The 2022 Pritzker Prize winner, the African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, became the focus of the cultural and design community a few days ago, and the surging news learned that the Goethe-Institut designed by Carlyle began construction in Dakar, Senegal. French street artist JR recently painted a huge painting of a smiling Ukrainian girl, which will be published in Time magazine.
Renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma won a competition for the design of the new Galiasgar Kamal Theatre in Kazan, Russia. In Beijing, there are exhibitions such as "From Andong to Dandong: Rafts on the Yalu River, Broken Bridges and Passers-by", "Yin Chaoyang Retrospective Exhibition" and so on.
The Paper, Art Review, "Art Figures of the Week", reports and analyzes art topic figures and hot events at home and abroad.
Senegal | new work by new Pritzker Prize winner Francis Carlyle
The "Goethe-Institut" in West Africa breaks ground
Francis Carlyle
Recently, the Goethe-Institut, designed by the new Pritzker Prize laureate Francis Kéré, began construction in Dakar, Senegal. The project is the first architectural space specially designed and constructed by the German Cultural Association and the Clearing House in its more than 60 years of global activities.
The two-storey building is set amidst lush gardens in a residential area, where lush trees create the formal structure of the building. The bricks used in the building are made of laterite and local stone slag, which has good thermal insulation and helps to passively regulate the indoor climate. The project will provide space for a wide range of activities, including exhibitions, language courses, concerts, parties and more, all based on Senegal's cultural landscape.
The building has a good sound insulation effect to ensure that the sound inside and outside the building does not interfere with each other. The hollowed-out skin of the building is made of bricks from the local area, the same material as the structural walls, forming a lightweight appearance. Most public events are located on the ground floor, including the auditorium, cafeteria and library, while administrative offices and classrooms are located on the upper floor. The top floor of the arable man provides more interactive space, with tree-shaped columns supporting the roof that covers the area. The building as a whole follows the principles of sustainability, leaving a small carbon footprint.
Renderings of the Goethe-Institut
"The programme expresses the values that I share on many levels with the Goethe-Institut. When I think about issues similar to sustainability, climate protection, etc., I am not only given an open and empathetic response, but also encouraged to do things better. Carlyle shared.
Diébédo Francis Kéré was born in 1965 and is the 51st recipient of the Pritzker Prize. Coming from the countryside of Burkina Faso, a poor country in West Africa, he returned to his home country to build numerous educational buildings after pursuing a degree at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany. He uses regional materials to build modern buildings that go beyond the construction itself, proving that architecture can go beyond the use of function and bring about social influence. (Finishing/Qian Xueer)
| Street Artist JR in France
A little Ukrainian girl with a huge smile will appear in Time magazine
JR is a well-known street artist in France, and the other day, JR went to Ukraine. Together with his friend Mathieu Kassovitz, he traveled to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to make large-scale artistic creations. Recently, Time magazine announced that JR's work created by the photography of a smiling Ukrainian girl will soon appear on the cover of the March 28 issue of Time magazine.
JR, Jean René
JR' real name is Jean René, born in 1983 in Paris, France. He loves and excels at posting large black and white photographic images in public places. In JR's view, the streets are the largest art gallery in the world. JR's work is spread around the globe, and the "Art for All" project he founded is widely presented in the architecture of the slums around Paris, on the high walls of the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa, and in the slums of Brazil. And the models in his works are not only "watching", but also participating in the creation: some elderly women have been models for a few days; some children have been artists for a week...
Jr said that he had only followed the news on social networks before, but he preferred to participate in it to support the Ukrainian people, so he decided to go to Ukraine. JR created a mural about 40 meters long in front of the City Opera House, showing a smiling little Ukrainian girl Valeriia, this photo was taken by Ukrainian photographer Lurchenko, when Valeriia and her mother had just arrived at the Polish border from Ukraine, and as soon as they crossed the border, Valeriia smiled happily. It is also one of many photographs of Ukrainian refugees crossing the border into Poland taken by the photographer. Valerii, 5, is from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. On March 9, Valeriia fled to Poland with her mother. In an interview, the mother said that she left to protect her child's safety: "I love everything about her, she is my sunshine, my happiness." ”
Ukrainian little girl Valeriia
Set-up site
JR says the little girl was chosen because she represents the future.
Jr saw this photo of Lurchenko and decided to print it on a huge tarp. He drove to the Polish border with the mural and carried it on foot into Ukraine from the forests on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Upon arrival, JR and the team loaded the murals into the cars of Ukrainians they met online. When assembling the work, due to the huge size of the frame, more than 100 people participated in the end. Recently, Time magazine announced that JR's work will soon appear on the cover of the March 28 issue of Time magazine in the United States. The cover is titled "Resilience in Ukraine". According to Time, the situation of 7.5 million children in Ukraine since the war between Russia and Ukraine is very worrying, and the world needs to pay more attention to the suffering of Ukrainian children. (Zonghe Finishing)
Russian | architect Kengo Kuma
Designing new buildings for traditional theatres: echoing Tatar art and culture with "ice flowers"
Architect Kengo Kuma
Recently, Kengo Kuma won a design competition for the new Galiasgar Kamal Theatre in Kazan, Russia. The competition was officially launched in August 2021 and invited architects to propose concepts for the construction of the National Academic Theatre of Gallasca Camar Tatar. Kengo Kuma's design has a strong geometry that is highly appreciated, and it is inspired by a rare natural phenomenon called "ice flowers" on Kaban Lake.
In summer, the building's transparent façade is reflected in the water, and in winter, the building is integrated with the surrounding landscape as part of a lake, thus unifying with its surroundings.
Both "pointedness" and "aspiration" are typical features of Tatar architecture and culture, and the studio strives to create a unique theater that is deeply rooted in Tatar culture. "Inherit the spiritual memory of the old theater and integrate into the long history of the Development of the Kamal Theater and the urban context of Kazan." The architectural form is inspired by the spiritual qualities of the Tatars: sharp and closed on the outside, soft and friendly on the inside.
Renderings of the Nové Kamal Theatre in Russia
The Kamal Theater is the oldest Tatar theater in Russia. Its interpretation of Tatar art, its rich performance program, the variety of techniques used, and the Tatar language are all hallmarks of the Kamal Theatre. For many years, the Theatre of Camar has been an important cultural centre of the world, hosting solidarity events and cooperating with many European partners.
Since 1985, the theater has been using a Soviet modernist building that resembles a sailing ship, and the building sits on the shores of Lake Caban and acts as a Caban landmark. The organizing committee of the competition claims that a key task of the competition is to adopt a gentle approach, using architectural language to express the national culture that has been cherished by the Kamal Theatre for decades.
While expressing a very tense form, Kengo Kuma also designed a transparent façade for the building that can delicately reflect the surrounding environment, so as to mix architecture and nature and reveal atmospheric fluctuations over time. (Finishing/Qian Xueer)
Beijing | architect Liang Chen, artists Zhang Shuo, Zhang Tuitui, etc
"From Andong to Dandong: Rafts, Broken Bridges and Passers-by on the Yalu River": A Social Observation of Dandong
In the past few years, the narrative technique of describing a memorable past with lyrical brushstrokes has run through almost all northeastern literary and artistic works, and a recent exhibition called "From Andong to Dandong: Rafts, Broken Bridges and Passers-by on the Yalu River" has focused on a city in Northeast Liaoning, Dandong. In the exhibition, artists of different eras create based on Dandong, including Japanese writers born here, a literary and historical archive research group rooted in Dandong, and resident creators who have long paid attention to local culture, and they have worked together to piece together a social observation report on Dandong from different perspectives.
Curator Liang Chen on-site guided tour
What kind of imprint will the times fall on an individual?' And how does personal history outline the historical space of a city? In the exhibition, the authors use their unique viewing perspectives to piece together, reconstruct and reproduce a "local landscape". Part of the documentary filmmaker Zhao Liang's work "Riverside" comes from Zhao Liang's long-term shooting of North Korea on the other side of the river in Dandong's home in recent years, and the artist chose two sections, summer and winter, showing the daily space where sentries and villagers coexist in an ordinary rural village on the Yalu River.
Artist Zhang Shuo's "Welcome to Anton" is an attempt to use the text symbols of each period, the content dissemination of the corresponding period, and the visual characteristics of the sales materials, and organizes the "Welcome to Anton" mixed visual field that integrates the mixed memories of each period. As a border city in northeast China, Dandong experienced the influence of various cultural periods in the 20th century, and in the more than 100 years of historical changes, each historical period has left a corresponding cultural memory.
Works on the spot of the exhibition
Artist Zhang Tuitui believes that in my opinion, the Yalu River is not only the romantic physique of a river, but more importantly, as the border of two countries; it carries the historical past, mysterious and tragic. The lingering picture in the memory: people on both sides of the river can only face each other, smile at each other, wave and shout, but they can't really reach. What does it actually mean to everyone as an administrative concept of borders? The artist's performance video work "Green River" takes this as a starting point, tearing a piece of cloth with a length of 21 meters from the middle into two pieces, and then stitching it up again with needle and thread. The "dividing line" externalized by needle and thread is also the process of bridged by invisible divisions.
Architect Liang Chen focuses on the rheology and space-time accumulation of a definite set (specific concepts, objects, spaces, etc.) in time over a long period of time, a multi-time period, and a large scale. Since 2013, based on the rich local cultural research and architectural practices in Dandong, Erguna, Xinjiang and other places in recent years, Liang Chen has launched the "Boundary Plan" based on interdisciplinary research such as art, architecture, and anthropology. Focusing on the frontiers of knowledge generation and exchange, he seeks to take an interdisciplinary view of the broader and more complex boundaries of culture, history, language and social psychology. (Text/Gao Dan)
Beijing | artist Yin Chaoyang
Retrospective exhibition presents "Rebuilding ideals 1995-2021"
On the afternoon of March 19, Yin Chaoyang's retrospective exhibition "Rebuilding Ideals 1995-2021" was held at the China Contemporary Art Center in Beijing. The exhibition is divided into seven units, with a total of more than 100 paintings and sculptures, presenting Yin Chaoyang's creative process over the past 20 years.
Beginning with an early work from 1990 that tells the story of the influence of art history on art, a Munch and Van Gogh-style "Flowers" work became the earliest prototype of the "painter" spirit. At the end of the 1990s, the embarrassing life, the application of photography, video, and computer technology made Yin Chaoyang shift from art history to personal experience, and the "painter" became a real worker, and the "youth cruel painting" represented by him once again made painting have a new experimental nature in narrative, image concept and aesthetic taste, and constituted an important trend of avant-garde painting in the 90s. After 2000, "Myth" shifted from the depiction of reality to the imagination of history and reality, and the identity of "painter" also entered political, philosophical and literary thinking.
After the age of 40, Yin Chaoyang followed the path of Cézanne and Mount Saint Victor, returning to his hometown of Songshan, integrating the artistic language of The East and the West to depict "contemporary landscapes". At the end of the exhibition, "Van Gogh and the Square", returning to the motif of Yin Chaoyang's artistic creation in the past 20 years, the personal ideal of self-portrait and the collective ideal in the square, returning to the symbol of "painter".
Rhapsody – Blue Midnight
Curator Cui Cancan believes that in this process, we can see the changes in society, the consciousness of painting, and the transformation of the identity of "painters" in different situations. (Text/Gao Dan)