798 District Blog

Enrico David, Untitled, 2011. Acrylic on canvas, 117.3 x 101.5 in (298 x 258 cm). Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery, New York.

NEW YORK, NY.- The New Museum presents the second exhibition in its recently inaugurated ‘Studio 231’ series. “Head Gas” is the first New York exhibition by Italian-born, Berlin-based artist Enrico David. Over the past twenty years, David has produced a body of work encompassing painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage that draws upon a rich variety of sources and expresses a range of complex emotional states. Although his work is highly celebrated throughout Europe the artist was among the nominees for the 2009 Turner Prize, for example—David’s work has rarely been exhibited in the United States.

The figures populating David’s work convey the struggle of adaptation, both physical and psychological, of the self and of the image. In his art, we see haunting, incomplete, and sometimes grotesque characters fighting against and merging into backgrounds comprising a personal lexicon of forms. These patterns are derived from craft, folk art, and twentieth-century design, as well as advertising, techniques of display, fashion, and art historical moments. Previously, David choreographed his figurative works to imply dramatic narratives, at times using the exhibition space as a stage. His exhibitions function as performances of self-analysis constructed and theatricalized specifically for public display. Through David’s highly personalized iconography, the works act as mirrors, reflecting viewers’ desires, fears, and vulnerabilities. In David’s more recent work, the implications and strands of psychological tension are enacted within a more formalized, image-based corporeality

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As all forms of arts do, sculpture is facing questions of innovation and development in modern times.

The China Sculpture Institute has responded by boosting a three-year promotional program for young sculptors starting from 2010.

The institute sponsored a series of exhibitions in nine cities since September 2010. The tour arrived in Beijing last weekend and will stay until Feb. 13.

Sculpture enthusiasts are treated to almost 100 works by more than 50 young sculptors at Beijing’s Today Art Museum.

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Featuring 40 pieces of “photo studio style” artworks Maleonn has practiced in the past three years, the exhibition can also be taken as the pilot project of the Mobile Photo Studio. In the show one will discover Maleonn’s latest series as well as the Studio Mobile itself. The visitors will also be able to have their portrait done in the old fashioned way. It is the very same Studio Mobile that Maleonn will then take across China to portrait people all around the country even in the most remote places. As Maleonn puts it, “I would like to provide a mirror to the viewers and, then, they are able to see some of their own thinking and senses.”

In his photographic work Maleonn has been working for years on the identity of people crossing time. Moved by their existence and memories that fade away and compared to digital photos and new technology induces memories, stored on computers, old photos have this extra emotion Maleonn wants to recreate. The artist is creating this new show to remind us not to forget that going to the photo studio was at the same time a real sense of ceremony and a pleasure that no longer exist…“You can also say that I provide a labyrinth, a huge one with lots of entrances and lots of exits as well” as he says.

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Zhang Enli Solo Exhibition is staged in Shanghai Art Museum from December 9th through to 22nd in 2011. And it is another crucial museum exhibition ever after the one in Minsheng Art Museum in the end of 2010. In this exhibition in the winter, important works from newly completed series Still Life and Space will be displayed.

Ordinary or tedious “things”, which are least attractive, the most widely utilized and the most unlikely to be noticed in everyday life, however, become the objects that fascinate the artist these years. They are rendered by his plain and yet accurate brushes to manifest the ultimate realness of life left in them. Moreover, “space” is another theme that captivates the artist’s eyes. From Zhang’s paintings, we often detect his discovery of aroma emitted from the passage and erosion of time under seemingly mundane circumstances. Again and again, he opts for the things that appear far too familiar to us as the themes of his creation and prompts our reconcentration on them.

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Potential changes in vision due to technological breakthroughs are probably the most revolutionary and expansive field to explore. In the history of art, the greatest progress was all connected with the breakthroughs in technology of that time. Currently, the biggest intervention of technology in everyday life is manifested in the development of the Internet along with the shaping of the world of fantasy by giftware.

When talking about the possible visual features brought by technology, people used to focus on the adoption and updating of the imagery. In other words, it was regarded as progress in pictorial language, which is subordinated to evolution of pictorial language. However, if the visual renewal cannot keep up with the idea or discourse behind the pictorial language, such renewal can do nothing but submit itself to transience, while the more permanent is till the human sentiments and their intellect behind the technology or machines. The sharpest contrast takes place when human sentiments face the indifferent technology or machines. Or in Lin Xin’s words, ” Human nature reveals itself in a more distinct way.” Slavoj Zizek put forward a profound question in his The Antinomy of Cyberspace Reason, we are pretty sure that behind the screen there is nothing except digital circuits. If so, would I myself have nothing in my mind as well? Zizek was afraid that human self-consciousness could also be a screen behind which there is nothing but neural circuits. No doubt this question put us in great panic.

Lin Xin reviews Zizek’s fear in visual terms. In her works, the relationship between human being and machines, between human bodies and intellect is no longer confrontational as it used to be in the industrial era. In our age of interaction, the human being and the machine, the body and the intellect do not relate themselves to each other as subjects or objects but place themselves in a flexible and floating schema where there is an ongoing mutual reference on physiological and psychological level.

Therefore I value the quality of cyber in Lin Xin’s works. Cyber used to refer to the cyber space and was later developed to denote the virtual autonomous domain which, as a completely autonomous future world, holds a disapproving and uncooperative attitude toward the industrial world. that is not solely confined to the virtual world. However, cyber is not totally virtual. It still keeps the material base as is shown in Lin Xin’s works. She never put her works in the hand of the virtual world. The automen in her works are placed in the scene which, though based on reality, has been changed into an indifferent world. What the cyber space exactly reveals is a traumatic scene where water is no longer a resource for life, mountains are neither for habitat nor for travel. The automen were placed in a solitary atmosphere where communication is impossible, but what they need is more than survival — they long for life. Lin Xin could create automen in the images but she has no way to endow them with autonomy.

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The Yanhuang Art Museum is hosting a solo show for poet, writer, calligrapher and ink painter Han Sanzhi from Shaanxi province.

On show are more than 90 of his abstract ink works, created on various mediums and inspired by ancient cultures from China’s northwestern regions.

Han has endeavored to create ink art that connects cultural roots to diverse modern cultures, critic Jia Fangzhou says.

9 am to 4 pm, until Dec 7. Yanhuang Art Museum, 9 Huizhong Lu, Asian Games Village,

People visit the “My Personal Universe” sculpture exhibition at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art of the 798 art zone in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 26, 2011. The exhibition, which will last to Feb. 25, 2012, presents images of universe explosion through static exhibits and videos. (Xinhua/Luo Wei)

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A new exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado is showcasing Xu Beihong’s work for the first time in North America. Generally considered to be the father of modern Chinese painting, his influence on the art world is acknowledged to be vast.

Featuring 61 works including oil paintings, Chinese ink brush paintings, drawings, pastels and calligraphy, the exhibition titled Xu Beihong: Pioneer of Modern Chinese Painting demonstrates the artist’s unique blend of Western and Chinese techniques. Visitors may recognize his dynamic paintings of horses in movement, for which he received great acclaim.

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Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang likes explosions; he likes to see how traditional mediums transform spontaneously before the spectator’s careful gaze. In “Saraab,” the artist’s exhibition to be held at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha next month, Guo-Qiang explores his personal connection to the Gulf through installation works and a series of gunpowder drawings in which he incorporates elements from Islamic miniature paintings, decorative art, and textiles, as well as ancient maritime routes between the Arab world and his hometown of Quanzhou, China. Mathaf’s first single-artist exhibition since its opening in December 2010, “Saraab” features more than 50 works, including newly commissioned pieces and documentary material to highlight the artist’s creative process. Guo-Qiang’s works are riveting in scale and execution. Their power lies with their ability to re-expose a seemingly forgotten past: the relationship between China and Arabia that dates back to the Silk Road.

“The Middle East is very mysterious for me,” says the artist, who took part in the exhibition “Talking Arts: Emirati Expressions” in 2009. “Geographically speaking, the Gulf and the Middle East have always been part of Asia. I want to retrace these histories and show the rich and long cultural exchange between these two civilizations.” Guo-Qiang also hopes to probe the contemporary society of the region and discover what is real and what is illusionary. “Saraab” (Arabic for mirage) was chosen by Guo-Qiang because parts of Doha have a mirage-like quality for him.

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A very important window on Chinese history has been opened in Europe thanks to “Manchu, the Last Emperor” exhibition which kicked off Saturday in northern Italy’s town of Treviso, Italian curator Adriano Madaro told Xinhua.

The show, which will last till May 13, is the fourth of a series of exhibitions each covering a different period of China’s history since the foundation of its empire, with exhibits carefully selected from the most famous archaeological sites and museums in China, Madaro said.

“Many of the objects which have been displayed in Treviso are listed as State treasures, and I must thank the Chinese government for allowing us to borrow exhibits which are normally locked away in security vaults,” he said.

The curator highlighted that over the four exhibitions, started in 2005, more than a thousand exhibits have been displayed, from the Xi’an terracotta warriors to the jacket of China’s last emperor Pu Yi.

The “Manchu, the Last Emperor” exhibition features over 250 robes, weapons, furniture and objects dating back to Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) including the Manchu iconic throne.

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