To Philip Mantofa, artistic creation is more than the creation of artwork; it is a reverent act of worship and a renewal of strength and peace. Every piece of art that he creates is a full and exhaustive expression from his heart, and an outpouring of his compassion for people. In 2015, Mantofa's debut worldwide exhibition Visions from Above captured and conveyed insights and revelations from above. Now in 2017, through Mantofa's art, we once again have a fresh look into his heart - The heART of Worship.
Night is situated at the dark side of objects. Light gazes inexhaustibly at all objects. On the other side of objects, which cannot be pierced out by light, they respond to themselves with night and shadow. Each object is followed by its own shadow, facing each other, in every moment of the dark night. As the reverse side of the visible, they submerge themselves in vast quiescence and mystery. We will display the works of Qingwen Bai, Lijie Tan and Ding Wu, all of which are produced in the previous year, in the exhibition scene of M Art Center. Qingwen Bai’s film The Extended Journey, depicting a hiking trip of young lovers, presents a discussion into the materiality of love and vague Utopia model established by desire. Essence of things always looms, like onions exfoliated layer by layer. Lijie Tan’s full-length film Off World, inspired by Mike Davis’s ‘Planet of Slums’, is based on observation to residential areas of the rich, present reflections to ‘a suspended moment’, as well as human history. Ding Wu’s work circling around the question of ‘Known and Unknown’, seeks for surface features concealed under ‘inner order’. Exploration into actuality and Utopia, fiction and reality, poverty and wealth, as well as representation and inherence are handled and embodied in the three artists’ works, making things even more complex and obscure, at the same time offering extensive interpretations under presentations which are unpenetrable. Underneath the shadow, objects...
Aiming for building up a local platform that could nature more communications and inspirations, “Off The Shore” is an annual project that M Art Center initiates to collaborate with new talent artists. Like the first version at the same time last year, “Off The Shore II” continues to invite artists that we have followed and to show what they have been doing in 2016 to present our collective thoughts on art today. In 2016, "Off The Shore Ⅱ" invites 13 artists that work in the fields of animation, photography, easel painting, installation, etc. As a sequel to "Off The Shore Ⅰ", it offers an alternative narration to the black night clue last year, which encourages the artists to go further off the shore and enjoy free space to think and to work.
In Pensées, the French genius mathematician, scientist, philosopher and theologist from 17 century, Blaise Pascal wrote: Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty…… Man is disproportionate. In fact what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the Nothing, a mean between nothing and everything. Since he is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret, he is equally incapable of seeing the Nothing from which he was made, and the Infinite in which he is swallowed up…… Man is only a reed, the weakest of nature, but he is a thinking reed. Following the dialectical and ethical concerns of man and the nature of Pascal has been the common theme in various works of photographic artist Stanley Fung. “Dust Icons” borrows figures as well as their dramatic life stories from the bible to show the humanity that wavers between the nature and super nature, experience and transcendence, god and demon. His series “Members for One Another” focuses on the interactions of two alien pairs of hands ( male verses female, black verses white ) that changes from being strange to getting intimate, so as to think over everyone’s inevitable moral responsibility of the others, that is a lifelong mission of love. With an open view, the “Mere Straw” series...
The sun of tomorrow is always brand-new. “Present Participle Ⅲ” gathers several artists that have been featured and collaborated by M Art Center, showing their latest works and progress in a natural presentation. These works are shown in a variety of media, painting, photography, sculpture, installation, woodcut, paper work, etc., directly or indirectly demonstrating the experience of being steady, awakening, exploring and going beyond oneself that every artist goes through. They are in simple words, but showing complicated messages. To artists, art creation is considered equally as breathing, as it is not only the expression of the mind and the heart, but also the process of consistent self-denial, self-fulfillment and innovation. Either as calm reflections or passionate pursuits, a temporary rest or a serious announcement, here are the recent statements that the artists want to make.
When talking about an artist and his / her work, it is really uncommon to apply words like lively, petite, clever, sensitive, quite and bright together at the same time. But that is what Yuhan is like, as overwhelming as the warm spring sunshine. For long, she has been described as a genius. As a girl who had never used oil paint, she changed her major from design to oil painting, and decided to apply for the oil painting department of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She did very well in the national entrance exam by winning the top of the colour part, and the second of the sketch part. Then she worked hard and showed her talent during the university. From then, collectors have started to pay attentions to this young artist. Her works have been shown at CIGE “Exhibition of Asian Young Artists” in 2010, and a solo exhibition for small size paintings were held at Schiller Gallery in Germany. Everything went well at that time. However, when her career just started, she chose to follow the passion of love and go back to family life. And the birth of her daughter also has endowed her with great motherhood. Rather than continue her career in art, she decided to spend all her time raising the kid. Instead, her daughter has become her best piece of art. But apart from that, in the limited time and space, she still...
Born in 1974, Philip Mantofa's early life was filled with violence and blasphemy. He started his journey of faith when he was 18 and has been experiencing radical transformation ever since. After graduated from Columbia Bible College in Canada, he embarked his calling in his country, Indonesia, and serving the community with all his talent. His influence reaches far beyond his homeland as he travels the globe changing spiritual climates everywhere. The dreams and visions he shared had excited many people ‘s minds, especially the visions of Heaven and Hell. Not until recently in 2014 has he decided to paint some of those dreams and depict what he has seen on canvases. Mantofa first painted at his age of 6 and even achieved excellence in art competitions. However, he never thought of being an artist until his 40 when he realized that painting is the best way to keep as well as widely spread his dreams and visions carrying powerful messages that may positively affect people’s life. Therefore, Mantofa took up his brush and began to share with others his spiritual dreams and visions through painting until now. Mantofa cooperated with Artrue to have his first global solo exhibition “Visions from Above” in Taipei in August, 2015 as well as its following exhibition at M Art Center in Shanghai in March, 2016, in which he would display about 16 pieces of painting. His bold strokes, vibrant colors and richly layered...
M Art Centre is happy to present Pan Xi's Solo Exhibition " Concealed." The exhibition is from December 12, 2015 to February 11, 2016. " Concealed" is the artist's recent thoughts -- concealed, hidden, puzzling, discovered, and released. The artist walks independently along a path between the Chinese sensibility and Western thought. Most of the works from " concealed" are Shui-mo (water and ink) on silk. The images are subtle and restraining, sharp and pointed. Pan Xi, born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, graduated with an MFA from Surikov Academy of Art (Oil Painting Department) in Moscow, Russia in 1999, currently lives and works in Shanghai, China.
The “Off the Shore” Project is an annual periodic project run by M Art Center and young artists, which provide a platform for artists’ creative thinking and idea collision. It invites them to bring their art languages into the story of curating and explore new direction of art in the contemporary context basing on artists’ experiences. In each collision, this project openly discusses the nature of art with artists in the liberal atmosphere. And also accompany them to start their trip of the project. The list of artists who confirmed their participation: WU Ding, SHEN Linghao, SU Yuhan, LIN Qing, ZHONG Yunshu, XI Xi, WANG Xin, ZHU Ziqian, GAO Ruyun, REN Jie, CHEN Xiao, LIU Yue The “Off the Shore” Project in 2015 invites 12 artists to present their first exhibition in this series. The creative medias include photography, sculpture, installation and easel painting. As the opening exhibition of the project with a storyline of Nocturne, artists will present their rich experiences telling personal secrecy in a metaphorical way. The project invites all the artists participated into group dialogues in order to let them know each other’s art works properly and find their similarities and difference of thought and sight while they talking about starting point of creation and logic. Therefore, the story of curating in this exhibition will be completed.
M Art Center is pleased to present a new exhibition “A Round Sun A Dot”, which is the first solo show of Lingjie Wang and Jingfang Hao in China. The young couple is based in France and usually focuses their works on the nature. And nature is their starting point to explore the basic concept of “things” and the relationships with human. The close observation of the nature, also further study and development of the characteristics and the techniques of the materials have been wonderfully demonstrated through their works in space installation, paintings, videos and sculptures. The exhibition will be open at 3 p.m. on 11th July until 10th September. The curator Hélène Doub once describes the artists and their works as “excellent alliance of contraries” (exaltante alliance des contraires). Sharing a background of engineering, the two artists, on one hand, are interested in western conceptual art, and strongly attracted and influenced by its ideology, which is a mix of intuition and reasoning. On the other, they have inherited the sensitive approach and poetic expression rooted in the concepts of “somethingness” and “nothingness” of Chinese philosophy. All these have made every piece of their works show a principal dialogue (un principe dialogique) between the two extremes, the reasoning perception and the accurate arrangement – it is conceptual, yet emotional; natural, beautiful and mysterious, but as complicated as science. As for the theme of the exhibition, the artists give their explanation as follows: look...
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