—from migrant workers, victims of ecological and natural disasters and sex workers to the new homeless—all sharing the dream of a better life.

Liu Xiaodong approaches his work with the eyes and the storyboard practice of a filmmaker. Each of the artist’s major works begins with a simple idea from one of his daily diary entries, describing the events he has witnessed, photos he has taken or people he has met, and then transforms them into live characters on his canvas. In a way the artist’s paintings resemble a production set where he acts as a director who collaborates with actors to play, record or recreate a situation, various impressions or the effects thereof. It is hereby that Liu Xioadong embodies the concept of "painting as shooting."

Biographies

Photo of the artist Liu Xioadong

Photo by © Jiang Jia

Liu Xiaodong (1963) lives and works in Beijing. He holds a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988–95). The artist gained recognition in the 1990s and represents the Chinese Neo-Realism style. His solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012) and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010), while his work was also shown in various group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the 47th Venice Biennale (1997).

The artist Liu Xiaodong with the curator Jèrôme Sans, Venice, 2015.

Photo by Yu Hong, © Faurschou Foundation & Liu Xiaodong Studio

Jérôme Sans is an internationally renowned curator, art critic, artistic director who has curated numerous major exhibitions around the world. He was the former director of the ground-breaking Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and co-founder of the acclaimed Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He is currently artistic director of one of the most important urban development projects in Europe, the Lyon Rives de Saône-River Movie, and co-founder of Perfect Crossovers ltd, a Beijing based cultural consultancy group.

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION
www.faurschou.com

Ai Weiwei at La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona

Ai Weiwei: On the Table
La Virreina Image Centre, Barcelona
5 November 2014 - 1 February 2015

On the Table. Ai Weiwei offers a comprehensive view of the artist's life and work through the display of a variety of artworks and materials, set up to match the scale of La Virreina Image Centre.

The exhibition aims to give an idea of the scope of Ai Weiwei's artistic career, from his beginnings in 1980s New York to his present-day status as the best-known and most influential Chinese artist in the world. Work by this media-savvy activist calling for greater freedom in China can now be found in leading contemporary art museums and collections worldwide.

Ai Weiwei makes use of a number of artistic practices, including photography and documentary film, sculpture, design and architecture, in operations that transcend formats and disciplines to create images that infiltrate and propagate through social networks and popular culture. In addition to several key pieces for appreciating this artist’s work, the show at La Virreina Image Centre also presents unseen work, new productions and installations by Ai Weiwei specially designed for this exhibition.

Curator: Rosa Pera

AI WEIWEI

Ai Weiwei is well known for his longstanding confrontation with the Chinese communist government and for his large-scale installations in leading contemporary art museums and events worldwide. He works on a global scale with any format and medium that comes to hand—or simply invents new ones.

A staunch defender in the struggle for freedom, he has used his work as a potent mouthpiece for speaking out against the unseen repression and censorship as China opens up to capitalist markets. As an artist, he strives tirelessly to raise critical awareness in society.

On the Table. Ai Weiwei aims to give a comprehensive overview of his work by exploring some of his best-known pieces alongside previously unseen work. Ai Weiwei makes use of a wide range of techniques—including photography, architecture, video, sculpture, graphic design, installations, objects and music videos, among others—but central to all his work is the role of the image as a construction and vehicle for reality. He then uses this to explore the tensions between truth and lies, evidence and ambiguity, control and freedom, politics, art, power and society.

Ai Weiwei sees art as a device for striking up dialogues within various contexts, comparing and contrasting different traditions and visions, negotiating, dissecting, projecting and sharing: like a table on which we can lay out our credentials and show our cards, discovering what is underneath and, if necessary, turning the tables.

Rosa Pera

La Virreina Image Centre and La Fábrica have prepared a catalogue to accompany the exhibition On the Table. Ai Weiwei. It offers an insightful rereading of the artist’s work and runs to 180 pages, including over 240 pictures of 42 pieces. The idea, design, editing and sequence of images were all personally overseen by Ai Weiwei himself. The catalogue also includes an interview with the artist in his studio in Beijing by Llucià Homs, director of La Virreina Image Centre, and an essay by Rosa Pera, curator of the show, entitled Image and Power in Three Movements and a Device.

La Virreina Centre de la Imatge
Palau de la Virreina
La Rambla, 99. 08002 Barcelona
http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lavirreina/en/

Artist Yu Fan, Amy Li Gallery, Beijing

Yu Fan: Floating Wall, Moving Sound 
Amy Li Gallery, Beijing
Curator: Liu Libin
Through September 3, 2013

Amy Li Gallery, Beijing, presents YU FAN Floating Wall, Moving Sound. As Yu Fan's first solo exhibition in Amy Li Gallery, it showcases five sculpture works including two very recent works Black Cats and Sitting Girls, which represent Yu Fan's new exploration of sculpture language. The exhibition is curated by Liu Libin - PHD of China Central Academy of Fine Art, well known art critic. 

The main difference of “Sculpture” as an art form from other artistic expressions is that: the sculptor reflects and creates on the basis of “physical form”, and the public sees it and perceives it on that same basis. The reality and fiction are two extremities of the “physical form”, and behind that lies the fascination of Yu Fan for extremities. If we consider “volume” as a straight line, reality and void are each at one end of that line. Take one point on that line, apply a rotation, and the two extremities are bound in a circle. Several “straight lines” then make a round surface, and that is three dimensional Yu Fan. These many lines could be internal questions about the art of sculpture, They could also be clues to Yu Fan's life, like career, ideals, etc. Each of these lines has two ends, the combination of which forms the borderline of the round surface. Yu Fan has a special predilection for this, and he touches it lightly, carefully. This “light and careful touch” is related to the atmosphere of vigor or pounding, sensitivity or morbidity that transcends his works.

Relief sculptures represent a large proportion of Yu Fan's works, and in this exhibition four works have been selected: Arthur in uniform, Leifeng Pagoda and Lily, Black Cats and Sitting girls. One can say that the first two still exudes the familiar characteristic of Yu Fan – namely freshness and purity, Black Cats and Sitting girls materialize Yu Fan's perspective, Black Cats shows a cat on a pedestal, and fixes seven positions of the cat falling to the ground. Chinese people believe that black cats can chase away evil spirits and sent them down South, making generations safe. But the fall of Yu Fan's black cat, its fear of falling, makes it seem closer to the Western interpretation. Sitting girls is composed by 16 girls’ relief sculptures. These girls are fashionably dressed, and are all in a reserved but desiring position, seemingly eager for something, to a certain extent, however keeping it in unspoken modesty. This again reminds me of Yu Fan “light and careful touch” towards the circumference. There are another two sculptures in this exhibition: Crane No.1 and Crane No.2. One is looking down, the other up, which corresponds precisely to what I was mentioning above, the reality and the void.

Place Yu Fan's works in an exhibition hall, and not only the relief sculptures will float, so will the walls; not only will you hear the sounds of nature, very clearly, these sounds will begin to move.

YU FAN is one of the most important artists leading the trend of chinese sulpture art. He was born in 1966 in Qingdao (Shandong province of China)，graduated from the Sculpture Department of CAFA, currently works and lives in Beijing as vice director and professor of CAFA's Sculpture Department. His works have participated in numerous important exhibitions and art fairs in China and other countries, many of them have been collected by important art institutions.

AMY LI GALLERY - 摘自
54 Caochangdi (old airport road, Caochangdi Art District), Chaoyang District
BEIJING 100015, CHINA
Gallery's website: www.amyligallery.com

Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei at Faurschou Foundation, Beijing

Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei: Works from the Collection
Faurschou Foundation, Beijing
13 October 2011 - 26 February 2012

The current show at Faurschou Foundation is the first show of works from the Faurschou Foundation collection, and thus marks the transition from commercial gallery to art foundation that Faurschou has now undergone. With the establishment of Faurschou Foundation, Luise and Jens Faurschou are realizing a long-held dream of devoting all their time, skills and networks to expanding and developing their collection of contemporary art, and creating exhibitions of a high international standard, both at the existing premises here in Beijing, and at the new exhibition space in Copenhagen which will open next year in September with a solo show by Cai Guo-Qiang.

In the future the exhibitions at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing and in Copenhagen will take their point of departure in the collection, and Luise and Jens Faurschou will be creating new exhibitions in collaboration with some of the best contemporary artists, curators, museums and galleries all over the world. For many years it has been the dream of Luise and Jens Faurschou to focus on the collection and its development, and the possibility of showing it. On the basis of the results and the collection created over the years, it has now become possible to realize this dream.

Faurschou Foundation currently presents works from the collection by Ai Weiwei and Liu Wei.

Entering the gallery the viewer is almost walking into Map of China, a large sculpture made out of Iron wood (Tieli wood) that Ai Weiwei has collected from dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Many of Ai Weiwei's works from the past decade are made of local materials and of antique Chinese objects, Neolithic pottery, tables and chairs from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, wood, doors and windows from demolished temples and traditional houses, freshwater pearls, tea, marble, stone, bamboo etc. - 'ready-mades' trans¬lated into a conceptual, post-minimalist idiom.

Ai Weiwei points to the loss of culture by transforming the historical objects into something new - into moving and highly sensual contemporary artworks which thanks to their aesthetic beauty recirculate the meaning and history of these valuable cultural artifacts in the context of contemporary China.

From his recent grand-scale installation at TATE Modern in London earlier this year a field of porcelain handmade Sunflower Seeds covers the floor.

At TATE Modern Ai Weiwei installed a 100-ton thick layer of sun¬flower seeds on the floor - 100 million seeds - all made of porcelain produced and painted by hand in Jingdezhen.

The number of seeds is overwhelming, and yet 100 million is not even that many in the Chinese context. It is precisely in China that it is possible to produce such a labour-intensive work - and the work is very much about the relationship between the mass and the individual, and about China's increasing dominance in the world economy.

Sunflower Seeds is an incredibly beautiful, poetic work, simple, and with many layers of meaning connected to Chinese history.

Ai Weiwei has in the past years been engaged in the loss of lives after the Sichuan Earthquake. Namelist of student earthquake victims found by the citizen investigation, 2008 - is the names of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The list has been collected by the citizen investigation volunteers. The date for the work is open ended as not all the identities of the students have been found out. Some names are not able to be found as entire families have disappeared after the earthquake. The government has never revealed the full list of victims of the earthquake, but only a number. The citizen investigation volunteer's aim is to give each number a name.

In the second part of the exhibition space - Don't Touch by Liu Wei hangs suspended from the ceiling.

Composed of sewn together ox-hides, Liu Wei's rendering of the Potala Palace in Tibet, Don't Touch, is the largest work to date from the artist's series of sculpted dog chews representing a disarray of global headquarters. The mock-ups demonstrate Liu Wei's early interest in questions of power, the relationship between landscape and architecture and the material condition of the visual.

Standing higher than any other palace in the world at over 3,700 meters above sea level, the Potala Palace is a conspicuous but almost passé religious, political, and cultural symbol, presented to the world with pride and yet a stain on the reputation of many. Perhaps dispelling politicization, perhaps creating a fantastical pseudo-religious object, perhaps pointing to a dystopian mutation stemming from a larger social lack of spiritual direction, we can't be sure. But Liu Wei "lets it hang", and advises, irony intended, "Don't touch".

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION

www.faurschou.com

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

Feng Mengbo, Long March: Restart large-scale video game installation at MoMA PS1

Feng Mengbo , Long March: Restart MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY 
December 12, 2010 -  April 4, 2011

MoMA PS1 presents the New York debut of Feng Mengbo’s installation Long March: Restart (2008), a large-scale, interactive video game installation. Recently acquired by MoMA and presented for the first time since entering the Museum’s collection, Long March is a fully functioning video game created by the Beijing-based artist who is known for his long-time engagement with digital technology. Feng Mengbo is on view in the first floor Painting Gallery beginning December 12, 2010.

LONG MARCH borrows imagery from arcade favorites like Street Fighter II and Super Mario Bros., along with propaganda motifs of Communist China. Feng invites visitors to direct the hero of the game—a Red Army soldier—via a wireless controller and combat the myriad enemies in his digital path. Comprising eight large-scale projections, the work creates an immersive environment in which visitors are dwarfed by the video game graphics. Like many popular games, Long March is a “horizontal scroller,” in which the hero moves from one side of the screen to the other. This movement is made physical through the scale of the installation. As the player directs the Red Army soldier across the game’s landscape, the player is forced to walk along with the character in order to keep the soldier in clear view and literally keep pace with the action.

FENG MENGBO (Chinese, b. 1966) lives and works in Beijing. He has been exhibiting his art for nearly two decades. He has had numerous solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; and the Dia Center for the Arts, New York. He has also participated in the 45th Venice Biennale; the 1st and 3rd Guangzhou Triennials; Documenta X and Documenta 11; Ars Electronica 2004; Mahjong: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection that debuted at Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; and Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China at the International Center for Photography, NY; among other exhibitions. 

Feng Mengbo is organized by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art. 

Opening Day Celebration: Sunday, December 12 from 12 pm to 6 pm

Major support for the exhibition is provided by The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art. 

MoMA PS1 Long Island City
New York 11101
www.ps1.org

Chen Yujun – The Empty Room – Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

Chen Yujun, The Empty Room
Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing 
Through 5 December 2010

On view in Beijing, at Boers-Li Gallery, a solo exhibition of recent work by the artist Chen Yujun produced since 2008 in a project entitled The Empty Room.

CHEN YUJUN was born in Putian of Fujian province in 1976, and the most basic motivation of his work comes from the culture of the Central Min diaspora. Because a branch of his family emigrated to Southeast Asia in 1900, many of his works are concerned with this lineage and the living environments of that alien territory. As young critic Lu Mingjun has summarized, this form of mental memory and life experience creates in his artistic practice a distinct anthropological aesthetic: for Chen Yujun, the foreign land of the South China Sea represents a space of possibility or experience of the unknown, and the communication of this experience becomes the original intention of his work. His mode of painting is simple and unadorned, consisting of hybrid visions of architecture and scene, a sensation of bland vicissitude and solitude that emerges through plants, decorations, and furnishings. Such images originate in the experiential world of the artist, but exceed this experience through a unique form of communication in painting. They consistently challenge the observational logic of the viewer, calling for explorations into the unknown.

Asian Geography is a new series initiated by the artist in 2009. For some time, the notion of Asia has been advanced as a community primarily through the cultural oppression of Eurocentric ideology, such that the cultural concept of Asia actually convinces us to ignore cultural differences within the continent. In Asian Geography, Chen Yujun attempts to produce an alien space of the other, a space of Asia at once both strange and familiar. In these works, apart from the appearance of bizarre furnishings, we find that readymade objects and space constructed through the extension of all manner of lines form a unique depth within a set of two-dimensional relationships. Observing such works, the disorder, vacuity, and fragmentation of space interfere with an understanding of our own identity and existence.

Asian Geography surpasses Chen Yujun's early imagination of Southeast Asia, placing the focus of this concept within an identification of history and identity. Within this series, the artist extends his domestic space such that it becomes the geographic space of Asia. As he says:

“The entire course of my practice unfolds through the history of migration of my family, appropriating this outward trajectory primarily in order to present my own secret experiences and imaginations. Through this specific spatial situation, I attempt to depict a singular domestic space and the alienated identity of its resident.”

BOERS-LI GALLERY - BEIJING - CHINA

11 November 2010 - 5 December 2010

www.boersligallery.com

Qiu Anxiong – Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing

Zoo - Qiu Anxiong’s solo exhibition
Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing
22 October - 21 November 2010

The exhibition includes QIU ANXIONG's new work in oil painting, sculpture, and video installation.

The exhibition as a whole revolves around the decaying scenes of the zoological garden. Animals once free to gallop and soar are here confined to a purportedly humane synthetic nature, held captive in the limited degree of freedom endemic to the zoo and certainly experiencing some degree of boredom. Such paintings exist here as a background to the exhibition, allowing the figure of the zoo to come to stand in for captivity itself within this new series. Alongside this conceptual development, Qiu Anxiong attempts to survey the broader meaning of captivity within more expansive spheres of culture, educational systems, and lifestyles, a discussion that originates with the phenomenon by which external control imperceptibly becomes habitual self-control, mirroring another process by which the object of control shifts from the animal to the human.

As a portion of this continuing exploration of culture and control, this exhibition employs models of the zoo and civilization to manifest mistaken understandings of history. Animals are here taken as gods, as in Heresy turned into food products, as in Revolution or observed as pets, as in Enlightenment. The artist here uses a method of Borgesian personification to reveal how, throughout the history of civilization, the various manifestations of collectivism have imprisoned and even extinguished the individual. Through the reverse of such personification, the artist concludes the exhibition by animalizing a domestic scene depicting consumer society, thus expressing the captivity of material consumption outside the spiritual realm.

Beginning with his widely known work New Classic of the Mountains and Seas I, Qiu Anxiong has drawn on a method in which mythical and existing animals are metaphorically drawn into reality in order to develop his analysis and critique of contemporary society. At the same time, the narratives and symbols present in his work continuously construct new forms of visual narrative in a relatively restricted system. The attraction of this work lies in its eccentric and abnormal quixotic pursuit, particularly in the artificial encyclopedic knowledge it spawns. This  unique narrative mode could be linked to those of Borges, but its spiritual quality is actually much closer to the critique of reality manifested in Orwell's Animal Farm.

QIU ANXIONG  was born in Chengdu in 1972. He has exhibited in the Shanghai Biennale in 2006, China Power Station Part 1 in 2007, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2009, and most recently the São Paulo Biennial in 2010. He also held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2007. His video work “New Classic of the Mountains and Seas II” and related print works have recently been acquired by the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

BOERS-LI GALLERY - BEIJING - CHINA

www.boersligallery.com

Zhang Huan: Hope Tunnel at UCCA Beijing

Zhang Huan: Hope Tunnel
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art - UCCA, Beijing
Through October 24, 2010

Zhang Huan’s Hope Tunnel is a curated social project related to the 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province.

“Hope Tunnel is conceptual art on a grand scale, a monument to hope, a space in which art becomes a vehicle for awareness, philanthropy and the public good. A towering display of destructive power frozen in time, it allows us to reflect on the scale of recent earthquake disasters, commemorate the victims and contemplate the possibility of reconstruction and the challenges that lie ahead.”

UCCA Director Jérôme Sans describes Hope Tunnel as being “conceived by an artist who believes that art has the power not just to move us emotionally, but to galvanize us into positive action. We may be dwarfed by the wreckage of freight train no. 21043 and humbled by the destruction wrought by nature, but as the title reminds us, we still have the power to help—and to hope.”

Artist Zhang Huan calls his train “a witness to history” that should be preserved. “At a time when the whole world is looking toward the future, preserving the past seems more important than ever. Reflecting on the disaster, investigating the causes, mitigating future dangers and finding ways to live in harmony with our environment rather than trying to conquer it—that’s where the real future is, the tunnel of hope that leads us to tomorrow."

Moving beyond “art for the sake of art”

Hope Tunnel is more than just a train, an installation piece or a Memento mori that recalls our own mortality. It is a multi-faceted philanthropic project and an experiment in using art to serve the public good.

“As a non-profit public arts center, UCCA is in a unique position to carry out curated social projects such as Hope Tunnel. Free of the artistic constraints and profit motives that restrict many traditional museums and galleries, UCCA possesses the resources, vision and innovation needed to harness the social and philanthropic power of art.”

“At UCCA, we are committed to engaging not just with the “art world” but with society in general and the world at large. Through exhibitions, films and educational events that reflect what is happening in Beijing, in China and around the globe, we seek to create a forum for dialogue and a place for developing innovative solutions. “

“Art should be about more than just making pretty things and putting on spectacles,” says UCCA Director Jérôme Sans. “It means caring about the world around you and giving something back to society.”

The long journey of freight train no. 21043

When the Sichuan earthquake struck on May 12, 2008, freight train no. 21043 was passing through a tunnel in the border region between Gansu, Sichuan and Shaanxi Provinces. Loaded down with grain and aviation fuel, the train collided with a boulder, caught fire and became trapped in the tunnel's inferno. It took workers six months to dig out the wreckage, clear the tunnel and reopen the railway line to earthquake-damaged areas of Sichuan.

When he heard the news reports and saw the photos of the Sichuan earthquake and the train disaster, Zhang Huan was badly shaken. Realizing that the train had both historical value and emotional resonance, he decided to try to preserve it for posterity. After a long and complicated process, the artist managed to obtain the wreckage and transport it to his studio in Shanghai for selective renovation.

When two large carriages of the train are installed in UCCA's largest exhibition hall amidst railway tracks and quake debris, visitors are able to examine the wreckage and watch a documentary that follows every step of the train’s journey from a salvage company in Xi’an to Zhang Huan’s workshop in Shanghai to UCCA in Beijing. A percentage of ticket sales will go to the Red Cross Society of China Jet Li One Foundation Project to fund disaster relief and reconstruction projects in Yushu, Qinghai Province.

In conjunction with Hope Tunnel, two of Zhang Huan’s large incense-ash sculptures are on display in the UCCA lobby: Military Officer and Cultural Officer.

BIOGRAPHY: ZHANG HUANG

Internationally acclaimed artist Zhang Huan was born in 1965 in Anyang, Henan. He currently lives and works in Shanghai. As an active member of the Beijing art scene in the 1990's, he was involved mainly in performance art and was considered one of the foremost avant-garde artists in China. After relocating to New York in 1998, he became a full-time artist working in a variety of different mediums and giving artistic performances in major cities worldwide.

In 2005, he returned to Shanghai and established the Zhang Huan Studio, where he continues his artistic work, expanding into new realms and developing new forms. The ash-painting technique he created has added another method of painting to the art history books. Zhang Huan has also pioneered a variety of other techniques, such as sculpting in ox-hide, wooden door carvings, and woodcuts with feather additions, to name just a few.

In 2009, Zhang Huan directed and stage-managed the lyric opera Semele, performed at the La Monnaie Royal Theatre in Belgium. He is the first Chinese modern artist to direct a lyric opera. In 2005, Zhang Huan and his wife founded the Gao An Foundation, which establishes "hope elementary schools" in impoverished areas of western China. They have also provided scholarships and study grants to ten major universities in China.

Curators: Jérôme Sans, UCCA Director
Project Coordinators：Paula Tsai, Joy Bloser

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