ShanghART Gallery Syndication

SUN Xun's new work Some Actions Which Haven't Been Defined yet in the Revolution has been nominated in 62nd Berlin International Film

ShanghART Gallery has a great honour to announce that artist SUN Xun with his latest wood printing animation film Some Actions Which Haven't Been Defined yet in the Revolution has been nominated by Berlinale Shorts 2012 jury in 62nd Berlin International Film Festival. Chinese animation films Three Monks, Yu Bang Xiang Zheng (Snipe and Clam), Feelings of Mountains and waters as well as Mantis Catch Cicadas were once nominated in the festival before. But thereafter no other works were ever chosen in the past 14 years. Breaking years of silence, it's really exciting for Chinese animation entering the Berlin International Film Festival again. Meanwhile, merely 2 years after SUN Xun's work 21G entered Venice Film Festival in 2010, being the first Chinese animation film nominated by this festival, the artist brings animation work once again into top three A-class international film festivals. Sun Xun was born in 1980 in Fuxin in Liaoning province, China. He currently lives and works in Beijing. He graduated in 2005 from the Print-making Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts. In 2006 he established π Animation Studio. During 2010 he has received several notable awards including the “Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA Best Young Artist)” and “Taiwan Contemporary Art Link Young Art Award”. His film “21 KE (21 GRAMS)” (2010) has had its world premiere at the new “Orizzonti” section at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. This was the first Chinese animation film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. 2012-02-01 01:23

SUN Xun's new work Some Actions Which Haven't Been Defined yet in the Revolution has been nominated in 62nd Berlin International Film

ShanghART Exhibition HUGE CHARACTER been selected in ARTFORUM 'BEST EXHIBITION OF 2011'

ShanghART Exhibition HUGE CHARACTER been selected in ARTFORUM ’BEST EXHIBITION OF 2011’ 2012-02-01 01:43

Late Spring and Early Summer

ShanghART Beijing is so pleased to present the solo exhibition "Late Spring and Early Summer" on December 16, 2011. It shows more than 30 new oil paintings created by Zhou Zixi in last two years.

The opening date of "Late Spring and Early Summer" was original planned in June, but now it is postponed to December for some reasons. Thus, the seasonal exhibition title became a chilly memory in distant, which implies some inappropriate complex and obscure sadness.

As an artist who always pays attention to reality and history of China, The new works of Zhou Zixi assume a totally new aspect. "Late Spring and Early Summer" forms like a set of traces, memories, introspections, observations and complex emotional collage of fragments. It interweaves personal history, contemporary history and reality itself. The seemingly fragmentized frames supplement, correspond, multiply, and impact with each other frames. They appear to be broken pages of the story, which implies subtle clues and shows inherent richness and imagination.

It seems meaningful for such amount of landscape paintings. Those deserted views looks like forgotten corners in city outskirts strewn with abandoned buildings. But paintings with figures and scenery reveal a surreal and incredible narration. Time passes through the old broken doors, corridors, gas meters and others, but it still remains a breath of reality. Via the realism paintings, those personal stamped paintings surpass the simple nostalgia and narrow personal lament. The portrait of current has taken a zooming angle of lens to highlight a strong sense of powerlessness. The image of the artist often appears in paintings, which seems a role as a witness and observer, it suggests the time passing and the transformation of affairs and feelings filling time gaps.

As a result, individual experience, past history and on-going history meet and pile one above the other. Some elements repeat in pictures again and again, take concerted action to form intertextuality. The whole exhibition presents a deliberately static, which cause the air filled with a kind of feeling in subtle landscape and still life. Meanwhile, it implies the origin of feeling in those unexpected and bizarre scenes.

Zhou Zixi was born in Jiangxi province in 1970. He currently lives and works in Shanghai. One by one, ShanghART Group Show, ShanghART Gallery (Shanghai, 2010); China 1946-1949 - Zhou Zixi Solo Exhibition, ShanghART H-Space (Shanghai, 2008); Interiors – Zhou Zixi, Büro Friedrich (Berlin, 2006); Under the Blue Sky, Grace Li Gallery (Zürich, 2006) and Under the Skin, Universal Studios (Beijing, 2006).

2011-12-01 17:29

cctv - Solo Exhibition of ZHANG Qing (2011 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program)

cctv - Solo Exhibition of ZHANG Qing (2011 Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program) Subsequent to the solo exhibition Mao Yan in Dufftown successfully co-staged by ShanghART Gallery and Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program in November 2010, this project continued to issue invitation to young new media artist ZHANG Qing in 2011 for his participation in Scotland. After preparation and creation for nearly one year, Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program 2011 is now delighted to present cctv - Solo Exhibition of ZHANG Qing in ShanghART Gallery H-Space on December 18th, 2011. Recently ZHANG Qing pays a close attention to the study on closed-circuit television. Borrowing language mode from that system, the artist performs his experiments and opens up the discussion over the judgment of value and significance when we are engulfed by the mixture made from truth and illusion after stepping into another linguistic environment and social system from our own. Here, the monitors from cctv are unfolded to their spectators viewing from top to bottom. These pictures, either real or imaginary, intended or indeliberate, all provoke thoughts to blossom. The artworks to be exhibited include video installation, conceptual installation as well as the single-screen video Learn from Tom Smith completed during Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program. After field trip into working environment in the Scotch whisky factory, ZHANG Qing renders with journalistic irony a worker against the background of western capitalistic society and expects his viewers to experience the conflicts between various cultures in the language familiar to them. ZHANG Qing (1977) was born in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province and is among one of the most important experimental artists for the last decade in Shanghai. After graduation from Changzhou Institute of Technology, the artist has displayed his works in Family? (Shanghai, 1999), Second Hand Reality (Beijing, 2003), Thirty-Eight Solo Exhibitions (Shanghai, 2006) and Shanghai Biennale (Shanghai, 2008) and so on. His first solo exhibition Frame was held in 2007 in Bizart Center, Shanghai. Translated by Sachiel Yuu 2011-12-15 16:55

"Huge Character" 2nd Opening

Artists: Tang Maohong, Zhang Ding, Sun Xun

Opening: 4PM, Oct. 29th, 2011 (Sat.)

Duration: Oct. 30th – Nov. 10th, 2011

Venue: ShangART Gallery Beijing Space, CaoChangDi 261

Time: 11AM – 6PM (Monday Closed)

ShanghART Beijing is so pleased to present the second stage of the project Huge Character from October 30th to November 10th, 2011.

This project is cooperated by artists Tang Maohong, Zhang Ding and Sun Xun, which including two stages. The first stage’s result will directly affect the second stage. The creation process is full of uncertainty.

The first stage started from September 3^rd,2011. Six 7m black Chinese characters - “你准备好了吗” (literally means "Are you ready") were put on four walls of the exhibition hall. It is a question from three artists as well as the dialogue with audience.

After the first stage, project enters its second stage. Artists create on site in exhibition, and the creation process is open to public. Base on the huge characters, three artists return to their own creation.

During the second stage, Tang Maohong’s painting works - "Thinking sadness in front of you", Zhang Ding’s installation work - "Compartment", and Sun Xun’s mural with sculpture and painting on paper – "March 18th Park " will be public.

The three art works are independent but with internal relations. Artists’ communication and their balance searching will be presented in exhibition.

Tang Maohong was born in 1975. Recent exhibitions include Facing Reality, Chinese Contemporary Art, National Art Museum of China (Beijing 2008): Belief (Singapore, 2006), Thermocline of Art, New Asian Waves, ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, (Germany 2007); Have You Eaten Yet?, 2007 Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, (Taiwan 2007); Singapore Biennale 2006: Belief, (Singapore 2006).

Zhang Ding was born in 1980 in Gansu. He resides and works in Shanghai. He graduated from North West Minority University, Oil Painting Department in 2003. He studied at China Academy of Fine Arts, New Media Art from 2003 to 2004. Recent exhibitions include Opening, Zhang Ding Solo Exhibition, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2011); Law, Zhang Ding Solo Exhibition, ShanghART Beijing (2009); Big City and A Lot of Ash – A Lot of Dust, BizArt Center (Shanghai, 2005) and First International Biennale of Contemporary Chinese Art: MC1 (Montpellier, 2005).

Sun Xun was born in 1980 in Fuxin in Liaoning province, China. He currently lives and works in Beijing. He graduated in 2005 from the Print-making Department of the China Academy of Fine Arts. In 2006 he established π Animation Studio. Recent solo exhibitions include: Beyond-ism— Sun Xun Solo Exhibition, ShanghART Beijing (2011); Clown’s Revolution, Holland Animation Festival, Center Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands (2010); 21KE, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); The Soul of Time, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel, Switzerland (2010); Animals, Max Protetch Gallery, New York, U.S.A (2009); People’s Republic of Zoo, University of Essex Gallery, U.K.(2009); His Story, ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai (2009); The New China, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, U.S.A(2008); etc. Recent group exhibitions include: By Day By Night or Some (Special) Things a Museum Can Do, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai (2010); China Power Station – Part 3, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Torino, Italy (2010); Aichi Tiennale 2010, Aichi, Japan (2010); 2009 Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria; etc.

2011-10-21 12:09

WATERWORKS

Duration: Sep. 7 - Oct. 30, 2011. 1PM-6PM. Opening: Sep. 6, 2011. 5PM-7.30PM. Venue: ShanghART H-Space, 50 Moganshan Rd., Bldg 18 Shanghai Artists: GENG Jianyi, WU Shanzhuan, YANG Fudong Curators: Philip Tinari WATERWORKS brings together major new works by GENG JIANYI, WU SHANZHUAN, and YANG FUDONG. Drawing titular inspiration from "Tap Water Factory," an unrealized 1987 installation by Geng Jianyi which questioned premises of seeing and being seen through a maze-like configuration of walls and windows, the exhibition's three distinct positions share a common joint concern with elements that might be described as both infrastructural and natural. The notion of the waterworks—an early industrial structure which enables urban modernity by providing the most elemental of human necessities—becomes a conceptual starting point for these three artists, all of whom are alumni of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. On the most basic level, each of the three suites of work maintains some connection to that most basic substance, water, and to its manipulation by human structures. Geng Jianyi's installation THE CONTENT IS DISTURBED BY ITS SHADOW examines the relationship between inside and outside, using a pinhole camera to capture and project a still-life arrangement of aluminum-foil-covered furniture onto the inside of a black box. The utter darkness of the inner room, along with its fragmented projection surface and the upside-down rendition of the objects, makes for a visual puzzle as the viewer waits to see an image emerge. The disjointed familiarity of the projection is heightened by another "watery" device: an automatic bubble-blowing machine situated behind the pinhole, distorting, albeit imperceptibly, the projected image. For Geng, the demarcation between inside and outside—and the distortion that happens in going from one to the other—is an apt metaphor for how information and ideas from beyond are transmitted into China. Wu Shanzhuan presents a suite of 420 meticulously rendered drawings. Realized between 1992 and 2011, playing on his mythical character of the BUTTERFROG. A witty conflation of the names for the swimming strokes of butterfly and breast (called "frog swim" in Chinese), the character looks at the philosophical principles of "rotation and recovery" which Wu and his partner Inga Svala Thorsdottir derive from their own decade-long conceptual engagement with the sport of swimming. A "sea's worth" of drawings, the project finds its earliest origins in Wu's ongoing philosophical, literary, and artistic project, "Today No Water." Hung on a slightly curved wall, the Butterfrog drawings are divided into five groups: "diagram," "bracket(s)," "configuration," "vectors," and "passer." Yang Fudong's film THE NIGHTMAN COMETH unfolds inside a movie-lot snowstorm, using the simulacral devices of an earlier era, when soap flakes and fans created the climatic illusions now so often left to digital manipulation. A single-channel, nineteen-minute production, works, like much of Yang's film, on the axis of character and (lack of) narrative, with a woman, a general, and two ghost-like spirits wandering forlornly in the winter night. Its Chinese title plays on the double-meaning of "the general at nighttime" and "nightfall imminent." For the first time, he presents alongside the film a selection of documentary material, including still photos, drawings, and other sources of inspiration, installed in glass cases evoking an old, encyclopedic museum. Together these three works—created independently but mediated through a process of ongoing dialogue among the three artists spanning nearly one year—offer three distinct notions of what the individual creative impulse might look like today, always in the context and against the background of the wider system and order. ------ The exhibition is organized by Philip Tinari, critic, curator, and editor-in-chief of the Beijing-based art magazine LEAP. 2011-09-05 15:50

Follow! Follow! Follow!

Duration: Sep. 6 - Oct. 8, 2011 Time: 10AM-6PM Venue: ShanghART Gallery , 50 Moganshan Rd., Bldg 16 Shanghai, China Artists: Ji Wenyu & Zhu Weibing The exhibition Follow! Follow! Follow! with Ji Wenyu & Zhu Weibing’s recent works will be showed to public in ShanghART gallery from Sep. 6 to Oct. 8, 2011. It is problem consciousness that makes Ji and Zhu’s installation to be teeming with experimental spirit. It is also what makes cloth the best option for them to make a breakthrough. Soft and gentle as it is, cloth can be used to cushion sharpness and hardness, it possesses more possibilities, also in this exhibition: It is almost a mode of development. Individuals need to seek the feeling of security and belonging in groups, thus individuals follow the groups and listen to their opinions. Among the grand narrative, the individual self has become insignificant, and groups become more powerful and invincible. They climb up and down the mountain, move like a great flood. The universality and everydayness of the scenes are important features of Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing’s work. In their work, everyday scenes such as photo taking, meeting, sightseeing, and watching television are considered as cases with special meaning, an ironic metaphor to daily reality. Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing’s installation work epitomizes the development of modern philosophies and cultures. It showcases the confusion and excitement, obsession and inspiration, progress and recession of people and their history. 2011-08-11 18:49

Yang Zhenzhong: If you disagree with “Future Festival” please raise your hand – “TOP Events” documentaries series.

Yang Zhenzhong’s “If you disagree with “Future Festival” please raise your hand – “TOP Events” documentaries series” is a series of documentaries about all the contemporary art activities related to “Future Festival” and “TOP Events” in Shanghai, in 2011. This project was created and displayed, simultaneously and progressively, as part of these art events. “Future Festival” is an art activity initiated in February 2011 by a group of artists in Shanghai, that will last for one year. The topic of “Future Festival” was inspired from French poet Mallarmé who said that the role of the artist is to prepare for future projects. This quotation allude to a certain reversion in contemporary art action, suggesting that participating artists turned from the act of criticizing and making experiences to a new attitude of bidding, gathering and mingling. During this period, discussions between local artists and a philosophy professor (Lu Xinghua), as well as interviews in artists’ studio and exhibitions will be held. This continuous symposium is more than a simple combination between philosophy and art, the organizers insist on the fact that: it is neither a talk, nor an exhibition, neither an art project, nor one of those academic topics we were used to, an inertia processing in an experienced thinking. It responds to art introspection, surprises, conflicts of opinions, differences, and unknown. Everyday becomes a festival. It is actually more a final festival, a kind of decisive conviction. As a project in parallel with “Future Festival”, “TOP Events” showed this conviction, located in a building of The Outstanding Park in Shanghai, a venue for art events. From July to October, “TOP Events” will continuously present three sessions of art and cultural interdisciplinary activities including: art exhibitions, music, theater and dance performances, poetry readings, film screenings and philosophy symposiums, all initiated by artists, architects, poets, musicians, philosophers, etc. During this year of “Future Festival” and four months of “TOP Events”, this documentary will be regularly updated, completed with real-time reports on people and activities coming and going in the building. 2011-08-11 18:41

Sun Xun be awarded: The Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship for 2011/2012

2011-12-11 14:38