2012 – CEAC

Delusory hopes – ‘Luchtkastelen’

root — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:34:55 +0000

Opening

November 24 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

November 24 till December 8, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Cathelijn van Goor

Four months ago Cathelijn arrived in Xiamen for a 4 month working period at the CEAC. She came to China to explore her ideas in an environment where the subject of her art is an actual topic. In China things change and develop with an amazing speed. This makes it a perfect place to see how technological development is reflected in daily life. For her research she visited big cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

In her solo-exhibition ‘Delusory hopes’ at the CEAC she will show drawings from several new series made during her stay in Xiamen.

The series ‘Digitalized’ is inspired by modern, busy streets were video screens, billboards and neon signs scream for attention. The moving images and the giants on the advertisements seem to overrule the people in the streets. Even the architecture is colored by the light from neon signs. In these drawings Cathelijn wants to show how the digital world that we humans create slowly seems to take over. Different layers of reality seem to be present.

In the series ‘Delusory hopes’ she also works with the idea of different layers of reality. She drew reflections of skyscrapers in the windows of other high buildings. In these reflections the buildings appear in fragmented and more organic forms. They look like beautiful castles up in the sky and could resemble something we long for, but are in fact only mirages that cannot be touched.

Next to making her own drawings she challenged a group of 7 students from the TKK Art College to think along on her theme about the world slowly getting digitalized. Together with these young artists she recreated a busy street from Hong Kong in a wallpaper sized drawing.

Gallery

Voyage

root — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 13:55:01 +0000

Opening

October 20 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

October 20 till November 10, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Bert van Loo

Bert van Loo got his education mainly at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and studied a period at the Royal College of Art in London. Travelled extensively to north and South America, all of Europe, China and Japan, won a few prizes, got a few grants and did about 20 large scale commissions. His work is represented by more than 25 museums, as well as many private collections. He exhibited almost everywhere and had one retrospective: “BERT VAN LOO – Naturalezas cruzadas – Cutting trough nature – Dwars door de natuur” at the Fundacion Centro Nacional del Vidrio, Segovia, Spain.” (With catalogue.)

The art critic writer about his work ….. I have never asked him what he is trying to say in his sculpture, or even why he uses glass or stone. His work is self-evident, and that is probably the most important criteria for quality. Sculpture should define, determine a space, and each of his monumental works does that in a wholly different manner. ….The glass is a real presence because of its reflection, but also in the soft tint that is produced when the glass sheets are stacked and yet a high degree of transparency. He often seeks out combinations with other materials, like stone to create a contrast; you experience a huge difference in the densities of the mass…. The result is a remarkable reversal of the traditional sculpture. Despite a characteristic, almost floating appearance, the earthly connection is always there.

Bert van Loo is on a trip in China as an artist in residence.
“It is an experience you will carry with you for the rest of your life. It will change you and enrich you. Back home you will be another person. Each voyage is full of surprises, this is not different in Xiamen, but the stay here is a clear example of a very positive experiences.

As a result I created a few new sculptures – with a lot of help – made out of local granite and float glass. For me the works are full of Chinese emotions which I like to share with you.”

Gallery

CEAC video group exhibition

root — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:50:13 +0000

Opening

September 22 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

September 22 till October 13, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

AnneMarie van Splunter
Title: A Day Such As This (Amsterdam version)
Running time: 8:33 minutes

The 9 year old pupils of class 5A of primary school De Witte Olifant in Amsterdam open their curtains to start the day.
Visual artist AnneMarie van Splunter filmed the children at their homes.
The film shows 21 children, 21 curtains and 21 views on a small part of the city of Amsterdam.
An optimistic welcoming of a new day, accompanied by Bill Withers’s song “Lovely Day”.

Sabina Maria van der Linden
Title: Fluffy minimalism
Running time: 9:15 minutes

These performances were recorded by the group exhibition of artists Fluffy Minimalism Ursula Döbereiner and Sabina Maria van der Linden which presented in the gallery Laura Mars. Directions, mathematical formulas, musical notation or the placement of furniture in a room – when someone tries to explain something figuratively, but words and gestures are often not sufficient, then either pen and paper and create a drawing. These records Ursula Döbereiner has collected over the years traced the computer and superimposed. As wall to wall papered computer printouts form the basis for their drawings， three levels of decoration Sabina Maria van der Linden consisting catwalk performances and Muzak, which are presented in the exhibition Fluffy Minalism. The artist presents decorative Interiors: delicate tulle pompom and a Styrofoam sculpture on which Esther Quade and Beate Kaulitz move hose and burkaartigen costumes and show up as the remote-controlled puppet of a tower clock movement and disappear.

Rumiko Hagiwara
Title: Exit in my studio/ Stick and x
Running time: 3:37 minutes

My works consists of tiny changes in the daily life. It is based on the notion that spaces contain memories and time as a result o human action and behavior. These memories can easily be ignored as our attention is distracted by elements that occupy our daily life. I point the attention to this phenomenon by suggesting the viewer to notice and rediscover trivial things.

I think phenomena of the world surrounding us always have some kind of system bounds or frameworks, but we are not aware of being part of such bounds in spite of the fact that all bounds come from just daily life.
I started to use photo and video often since 2008. I found the way to use these registrations to document my minimalistic intervention of life, translation the documentation into the art itself.

Wineke Gartz
Title: River Walk 2009
Running time: 12 minutes

A video collage made with two partly overlapping video projections of images shot in Kitakyushu, Japan in 2003 and 2004. Wineke Gartz became friends with some of the homeless men and women at the time she was living in Japan during a one year artist residency at that time. The footage is shot in different times of the year, such as summer time, Christmas time and during the rainy season. ‘River Walk’ shows the homeless Japanese men and women in their habitats in public parks and alongside the rivers. In the center of town they were living underneath a steel arcade next to a shopping and amusement center called ‘River Walk’, where they had made the benches into their temporary homes. In Gartz’ video dyptich, these images are partly overlapping with images of a busy restaurant area nearby, and with images of the omnipresent Christmas decoration in the shopping streets: castles made out of Christmas lights. They form a comforting and utopian background for the homeless men. The song in the video is ‘House of cards’ by Radiohead. ‘River Walk’ is part of the project ‘Men become Flowers’ (2003 – 2006). See for more information the press release

Memory

root — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:05:57 +0000

Opening

June 2 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

June 2 till 13, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Pan Feifei

Pan Feifei was born in Shandong province of China.

Handicraft production has a long history in Shandong province. Feifei’s grandfather is a very good craftsman. She spent all her childhood with her grandfather, during those years, she always saw grandfather weaving or doing all kinds of handcrafts.

In her memory, traditional handicraft was very familiar and close to her. But gradually the strange feeling comes out. It makes her confused but also curious about this feeling. She tries to find a special relationship between the body, object, time and space.

She uses the traditional way of knitting straw sandals to weave a high-heel shoe;

She uses hemp ropes to weave a thong, bikini, boy shorts, a pair of socks, knee socks, stockings and panty-hose;

She records the process which a piece of paper was folded numerous times until broken.
……

Gallery

Fruit from Fuzhou

root — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 07:40:03 +0000

Opening

July 28 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

July 28 till 30, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Voebe de gruyter

During my stay in China I was interested in the process involved in the making of bodiless lacquer.
I travelled several times to Fuzhou, which is the centre of famous lacquer ware.
I asked the lacquer painters how they could produce these smooth shiny surfaces in this polluted city, filled with dust of traffic and ongoing construction sites.
They replied: we polish the dust away! You will not see it in the end, the surface will be smooth!

The natural varnish they use is made from the sap of the lacquer tree. Once exposed to air, the raw lacquer is used as a strong adhesive and by drying in the shade, it produces a very hard, durable finish.

I thought: the time the lacquer is wet it attracts particles and all of them will disappear in the layers, one by one.
So, if you follow their way, small pieces of the urban environment like coarse particles released by demolition and the tiny air-pollution particles, will gradually be included in the lacquer.
The amount tiny matter the lacquer can collect is also related to the duration of the process. After preparation and polishing it takes about 3 months to coat, with several dozen up to hundreds of layers of lacquer, reaching a total thickness of 5 to 18 millimetres. After every layer the lacquer painter has to wait at least 12 hours before adding a new one.

My conclusion: the natural lacquer method is physically collecting the history of the changing Chinese environments and neighbourhoods.

The video ‘Fruit from Fuzhou’ express this idea of changes recorded and included by lacquer.
I was very lucky the old lacquer-master Zheng Chongyao wanted to cooperate with me.

Gallery

Sorry Out of order

root — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 07:29:16 +0000

Opening

July 14 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

July 14 till 28, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Sandro Setola

At the basis of all my work lies a strong fascination for natural processes and phenomena. These sometimes dramatic processes, such as isolation, expansion, transformation, growth and decay are interpreted in a poetic, personal and sometimes cynical/humouristic way. Associations with architectural proposals allow these works to enter a twilight zone between desire and reality that in turn raises questions about their function or meaning. On the one hand they can be seen as comments on our everyday surroundings and urban environment by proposing buildings that seem to be designed for the expression of discomfort, spirituality or a lack of ideology or function. Other works transgress this seemingly critical attitude. In these works the strong links to the aforementioned natural or universal processes and their psychological parallels prevail and cause the proposed structures to be nothing more but representations of a particular state of mind or personality.

Sorry, out of order” is an exhibition about inabilities and failure. About disrupted communication and abandoned dreams. About breaking things and trying to fix them back up. It is about the tragedies in everyday life and its non-enduring moments of glory and despair. It is about unbridled optimism versus the dreadful consequences of some kinds of optimism. It is about certain feelings of shame that cause serious memory loss. It’s about things that you still wouldn’t do even if you had the chance to do it all again. It is about creating more space for more trash. About witnessing a collapsing civilisation and dancing the night away. It is about human beings trapped in something but not knowing, nor caring what it is. It is about not knowing what lies ahead but whatever it is; there is no way back to where you came from. You have passed the point of no return. It is about the catalyzing qualities of alcohol. It is about the catastrophic qualities of alcohol. It is about things getting lost in the translation of this text. It is about my inability to truly express to you my deepest feelings because I am having second thoughts about actually having them. It is about not being able to save a dear friend from impending doom because he doesn’t believe it’s going to happen. It is about being too far away to spot a person drowning. About somebody being beaten up by life on a daily basis but still not wanting to end the relationship. It’s about broken friends. It is about me worrying about all these things but not doing much about them. I can’t because I’m probably a little broken myself. I desperately need maintenance. I need a qualified mechanic. So for now I’m sorry but I’m out of order…

Gallery

Undying Home

root — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 07:18:02 +0000

Opening

June 23 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

June 23 to July 7, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Vangelis Legakis

On Saturday June 23rd 2012 at 16:00 hour the Chinese European Art Center will open an exhibition entitled Undying Home by the Greek artist Vangelis Legakis collaborating with the Chinese artist Lin Xiuqing.

Vangelis Legakis was born in Athens, Greece 1980 and for the last ten years he has been living and working in London, UK. He studied Dance Theater, Choreography and Complementary therapies and has been, for long time, rigorously involved in and studying fine arts, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience to create interdisciplinary installations and dance performances.

Lin Xiuqing was born in a small village of Dehua Quanzhou, China 1987. She studied Fine Arts (Bachelors) at Jimei University and is currently studying Multimedia Arts (Masters) at Xiamen University. Lin focuses her works on the social communication amongst people by creating public art works-installations and specializes on constructions made out of bamboo.

Vangelis Legakis is best known for his choreographic works and interdisciplinary educational dance workshops which he has been showing and teaching across the world – Latin America, Europe and Asia. The last few years he has been concerning spiritual practices with dance to raise consciousness and offer a new perspective on what is felt and experienced.

In this exhibition Vangelis and Lin are creating an installation with bamboo and photography to portray an inter-relationship between Nature, the human Body and Home.

Home is usually seen as a fixed architectural and limited place, but Undying Home is the feeling of home that arises from any interaction in nature that could potentially occur anywhere, at any time, with any-body. We are truly at home in our hearts when we feel our ‘SOMA’ which in Greek this word means the poised union between the Body, Mind, and Spirit.

The photos portray the space beyond the real, beyond what is tangible, so as to depict the spiritual or the energetic aspect of Nature, Body and Home. The bamboos reaching high in the sky on a concrete terrace represent not only the nature itself within a material city but also the connection between earth and sky; what the human body unites. The engraved poem and paintings on bamboo show the space beyond body and mind, the spiritual aspect of the human kind who can now start a new beginning in a world that is currently severely wounded.

Music Composition: Matthew Orange (UK) – Undying Into Eternity

Gallery

MAAS at CEAC

root — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:45:50 +0000

Opening

May 5 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

May 5 till 26, 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Bart Dorst

On Saturday May 5 at 16:00 Bart Dorst proudly presents MAAS at CEAC.

The participated artists are Bart Dorst, Jia Zhixing, Wei Na, Tian Rui and Sayaka Abe.

All the artists they have either had the Artist Residence program or made a presentation at MAAS. MAAS Artist Residence offers recent graduated Chinese artists a place where they can develop ideas, experiments and new work. This exhibition includes drawing, photograph, video and installation.

Bart Dorst (NL)
Drawings are most of the time the source of the works of the Dutch artist Bart Drost. Small sketches, scribbles and diary drawings turn out into paintings, sculptures, installations or even performances. Together with the former MAAS Artist in Residence Zhixing Jia, Drost visited the Venice Biennale in 2011. The drawings Drost made during this trip are the starting point for the three large format paintings (indian ink and gesso on bitumen paper) now shown at CEAC.
www.bartdrost.nl

Zhixing Jia (CN)
Zhixing Jia tried to feel the breath of the city Nijmegen. He grew up in a very tradition Chinese family, with Chinese family education. When he visited Chinese children at their Dutch adoptive families, there where a lot of questions: he wanted to feel their habitat, their atmosphere and family education, their way of life. He wanted to know their experience, their interests, study, and habits. Of course his camera was with him. Then- fast fast- he took some pictures following his first feeling. And the answers became clearly. This approach is very different from the way Jia Zhixing worked before. At the MAAS Final Presentation he showed us pictures he made of adoptive families and a selection of the hundreds of photos he made during his many wanderings through Nijmegen.

Wei Na (CN)
“There is a lot about myself I don’t understand, and quite frankly, don’t want to understand. I know I should think more, but doing is easier. I want to have a car, but a bicycle is more convenient. I want to be happy, but I know happiness makes you stupid. I know I should do something worthwhile with my life, but I don’t have time, I have to be hurry now, I have to catch a train… So I feel like somewhere in between, in between looking and not-looking”. At MAAS Wei Na showed an installation work with 12 new short movies. Combined China and Holland, photography, video and text. Being a Chinese artist seems less and less important to her. The artist is more than a product of society. Art is universal.

Rui Tian (CN)
Rui Tian workperiod at MAAS was about ‘Communication & Meeting’. Thrown between China and The Netherlands she also visited Brussels, Paris, Barcelone, Milano and Frankfurt. The impressions of these journeys she shows us at her MAAS-blog. During the Final Presentation Tian looks for the limits of freedom. It was the true spectacle as promised. In this presentation, Tin almost literally took the concept frontier as an intervention in the space: visitors had stooped the entrance to get inside; once inside nigh invisible lines crossed the space. In a touching speech Tin told the visitors of her trials and tribulations during her residence period.

Sayaka Abe (Japan)
Sayaka Abe and Rui Tian met each other for the first time in 2008. At that time they took part in a group exhibition in Xuzhou, China. Since 2005 Sayaka is staying in the Netherlands, she studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute. The current MAAS Artist Rui Tian invited Sayaka to be the guest artist for the MAAS In Between and they decided to do the project together. When Rui Tian is in The Netherlands she feels she is really a Chinese. When Sayaka is in The Netherlands she feels she is really a Japanese. It’s the frist time both artists do a project together. They try to combine everything together. They started at MAAS their Chapanese Restaurant for just one Sunday-afternoon.
www.sayaka.nl

Gallery

Nostalgic Feelings

root — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:36:43 +0000

Opening

April 14 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

April 14 till , 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Dirk van Lieshout

On Saturday April the 14th at 4 p.m. the Chinese Art Center will open an exhibition by the Dutch artist Dirk van Lieshout entitled: ‘Nostalgic Feelings’.

Dirk van Lieshout is born in Deurne,the Netherlands 1973 and has been living and showing in different cities around the world. He studied at ‘the Ateliers’ in Amsterdam.

Van Lieshout works with different media such as installation,sculpture,drawing and models.Even at art school he had a preference for constructing temporary accommodation: for material that was ‘still in motion’. The theme – if any comes up at all – is the conditioning of human life. His work often takes place in public spaces. Sometimes his works are ‘instruments’ or tools to understand or learn about the surrounding. His installations are actually experiments, carefully matched to their environment and anticipating group behaviour.
Performance is an important element in his work and since 2005 he’s realizing mobile studios around the world. The mobile studio’s shows ideas, thoughts and reflections about the surrounding. Besides his ‘site-specific’ work he makes models in his studio.

In the exhibition ‘nostalgic feelings’ van Lieshout shows his latest works he recently made in Xiamen during the four months he lived in the city. The works in the exhibition are performances, models, installations and all the works will be shown outside on the rooftop at the CEAC.

The title of the exhibition ‘Nostalgic Feelings’ refers to his feelings he got when working in Xiamen and he says about it “ working in this city somehow reminds me of my childhood when I was the whole day playing in the garden, the same feeling I got when working in Xiamen, where people live and work outside.”

After the opening there will be a barbeque which starts from 6 pm and after there will be a small concert on the rooftop.

For information about van Lieshouts works check: www.dirkstudio.com

Gallery

Untitled

root — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:28:30 +0000

Opening

April 7 at 5 PM, 2012

Duration

April 7 till , 2012

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Bärbel Schulte Kellinghaus

Bärbel Schulte Kellinghaus was born in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied art in Düsseldorf, Academy of Fine Arts and specialized with Jannis Kounellis. Since 2006 she lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Her work has been exhibited in Belgium, Brussels, Est Belgium Art Center, in Germany, Bonn, Berlin and Italy, Milan.

I am interested in the human being. My understanding of sculpture is coming from a classical Greek / Roman sculpture definition. Mostly the ideas come from material and pass through my physical state of being. It is a subjective behavior to my surrounding world. I like to work slowly in time with my own hands.

My dream is to extend my perception of world through doing my art work.