All posts tagged: China

L’Art de l’Amour

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Artists Marina Abramovic and Ulay started an intensive love affair in the 1970s, performing out of a van they called home. When they ended their relationship, they decided to walk the Great Wall of China, each from one end, meeting for one last embrace in the middle. That was the last time they saw each other. In 2010, as part of a MoMA retrospective, “The Artist is Present”, Marina shared a minute of silence with each stranger who sat in front of her. On opening night, Ulay arrived without Marina knowing….

Hong Kong: Inside Zhu Jinshi’s Boat

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Born in Beijing in 1954, Zhu Jinshi moved to Germany in the mid-1980s, and at present lives and works in Beijing. Zhu began painting abstract works in the late 1970s, and participated in the Stars group exhibition, the first avant-garde art exhibition held after the Cultural Revolution. The core of Zhu’s artistic practice is most fittingly characterized by traditional Chinese aesthetics, which emphasises the harmony between human beings and the natural world. Part of the legendary generation of artists who left China in the 1980s, Zhu Jinshi was clearly marked by his move to another country and culture. He used contemporary Western art languages to find the contemporary possibilities in the cultural resources and materials of China. At Exchange Square in Hong Kong, visitors are immediately greeted by Zhu Jinshi’s monumental Boat. Bamboo, cotton and 8,000 sheets of pale white Xuan (rice) paper meticulously hang from the ceiling, forming a spherical tunnel and stopping just before touching the ground. “I used materials, thoughts, and traditions of the East as a tool to go against the …

Gunpowder & Tiger by Cai Guo-Qiang

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Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. His father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligrapher and traditional painter who worked in a bookstore. As a result, Cai Guo-Qiang was exposed early on to Western literature as well as traditional Chinese art forms. As an adolescent and teenager, Cai witnessed the social effects of the Cultural Revolution first-hand, personally participating in demonstrations and parades himself. He grew up in a setting where explosions were common, whether they were the result of cannon blasts or celebratory fireworks. He also “saw gunpowder used in both good ways and bad, in destruction and reconstruction”. It seems that Cai has channeled his experiences and memories through his numerous gunpowder drawings and explosion events. More about Cai Guo-Qiang http://bit.ly/1jl0kT6

Untitled by Lu Guang

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Lu Guang’s work covers a wide range of consequences due to China’s rapid industrialization. A reoccurring theme is that of ‘cancer villages’ in certain affected provinces, the negative environmental conditions such as water pollution and the effect of industrialization on Chinese countrysides and its people. Guang has stated that his choice of subjects is done to raise awareness in both China and on a global scale. More about Lu Guang http://bit.ly/1twa0wj  

The East is Red by Ling Jian

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Ling Jian was born in the Shandong Province of China in 1963. He graduated from the Qinghua University Art College and has exhibited his work in Germany, Bangkok, Amsterdam, and Italy. Ling Jian’s art is neither westernized Chinese art nor orientalized western art but a carefully negotiated hybridization calibrated to the artist’s expressive concerns. More about Ling Jian http://bit.ly/1uELDQI

The Geography Of Innovation Is Shifting

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When a prominent venture capitalist of California invested one billion dollars in high risk green technology, Silicon Valley recalled the world that in innovation, geography is karma. What Vinod Khosla’s story tells us is that location is crucial when dealing with innovation and technology. Thirty years earlier Vinod left India to study management at Stanford University in California. In 1981, fresh out, he founded Sun Microsystems, a computer manufacturer . Innovations do not occur anywhere but often in geographic clusters where investors, large research universities, existing technology companies, engineers, designers, artists and scientists are always willing to think outside the box. Those people are part of what Richard Florida calls the Creative Class. His paradigm asserts that innovation is the outcome of creativity, this latter being the outcome of human creation for a concrete realization which then might lead to innovation. As far as geography and clusters are concerned, the Silicon Valley has been for several decades considered as the only creative and innovative hub worldwide. This is clearly changing. The geography of innovation is shifting. For proof, start with Google, …

China by Chen Jiagang

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Former architect and museum director, Chen Jiagang offers dazzling works mixing documentary and staged photography. His pictures paint the urban and social upheavals of contemporary China without artifice and with an undeniable subjectivity. Ruined cities, disfigured landscapes, abandoned factories or renaissance, scenes with deceptive appearances, all these places full of history and uncertainty are both documented and reinvented. He loves indeed to populate this apparent urban chaos with delicate female presences. Chen Jiagang captures the echo of a past life, of a forgotten memory with a necessary awareness. More about Chen Jiagang http://bit.ly/1uphPck