798 District Blog

From ceramics to metal, from realistic figures to abstract post-modern images, a complex world of contemporary Chinese sculpture is presented at an exhibition of young artists from Chinese Sculpture Academy.

The exhibition, which opened on Aug 22 at the Chinese Museum of Women and Children, showcases the works of 21 young sculptors from the academy, which is attached to the Chinese National Academy of Arts.

“This exhibition shows how the younger generation of Chinese sculptors has learned from both Chinese and Western sculpture traditions, as well as the visual arts revolution of the 20th century,” says Wu Weishan, director of the Chinese Sculpture Academy. “It also shows young Chinese artists’ understanding of the specific time, location and context in which they live.”

Some of the artists, like Zhang Wei and Zhi Min, in the spirit of classical Chinese art, express spiritual transcendence through ritual scenes. Some others, like Qu Feng and Chen Gang, present their views on nature and society.

The young sculptors’ exploration of materials is a highlight of the exhibition. Zhang and Zhi choose ceramics to add more elements of traditional Chinese culture into their works, while Qu and Chen use wood to invoke the vitality of art. Li Hengfeng and Wang Wei present their idea of “humans and nature in harmony” through the use of melted metal. There are also works using more complex materials.

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Exhibition / SAGYA ZHANG XIAOTAO SOLO EXHIBITION
curator / Cecilia Freschini
Artists / ZHANG XiaoTao
City / Beijing
Opening Reception / 16:00 20-Aug-2011
Date / 20-Aug-2011 To 10-Oct-2011
Place / Whitebox Museum of Art
Organizers / WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART

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SAGYA  ANIMATION  15Mins 06Secs   2011

CURATOR: Cecilia  Freschini
Art Director:Gu Zhenqing
PRESENTED BY: Sun Yongzeng
EXHIBITION DIRECTOR: Dai Zhuoqun
ASSISTANT CURATORS: Hao Danmeng, LI Yunxia
PUBLIC RELATIONS: Wu Wei

SPONSOR: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART
OPENING: 4pm.Aug 20(Sat), 2011
DATES: August 20, 2011 – October 10, 2011
MUSEUM OPENING HOURS: 10:00 – 18:00, Tuesday – Sunday
VENUE: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, 798 Art Dist., NO.2 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist., Beijing, China

CONTACT US: +86-10-5978 4801
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.798whitebox.com

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Artist BIO:

Zhang Xiaotao (born 1970) is a painter based in Beijing and Chengdu.

Zhang Xiaotao was born in Chongqing in China. He graduated from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 1996.

Zhang makes paintings with sexual imagery often involving small animals such as frogs and snakes, and incorporating images of putrefaction and pollution.

His work Condom Series: Enlarged Props – Crystal And Fishes 2 sold for US$64,500 at Sothebys Hong Kong in 2007.

Solo exhibition of Ye Yongqin, 54, As Light as a Feather, in the Singapore Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) and curated by Zhu Zhu, features 20 artworks, organized by the Beijing, Singapore and Indonesia-based Linda Gallery.

The themes are a conjunction of his Bird and Injury/Heart series.

“Flying birds are traditionally used to express the wandering and carefree. Ye’s paintings are a nironic echo of the words of Du Fu, a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty [618-917]: ‘A gull on chilly Earth, not free from care,’” Zhu explained. “Thus, the imagery… delineates the crucial theme of the unbearable lightness of being.”

In Birds, avian imagery is partially glimpsed. “Feelings and thoughts are portrayed through feather-light improvised strokes,” Zhu continued. “This is an unintentional abstract, a capture of pure emotion. The lines are like pulse beats and the negative spaces which evoke feelings of emptiness.”

“An artist, whether he has consciousness about the nation or the races, depends on his own past experiences and memories,” according to Ye. “Such change in ideology began when I worked in London. Drifting and wandering abroad, alienated from my mother tongue, the feeling of loss of familiar experiences seemed to be magnified.”

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Christie’s, the world’s leading art business, announced that tonight’s sale of International Modern and Contemporary Art in Dubai made $14,043,000 / AED 51,565,896, more than doubling the pre-sale estimate of $6.7 million and confirming Christie’s market leadership in the region. The auction was 94% sold by value and 84% sold by lot. The buyer breakdown by lot was 60% from the Middle East, 28% from Europe, 10% from the Americas and 2% from Asia. The sale concludes a record year for Christie’s in contemporary Middle Eastern art, with an increase of 117 percent over 2009.

Jussi Pylkkänen, President of Christie’s Middle East and Europe, said: “A packed saleroom, a team of 20 Christie’s staff manning the telephones and internet bidding from around the world, helped to make tonight’s auction both successful and hugely memorable. The sale achieved $7.3 million over our pre-sale expectations and saw record numbers of clients registering to bid, with nearly 200 registrants from 23 countries. The 30 works from the Dr. Mohammed Said Farsi collection were again 100% sold and saw a huge increase in international interest in Egyptian art. We were delighted to see Mahmoud Said’s Whirling Dervishes sell for a world record $2,546,500 making it the most expensive Middle Eastern painting ever sold. Following the trend of the Frieze art sales in London two weeks ago, tonight’s auction here in Dubai had a tremendous spring in its step.”

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Sotheby’s 4 November auction of 19th Century European Art in New York will feature three works by the prominent Italian painter Giovanni Boldini. This offering comes just after the close of the important exhibition Giovanni Boldini in Impressionist Paris, which opened at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara in 2009 and traveled to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts in early 2010. This exhibition represented the first major show of the artist’s work outside of Europe, and an exciting opportunity for Americans to discover Boldini’s impressive and varied oeuvre.

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Tate Archive will celebrate its 40th anniversary this week with a fascinating new display, 40 Degrees of Separation, featuring forty items from the Tate Archive Collection, all of them interconnected in sequence. From Kenneth Clark’s notebook when he was making the epic Civilisation for the BBC to Keith Vaughan’s suicide note, and from Jake Chapman’s schoolboy essay on his favourite painters to a loving letter from Constable to his wife, this rich diversity of material reveals undiscovered gems which provide intriguing insights into the workings of British artists and institutions over the last three centuries.

Tate Archive has also significantly enriched the Collection in its fortieth year with over forty archives pledged as gifts, thanks to the generosity of artists, individuals and institutions, Highlights of these include: 30,000 photographs taken by Gemma Levine comprising, among other items, the most comprehensive set of images documenting the last decade of Henry Moore’s life; and important bodies of material relating to Stuart Brisley, Prunella Clough, Nigel Henderson, Josef Herman, Cedric Morris, John Nash, Norman Reid and Leonard Rosoman.

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The 2011 programme at the Kunsthaus Zürich is the most exciting yet. News of one highlight has already leaked out: the prestigious private collection of the Nahmad family is to receive its world premiere in Zurich. There will be a retrospective of the work of Franz Gertsch, one of the most important contemporary Swiss artists. Full of fascinating insights, ‘The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture’ transfers to the Kunsthaus Zürich from the Museum of Modern Art New York. There is a revival for the ecological and political work of Joseph Beuys. ‘Beastly Good Show’ will be of particular interest to families. Exhibitions featuring the most recent work of Roman Ondák and international rising star Haris Epaminonda will be of particular interest to experimental art enthusiasts.

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Christie’s 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe, including Oriental Carpets achieved $14 million from October 21 to 22, selling over 450 treasures from the 16th to the 19th centuries. This spectacular sale was the top-grossing 500 Years sale to date held in New York, with the top lot of the sale, the Messer Chippendale Bookcase achieving $1.7 million. 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe is a new sale concept unique to Christie’s that brings together all styles and movements of European Decorative Arts as well as Oriental carpets in a richly varied sale that offers collectors an incredibly diverse range of works of art to choose from.

Will Strafford, International Specialist of European Furniture, said: “This was truly an international sale with 31 countries participating, and we demonstrated yet again the achievement of 500 Years as an innovative response to the market and the buying patterns of our clients. This sale saw extraordinary demand for both important furniture and exceptional works of art from private collections. The discovery of the Nile Napoleonic clock caused great excitement amongst collectors, and we are thrilled that it realized $722,500, far exceeding the estimate of $200,000 to $300,000.”

Melissa Gagen, International Specialist of English Furniture, said: “The exceptional selection of English furniture, among the best to come to market in New York for years, caught the attention of the world’s top collectors. Bidding was spirited among both private and trade buyers in search of iconic 18th century examples. The cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale reigned as his bookcase soared into the million dollar range, making nearly 3 times its price when last sold from the legendary Messer Collection at Christie’s in 1991. It is the second most expensive bookcase by this maker sold at auction both at Christie’s. The depth of the market for truly exceptional examples of English furniture was demonstrated by the fact that four bidders were actively pursuing the bookcase above the $800,000 level. Two pairs of chairs by Chippendale and a fantastical chinoiserie mirror attributed to John Linnell and formerly at Ditchley Park also exceeded their pre-sale estimates.”

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This Autumn is the Season for Andy Warhol, thanks to an extraordinary selection of his key works.Christie’s New York leads this group with the sale of Andy Warhol’s hand-painted masterpiece, Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable), 1962 (estimate upon request). An icon of Pop Art, it is one of the largest examples of Warhol’s most famous and beloved image of a Campbell’s Soup Can — a subject matter that helped shape the course of art history in the 1960s.

At 72 x 52 inches, Big Campbell’s Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) is the first in a series of very rare large scale Campbell’s Soup Cans. Of the 11 large scale Campbell’s Soup Can paintings, eight now reside in museums, foundations or are promised to museums, such as The Menil Collection in Houston, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and The Kunsthalle in Zurich. The present lot is the most important example to come on the market in over a decade.

Warhol’s soup cans challenge the traditional boundaries of art and life as well as art and business. Warhol believed anything could be touched by art: from the mundane, such as the humble Campbell’s soup can and Brillo boxes, to ubiquitous public figures and celebrities such as Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. The Campbell’s Soup can is the ultimate everyman consumer product. It is completely accessible and recognizable, making it a key icon of Pop Art. In this work, Warhol’s eponymous static soup can has been pierced by a can opener against a seamless background.

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Fifty Antoni Tapies’ paintings and drawings are being exhibited at the Palau Fabre Foundation (Fundacion Palau Fabre) from today on in the “Gaze at the Hand” (“Mira la mano…”) exhibition, which shows the vitality of the last ten years of this artist, who has already reached 87 and with which the Foundation opens a new stage.

Arriving simultaneously with the vernissage of the new permanent exhibition, the Foundation has done a redistribution of the spaces assigned to temporary exhibitions, which starts with an exhibition of the recent work of Tapies, chosen by the also artist Perejaume, the director of the center, Josep Sampera, has informed today in a press conference.

The exhibition starts with a dozen of the most recent work of Tapies, created in the last three years, all of them on paper and lots of ink, such as “Stretched Body” (2008, “Cuerpo estirado”), “Arrow Body” (2008, “Cuerpo flecha”), “Blue Ink” (2007, “Tinta azul”), “Black on Red” (2008, “Negro sobre rojo”), or “White Eyes” (2007 “Ojos blancos”).

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