Zhang Huan

ART INFO reivews Chinese art star Zhang huan’s art project “Stop traffic with an ‘over the – top’ public sculpture for downtown Toronto”.

“Crowds gathered on Saturday in anticipation of international art star Zhang Huan and the grand unveiling of his impressive new public sculpture, “Rising,” veritably shutting down one of the Canadian metropolis’s busiest streets. The flashy new work was unveiled in a ceremony outside the Living Shangri-La Toronto complex on University Avenue north of Adelaide. On hand were a duo of city councilors and Art Gallery of Ontario director and CEO Matthew Teitelbaum, flanking the Shanghai-based Zhang, who was dressed in head-to-toe grey and a sleek, if modest, baseball cap. ……
From ART INFO (online here) Article by  Sky Goodden / May 9,2012

There is another article about this art project from “The Globe and Mail” .  The bold sculpture, titled Rising, complements the 66-storey hotel and luxury condo tower that soars above them, LIving Shangri-La. The Globe and Mail suggests that it is “a metaphor for the red-hot Chinese art market, where artists such as Zhang can employ dozens of assistants to create work that sells for millions at China’s 1,200 auction houses. It’s estimated that about a third of the world’s 100 top-earning visual artists are Chinese (although not all of those are living in China.)” It is estimated that the commissioned public sculpture cost between CA$4-$6million.

From The Globe and Mail (online here)
Article by Kate Taylor, May 03 2012

May 5 – June 23, 2012
Chambers Fine Art
Caochangdi,Beijing

In so far as Guo Hongwei depicted objects close at hand in the paintings shown in the 2009 exhibition and immediately after, his 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.

Text and image from the press release(here)

Jiang Zhi, Slight Smile, Shortcut Code, 2012, Oil on Canvas, 90 x 100 cm Courtesy of Saamlung

15 May – 16 June
Saamlung
HongKong

Saamlung will presents a solo exhibition new and recent work in painting from the Beijing-based mid-career artist Jiang Zhi, entitled “Impure Light”  In an ongoing series of works in oil on canvas produced as representations of moments of glitch and failure in everyday computing, Jiang explores the possibilities of perception and essence in an era aesthetically dominated by mechanical logics of sensation and communication.

The evolution of Jiang Zhi’s practice marks a fascinating traversal of a Chinese mediascape that has at times come into existence alongside his work. Prior to working as an artist, Jiang launched his creative career as a journalist for the pathbreaking Shenzhen publication Jiedao, which reported on the cultural ramifications of the early market-oriented urbanization of the southern city, once the heart of China’s nascent design world. Coming to international attention as the leading representative of a close-knit group of contemporary artists who temporarily took Shenzhen as both a personal home and a source of conceptual production for thinking about the politics of migration and the body, the status of media in the city, and the possibilities of the manufacturing base as a point of entry for global culture. He belonged to the second generation of artists in China to work with the video, and was one of the first to use to use the medium to interrogate questions of perspective. By the end of the 1990s, Jiang Zhi was a core member of the artist-organized exhibition series known as “Post-Sense Sensibility,” and has, since then, continued working primarily in photography and video that is both highly formal and markedly concerned with the social import of image-based practice.

Article Link: JIANG ZHI

Text and image from the press release.

Xu Bing exhibition view

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.

This exhibition 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.

“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 understand the text as long as one is thoroughly entangled in modern life.”    – Xu Bing

(Image and text from press release)

“The Untouchables.” is a group show of six Chinese and American artists dealing with the qualities of the surface within conceptual art today, including painting, photography, sculpture, and digital work.
Works on view feature painting from Conor Backman, Kadar Brock, and Hou Yong; digital image-based work from Travess Smalley and Jo-ey Tang; and a spatial intervention from Yan Xing. Delving into the status of the surface within artistic practice today, this group of artists presents a diverse set of interpretations of the relationships between mediation, process, texture, and the tangible.

Image: http://saamlung.com/?/projects/2012/The-Untouchables/works/Hou-Yong-2/

April 21,2012
Three Shadows Photography Art Center
Caochangdi, Beijing
For its third edition, 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’Arles through a special exhibition curated by its director François Hébel, who will present Brian Griffin’s 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 programming.

Partners in Caochangdi, the 798, and beyond will strengthen PhotoSpring’s diverse programming by hosting more than 20 of the festival’s shows.

PhotoSpring Exhibitions

UCCA: ” The important is not the meat”_Gu Dexin solo exhibition (until May 27)
Boersli Gallery: “The Abstract Paintings 1979 – 2012″ _ Zhang Wei solo exhibition (until May 27)
PIN Gallery: Beautiful violence _ Qin Yufen solo exhibition (until May 20)
March forward, March forward _ Jiang Jie solo exhibition(until May 20)
Faurschou Gallery: Meme lit, reves differents _ Chen Zhen solo exhibition (until June 3)

Caochangdi Art District

White Space Beijing: The layers _ Xie Fan solo exhibition (until April 24)
Alexander Ochs Beijing: My promise for your happiness _ Lin Jingjing solo exhibition (until May 6)
Art Mia Gallery: A merciless expression _ Zhang Yingnan solo exhibition(until April 22)
ShanghArt Gallery: “Zhuiku Tablet” Annotation _ Chen Xiaoyun solo exhibition (until May 2)

Jiu Chang Art District
Arario Beijing: Memento Mori _ Video group exhibition (until June 3)

Songzhuang Art District

MOCA Beijing: Collective exhibition – contemporary ink and traditional ink exhibition _ Group exhibition (April 15 – April 25)

Huang Ran (b. 《 愉悦悲剧》拍摄现场剧照 Production Stills from Blithe Tragedy (Courtesy of the artist) 摄影/ Photos: 范欣/ Fa n Xi n

Yellow Signal: New Media in China is a city-wide exhibition of the best contemporary video and new media artwork made by Chinese artists in recent years. The project is initiated by Centre A — Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, with Shengtian Zheng, a Vancouver-based curator and internationally recognized expert on Chinese contemporary art. He is currently the managing editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.

Curatorial statement by Zheng Shengtian, 2012:

“Yellow Signal” is a metaphor suggested by Vietnamese-American artist Dinh Q Le during a discussion in Ho Chi Minh City on June 19, 2010. He said: “Many of the artists in Vietnam look at government policy towards contemporary art as a yellow signal, unsure as to whether it will let art proceed or make it stop completely.” In response, Chinese artist Wang Jianwei proposed the idea of a “yellow signal commonwealth” which he defines as a communal state of ambiguity, heeding neither to red signals nor green signals from systems of authority in Asian countries. Artists have to make their own choice.

“Yellow signal” is not only a political circumstance faced by many Asian artists but also a challenge that artists elsewhere may run into in their creative practices. “A yellow signal brings uncertainty and also a feeling of caution and awareness,” Wang Jianwei noted. Yellow signal is about limitation and possibility, choice and chance, confusion and self-confidence.

New media art has developed rapidly in Mainland China during the last two decades. “Yellow Signal: New Media in China” represents the best Chinese artists working in this field and includes those who are internationally recognized as well as those who have emerged recently within Mainland China’s vibrant art scene.

Yellow Signal: New Media in China is a multi-event celebration of contemporary Chinese video and new media artwork running March to September 2012 at various venues in the Vancouver area. THe complete schedule of Yellow Signal exhibitions appears below. Please click to individual venue links for more information