2009 – CEAC

Translations

root — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:23:03 +0000

Opening

April 16 at 5 PM, 2010

Duration

April 16 till May 8, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen & Danielle Lemaire

Exhibition ‘Translations’ in search of the Philosophers Stone” is the title for Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen’s project in his recidency at the Chinese European Art Center.Made possible with a grant from the fonds bkvb Amsterdam The Netherlands.

A search for and finding Tao (Dao)-influences in daily life in today’s society in China Xiamen City, one of the first free developing cities in China. Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen is a multi media artist from The Netherlands. Exhibited-lectured –performed and curated exhibitions in Europe, The USA and Asia. Professor of multi media art at the Avans and Fontys universities in The Netherlands.

My goal is to create freedom in research and Art practice starting from the idea ‘Art is not what it is”. The visual and audio output like composition techniques, recording and editing methods and persistent refinment and redefining of the visual as well as aural goals helped to define a body of work for this ‘translations’ exhibition.

You can expect sculptures, a painting, textworks, a film,s everal audioworks and for this ocasion a specialy produced book with cd’s “ Useless Stones “.

All for you together with artworks from his wife Danielle Lemaire in one total installation “Translations” .

For the exhibition “Translations” that Danielle Lemaire makes together with Jan Van Den Dobbelsteen at the CEAC in Xiamen, China, in the workperiod 15 february – 15 may, she realized, new charcoal and pencil drawings and a series of photoworks. next to that she realizes a special performance for the occasion, together with 6 international female students, about female identity and language.

She asked the girls to wear high heels and they will speak and sing live through a headset microphone with an amplifier attached to the belly, moving in and out of the artspace. Such headsets she has seen used by sellers in several shops in the streets of Xiamen. It occured also to Danielle that a lot of Chinese women wear (very) high heels, on which they shop and carry heavy shopping bags a long way, carry children on the arm, walk on the sand at the beach or climb the rocks way up high at a Buddhist temple. She thinks that it is remarkable and typical that these women don’t show pain or exhaustion from it and wonders if the high heels represent a certain pride or self-confidence.

Danielle’s performances are never the same; when she performs, most of the time she brings songs and sound-landscapes based on personal stories, in a specific time schedule. Lately she sets up specific performance events in which female artists / musicians bring performances based on her investigation of the phenomenon of female identity in public space.

For this exhibition Danielle publishes a book “Aerials” with photos of drawings dated 2007 – 2010 and photos of all kinds of antennas- aerials- that make the cellphone communication possible in Xiamen.

Gallery

VIDEO LOUNGE

root — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:50:04 +0000

Opening

December 18 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

December 18, 2009 till January 7, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans

CEAC is happy to invite you to VIDEO LOUNGE, a platform for exchange by Belgian artists Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans. VIDEO LOUNGE allows both artists to present part of the research they have been doing in Xiamen for their new video project, RESIDENCE (working title). The research itself is a continuation of their investigation into the intricate relations between art, architecture and economy, which featured in their previous film, The Good Life (a guided tour), also on view. VIDEO LOUNGE elaborates further on this theme in two screening programs – ON VALUE and BACKSOURCING -, which the artists invited Nav Haq and Vincent Meessen to put together.

Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans
The Good Life (a guided tour), 2009, 16min
“A unique proposal for those who conceive their life as a work of art.” This recent video by Heiremans & Vermeir is a meditation on the inextricable relationship between institutions of contemporary art and the wide structure of the economy, harnessed today by the ‘creative class’. The video takes the form of a virtual guided tour around an ambiguous contemporary art institution, in a future scenario where it is selling off its building to be transformed into luxury apartments. The depicted institution (itself an uncanny ‘collage’ of four existing major European institutions), for an unspecified reason, is utilizing its assets, promising major regeneration to its host city. Get a full tour – get a taste for ‘The Good Life’.

RESIDENCE (working title)
A video workshop with A Xiu, Boyi, Chen Libin, Dong Yehong, Guo Sai, Jia Zhixing, Mei Lin, Mi Zhenxi, Li Yi, Pan Feifei, Tian Rui , Wang Yu, Wang Hechen – New Media Department of Prof. Qin Jian, Art College of Xiamen University.

RESIDENCE (working title) is part of A.I.R, an ongoing project Vermeir & Heiremans have been developing since 2006. Encompassing various collaborations in different formats, A.I.R examines architecture as a significant ideological gesture.

The result of an intense workshop with a dozen of students of Xiamen Art College, this phase of RESIDENCE (working title) presents itself as a video set of three narratives all generated from the same source material. Focusing on the identity of a group of young people, each of the three narratives allows for different details in the story to take prominence. RESIDENCE (working title) offers a prime example of the potential for collaboration, while in the process engaging with all literal and symbolic forms of translation.

Gallery

Playing In Storms

root — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 07:54:02 +0000

Opening

December 18 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

December 18, 2009 till January 7, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Amy Thomas and Oliver Irvine

Amy Thomas and Oliver Irvine have been working collaboratively over the past years instigating many projects most notably ATOI ARTS GALLERY, a project space located on a busy high street in England where the general public where invited to view contemporary art at a very accessible yet challenging level amongst high street stores. In June 2009 the artists launched ‘The Cloud Seeding Project’ with a solo show at Gallery 35 in Manchester. This 12 month project has formed and still continues to form the basis for intensive research into Cloud Seeding. Cloud Seeding is a form of weather modification used to alter the sky by attempting to change the amount or type of precipitation that falls from clouds. The method is used throughout the world, most commonly however in China. Recent examples include steering off the rain at the Chinese 60th Anniversary celebrations, the unprecedented snowfall in Beijing and the artificially induced rainfall to relieve drought in the Fujian province in November 2009.

For their solo exhibition ‘Playing in Storms’ at the Chinese European Art Centre, the artists utilise the idea of weather modification to explore global and social issues, yet still allow for space to open up wider questioning. They say the works in the exhibition speak on ideas of belief systems, communication, broken cycles, control, fate and possibility. In stead of exhibiting finished works with distinct messages, it seems the artists are aiming to create a field of raw communication where different energies meet, utilising sculpture, performance, painting and photography to do so.

“We have been cautious not to allow The Cloud Seeding project to simply comment on and critique the concepts of weather modification, to simply do this would , for us, be tackling something so real and so blatant that it would need no metaphorical description to bring it’s bizarreness to attention.
However we are inspired by the metaphorical and literal implications of weather modification, in global, social and economic ideals. (..) Humans can try to play god and attempt to control the weather. It is a concept that has the potential for catastrophic or revolutionary outcomes.”

‘Playing in Storms’ will be exhibited at the Chinese European Art Centre from the 18th December 2009-07th January 2010. The Cloud Seeding project can be followed online at www.atoiarts.org. The project will be concluded in England in June 2010.

Gallery

The Dialogue

root — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:34:57 +0000

Opening

November 20 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

November 20 till December 11, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Group exhibition

On the occasion of the ten years anniversary of the CEAC we invite you and your friends to join us at the opening of the International exhibitions The Dialogue on Friday November 20th 2009 at 17:00 hours.

The opening will be attended by the Ambassador of the Republic of Iceland in Beijing, Mr. Gunnar Snorri Gunnarsson and Consul General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Guangzhou,Mr. Antonius van Zeeland and the Consul General of Switzerland in Guangzhou, Mr. Werner E. Nievergelt. Also a great number of the participating artists from China and the European countries will be present at the opening.

Location exhibition Building D, 4th floor of Art College
The International Exhibition: The Dialogue
November 20- December 11
Curator: Ineke Gudmundsson
Assistants and coordination: May Li, Lucy Chen and Chuanxi Chen, Tim.
Artist China:
Chen Wenling, Xiamen/Beijing,Chuanxi Chen, Fujian Pr.,Huang Yan, Beijing, Kan Xuan, Beijing, Maleonn, Shanghai, Meiya Lin, Xiamen/NL, Xu Huijing, Guangzhou, Liang Shuo, Beijing, Gu Yue, Fujian Pr./Beijing, Shen Ye, Fuzhou, Wang Wei, Beijing, Weina, CN/NL, Zhifei Yang, Xiamen/NL, Yang Jian, CN/NL, Ma Wen, CN & Horst Baur, Germany, Rania Ho,USA/CN

Foreign artists:
Björn Norgaard, DK, Bard Breivik, NW, Rachel de Joode, NL, Richard Gibson, IE, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, IS/CN, Stevens Vaughn, USA, Colette Hosmer, USA Pascal, FR/USA, Vroegop & Schoonveld, NL, Charlotte Schleiffert, NL, The Icelandic Love Corporation, IS, (Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir, Jóní Jónsdóttir and Eirún Sigurdardóttir), Kristján Gudmundsson, IS, Ragna Róbertsdóttir, IS, Klitsa Antoniou, CY, Pieter Holstein, NL, Sandra Kunz, CH/CN, Nick Renshaw, UK/NL, Ronny Delrue,BE.

The Dialogue is an exhibition of sixteen Chinese artists and twenty one foreign artists. The artists were selected by Ineke Gudmundsson, the director of the CEAC.

The architect of the exhibition is Tim, Chuanxi Chen, who also is one of the exhibiting artists. All the artists in this exhibition have been in one or another way working or exhibiting in the CEAC during the past ten years. Many of these artists are here in Xiamen to celebrate this milestone in the work of the Chinese European Art Center. Together with a lot of people and with the support of the Dutch Government and Xiamen University Art College we have been working on a publication of a 320 page book about our activities at the CEAC and Art College in the past ten years. This book has the title; The Red Snowball, and will be published later this year in China and The Netherlands.

Sandberg Institute and Xiamen University Art College postgraduate’s students are presenting the exhibition: The Young Dialogue
Curator: Marjo van Baar
Participating students:
Tom Milnes – UK, Renee van Trier – NL, Kirsten Wilmink – DE, Sachi Miyachi – Japan, Mattijs Bredewold – NL, Ulrik Kristensen – DK, Jetske Verhoeven – NL, Georgi Tabatadze – Georgia, Marieke de Jong – NL, Sina Khani – Iran/DL
Xiamen University Art College:
Chen Libin, Dong Yehong, Huang Xiaoqin, Jin Jing, Jia Zhixing, Mi Zhenxi, Tian Rui.

We would like to thank the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Guangzhou, the Swiss Consulate of Guangzhou, the Rabobank Graafschap-Noord Zutphen e.o of the Netherlands and Mr. Stevens Vaughn for their support.

The Young Dialogue is an exhibition of works made by postgraduate students from The Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and Xiamen University Art College. The Vice Dean of the Sandberg Institute Marjo van Baar has been working closely with the Art College for many years, both in China and Amsterdam. Marjo van Baar is the curator for this exhibition and she has selected seventeen young artist/ postgraduates from Xiamen University Art College and Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This exhibition is a good example of a fruitful cooperation between the two institutes.

The two postgraduate courses cooperate for nearly 10 years and are honored to present themselves at the 10 year anniversary of the CEAC. The CEAC, under the inspiring directorship of Mrs Ineke Gudmundsson, plays a very important role in the exchange program between the two schools. It gives space to the newest developments in art and it’s often the first serious art platform where young artists present their works to the outside world. The Young Dialogue is the title of our contribution to this anniversary. Young because all the participants of this exhibition are at the beginning of their art careers. The Dialogue points at the frankness of their minds to get to know each others frames of reference and approaches to the arts in spite off the different cultural backgrounds. We meet each other in a shared interest for art and its place in society.

Gallery

Center for Cloning and Manipulation Collection 2009

root — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:01:01 +0000

Opening

October 23 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

October 23 till November 13, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Ronny Delrue

Belgian artist Ronny Delrue has made ceramic works with the theme of CCM：Center for Cloning and Manipulation, which are his new experimental creation since 2003. His works in the past were mainly drawings and paintings; however his change on the choice of materials is actually his continuation and development on the same theme.

In the past twenty years the images that Ronny has created are mainly about people. One of his artworks’ special characteristics lies in infusing various abstract thinking and perspectives of thinking in identifiable images. Thoughts on abstraction come from his strong demands on simplicity and purity, while simplicity and purity don’t mean synoptically dealing with images in a visual form; instead it’s sheer concentration of psychological experience.

In this exhibition audience witness a new result showing above-mentioned viewpoints presented by Ronny through his ceramics works Center for Cloning and Manipulation after creating a large number of drawings and paintings. A visual form that looks like a bomb but actually symbolically summarizes and presents human bodies: no heads and arms, two legs almost visible while the white colour of ceramics the material itself suggests the simplicity and purity. Two hundred pieces of human figure sculptures more or less remind the audience of Chinese terracotta warriors; the difference is that Ronny’s works diminishes characteristics and individuality of each figure using the form of cloning.

The exhibition site is Chinese European Art Centre in Xiamen, a southern Chinese city. Ronny as an artist in residence came to Xiamen to live and create his works, in the meantime gave a series of lectures about his artistic creation in Xiamen University Art College. His living and working experience in Xiamen naturally presents his feelings about everyday life in China through the way he displays his works. Above CEAC gate he hangs a cheap billboard that is often seen outside various shops in Chinese cities and two big red signs using “Collection 2009” this kind of advertising terms to express his ceramics figure sculptures. What are the differences between artistic creation and products cloning? Ronny uses a very special way “Centre for Cloning and Manipulation”, the concept through which he puts forward his further thinking and offers perspectives for the audience for dialogues between two different cultural backgrounds.

Qin Jian
Sept. 27, 2009

Gallery

Discovering Slowness

root — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:15:10 +0000

Opening

September 25 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

September 25 till October 16, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Group exhibition

Artists：Barbara Visser, Broersen & Lukacs, Gabriel Lester, Eelco Brand, Hans Op de Beeck, Job Koelewijn, Michal Butink, Oliver Boberg, Paul Kooiker, Raymond Taudin Chabot, Anouk De Clercq, Ine Lamers, Lon Robbe, Philippine Hoegen, Martijn Veldhoen, Dan Geesin, Marjan Teeuwen, Matt Calderwood.

During my search for a producer of projectors who would be willing to enter into a mutually beneficial collaboration with KW14 in the context of the Discovering Slowness, I met a public relations employee of a multinational. No, they weren’t interested in sponsoring or collaboration, not wishing to be associated with something like slowness. This anecdote is as telling as it is trendy and characteristic of the times. Eventually, Epson Holland proved to be willing to generously support the exhibition by providing all the necessary beamers.

In art too, fashions and trends dominate, albeit less compellingly than in former eras; current times are characterized by an anything goes character. The time of avant-gardes and movements has been behind us for some decades. This does not mean that there are no hypes or common loves. One moment painting is hot, the next it is pronounced dead, then the documentary tradition is in the spotlights or much attention goes to new media. At the moment imagination rules again, so I’ve heard. To me this sounds peculiar: in my opinion, imagination and inspiration are essential characteristics of art, they cannot be subject to trends, they are of all times and ages, no Zeitgeist or hype can change that. Apart from intrinsic and formal layers of meaning, personal necessity and relevance to current times, imagination and inspiration are the very cornerstones of a work of art. Beauty is another thing that I like to see in a work of art. These are the basic principles that have guided me since 1993, the year I started KW14, the artist’s initiative connected to my practice as a visual artist.

Recently, the border area between photography and film has received considerable attention. It is the theme of the Discovering Slowness exhibition, which highlights this transitional area from the perspective of the moving image (not the photograph), and consists merely of projections. The emphasis is on autonomous works of art dealing with the human condition – works of art that show a broad range of human existence in their personal patterns and necessity.

I am very pleased that we can show the exhibition Discovering Slowness, at the Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen University we did make a selection from the exhibition what will be shown. The exhibition has been showed in 2’8 at National Centre of Photography of the Russian Federation, Saint – Petersburg and at the Centre of contemporary Art M’Ars in Moscow. It is a big challenge to present the participating artists to the Chinese public in an entirely different setting. Surveillance cameras are all around us, cell phones are equipped with a camera function and monitors and vide screens accompanies us permanently, both inside and outside our homes. Images are there for the taking. Artists, too, are inspired by these uses. It is striking that in these times of innovation the border area between photography and film would be topical. It is an area that is almost synonymous to limitation and deceleration. The transitional area combines characteristics of photography and film, but also has qualities all its own. As a result of the digital revolution, photography and film are increasingly interwoven, which has its effects on both disciplines. Moving images are frozen or slowed down to the extreme, while still images are set into motion.
State-of-the-art digital and analogous techniques provide artists with an inexhaustible range of possibilities. The specific characteristics of film and photography can be fiddled with through manipulation and reorganisation of the elements of movement, time and space. Film, for instance (a medium that owes its very existence to the passage of time), can be decelerated or stopped, repeated endlessly, stripped of its narrative structure or limited in its focus. Photographs (frozen, still moments by definition) can placed in a moving sequence. In this case, movement is not primarily used to tell stories, but rather a visualisation of time. The camera viewpoint is often fixed and the projection tends to focus on one single event or one space. Drawn-out moments that are a highly cinematic in nature. A clear narrative structure is often lacking, allowing much space for the spectator’s imagination. Delineation is the common denominator for the stylistic devices of the border area. Delineation of time, delineation in movement, delineation of space and delineation in the story line. Deceleration is a much-used method here. Other methods include the use of close-up, repetition (often in the form of loops with a perpetuum mobile character), discontinuity and simultaneity. With the use of these stylistic devices, often borrowed from the world of cinema (there has always been a strong interaction between the worlds of cinema and art) intuitive layers of meaning (in an intrinsic, psychological and aesthetical sense) are added to the works of art and the intensity of the visual experience is heightened Discovering Slowness shows Job Koelewijn his film Sur Place (2003). This video Projection shows a cyclist, balancing on his bicycle (sur place), waiting to dash away.

In retrospect, some remarkable developments in the history of art may be seen as precursors of the current trend of working in the border area between photography and film. The first to be discussed here is the tableau vivant. The tableau vivant (emerging as an art form in the eighteenth century) with its allegorical and mythological content, often referring to classical painting, has influenced photography, film and performance art to a great extent. The light boxes of contemporary artist Jeff Wall are a direct reference to history painting and the tableau vivant.

A number of works at the exhibition can be placed in the tradition of the tableau vivant, such as All together now… (2005) by Hans op de Beeck. We see three groups of table companions, portrayed in three different locations; a group of elderly people with coffee and cake after a funeral; a sad bride and groom with their guests, and a group at a birthday dinner: a well-to-do gentleman with his family in an overly designed interior. In one continuous and slow movement the camera records the psychological portraits of the guests. In Barbara Visser’s work themes such as acting, real/fake and remakes are key concepts. She shows her film Philippa (1998). The film has been shot in the Van Loon Museum in Amsterdam and is characterized by a minimum of plot and continuous repetition, with Philippa van Loon acting out an ingenious role play in the monumental spaces of the seventeenth-century museum. Raymond Taudin Chabot’s work fits into this tradition too. The exhibition show two of his works, his most recent Disposition (2006) (with well-known Dutch actor Gijs Scholten van Aschat). The film can be seen as a still life, with men figuring as animated sculptures of sorts. The films have been shot in an excruciatingly slow tempo: psychological portraits, zooming in on the characters razor-sharply.
The factor of time is the main difference between a frozen, still moment and film. Paul Kooiker presents a recent work on eight interconnected monitors. Several films of model sessions and spurting fountains are shown, and then there is the film Grasmaaier (Lawn Mower, 2005). Grasmaaier shows a Kooiker-type of woman in a bikini mowing the small lawn of her terraced home, endlessly walking her little rounds; a small poodle enters the picture for a moment. The themes that characterize Kooiker’s work cannot be missed, in this case lush vegetation and romantic skies. Models throwing around a ball between them, doing a handstand or spinning around in a decadent lounge chair. In his studio I was struck – not for the first time – by the power a minimum of movement motion can add to an image. The simple fact that the model has eye contact with the spectator generates an additional impact.

This is also true for Martijn Veldhoen’s latest film, Public Spaces (2006). Using digital techniques, large numbers of photographs have been transformed into moving images, into film. In its execution this film is entirely different, though. It does have a plot and a storyline In Dan Geesin’s film In the Garden (1998), not photographs but 35-mm slides have been edited into a film. This film does not show flowing movement: separate moments are turned back one frame, then moved forward two frames, et cetera. This technique of jerky movements has its own intrinsic relevance.
Oliver Boberg’s films may also be considered moving photographs. They evolve around simple events, such as waves lashing the coast (Klippe/Cliff, 2003), or fog lifting in a forest (Wald/Forest, 2002). The fact that these are constructed realities, notably scale models, lends his work a unique position.

The latest film by Michal Butink refers to the same theme. In Flash (2006), tourists posing for a photograph in an Asian country light up in the flashlight, and are frozen in the same instant.

Eelco Brand and Anouk de Clerq both work with 3D techniques. Eelco Brand shows his latest film, entitled SB. Movi (2006). A person walking through a dark spruce wood (the movement of walking is visible through the movement of the camera) moves from the dark to the light of an open spot. Several artists in the exhibition have a direct relation to the subject of light, both formally and as to content. In Matt Calderwood’s film Strips (2005) we see the backside of a substantial row of striplights; an invisible ball smashes the lights one by one, the light disappears step by step, making way for darkness.

The exhibition Discovering Slowness explores this border area, showing all dimensions from photography to film. One final consideration: would so much slowness not be boring to the modern exhibition visitor, who has been treated to a considerable amount of entertainment over the last few years? Initially, that thought crossed my mind. But as the organisation of the exhibition progressed and the list of participating artists grew, I knew better. So many different approaches, so many different themes, all this makes Discovering Slowness a very cohesive and multi-faceted exhibition.

Marjan Teeuwen
Director Artist Initiative

Gallery

Come, look and see……Us

root — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:19:42 +0000

Opening

July 14 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

July 14 till 31, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Terrence Letiche

About Mi Zhenxi

I paint myself, my wife, my parents, the intimacy of my existence. I paint how it is to feel being ‘there’ — an affective someplace in which I find myself. This painting is not about objects, about commonplaces, about the mass produced material world. I do not sms images as if such tokens could create common space. Space is individual, complex, divided and difficult to communicate. A painting has to be looked at — not just electronically shared as a token. Electronic markers may establish a rational, sign posted way of being together — but this is abstract contact and very impersonal. The painting requires time, to make and to look at. It does not have an automatic sense and is not easily and simply shared. The painting makes demands on time and seeing. I have to puzzle often weeks to find the painting inn me and to be able to start to paint. And it is my intention that the viewer puzzle a moment to find a perspective and sense of meaning in what has been painted. We have images all around us as visual throwaways — moments of visual stimulation to be forgotten as quickly as they are displayed. The painting tries to slow down time – to demand a moment of attention in a world of images that fly about our heads unattended to. Do I have the right to demand the observer’s attention? Is this arrogant? In the visual chaos that we live in asking someone to really look at something is making an extraordinary demand. And I want the viewer to really look – I want to make that exceptional demand. It is not that I want to claim that what I have to say (paint) is so extraordinarily important. But I do want to claim that people who never look never see — when they do not look they don’t live relationships for they won’t see what they have. Therefore it is, I believe, crucially important to see — and painting is the art of seeing. It has been popular (for instance in postmodernism) to berate ‘seeing’. Seeing was supposedly too intellectual, too male, too aggressive. I wish to counter this critique. Not seeing is too blind, unfeeling and emotionless. Seeing is a key dimension to knowing one is alive. As long as one sees, one knows one exists — I see therefore I am. But in the monotony of garish consumerism one cannot see. I paint that there is seen – firstly by myself as the painter and thereafter by whomever is willing to look at my paintings.

–Mi Zhenxi
All along, I work to explore the existence of myself, quite often to use the way of self-portrait to record the fragments of life. However, the existence of me is uncertain, different conditions have different presentations. People often think that the person will become more real after the effect of alcohol, but this does not suit me, I will lose myself and get into a very strange person after mania alcohol. Perhaps that is a real, a kind of me that dare to face myself in the real life.

–Jia Zhixing—‘Lost’
People are inclined to find their own private space, but they also would like to have an independent thinking and acting. This is everyone’s personal space to reflect his/her personality, hobbies, occupation, status, experience, stories, life, etc. The “private space” has a certain distance from the surrounding as well as people do have – a kind of flexible distance. So this time I tried temporarily to narrow this distance, and to experience the different feelings of the private space. Wanting to communicate with other persons. Making record of their language, experiements, perceptions, small talks, the truth…. The whole process has to subvert the impression that I had the view of things and objects, and attempts to access to the information from the details of the private space and to present his/her scene or attitude. So either he/she would like to present something to me. Regarding ideals, love, life, humanity, growth……

Gallery

Southern Gothic

root — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:08:26 +0000

Opening

June 19 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

June 19 till July 11, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Chloé Morrison

Chloé Morrison presents an exhibition of new work made during her residency at the Chinese European Art Center. The small number and diminutive scale of the drawings presented may result in the exhibition seeming rather slight and inconsequential at first glance, however detailed and patient viewing will reveal the drawings intensively worked surfaces, heavily loaded with meaning. The obvious craftsmanship employed provides an emphasis that serves as a lightning conductor for the works explosive content.

The subjects themselves are easy to grasp. The human heart, that beating pump which propels our lives, is recognizably represented. As is the bat, an animal that the artist observed flitting through the night skies of Xiamen.

Morrison uses firm lines when she renders this physical organ and animal. She stresses their shapes, apparently attempting to underline the realistic nature of her subjects.But those who are sensitive to the evocative atmosphere that emanates from these “normal” drawings, will immediately observe an abnormal, uncanny sense of disquiet. It’s not the old issue of life and death that is at stake here. It’s rather the uncomfortable feeling of an ominous atmosphere. Dusk, rather than bright daylight, provides the perfect environment for the mental state described by Sigmund Freud as unheimlich (‘uncanny’ in English). Moments that make your flesh creep often surface when you feel uncertain about the realistic aspect of something, for example, the human figure. In literature and art the notion of gothic is akin to the Freudian unheimlich. What differentiates the two sensations is the gloomy, ominous atmosphere of the former. Gothic triggers the intuition of a nightmare; something natural like a bat can be interpreted as being a messenger of evil.

Whilst undertaking research into the gothic during her stay in Xiamen Morrison was interested to discover that it is not just a phenomenon of the West, but is also present in Asia, particularly in the South East region. As Morrison became increasingly aware of the potentially gothic elements within Southern Chinese culture, many aspects of her daily surroundings, from the bats on Gulangyu to the ghostlike ships lying stationery on a sea often shrouded in mist, provided a stimulus to the charisma of her explosive drawings.

These drawings should not be read as simple representations, but rather scrutinized inch by inch. Morrison’s works can be as time consuming for the audience as for the artist. However once the layers start to exude their mysterious gloom, the viewer will be gifted with sensibilities that

Isolated Situation

root — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:43:48 +0000

Opening

May 29 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

May 29 till June 10, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Pass out of existence photography&video
Huang Xiaoqin
This is a series of photography and video work related to sleeping.
“The moment when people fall asleep, does their consciousness disappear? Where do their souls go?” For a while their body and breathing sounds are the only proof of their existence. The details of subconscious thought again attracted me and led me to raise questions about my own existence.

In Suspension Painting, Mixed-medium
Xue Zenghui
There are more and more people in this world and less and less living space for us, a developing social problem. I feel nervous and fret when I face this. I’m trying to make myself be in suspension and float in the air, where I can draw on my notebook aimlessly. I do this because it’s the only way to extricate myself from pressure.
I draw my feelings on the tablecloth; place in it idyllic living scenes. It’s my attempt to bring my feelings of real life into my work: a place to escape to.

Between absence Installation Hotel room-2258, A series of project sketch
Chen Wei
“Unhappy, no passion, and without contact, are the characteristics of lonely animals.
A lonely person lives in a room in a city, maybe each room in the city is exactly the same.”
This sometimes extremely detached personal experience of people living in present society,
is the topic on which my works focus on at the moment.

Factory that makes aircraft, installation
Lu Dawei
I have always paid attention to the theme of copying and mass production. I once
dreamed of an absurd scene, where I saw a strange combination of horses, planes
and the moon. I think that this combination is very interesting and can represent
more about our responses towards influences of our environment on our subconscious.
It is the main content of my creation.

Swirl Lighting Installation, Video
Jin Jing
This is an illusory scene of the city. The twinkling neon lights are like the
colorful soap bubbles in the night sky, soaring, spinning, wandering…

Gallery

WHITE RIOT

root — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:35:10 +0000

Opening

April 24 at 5 PM, 2009

Duration

April 24 till May 15, 2009

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Nick Renshaw

British/Dutch artist Nick Renshaw is in residence at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen for the months March April and May of 2009. Towards the end of this period he will present work in a solo presentation that is both a summation of important general areas of his artistic practice and also a representation of the influences he has garnered during his time at CEAC and in China.

Renshaw is interested in the apparent interconnectivities that exist within his work, in the subsequent development of his visual language, and the connection with and between the environments, places and influences he has come into contact with.

A Jungian explanation of oriental thought relates to an interconnection between all elements, an organic all-absorbing process, rather than Western rationale where cause and effect relationships are constructed and followed.Renshaw’s own interconnective process finds therefore a very personal parallel within the workings and behaviour of Chinese society. His predominantly and at first seemingly Western perspective and background in conjunction with this apparently Eastern, oriental thought and working process gives his work a unique character.

The exhibition ‘White Riot’ interconnects visually a number of significant ideas and interests in Renshaw’s work. The name itself refers directly to the title of a song with the same name from the punk generation of the late seventies. An important symbol not just in terms of the energetic and positive appeal such creative spirit embellished but also because of the personal echo this creativity and period in time had at an embryonic stage in Renshaws own life.

Ideas of desire and yearning are important concerns in Renshaw’s work. Desires that can lead to a world of sentimentality, of imitation, of mimicry and of idealism. An idealism where devotion to preperceived images is particularly apparent. Whether this be a desire for the aclaim of the Rockstar and all the satisfaction this apparently provides, the ‘Wannabe’ culture, or the fascination of Eastern and Western cultures on and with each other. The longing for involvement in one anothers worlds are issues that Renshaw observes in reverse ways and at different levels within both Eastern and Western cultures.

Renshaw’s visual language has involved the practical, visual and theoretical use of the material clay for many years. He has travelled and worked around the world coming into contact with protagonists of this material from a wide variety of viewpoints and cultural perspectives. In this exhibition he will emphasise the desires of contemporary cultures and that of Eastern and Western societies by collaborating creatively with a colleague Chinese porcelain master artist to make a porcelain sculpture based directly on an iconic photographic image for that of the Rockstar, and one importantly associated directly with the group responsible for the punk anthem White Riot, The Clash.

This work carried out in the almost mythically associated porcelain regions of Fujian province relates consequently to ideas of Eastern and Western culture, trade links, aesthetic influences, social interchange, art history and of originality. The ideas of originality and devotion are expanded on in other works in the exhibition. Connective drawings and sculptures, superrealistic paintings drawn from photographic images of ancient porcelain working methods and sculptures that echo and mimic the ideas of desire and the visual language associated herewith.