Exhibition poster
On July 5, 2024, the 2024 National Art Fund Communication and Promotion Funding Project "Spirit Matters: Traditional Culture in Chinese Contemporary Art", undertaken by Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, opened at the Mars Street Art Museum, School of Art, Birmingham City University, UK.
The six participating Chinese artists in this exhibition, Fan Bo (b. 1966), Guo Gong (b. 1966), Liang Shaoji (b. 1945), Liu Jianhua (b. 1962), Peng Wei (b. 1974), and Xiao Yu (b. 1965), focus on "things" – material materials rooted in or attached to traditional Chinese culture – through paintings, installations, and videos, respectively. In their works, six different "objects" – ceramics, silk, bamboo, paper, herbs, and wood – are reinterpreted and extended in contemporary art practice as "Chinese materials" with different aesthetic qualities and symbolic meanings.
Exterior view of the Mars Street Art Museum, School of Art, Birmingham City University, UK
Exhibition hall scene
Fan Bo, President of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, sent a message to the opening ceremony: "Art is colorful because of communication, and civilization is enriched by mutual learning. It is hoped that this exhibition will become a new starting point for cultural and artistic exchanges between Guangzhou and Birmingham. ”
Jiang Jiehong, the curator of this exhibition and professor of Birmingham City University, delivered a speech
Jiang Jiehong, a professor at Birmingham City University and curator of the exhibition, said, "The story of China can only be better told through cultural exchanges with feelings. ”
"This exhibition is the result of the unremitting efforts of the curators, artists and team members with the strong support of the National Arts Fund of China. We hope to show the unique charm and creative achievements of traditional Chinese culture in contemporary art to the British audience through the exhibition, and promote the in-depth exchanges and cooperation between China and the UK in the field of art. Hu Yu, the project leader and professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, introduced in his speech.
Liu Jianhua, Sand, ceramic, refractory material, 340x271x20 cm, 2012-2019
As one of the oldest craft materials in China, ceramics has become the language of Liu Jianhua's artistic production. When this material becomes a language, this language is not only based on its materiality and craftsmanship, that is, on the "vocabulary" of this language—simple, complex, ornate, or plain; At the same time, it also defines the production process, some immaterial and methodological rules, i.e. "grammar". Liu Jianhua's installation works are inconspicuous, seemingly like 20 piles of "sand". One of the most common materials used in China's urbanization, sand abounds on overwhelming construction sites. They are like those building materials that are usually seen piled up there – raw and cheap. However, Liu Jianhua's "sand pile" is not actually sand, but ceramics; It is not a raw material to be used and will eventually dissolve into the urban architecture, but a finished product that has been made through traditional firing techniques, and the sand pile, such a simple and natural way of existence, is the perfect shape of the work.
Liang Shaoji, "Plane Tunnel", silk, diameter 145cm × 3, 2011-present
Liang Shaoji traces back to the origins of oriental textiles, returning to its basic building unit, silk, a material discovery that can be compared to the beginning of ancient Chinese civilization, as his language. Since 1989, the artist has devoted himself to raising and training silkworms to produce silk, an organic material, for artistic creation. His philosophical reflections on traditional culture and contemporary life are often based on an understanding of the texture and physical properties of silk, and are expressed through intimate communication with these extraordinary silkworms. Liang Shaoji's series of works "Plane Tunnel" can be described as a tribute to the ancient silk weaving process. Unearthed in the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C. to 9 A.D.), Mawangdui No. 1 Tomb Plain Yarn Single Clothes is the earliest surviving Han Dynasty clothing treasures, weighing only 49 grams, thin as cicada wings, light as smoke clouds, breathtaking. After mastering the biological clock of silkworms and the swing of their silk movements, and the laws of silkworms piling up silk at the edges of their bodies, the artist created a light and transparent circular silk foil through his silkworms. For Liang Shaoji, these silkworms are the collaborators of his artistic production, the messengers of this dialogue that spans thousands of years, and the skilled craftsmen who built this "time tunnel".
Xiao Yu, "If you think too much, you'll ...... No. 3, video, 25', 2015
Since the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), bamboo has been favored by literati and scholars and has played an important role in their paintings and poems. Bamboo is at the heart of Xiao Yu's work, not only as the subject itself, but also as the main working material to establish a new starting point for further exploring intuition and bodily perception. In his work, this sturdy and resilient plant is bent and twisted by some kind of man-made force to the limit of its material. The 2015 video "Thinking Too Much Will... No. 3 shows a straight, mature bamboo pole – uniform thickness from end to end, solid and steady. In an extremely slow shot, the bamboo gradually begins to tremble. As it intensified by an unknown force, it was twisted, twisted, cracked, and crushed into discrete fibers. Until a critical moment, the twisting power is reversed, as if the bamboo can regain its strength, so that the injured can be soothed, and the broken can be repaired.
Fan Bo, Part 1 of the "Complex Phase: Abnormal Transformation" series, linen mixed media, 150×120 cm, 2021
In Fan Bo's 2021 painting series Complex Phases and Variations, Chinese herbal medicine carries its cultural and philosophical significance and is used to fuse Eastern and Western understandings of the current situation. The artist discarded the masterful technique of pictorial realism that he had cultivated over many years of training, and the canvas became a magnified sketchbook of pages—with scribbled formulas, improvised notes and data, and sketches of human organs. Through the global pandemic, these bioscience symbols and images come from the artist's reflections on the fear of disease, the fragility of life, the disharmony in the world, and the uncertainty of the future of mankind, while also revealing the chaos, hesitation, doubt, sadness and pain in this reflection process. In today's society full of compassion and conflict, the herbs used in Fan Bo's paintings are no longer a healing method from the mystical lands of the East, but a cultural ambassador, a diplomatic negotiation, or a prayer for the peace of mankind.
彭薇,《Hi-Ne-Ni — Kuro2》,麻纸水墨(绘画装置),64×35×30 cm,2020
Peng Wei has been trained in traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy since childhood, and paper is an important material to support and display artistic expression. Paper was born in the Eastern Han Dynasty of China (25-220 AD) and carries a thousand-year history. In her series of painting installations, the artist invites us to relive the daily lives of past dynasties, depicting antique buildings, literati gardens, pavilions, and men and women in traditional costumes, as if traveling through scroll paintings. However, Peng Wei's work is not in the form of a scroll, but a half-length female mannequin used for costume display. In these paintings of the female "body", the viewer can read scenes with stories, meaningful spaces, and legendary generations. In Peng Wei's practice, paper made with traditional techniques is first pasted onto a selected mannequin, smooth or wrinkled, and painted on the "skin" of that "body", then dried and then removed from the bust to shed its shell. As a result, paper, as a material medium, is not only used as a carrier for painting, but also as a material for sculpture, completing a journey from two-dimensional to three-dimensional space. While the mannequin is a fake body, Peng Wei's paper installation becomes a fake mannequin, revealing the world of her imagination – otherworldly, delicate, elegant, and otherworldly.
Then remove from the bust after drying. Traveling from two-dimensional space to three-dimensional space, it is used not only as a traditional medium for painting, but also as a material for constructing sculptures. If the mannequin is a hypothetical body, then Peng Wei's painting installation is a hypothetical model, in order to present her imaginary world, delicate, elegant, ethereal—a place far from the world, otherworldly.
Guo Gong, "A Tree - Scroll", trees, silicone, 143 x12 x550cm, 2016
In this exhibition, Guo Gong does show a scroll. However, his scroll was not made of paper, but from the trunk of a pine tree. Through a series of painstaking processes, the trunk is slowly peeled away from the epidermis by a large machine, layer after layer, like an incomparable torture, while the performer always explores and examines all possible secrets. When the entire trunk is unfurled, it is unobstructed – a roll of wood chips more than five meters long and less than half a millimeter thick, silent except for the natural wood grain, as a gesture of determination. In another of Guo Gong's works, wood can be transformed into "metal". The artist collected some discarded and deformed steel bars from urban construction sites, and then, with the most sophisticated and skillful process, he faithfully reproduced the twisted form of the entire steel bar with purple sandalwood, one by one, seemingly almost seamlessly. In the above two works, wood becomes the spokesperson of a special cultural spirit and temperament. If the former is a symbol of openness, confidence, honesty, and fearlessness, the latter is a metaphor for empathy, perseverance, and resilience.
Exhibition hall scene
For the artists in this exhibition, it is not only the material itself or the visual language of their achievements that is important, but also the methods and paths of their artistic practice. More importantly, through the creation and production of works, these materials transcend objects and return to and revive cultural traditions in a contemporary context, thereby extending the established aesthetic imagination and the spiritual power of materials beyond their material form.
It is reported that the exhibition will last until July 26.