2007 – CEAC

Notion of gesture

root — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:48:07 +0000

Opening

November 23 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

November 23 till December 9, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Danielle van Vree

Danielle van Vree started her artistic career within the theatre. After finishing the  theatre school in Amsterdam, she worked both as an actress and a director in the  field of visual performance theatre. In 2003 & 2004 she followed two working periods at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

The work of Danielle van Vree consists of film/video installations and performances. In her films, characters move in stilled choreographies. Against bare scenarios, she tries to let the viewer’s eye focus on small human acts, such as swinging, sweating or singing. In her work she searches for vulnerability and emotionality, in which the emotion is not shown directly. She attempts to present the moving image in a direct and clear-cut way by isolating act and place. Moreover, through repetition and doubling of images she tries to cause a layering in time, space and the perception of the acts of the characters. By doing so she aims to make works that contain different possibilities.

Human relations are central to her work, in which she explores the field of tension between intimacy and distance. Recurring themes in her work are death, desire, consolation and solitude. Universal themes that expose the vulnerability of man. ‘Whereas all kinds of relations exist, in the end you remain on your own. That’s fascinating and beautiful’.

During her stay in Xiamen she developed new works that she will present in her exhibition: ‘Notion of gesture’, at the CEAC. These works focus on the interaction between public space and inner experiences.

Gallery

Multiple Diminsions

root — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:40:02 +0000

Opening

October 19 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

October 19 till 25, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Keith Brown

The use of the computer is a necessary and essential aspect of his current working process and is indispensable to the conception, content and quality of the artwork in this exhibition. His sculptures have not only a solid and actual world to live in, but also an imaginative and virtual world to transform and reform them. In this exhibition, you can see his work in 2D, 3D sculpture, video animation and 3D integral imaging. There are also, bronze, wax, gypsum and plastic sculptures which have been made from computer generated rapid prototypes. In the video animation, the sculptural forms are seen to exist in a cyber environment where apparently 3D objects can be seen to pass through each other producing a 4D effect.

Integral imaging is the highlight of this exhibition. It is like holography, producing a 3D effect but with incoherent light rather than laser light. The resulting 3D objects can be seen to exist in true space, in front of the picture plan, where spectators can put their hands directly into the 3D cyber objects.

This exhibition is sponsored by MIRIAD (Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design), curated by Dr. Tongyu Zhou and with the help of Mr Jian Qin of the Art College of Xiamen University. It is held at the Chinese European Art Centre in the Art College of Xiamen University from Friday 19th October to Thursday 25th October 2007.

We do hope you will enjoy the exhibition.

Gallery

Two Rooms

root — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 11:25:53 +0000

Opening

October 26 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

October 26 till November 4, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Helen Felcey

Helen Felcey is a Manchester based young artist who produces objects and sculptures in ceramic and also works as a Senior Lecture at the Manchester Metropolitan University. She has been exploring a world of white bone china for quite sometimes, until one day in July 2006, she travelled to China to undertake an artist residency; from here, her work begins to show colour, livelihood and movement.That is how the exhibition ‘Two Rooms’ came into being. It has summarized Helen’s artwork so far, but also reveals the beginning of her future work. In her own words: “I see two rooms in a house under constant renovation”.In the ‘first room’, we can see her ‘White Objects’ series. Cups and constructed paper like spoons are white, crisp and quiet, with abstracted curves and seemingly weightless forms. “The work is driven by a continual fascination by the often distant relationship between man and his environment” she says. In the ‘second room’, the work bears Chinese inspiration. Round porcelain plates line up with sweeps and smudges of line and form; Helen also presents a series of photographs taken in China. During her residency at the Experimental Factory in Jingdezhen she spent a great deal of time exploring the streets – as both the casual passer-by and the systematic observer. In the choking dust, she witnessed stories on every street ‘between destruction and development’ and felt ‘a strong sense of life’. She began to reflect further on the life of the city within the porcelain plates and her photographs. Between the ‘two rooms’, Helen shows some enameled bone china cups called ‘Red Trails’, to symbolize the changing point of her work.This exhibition is sponsored by MIRIAD (Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design), curated by Dr. Tongyu Zhou and with the help of Mr Jian Qin of the Art College of Xiamen University. It has been held at the Chinese European Art Centre in the Art College of Xiamen University from Friday 26th October to Sunday 4th November 2007.

Gallery

HERE.THERE

root — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:39:00 +0000

Opening

September 21 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

September 21 till October 14, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

group exhibition

The Chinese European Art Center invites you to the exhibition Here.There, 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. Five European and seven Chinese students are selected for this show.

Participating artists: Lu Da Wei, Liu Fang, Jin Jing, Mees de Jong, Kristina Kersa, Min Lan, Rogier Roeters, Andreas Templin, Erik Visser, Chen Wei, Xiao Qin and Xue Zhen Hui.

The exhibition Here.There, as the title already implicates, summons a concise interplay of young Chinese and European contemporary art. This fruitfull cooperation, strengthened and underlined once more in this travelling exhibition, combines artworks evolving questions about cultural identity and its perception as well as personal and unique positions. Most of the works on view are specially created for this artistic intercultural encounter. Life performances take place during the whole exhibition period. Here.There occurs in the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in the beginning of 2008.

Gallery

Silhouettes of Memory

root — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 14:39:05 +0000

Opening

June 1 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

June 1 till 17, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Tzu-Ju Chen

Visiting jewelers and metal smiths across China gave me immediate realization of increasing lost of traditional jewelry/metalsmithing practice. The desires to learn, revitalize, and contribute to the traditions of Chines jewelry inspired this body of work. Paper money, “currency for the dead” is used to create the pieces, hinting the sentiment of mourning. Burning paper money at the temples and cemeteries is commonly practiced as offering for the dead, deities, and Buddha in China. Changing the status of a common material such as the paper money and reassigning it a different function as jewelry gives it new meaning. Rearraging familiar symbols like the phoenix to crate new silhouettes; layering the graphics elements creates texture and incorperating old photographs portrays events are the means of creating new context on the body as adornment.

Tzu – Ju Chen
Xiamen, June -2007

Gallery

Birds sing, flowers smell nice

root — Sun, 06 May 2007 14:25:46 +0000

Opening

May 11 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

May 11 till 27, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Pieter Holstein

Pieter Holstein. Born in 1934 in The Netherlands. The CEAC exhibition shows about 70 works that are as technique a combination of printing and watercolor.

They are made over a period of 35 years, the oldest are from 1970, the newest from this year.

The works are images that tell about daily life and are based on facts and imaginations.

Their purpose is to make onlookers watch.

This exhibition was made possible by an invitation for a working period by the CEAC and support by The Netherlands Foundation For Visual Arts Design and Architecture.
Website:www.fondsbkvb.nl

Gallery

In between 1

root — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 14:16:50 +0000

Opening

April 13 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

April 13 till May 6, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Sandra Kunz

For the Swiss artist Sandra Kunz her six-month residency in Xiamen has involved capturing sounds, movements that have flooded her imaginative mind and experiences on a rapidly-changing foreign land. Various sounds and rhythms collected in the once-vibrant old neighbourhood document the on-going changes of the city. Her photographs of the semi-demolished structure of old houses unfold before us, evoking an eerie beauty like that of a barren winter pond.

Texts in a box visualize and intensify moments of the artist’s day-to-day life experience. Easily ignored objects such as laundry and plastic bags are transformed into fascinating ever-moving kaleidoscopes. The whole exhibition is about encapsulated moments of the artist’s life experience whilst in Xiamen, moments that come and disappear (go); the transient life cycles and the hidden beauty of the ordinary.

Reading the flying texts on the wall in the sound box, you find yourself listening to the artist’s racing mind whisper, witnessing her life on the tenth floor. Fleeting life is seized and sealed in the box. Just like any other modern creature that lives lonely in the matchbox buildings, your senses become intensified in the isolation of the box.

Gallery

by this I send you some noise of the city I am in

root — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 13:36:45 +0000

Opening

January 19 at 5 PM, 2007

Duration

January 19 till February 11, 2007

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Mira Sanders

Trying to define your work in words is maybe the most difficult thing to do, although trying to define what you see is maybe worse
(Le journal d’un usager de l’espace, Mira Sanders,)
These thoughts still linger in my mind, and even more so when I traveled to China last summer. It was as if I almost couldn’t take photographs, or film. Surely a strange feeling, in a country where technology and media are trump cards!

You can close your eyes, but it is difficult to close your ears. So I listened, and I visualized my observations in drawings and notes. Trying to visualize what I heard and thus trying to understand a new culture (for me!) and to explore the possibilities of this/its system.

I held an exhibition in December 2006 at SECONDroom in Brussels (Belgium), which offered a glimpse of my ‘wanderings’ in the cities Shangha? and Xiamen, as well as a first reflection of the work I made as an artist-in-residence at the CEAC, Xiamen.

For that project I invited the graphic designer Jef Cuypers to work with my notebook, as I needed to take distance from my drawings and notes, relating to the distance I felt during my ‘wanderings’. The exhibition presented a selection of visual material (drawings, printed matter, …). In addition, some recorded sounds were presented on the website of SECONDroom ( www.desktopgraffiti.be ) .
January 2007, I’m back here in China. This transition time was important for me. I could take distance from my experiences too. And it is strange the feeling of grasping your memory when you are coming back to ‘a place’. Cause it is like all the time you want to make comparisons of your first impressions and at the same it is not true.

For the exhibition at the CEAC I present a publication, on a newspaper format, which I print out on several issues. The publication includes a selection of the drawings I made during my ‘walk’. The newspaper format was chosen in regard to the use of the public newspaper in China. I like the idea of collective reading. Which doesn’t exist in my country. Therefore, the aim is that this newspaper publication is for free for the public and can have as well an existence outside the walls of the exhibition. Maybe it will have a place in a library, in a suitcase, in a trash …

The ‘noise’ images, which were posters in the exhibition in Brussels, are now drawn or painted on wooden panels. During my stay in Xiamen, I loved to work on this huge wooden panel table in my studio. You can eat on it, draw, work, write, put objects and papers you collected during your daily walks, have flowers on it, …
A video, Silent China , with excerpts of recorded sounds and notes I made during my journey in China, draws among others, a vertical rectangle in the exhibition space. A video without images, but maybe a ‘black’ image is more than an‘image’? The title of this video refers also to the title of the exhibition by this I send you some noise from the city I am in . ‘Noise’ can have several meanings; the ‘noise’ of traffic in a city, the ‘noise’ of machines, …, but as well ‘noise’ in the head. Questioning a time being, questioning your perceptions. Not that the aim is to find answers, on the contrary, but realize a story with an open end.

I use ‘send’, like you can send a postcard or a letter. To give by this an idea of the place you are. You can send your greetings to your friends or family and say that everything is fine and soon you will see each other back. Writing is a silent medium. But if you read the text, it’s a sound, a voice in your head. It can even be an image.

Mira Sanders, November 2006 – January 2007
http://users.skynet.be/mimirage/
Thanks to
CEAC (The Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen) and my friends.
With the support of the Flemish Community