INEZ: China

Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

798 Misc

D-Park is an extension of 798. Much cleaner, spacious and more organized than the older sections of 798. Still coming along...while I was walking through there, there was some pipe that was hissing some weird steam ...smoke... toxic gas...who knows?

I've seen these sculptures at 798 a million times, but never paid much attention to them. I've been recently working on a fudog project with Madison Art Consulting and made me stop to snap a shot. They‘re chasing me!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Boers-Li: Chen Yujun and Chen Yufan

I went to Boers-Li to see XueFeng's painting exhibition. To my surprise I saw this exhibition in their downstairs Gallery. Hannah was super nice and showed me all around the exhibition.

Mulan River Project
Chen Yujun and Chen Yufan

'Mulan River Project' is a comprehensive installation by the artists and brothers Chen Yufan and Chen Yujun, which began to develop over four years ago as a collaborative research project into the history of their cultural heritage. The title refers to the mother river in their home town of Putian, and thus the creative source of their collaboration. Their multi-disciplinary approach to art practice allowed them to navigate their ideas through a variety of mediums with the current installation comprising of intricate abstract painting, sculptures and layered topographical constructions.
The centrepiece of the installation pays homage to the river and navigates the viewer through their interaction with the artists' skillfully assembled works and constructions. The artworks seem to take root in the gallery space: intricate paintings crawl up the walls like vines, hand carved sculptures tower above you on stilted legs, while cardboard and wooden landscapes rise from the floor, as if formed by layers of deposited psychological strata, transforming the gallery space into a new environment reminiscent of the dark innocence and intimacy of a childhood hide-away in a folk storybook.
Originally intended as a process to maintain a visual communication between the two, over time it became evident there was something much more significant and ephemeral occurring as a result of this process. Through a series of discussions about their work the artists saw the project as an exploration of their own lives, processes and history, in both a personal and artistic sense. The reclaiming of natural materials in their structures reflects an authenticity to their hometown, while also highlighting the significance of the intricate handcraft which goes into each piece. The evidence of their process and rapport with the materials is vital to the core value of the work which acts as a physical and psychological archive of their shared history and current collaborations. Architectural references drawn from their youth in their native province remain a strong influence in much of the aesthetics of the work and encapsulate the artists' reverence and nostalgia for a passing time in both their personal and national history.

Chen Yufan and Chen Yujun were born in Putian, and now live and work in Hangzhou.

Xue Feng Solo Exhibition “Extended Landscape”

Xue Feng Solo Exhibition "Extended Landscape"

Opening: 15th September, 2011; 16:00 - 19:00

Exhibition dates: 15th September - 16th October, 2011

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Sunday, from 12:00 - 19:00

Address: 798 Art District, Boers-Li Gallery

The Boers-Li Gallery is pleased to host "Extended Landscape", a solo exhibition by the artist Xue Feng, in Gallery II from 15th September - 16th October, 2011.

"Extended Landscape" includes the artist's paintings from over the past three years, and also reflects the artist's recent reflections on the interrelation of images, cultural psychology and vision in landscapes. Perhaps the earliest motif in Xue Feng's paintings originates in the bushes and dead branches that stretch continuously over long distances and throughout the whole year in Hangzhou (the city where he lives). These plants dividing the traffic flow and delineating private spaces are only part of the artist's memory, and the earliest theme in his works. Xue Feng's emphasis is not on expressing the objective existence of those plants and landscapes, but in treating landscape as rhetoric of psychological and personal experience, an attempt to show the interrelation in a given landscape or even between different landscapes.

In the series "Wrong Version", Xue Feng starts flattening his botanic landscapes, and relating them to images used in wallpaper. Using an exquisitely complex handiwork, the artist completes the printed "Wrong Version" in passionate brushwork, what has been eliminated in these patterns are those vague and mysterious social scenes. In the series "Flashback", the landscape of plants begins to reveal a dualism between the true landscape and the wallpaper. Whether it is everyday items spread on a nearby floor, or a building in a foreign country spread over the wall, they continuously hint that these paintings are a combination of gaze and deep contemplation, they refract the artist's reflections and concern for psychological contact: a bag of laundry detergent and a botanical landscape, or the plants of our motherland and a foreign castle––which is nearer to our psyche? Thus, at the same time that these works attract us with the unique richness of the visual experience, these landscapes extend continuously into our cultural psychology, they are a up-close and distant "flashback" on the artist's individual cultural identity, one possessing a unique comprehensivity.

Xue Feng was born in 1973 Ninghai, Zhejiang, and currently lives and works in Hangzhou. He graduated in 1997 from the oil painting department at the China Academy of Arts, and studied at the Düsseldorf Academy of Art from 2001 - 2003. He began teaching at the China Academy of Visual Arts in the year 2003

Singing Gourds 798

Talk about incorporating nature and design. I found this guy sitting in his studio in 798 making speakers out of gourds.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Alien Street

They're here and they have their own street in BJ!

Xue Feng - Art - Time Out - Beijing

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Great Wall with Grace Yang

Grace Yang and I decided to go see the Great Wall of China. We wen to some remote Tibetan themed retreat in the mountains. The funny thing is that we were the only 2 guests there, so the entire staff was there to just serve us.