Contemporary art is conceived in the modern context. However, with hardly any similarity to fads and fashion, it has the prospect to be handed down as classics with its unique aesthetics. Though it is universally acknowledged that the once prevailing western post-modernism art had now tucked into pure canvas form, it had on the other hand reflected the demands of art itself to regress to its essence rather than expanding into more vastly varied forms. This choice is believed to have been made after careful consideration to refine art from our culture and the artists’ self-consciousness following their free-wills and sticking to their common idealism. This is the portrait of the environment for the artists’ creation, where modernity is intensively depicted. The abstractionists in this room has been weaving in the patterns their personal style and feelings in modern times. The farther their mind leave what they saw, the more profound their art deliver what they perceive. Finally, spiritual dimensions are developed; the poetry of abstraction is harvested as one after another conception had been established, emitting the warmth of conciliation for the upright and the stoical. We firmly believe that abstract art is bound to be accepted to larger population with the time moving forward. Nevertheless hard work would be indispensable with to communicate academic aesthetics and popular taste. On such basis, these five abstractionists in this room had eloquently testified this point, reflecting their inimitable explorations on Chinese...
“Vase, rather than vase” is the main theme of a series of silk-screen printmaking Lu Zhiping has created in recent years. The internal essence of aesthetics and ideal of contemporary art behind the theme cover the artistic concept and pursuit of creation in all his artworks created in recent years. His printmaking series such as “Water Hometown”, “Archaeology” could be named with other similar titles, for he would like to present some historic and realistic images through the articles characterized by contemporary aesthetics by means of deliberate subversion, deconstruction, combination and restructuring. “Vase, rather than vase, uncommon vase”, the vases in Lu Zhiping’s artworks are not those ancient boutiques which we appreciate, however, they serve as traditional elements and factors integrated into the atmosphere of contemporary creation to seek the ideal convergence with the beauty of modernism, create brand-new constitutional logic and present artistic explicit mode featuring contemporary sentiment. Here traditional constitutional factors have been stimulated and obtained continual extension and expansion while inherent essence of beauty has been extracted and enhanced, thus finding companion in the new field of aesthetics to be transformed into brand-new inspiration featuring “image-oriented” philosophy as well as symbolic metaphor. Many traditional historic art symbols have consciously been injected into Lu Zhiping’s artworks, for example, there are monster pattern, dragon & phoenix pattern and thunder pattern on bronze wares, net pattern, string pattern and falling curtain pattern on pottery in “Vase, rather than vase” series,...
Perhaps because of the edification of the life in the great desert of north-west which is full of poetic quality, Li-lei has another gift which is different from those the Shanghai native artists have. Li-lei spent his childhood without any sorrow and anxiety in the valley of Huang-shui, Qinghai Province, and the customs and influences handed down from the ancient civilization of Ma-jia Cave nourished his immature heart. It’s the primitive culture and the ancient legend of plateau which are straightforward, simple and unsophisticated, as well as mysterious that forms the significant childhood complex. The sense of vitality and the worship of the primeval ecology have been controlling potentially his thought and his creation. Many years ago, when Li-lei was a youth, he even went into the trumpet shell gorge (Hai-luo gou), Gong-ga snow-mountain, Sichuan Province lonely to experience the value of life in the situation of alone and with no help by breaking into depopulated zone in glacier gorge. Recalling this experience, he stated, “visiting trumpet shell gorge for me is not only a magnificent tour of life, but also a experience of soul cleansing…… Whenever the Gong-ga snow mountain appears in my dream, I would arise spontaneously endless joy, and I would make a consider quietly and serenely what’s the meaning of life……” Therefore, we can conclude that the plateau which is thousands miles away is the origin of Li-lei’s poetic abstract works which produced in the survival...
ShContemporary will be held in Shanghai Exhibition Center on Sep10th---13th, 2008. ShContemporary serves as the only mature, top and comprehensive international art fair that provides the public with information of Asian art market and plays the role as cultural bond for artworks of western artists. Over one hundred galleries from more than 20 countries will participate in the fair. Top galleries from Asia-Pacific region, America and Europe will also take part in this top international art fair in Asia-Pacific region. The cooperation between M Art Center and ShContemporary is aimed to promote art exchange, prosperity and development of artwork market, keep pace with time, continuously enhance innovation, strive to explore the market and commonly form the platform of communication and trade, thus serving as cultural bridge between the public and art, even between Shanghai and the rest of the world.
In the wake of holding solo exhibition named “West-East ”in Shanghai Art Museum in 2005, Richard Texier enjoyed high popularity and concern of artistic enthusiasts in Shanghai and even China. In the past three years, he has been committed to creation and exploration of language of painting and sculpture with great concentration based on perseverance for art. As a result, his works were more mature that distinctive personality could be found in the expression of his works. During these 3 years, with the different exhibitions and art events in Shanghai cooperated with M Art Center, Richard Texier was better known and appreciated by Chinese professional art collectors. With the invitation of M Art Center, Richard Texier will soon present his latest artistic works created in France and share his recent artistic achievements with more Chinese audience.
As to me, it is the first photography exhibition. When Crazy English was finished, some good friends reminded me that, actually your pictures in the film are naturally good art photography. However, I was busy on my filmmaking at that time and couldn’t pay any attention to it. In 2001, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in USA has formally collected my three music videos shot for Cui Jian. In the past few years, some art galleries in Singapore, Holland and Germany have been unceasingly inviting Crazy English to their art show. Although my films are sometimes shown on some international exhibitions and gathered for some specific subjects, I am still exciting and full of expectation on this attempt as a pure photography presentation. I learnt as I was initially exposed to art that, the boundaries between deferent arts are ambiguous. I can see from these pieces that they are able to cross the boundaries. This exhibition is mainly composed of four parts:Let Me Be Wild in the Snow;The Square; Ms. Jin Xingand Crazy English.To prepare for this exhibition, the hardest work for me was to find those of my negative films. Lots of negative and positive films are stored in two small warehouses in my basement. I worked on in a sweat until I found the negative films of Jin Xing’s surgery and Be Wild! I hope, through such an exhibition, to fix the flowing pictures in movie into...
The Chinese culture, in its course of thousands of years, has never been in lack of pioneers and initiators. As a vehicle for the expression of culture, painting has been playing a historically important role in promoting and developing the Chinese culture with its dual presence in literature and art. Throughout the ages, painters have taken nourishment from different types of art for the nurture of culture, splashing cultural waves one after another. Today, a young artist, taking his share in the cultural creation, shows the world, through his works, his own search, understanding, refinement and sublimation of the traditional Chinese culture, thus making contributions to the bloom and development of art with his wisdom and talent. The works of Zhang Lanjun are always beyond expectations: each of his series shows a striking change in artistic mood or technique. However, as is commonly felt, many of his works are invariably permeated with the flavor of traditional Chinese culture: some are fresh and chaste, some bold and vigorous, some gentle and graceful. The scenes Zhang Lanjun paints, such as trees, mountains and rivers, are in the west, taking on specific geographical features. Compared with the flatness of the east, he seems more inclined to the roughness of the west; he depicts the boundless landscapes together with well-composed border scenes. The more he paints, the more he paints in depth. Though his stay in the west is not long, he penetrates into...
We would miss Jiang Qionger’s genius if we only saw her as an abstract painter, that is if we considered her as the heir of a pictorial tradition born from the Western mode of thinking which can only comprehend the world through dual oppositions: figurative/abstract, ancient/modern, yes/no. The daughter of a China which has thrown itself headlong into the adventure of development, she is indeed perfectly familiar with our modernity whose codes she became acquainted with during a two-year stay in France and whose icons she regularly mixes with today. We would then conclude, indulging in the short-sighted ideas of fashion rather than genuine analysis, that Jiang Qionger is an example of bi-culturalism, an artistic and conceptual bridge between East and West. I know full well that ours is a time of cross-cultural pollination. But I assert that Jiang Qionger is a primary identity, what defines her artistic practice, is her Chineseness. Writing this, I do not refer to her art as belonging to some incomprehensible exoticism, some unsurpassable otherness: I name the key which opens onto the mental universe that has created the fabric of China and, beyond the borders of this country, the fabric of all the sinicized world. A mental universe which, through its very difference, exalts the infinite variety of the mind. It would be easy, and therefore deceptive, to place Jiang Qionger’s painting in the tradition of some great predecessors, bi-cultural like herself: Zao Wou-Ki...
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