2010 – CEAC

Does the branch know there is a trunk?

root — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:48:07 +0000

Opening

Friday December 31，2010 at 5pm

Duration

31 December 2010 till 22 January 2011

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

G.J. de Rook

Dutch visual artist G.J. de Rook came to China to look for an answer to the question he did not find in Europe: ‘Does the branch know there is a trunk?’

After making a number of ‘language sculptures’- site-specific installations in which he only used words – his exhibition in Xiamen will be his first effort to make a installation only using images from different sources.

De Rook uses the branch-trunk relation as a metaphor for the many questions which intrigue him. In short, they can be summed up in the three sentences by the French painter Paul Gauguin :’Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?’ Besides as metaphorical, the artist regards trees as a suitable tool for answering his basic question.

His research led him to study the different aspects of trees in his home country as well in Xiamen. This made him realize that the branch-tree relation forms the core of a longer chain: soil – seed – roots -stem/trunk – branch – leaves – flowers/fruit. He devotes some attention to a few at these subjects, but the branch and the tree get most attention.
G.J. de Rook is well aware that it is possible, even probable; he will never be able to find the right answer to his question. But perhaps this first visual presentation of his ongoing project at CEAC will lead the visitors to form their own perspectives on these matters.

Gallery

TWO WATERS

root — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:50:41 +0000

Opening

Friday December 10 at 5pm, 2010

Duration

December 10 till 25, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Sandra Eula Lee

The Chinese-European Art Center is pleased to present “Two waters”, an exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Sandra Eula Lee. In her work, Lee uses a variety of approaches, including handmade sculpture, found objects, and photography, finding details from her surroundings that can be combined to reveal the intimate aspects or cross-cultural experiences in daily life.

A Korean-American artist, Lee reflects upon the legacies of the Korean War in her project “Two waters”. Originally born in northern Korea, Lee’s parents migrated to the south during the wartime, enduring the separation of families that resulted from the country’s division. Photographs included in the exhibition depict mountainous ridges where major battles occurred, such as “Heartbreak Ridge”, stripped of all signs of life, where U.S., French, North Korean, and Chinese casualties numbered high.

Echoes of division and the spaces between, run through the work both conceptually and formally, such as “Split mountain”, a sculpture comprising a large pile of weathered rocks divided by a delicate triangular pane of glass. In the collage, “Deep waters (Pacific)”, the vast body of water lying between continents is depicted, created from hundreds of pieces of Korean newspaper torn by hand.

Lee spent much of the past two years in Korea where construction is rampant and new structures are being made on a daily basis. During her time in China, she continued to see widespread demolition and a fast-changing landscape. Works on view include materials from this altered landscape, such as rubble collected from construction sites, pvc tubing, and sea-weathered rocks— construction rubble, bricks, and concrete—washed ashore and collected on the beaches of Xiamen.

Lee sees this landscape as a combination of natural and man-made elements. Informed by the traditional gardens in China and Korea, a central element of “Two waters” can be found in the dark ponds that provide areas of reflection and contemplation. The ponds are fragmented and portable, reflecting as well as breaking the view.

Gallery

The sky touches the earth and the earth

root — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:42:13 +0000

Opening

October 15 at 5 PM, 2010

Duration

October 15 till November 6, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

This is the exchange exhibition by the art students from the multi-media department of Art College of Xiamen University meets Department of Visual Art Sint-Lucas Ghent (association University Leuven). The curator is Ronny Delrue and Qin Jian.

Gallery

Brancusi’s Psychosis goes exotic

root — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:57:01 +0000

Opening

Friday October 8 at 5pm, 2010

Duration

October 8 till October 29, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Maddy Arkesteyn

In Brancusi’s Psychosis Maddy Arkesteyn investigates a new escape route from oppressive ways of looking at things. Her sculptures are an architectural recreation of spaces using ropes. These ropes become textile columns, swaying totem poles, Chinese lanterns with holes… They refer to long ago, faraway and yet nearby.

It is an architecture that accommodates entropy; it is a system that acquires form and meaning from the degree of chaos and degeneration. Arkesteyn spends hundreds of hours knotting vertically hanging strands in such a way that patterns are created. She doesn’t conceal the detail. She loses herself in her handiwork. Her only tool is her hands, her only knot is the flat knot. She loses herself in a knot.

These maniacal operations gradually produce knotted sculptures. Next to each sculpture another is created, and then another. They overrun any existing idea of unity. They form a mental landscape. Just as in a psychosis contact with the real environment is lost, so too Arkesteyn sets an expanding network in motion. She dislodges all structure by performing decisive operations.

Macramé, it’s called. And the mere mention of the word immediately clarifies the many layers of meaning Arkesteyn explores and her resistance to prevailing forms of sculpture. She uses macramé, an ancient knotting technique but, to confuse the issue, one which became synonymous with women’s handicrafts in the 1970s. She strips the technique of its limited cultural connotations and at the same time zeroes in on it. She uses it to build fabric cathedrals. Sometimes she has young girls to walk through them, like living statues which represent an ideal. The spectator is given the choice between making his way between the sculptures or staying outside. Her installations are contemporary cathedrals.

For the late-medieval cathedral builders the surveyable scope was not that of a closed habitation. Perspective had to be infinite. The trivial was not trivial, the scope and the limitation of existence went hand in hand with the universality of that existence. In building, they were committed to the infinite, the relevant, the essence. Inside was outside and outside was inside. That is what Arkesteyn is: a builder of cathedrals. That is what Arkesteyn does with her sculptures: geometry with macramé, geometry which leads to the transcendental.

Or as the artist Constantin Brancusi to whom she refers in her title said: “Art does not represent ideas but generates them, which means that a true work of art comes into being intuitively, without preconceived motives because it is the motive.”

Gallery

The Red Snowball

root — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:50:56 +0000

Opening

September 17 at 5 PM, 2010

Duration

September 17 till 30, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Group exhibition

This exhibition entitled The Red Snowball is the last part of the three celebration exhibitions on the occasion of the ten year anniversary of the Chinese European Art Center. The first one called The Dialogue has held in November from last year here at the Art Center and also in the exhibition space of the Art College – the second one Dialogue 2010 was held at the Dutch Cultural Centre in Shanghai in May and June this year.

The participants in the Red Snowball exhibition have all been working with the CEAC in the past ten years and are all connected to The Netherlands and China in one way or another.

Participants exhibition: The Red Snowball

Meiya Lin (CN/NL)
Lost paradise, Video work

Kan Xuan (CN)
Try Out, Video works

Yang Jian (CN)
Pigfat and Linear Narrative, Video works

Chen Wenling (CN)
Happy Life No. 21, Sculpture

Jia Zhixing (CN) Postgraduate student Xiamen University Art College
Memento, Collage

Paul Kooiker (NL)
“Untitled” 2007 (Swimming Men in Sea), photo works

Sigurdur Gudmundsson (IS/NL/CN)
Head and Cauliflower, 2009, video

Gerald van der Kaap (NL)
Photo works: Fang & Limei (Kiss), Fang & Limei (Make-up), Passing the Information, Limei (Watch),
Video work: Weiwei (Track)

Monique Verhoeckx (NL)
‘The old harp’ based from one of the poems from the Chinese poet Po Tsju Bai Juyi and J.Slauerhoff from the book ‘A hundred and seventy Chinese poems’ (1925), film

Bas Prinsen (NL)
Section Xiamen 2007, photo works

Vroegop/Schoonveld (NL)
Among others, Installation 2010

Sema Bekirovic (NL)
Untitled (mountain) in cooperation with Rutger Emmenlkamp, Installation
Untitled (ants), Video work

We celebrate this special occasion with book launch,’The Red Snowball’
The new book is about Ten Years Cross Cultural Activities of the Chinese European Art Center Xiamen University Art College.
It has been made in the past two years.
The book is a richly illustrated document of ten years activities of the Chinese European Art Center.
In 320 pages the book shows how fruitful the China-Europe has been from the very beginning of CEAC in 1999.

The Red Snowball contains images of artworks made by more than two hundred artists from more than twenty countries the Dutch and Chinese artists are specially highlighted because of their tied relationship with the CEAC, the Art College and The Netherlands.

The Red Snowball

Design: Irma Boom
Language: Chinese and English
Publisher: Hebei Press, China/ Jap Sam Books, The Netherlands

The book was published with the support of The Mondriaan Foundation, China Netherlands Art Foundation, The Xiamen University, De Gijselaar Hintzenfonds Foundation, AMPEK, The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture, Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Guangzhou.

The Red Snowball contains articles about the CEAC activities written by the following authors:

Tineke Rijnders, art historian and former chair woman of the CEAC foundation

Garrie van Pinxsteren, writer and journalist
Qin Jian, Professor Xiamen University Art College
Sigurdur Gudmundsson, artist
Carol Yinghua Lu, art historian and essayist
Leonard Blussé, Professor
Jos Howeling, Dean Sandberg Institute
Lucy Chen, former chief assistant CEAC
Vivian Zhang, editior Common Talk
Paul Hefting, art historian
Allard Schroder, writer
Sally Zhiwei Chen, Foreign Office, Xiamen
Rashid Novaire, writer
Hong Rongman, artist

Gallery

The New Sorrows of Young Werther

root — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:19:27 +0000

Opening

Friday June 4th at 5pm, 2010

Duration

June 4th till July 3rd, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács

Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács address issues of identity and the fabrication of imagination in their work. With intricate layers of depersonalization, re-mediation and re-interpretation they demonstrate how reality, (mass) media and fiction are strongly intertwined in contemporary society.

Their work shows an intimate embrace, a continuous movement back and forth between real and mediated events, between occurrences in everyday life, in the virtual sphere, and in the media landscape. Their films, installations and graphic work have been shown internationally, including: the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Muhka, Belgium; the Centre Pompidou, France; and various international film festivals.

In the exhibition ‘The New Sorrows of Young Werther’ they choose to juxtapose Goethe’s raving, revolutionary and passionate Sturm-und-Drang novel ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ (1774) with the romantic nature of the younger generation of China today. The novel marked the beginning of the Romantic period in Europe, roaring across the continent at the end of the 18th century to cause a backlash against the industrialist, materialist and rationalist values of the time.

The tragic story tells about Werther’s passionate love for Lotte. Werther ultimately commits suicide because Lotte is already ‘promised’ to another man. The novel forms the foundation for the film/installation set in the ruins of rapidly transforming contemporary China.

In a small studio in the old neighborhood of Shapowei, Broersen & Lukács built a film set comprised of cut-out elements of the vistas they encountered during their wanderings; verdant mountains with traces of old temples, goats and ancient trees, as well as contrasting construction sites with cranes, ruins and dark clouds of dust. In this imaginary miniature version of China, the tragic story of the young, unconventional Werther unfolds. The first romantic hero in history is played by 13 different young Chinese men; they all are wearing a blue jacket with yellow trousers, just as described by Goethe (which, at the time the novel came out, caused a huge fashion wave throughout Europe). But the designs are derived from Chanel’s fall 2009 Shanghai Collection, created around the idea of an imaginary, revolutionary China that Coco Chanel never visited but always dreamt about.

With the collaboration of dancers, musicians, artists, carpenters, tailors and actors, Broersen & Lukács reveal a glimpse of the new individualism of China’s younger generation, on the verge of a changing, twisting and rapidly unfolding era.

Gallery

FORCE

root — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:38:28 +0000

Opening

Friday March 19th at 5pm, 2010

Duration

March 19 till April 10, 2010

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

Albert Van Der weide

Albert Van Der Weide, artist in residence at the CEAC, Art College of the Xiamen University, lives in the Netherlands. Since 1977 he makes drawings, paintings, sculptures and is doing performances or projects. His work was on show in museums and galleries in Europe and the USA. His exhibition in the program of the CEAC is the first presentation of his work in China.

The project of the artist in Xiamen has been inspired by what he saw of daily life in the city of Xiamen. Just by looking around at the behavior of the people and meeting the people, the mobility, the building and urban planning, the food and drinks, the trees, stones and water. These observations were recorded in notes, drawings and photos. Three art works are the outcome of it and these works will be exhibited in the CEAC.

Above the front door of the CEAC he placed characters in bronze with the sentence: “All power (in Chinese translation : force) to the arts”. With this he wants to make clear that he sees art as the domain of imagination, innovation and freedom.

For this installation on the floor with the title “Chinese Blue”, he collected more than 50 different utensils, in which one can put water, as there are: buckets, pans, vases, bowls, tanks, glasses and water pitchers. He painted these objects blue on the inside. The kind of blue that one can see often in Xiamen on the roofs, fences, taxis, and in the advertisements on billboards. He refers with this blue also to the water and the sea, what are important sources of life. His floor installation in the CEAC will be the connection between the outside and the inside. During the opening of the exhibition objects will be filled with water in a kind of ritual.

In the exhibition space he will show 50 photographic prints of drawings and texts with the size 100 x 150 cm and the title “With & For” Xiamen. The artist asked 50 inhabitants of Xiamen, what they thought was the most important thing in their lives. He made these texts part of the drawings, that he specially made for it. He used in these drawings his observations of what he had seen in Xiamen. In the drawings with the texts two cultures will come together. The culture of 50 inhabitants of Xiamen by way of the texts in their own language and on the other hand the culture of the artist who has his roots in Europe. “With & for” deals with difference as well as with what binds us.

Gallery

Dialogue 2010 at the Dutch Cultural Centre Shanghai World Expo

root — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:04:00 +0000

Opening

May 29 at 5 PM, 2010

Duration

May 29 till June 13, 2010

Location

Dutch Cultural Centre, Shanghai World Expo

Artist

Group exhibition

Dialogue 2010 at the Dutch Cultural Centre Shanghai World Expo
Celebration Exhibition of Ten Year of Chinese European Art Center with Book Launch.

The Chinese European Art Center (CEAC) has been invited by the Dutch Culture Centre (DCC) Shanghai Expo to organize an exhibition. The CEAC selected 24 artists from China and the Netherlands who have all been exhibiting and working in both countries. They are all strongly connected to the CEAC.

Participating artists at Dialogue 2010

• Kan Xuan – On wood ink paintings on rice paper, Untitled;Video work, title: Island.
• Meiya Lin – Video works, Title Once Upon a Time: Old Family Fairy Tale.
• Yang Jian – video works, titles: 84.000 Beings and Pigfat ;Linear Narrative.
• Liang Shuo – Sculpture. Title : What-thing
• Zhifei Yang – Video works. Titles: Day dreams; Dream talk
• Weina – Video work. Title: Mr. Zheng
• Maleonn – Photo works. Title: Journey to the West
• Huang Yan – Paintings. Title: Mountain Water Series
• Chen Chuanxi – Photoworks. Title:The Longan Tree I & II.
• Chen Wenling – Sculpture. Title: Happy Life No.21
• Jia Zhixing student Art Coll. Xiamen University. Title: Memento
• Paul Kooiker – Photo works. Title:Acute Chaos 2007
• Charlotte Schleiffert – 2 Paintings. Titles: Spring and White Lotus
• Sigurdur Gudmundsson – 3 Photo works and a video work.Title of video work: Head and cauliflower 2’9. Titles of photo works: 1. Five Males and an Egg. 2. Admirers of my work. 3. 16 Icelandic Carpenters and Deceased Philosophers
• Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács – Music video. Title: Virtual Girl is Singing Song: ’Everytime’
• Gerald van der Kaap – Photo works.Titles: “Fang & Limei (Kiss), Xiamen, 2002,

• “Passing the Information, Xiamen, 2002″,”Fang & Limei (Make-up), Xiamen, 2002”, “Limei (Watch), Xiamen, 2002″ Video work, title:”Weiwei (Track), Xiamen, 2002”,

• Bas Princen – Photo work. Title: Sections Xiamen 2007

• Scarlett Hooft Graafland – Photo works. Title: Horse Hair; My Bonny; The day after Valentine. Porcelain sculpture. Title: Instant Sculpture

• Vroegop/Schoonveld – Porcelain installation: PAUSE with movie,
‘ Dehua Ware White China’

• Sema Bekirovic – Installation and video work Title: Untitled (Ants)

• Aam Solleveld – Wall installation.

• Maartje Blans – Installation works. Titles: Dancing figures; Fleeting.

• Monique Verhoeckx – Film: ‘The old harp’ based from one of the poems from the Chinese poet Po Tsju I from the book ‘A hundred and seventy Chinese poems’(1925)

• Robert van der Hilst – Photo works with book launch. Title: Chinese interiors.