2006 – CEAC

Adventures of The Little Travelling Academy

root — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 11:01:42 +0000

Opening

December 22 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

December 22, 2006 till January 14, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

áslaug Thorlacius and Finnur Arnar

Friday, 22 December 2006 of The Little Travelling Academy opens their exhibition in the Chinese European Art Center. Xiamen University Art college. The members of the academy are: Icelandic visual artists áslaug Thorlacius and Finnur Arnar, together with their four children, Salv?r, Kristján, Hallgereur and Helga. Last September The Little Travelling Academy moved periodically from Reykjavík, Iceland to Xiamen, China. Since then they have had their headquarters near the old Typhoon Harbour where they have done various kinds of studies and research by different means.

They have been playing. They have been reading, writing and doing maths and they have gone through a lot of school assignments. They have made all kinds of things with their own hands, toys as well as tools. They have been drawing, painting, building, cutting, pasting, tieing, sewing and knitting. They have studied their neighbourhood with their senses and with the help of various techniques. They have been watching, listening and tasting. They have been recording and taking photographs. They have communicated with people. They have watched the everyday life of their neighbours and tried their best to imitate their habits. They have experimented. They have tried to realize as many of their ideas as possible. They have made mistakes. They have had success. They have learned a lot. The Little Travelling Academy has had a very good time in Xiamen.

The exhibition is a documentary installation about how The Little Travelling Academy spent its four months in Xiamen. It opens at 5 :00 pm. There will be performances at the opening. The Chinese European Art Center is open Wednesdays to Sundays, 10-12 am and 3-5 pm. The exhibition Adventures of The Little Travelling Academy lasts until January 14, 2007.

Gallery

Collapsible Sublet

root — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:20:15 +0000

Opening

December 1 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

December 1 till 16, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Sanja Medic

It has been proven that humans as well as animals are exceptionally sensitive to the changing patterns in landscape. Variations such as forest to plains or water to mountains become a rhythm when traveling through them, and can affect the mood and awareness of those taking that journey. Details fall back and forth into the field of vision and contemplation, while the larger grandeur of the landscape as a whole continuously presents itself. Ultimately a landscape is endlessly reconstructed in the perception of those traveling through it.

It is within this notion of rhythm, perception and reconstruction that the work of Sanja Medic becomes relevant. For her a landscape is a summation of patterns which can just as easily suggest itself inside a space as outside. The installation itself seems always affected by an outside force. In previous works this force is present in shelves of books which seemingly bend to the force and rhythm of an earthquake, or a large mass of wallpaper protruding from the wall into the sharpest of points, leaving the smallest amount of room for passing. Whether through scale model or life-size, in her installations each singular part seems possessed or influenced by a natural force that has given it a specific position and character, which together constitute a setting, or landscape.

For this newest work she has again chosen an environment – inspired by a photo taken in the living room of the Night Lily, a beautiful guesthouse on Gulangyu Island – with already a specific character: red-white striped walls, a floor with a strong geometric pattern, and a balanced floor plan (two windows and a door in the middle). The presence of the walls and floor is profound due to their repetition and play with perception; each is obviously flat in their function yet suggests depth and space by their design. It exactly this repetition and suggestion that is the starting point for this work. The umbrellas borrow – or sublet – the pattern of the given environment and extend its suggestion of space through their own unique form, suggesting a third dimension. Some umbrellas remain slightly closed, others open in order to underline the sense of rhythm, but as well imply the notion that the installation may be growing still, or wilting away. The soundtrack to be heard abstracts the instrumentality of the umbrellas, as well as emphasizes the concept of the space inside in relation to outside.

The distinctiveness of this installation is her use of the umbrellas – the Chinese being the first to invent waterproof umbrellas over four thousand years ago. Not only are they therefore a tribute to her temporary (cultural) surroundings, but also a possibility to create an interior in a real-scale, and afterwards take her – collapsible – installation with her when she leaves.

An umbrella, according to popular superstition in Europe, should never be open indoors or you will bring bad luck on all the people residing in the building. It is thought that this superstition originates back when the purpose of the umbrella was to act as a sunshade. If opened indoors the action may be construed as a direct insult to the sun, which was revered in many societies. For Sanja Medic the purpose of the umbrellas is not to ridicule this superstition or offend any aspect of nature, quite the contrary. They represent the all encompassing force of nature, whose presence does not end at the doors and windows of a space. It resides also in the manner in which space is designed by that what goes into it.

Huib Haye van der Werf

Gallery

The Great Wall

root — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:20:49 +0000

Opening

November 3 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

November 3 till 26, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Galina Manikova

About herself, about her own life in a foreign landscape, about being exposed and vulnerable, about watching and being watched. Walls symbolise exactly what has been a part of Fu Yang’s everyday struggles and experiences: exclusion, segregation and isolation.

When you enter the exhibition room, you discover that there is not a single picture of The Great Wall to see; the title is only used as a symbol, which is known by everybody.
More than that, the name Fu Yang is too, only a symbol, and the real person behind this pseudo name is Galina Manikova. She is a real cosmopolitan person, born on an earlier Japanese island of Sakhalin, grown up in Moscow, educated at an art academy in Jerusalem and presently living in Norway. More about her life and work can be studied on her web site: www.galina.no.

She has worked with transparent photographs on glass and silk since 1974. The techniques she uses are based on old photographic methods and handmade photographic emulsions. They are both complex and challenging. During the course of the last 30 years she has achieved a solid knowledge of the aesthetics and the traditions that follow that particular way of art and a certain international acknowledgement for her research in the field.

She also works a lot with video and computer art, which can be studied on her web art projects like www.galina.noand www.wailingwall.no . All her installations are presented as a part of these web projects that are the final destination.
A smaller version of this project has been presented at the Photography Biennale in Istanbul in September 2006. This project will later be shown at several galleries in Norway, France, Japan, Russia, and even more other countries. So the project will keep growing and changing according to how her thoughts and concepts develop in the run of time and adjust to different places.

Photographs of a girl with a mask over her mouth and holding dolls upside down are transferred to very thin silk and mounted in the middle of the exhibition room as the pictures are transparent, they throw shadows and change depending on point of view and light conditions. Many portraits of many Chinese faces are hanging as a long line on the wall by the entrance. The same faces are projected on many long panels of white silk, hanging from ceiling to floor in several layers. All that creates illusions of space and volume. Pictures mounted in several layers and in relation to each other create a combination of two-dimensional images and three-dimensional effects. Texts and symbols are a part of the visual impression. The project is going to be oriented towards an international audience; therefore language is an important part of the project. By using Russian, Norwegian, Chinese and English in combination with each other an atmosphere of some universal communication is being created.

Motives and signs are overlapping each other and are projected on to live figures moving around in this new landscape – the public. Contrasts between the motives, the signs and the forms are an important part of the impression. Light and sound are used to underline this impression. There is also a part of the silky wall containing of white panels with holes burned in an irregular pattern. The public is offered an opportunity to write small messages on small notes of paper, which may be wishes or complains, comments or regards. One can chose between white, black or red paper notes. The colours have a certain symbolic meaning, which will show the mood of the public, when the notes are placed in the holes in the white silk panels. In that way the public is invited to participate in creating the exhibition. Notes will later be scanned and placed in the wailing wall of the Internet project.

Each new exhibition will bring more notes in more languages to the web site and more faces in the line of faces on the wall. Photo- and video-documentations of the project are also going to be published on the website.

Gallery

ELEVATED WORLD

root — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 10:14:09 +0000

Opening

September 22 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

September 22 till October 22, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

group exhibition

The Chinese European Art Center invites you to the exhibition ELEVATED WORLD, a project of cooperation between postgraduate students of the Multimedia Department of Xiamen University Art College and the MFA students of the Sandberg Institute of Amsterdam.Six Dutch and seven Chinese students worked together in high-pressure workshops. The young artists challenged each other by researching mutually their cultural experience, knowledge and their ability to improvise. Besides these fresh and surprising new works, individual installations are also on show.

These art works have mostly been prepared quietly at home. One of these works is a dreamlike drawing device, invented to make the pencil drawing randomly,blown as it is by soft currents of air. As unpredictable will be the new big wall and floor drawing installation: the result of an intense workshop started by sending photographs of body parts by e-mail. Often reflections on our daily world surface in the works, that are playful and a bit surreal. Or dramatic, like the man who loses his head.

Elevated World refers to a world with high-rise buildings, an elevator world that needs a little help
from artists in order to be lifted.

The exhibition occurs in two spaces: in the CEAC and on the 2th floor of the nearby new building.

• Yasser Ballemans
• Liu Fang,Jurrian van den Haak
• Tom Hillewaere
• Yang Jian
• Min Lan
• Wang Lihong
• Marinke Marcelis
• Cao Minzhu
• Wei Na
• Linda Pijnacker
• Richtje Reinsma and Chen Wei

Gallery

TIME ON MY HANDS

root — Tue, 16 May 2006 10:00:26 +0000

Opening

June 2 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

June 2 till 23, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

René Coelho

René Coelho (1936, The Hague, The Netherlands) re-entered the art field as an artist after 40 years of being a photographer, a tv-producer, a documentary maker, professor in Media Art and as founder and former director of MonteVideo/Time Based Arts, the National Media Art Institute of The Netherlands. About his present work he states:

Time cannot always be measured with a clock and has subjective characteristics. I just have to look at my own life and find that time passes much faster than it used to do years ago. Or to think back at that complicated dream that develops in just part of a second, before waking up. It is therefore not surprising that the element of time is and has been not only a source of inspiration for many artists, but, along with the technological developments, also more and more a tool. For more than forty years I have been involved in the moving image in various chapters of my career: in photography, film, television and in the arts. And from ‘time to time’ I realized that the moving image, in film and video, is nothing more or nothing less than a series of still images, projected onto our retina for 1/24th, 1/25th or 1/30est of a second. A single image like this, being part of a movement, often has, compared to a photo, quite different characteristics. This inspired me to start working with this ‘frozen image’, and doing so creating my personal ‘time’. But also the opposite, bringing into motion series of photo’s, not intended to be part of a moving image,offers interesting possibilities. Setting into motion a series of photographic images, produced over a longer period, compresses time. Doing so, a period of several years can be displayed in one minute. This type of ‘movement’ should not always be taken literally. Hanging a series of images on a wall can create a type of movement and can be seen as a certain order of time and display a type of movement..

As a photographer I had to deal with the dictatorship of the ‘moment’, in film and video it is the linear time that rules. To withdraw myself from these laws and rules, but also combining these two properties, opened for me new creative possibilities. It allows me, for instance, to recycle images, produced in a period of more than forty years.

Gallery

INSIDE OUT

root — Tue, 16 May 2006 09:37:57 +0000

Opening

May 12 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

May 12 till 28, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Colette Hosmer

Hosmer can be described as a contemporary naturalist, but her work has always displayed elements of surrealism and minimalism. Her dogged use of repetition and explorations of symmetry resonate with Agnes Martin’s obsession with grids. The narrative evident in her work shares, with the outdoor installations of organic materials by Andy Goldsworthy, an aspect that celebrates nature and demands that we renew our attention to it. But Hosmer’s work may have even more in common with that of John James Audubon. In it’s singularness of purpose and rejection of sentimentality. Hosmer’s depiction of animals, coupled with her arrangement of them to shape specific ideas, echo Audubon’s illustrations of birds: unrelentingly raw, sometimes beautiful, and always revealing. And like Audubon, she deals directly with the real thing, not a romanticized ideal viewed from a distance. Her work skirts the tiring political rhetoric of environmental issues and takes us to the core instead.

Although Hosmer’s sculpture always connects animals and humans; hers is not “wildlife art” by any stretch of the imagination. Yet neither is it art that exploits animals purely as media. Nor are Hosmer’s works mementi mori, reminders of mortality; her imagery is not violent or grotesque and has little if anything to do with death. And they are not partisan; Hosmer is a meat-eater who grew up hunting with her father in rural North Dakota, rooted in the reality of our relationship with animals.

Hosmer’s talent lies in the scope of the emotional responses her work evokes, sometimes simultaneously, in the viewer: Awe, discomfort, laughter, revulsion, fascination, guilt, serenity, and thoughtfulness. In this work we can see the whole cycle of life and come to recognize more surely our own place in it.

Hollis Walker, Santa Fe, NM, USA

Gallery

85th Anniversary of Xiamen University

root — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:34:07 +0000

Opening

April 6 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

April 6 till 30, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

This exhibition is to celebrate the 85th Anniversary of Xiamen University. The participated artists are BJORN NORGAARD (Denmark), ERRÓ (Iceland), Karin van Dam (The Netherlands), Maleonn (China) and Scarlett Hooft Graafland (The Netherlands).

Gallery

CROSS OVER

root — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 14:40:02 +0000

Opening

March, 2006

Duration

March, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Group exhibition

The Mix & Match exhibition showcases photographs, video and installation work made by Chinese artists Cao Minzhu, Liu Fang, Min Lan, Wei Na and Yang Jian. As a popular way of living and attitude of life, Mix & Match influences everyone in today’s life. These five young artists hope to express their different understandings towards Mix & Match through this exhibition. Their focus and ways of expression themselves may have expressed possibilities and vitality of Mix & Match. Mix & Match not only shows works of individual artists, their dressing behavior also fully expressed the charm of Mix & Match.

Cao Min Zhu’s work Double Happiness is an installation posting Double Happiness the Chinese folk symbol on the wall in the form of a red cross to mix & match. What echoes it is various wedding food for visitors to taste. When the exhibition is finished the sweet food is finished and only the red cross on the wall is left. This work shows the audience that life is art and everyone can be artist. Art is left after exhibition; the consumption and its process are also art.

Liu Fang: Like a paradox, Mix & Match itself has various unreasonable elements in it but often results in reasonable results. The “person” in the work took photos in various different places, mixing and matching his own images on different backgrounds. What was his purpose when having his photos taken? What was the purpose of traveling? But very often tourists forget the process of traveling and take the action of taking photos as purpose of traveling. This kind of behavior appears to be very empty to me. The black color on the picture seems to express emptiness under the abundant surface of current society.

Min Lan: Women’s life is always surrounded by a big pile of objects: unused cosmetics, books read or unread, clothes worn or not worn and the other known and unknown. When they are presented before you in a Mix & Match form or when I present my life in this way, this is what I understand about Mix & Match.

Yang Jian: In my opinion Mix & Match is a cross-border expansion. Expansion means that explosion of irresistible force makes stableness of any borders impossible. Therefore materials become very important: then I found it and used it to make a series of light trials under such powerful theme. Comparing with the content it expresses, what makes me more fascinated is the way of operation and the process of making it. Maybe to a certain extent, this is where the charm of Mix & Match lies.

Gallery

PASSING

root — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 13:15:58 +0000

Opening

January 6 at 5 PM, 2006

Duration

January 6 till 22, 2006

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Floor Kortbeek and Gilles Frenken

The Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) is pleased to present, PASSING a dual exhibition of works by Floor Kortbeek and Gilles Frenken, two Dutch artists who have been invited by CEAC to work as artists in residence in Xiamen over a three-month period.
For the artists, PASSING references the rapidly changing Chinese society, as well as the traces that passing time leaves behind influencing both historical and personal perspectives.

PASSING features works that have been created during their stay in Xiamen, utilizing film, photography and site-specific installation. Kortbeek and Frenken have also collaborated especially for the CEAC exhibition, resulting in the production of several short films. Twelve of these one-minute films will debut throughout the show.

An antique Chinese dragon that Kortbeek has transformed into a moving installation will greet visitors to CEAC. She will also present several photographic works, based on her one-minute-films. Frenken will exhibit two series of photographic works; abstract light drawings created by use of his digital camera and cityscapes which impart a more impressionist mood.

In PASSING, she presents a dragon kite, a symbol of the past, of mythology, of religion and celebration. Kortbeek has changed the dragon’s surface to gold. Through suspension, she creates the illusion of flight, making it a heavenly creature, reflecting light, looking back at us. To her the dragon symbolizes the transformation of time which is opposite of the western concept of time. In the West time is linear, so future can become past, but past never becomes future. In Eastern cultures time is a cyclical process, past can regenerate and become future! The dragon keeps circling, chasing its own tail.

In her six one-minute films she shows the passing of time. Time facilitates so many changes in our lives. Kortbeek captures elements like water, wind and stone. Often she transforms their natural state, to enhance the power of the images.

In another series of photographic works Frenken refers to the times of impressionism, more than 100 years ago. At this time European traders stayed in Xiamen (Amoy) where they made their first photographic pictures to take home. Photography was a new way to document reality. Eventually artists made their drawings and paintings more abstract, expressing their personal feelings and impressions of the world as they saw it. In this way Frenken uses his camera, literary as a brush to paint both landscapes and cityscapes. Instead of taking pictures of people and objects in a short moment of time, he moves his camera in the streets of Xiamen. This process has resulted in a series of impressionistic photographs.

As a professional filmmaker and a director of photography, Frenken is competent in all areas of film and video cameras. In Xiamen he experimented working with an inexpensive and simple digital camera while making a series of six one-minute films. In these films he presents his way of looking at contemporary Xiamen, showing an abstract world behind the ordinary.