2013 – CEAC

Sculptures and Drawings

root — Thu, 12 Dec 2013 12:47:18 +0000

Opening

December 14 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

December 14, 2013 till January 20, 2014

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Arni Gudmundsson

Arni Gudmundsson is a Stockholm-based artist working in a variety of mediums–from sculpture to photography, performance, and drawing. He is also the co-founder of two artist-run galleries in Stockholm (Konstakuten and IDI.) Along with being one of the initiators of Supermarket, an annual fair of independent artist initiatives, Gudmundsson participates in many shows throughout Europe, Asia, America, and the Middle East as both an artist and an organizer.

The works on display is a larger installation entitled, “Living Room”, which was created while in residency at the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen. Artists-in-residence seldom have all of the tools or workspace they are accustomed to in their home environments. This means the artist-in-residence is removed from their normal process of idea creation and production. For Gudmundsson, the development of ideas happens not in his studio, but while sitting on the couch in his living room.

In an attempt to develop this creative living area away from home, the artist assembles together sculpted furniture and decorates the walls with his own drawings. In this exhibition, a few individual personal artifacts from the complete installation are presented with an eye towards personalization of, and identification with specific objects.

As a child, Gudmundsson was titillated by Allen Jones’ 1969 body furniture installation—in which female sculptures were positioned in provocative poses serving as furniture. As he grew into a more mature artist, and understood the sentiment that lay beneath Jones’ figures, Gudmundsson found it interesting to consider how such work would function if he flipped the female figures to male. Forty-four years later he finds it compelling to examine if gender roles have progressed to a point where it is feasible to place himself as the object of titillation or not.

Because furniture functions as an everyday object, these sculptures are intended to be used—to be sat in, laid on, or hung from. Gudmundsson says of their use, “I hope people will sit on them and maybe have nice thoughts as trying to see the sexy in everything or the happiness of sharks.”

As wall art, as the type that a person may hang above their couch, Gudmundsson drew a life-sized New World Vulture (Condor) in order to bring the reality of its wingspan or grandness up close. Only when something of that scale is seen in the context of one’s own living room can one understand the magnitude of it in the outside world. Such is the thought process of the artist in his living room.

Arni Gudmundsson would like to thank everyone at the CEAC for their support and hard work in making this work a reality, and to the wonderful people of Fujian Province for inspiring him with their ingeniousness solutions to everyday problems.

Gallery

The gallery was not found!

Remains of the day

root — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 13:42:03 +0000

Opening

November 23 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

November 23 till December 7, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Renate Wernli

Swiss Photographer Renate Wernli (1967) focuses on projects, which are not too popular in our rapidly growing and proseperous world.

Many years ago, before she became a Photographer, Renate Wernli was working in Human Resources. And what she loved there – to be in touch with people and to give people a voice – led her to make a journey to the U.S. to pursue this passion in photography.

She has an affinity with people who are not on the bright side of life. People who are forgotten by society, because they don’t fit into our perfect world, where creams, knives, clothes and jewelry make you believe in a good life.

In Switzerland she began many years ago to do projects about old people. So when she decided to come to China she carried with this subject.
China has changed dramatically in recent years, including the changing of family structure. In traditional Chinese society, the elderly used to live with one of their children. But nowadays, more and more young adults are moving out, leaving their elderly parents alone.

Renate Wernli wants to keep records about what happens to beloved parents in China, when they become old and maybe sick.

In this exhibition at CEAC she shows pictures made in Chinese nursing homes, portraits of Chinese and Swiss centenarians and about people with Alzheimer’s disease in Switzerland.

Renate Wernli’s interest is based on social and psychological issues. Even in situations of misery, sickness and poverty, she discovers the dignity of the individual.

Gallery

Looking – not – looking

root — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 04:53:39 +0000

Opening

September 21 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

September 21 till October 12, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Wei Na

This series of work ‘looking – not – looking’ was finished in Holland. I was interested in recording the world around me during the time I stayed in Amsterdam and came back to my hometown-Hohhot of Inner Mongolia for summer holidays.

I was inspired that night while I was sitting at a restaurant in Amsterdam. There were only a few customers there. A young man was eating hamburger; a middle -aged woman was idly rotating a spoon in a cup; an elderly man was reading the latest newspaper… There was no conversation. The atmosphere led to meditations as well as melancholy, only slightly eased by the brisk tempo of faintly played wind music and the charming smile of the woman eating sandwiches in the photo placed on the counter.
Later my eyes were drawn towards a young woman who sat next to me. She looked self-conscious, and her face was a bit pale. She was trying not to let her tears flow down. I noticed her trembling fingers were rhythmically tearing a piece of gasket; a broken purple nail on the middle finger caught a scrap of paper; the activated blood vessels were beating…

I heard some noise from somewhere in my head. ‘There might be something gone wrong for her, as if she had knocked against a hard corner of the world’. Yet something about the scene moved me. There was poetry in that woman. Or it was picture of sadness – and yet it was not a sad picture. Its appeal made me thought of certain other equally and unexpectedly images that had touched me: the broken beer bottles, the steps were covered in flower petals, unfeeling eyes…and the work of a sixteenth-century philosopher on pessimism and a twentieth-century artist. It has the power of a great melancholy piece of music…
Wei Na 2013

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China Conflux

root — Sat, 12 Oct 2013 12:33:38 +0000

Opening

October 19 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

October 19 till November 15, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Ann Noel

‘Art is a full-time, absorbing occupation and a way of life for me’, says Ann Noel, a British born artist living in Berlin, Germany. Every aspect of her daily living experience becomes possible source material for a continuing voyage of creation and discovery, whether it be the trash picked up off the street, the words in the diary she writes faithfully each morning or the souvenirs and keepsakes given to her by participants in her ongoing exchange project “GIVE &TAKE.”

In the exhibition currently showing at the CEAC Gallery in Xiamen, Ann Noel displays these objects and the stories she was told about them in the interviews she has had with people over the last few weeks. In addition to this there are drawings of her own, which she made during her art residency in Xiamen, overworked pages from the journal she has kept and a large work on paper in which painted and collaged elements come together in a colorful celebration of our common co-existence, all made ‘with a little help from my friends.’ (Lennon and McCartney.)

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Water (SHUǏ)

root — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 16:41:29 +0000

Opening

August 31 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

August 31 till September 14, 2020

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About STELLA RAHOLA MATUTES

水is the title that embraces a set of pieces that follows the inspiration of the artist Stella Rahola Matutes. The manufacture of the material acquires the protagonism under her philosophy of not existing any poetical meaning in any material. It is the form and the way we work or assemble the material that we can reach something close to beauty. In fact, Shui is an installation made of pieces of stainless steel and glass that split its character of industrial use and turned into the side of the sensuality, the corporeal, immobile and vibrating, or the fluid and the weightlessness. Taking parallelism of the water (shui), the work remains impregnated with the subjective experience that the artist has lived in China.

Even that Stella comes from Mediterranean Sea; she has felt in this tropical landscape of China the strong presence of the water. The water suspended in the air of the dampness, the water crossing the body as sweat, the violence of the nature in the shape of typhoons, the importance of the tea ceremony, where the water even runs over the wood table to warm the cups, or even the diluted Chinese ink as a tool of expression, the water of the sea for fishing… All these aspects connected with life… the organicity of the taichí as a flow, the soft and seductive movement of the Chinese calligraphy, or even the rhythm of the traffic, never drastic, but never intermittent, always fluid and crazy like a dancing. Shui….

Everything sensitive is not any more than a symbol. The artist is not the slave of the nature. The nature is constructed by the personal experience.

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Do you have WeChat

root — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 13:14:15 +0000

Opening

June 30 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

June 30 at 5 PM, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Jessica Kung Dreyfus and Stéphane Dreyfus

Jessica Kung Dreyfus and Stéphane Dreyfus will be offering a performance called Tea Time on June 30, 5:30-7:30pm at the CEAC studio at MASSBOX

In conjunction with the performance there will also be a solo exhibition of paintings by Jessica Kung Dreyfus conceived of and created during her CEAC residency.

“Do you have WeChat?”
June 30th, opening starts at 5pm MASSBOX exhibition hall

Jessica and Stephane are CEAC resident artists from the USA. Jessica is an international artist who has exhibited in Rome, London, and many US cities. She is a graduate of Yale University cum laude. This piece will invite audience participation and is an interactive cultural commentary. With the inescapable presence of social media and smart phones, how has technology changed the way we connect with each other? What have we gained and what have we lost? “Tea Time” investigates this question within the cultural context of a familiar ritual. “Do you have WeChat? investigates this same question in another way.

Gallery

One Minute, Fried Rice

root — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:01:01 +0000

Opening

September 21 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

September 21 till October 12, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Zhong Zheming

This exhibition is given as a graduation show by Zhong Zheming, who comes from Multimedia Department, Art College of Xiamen University. He has completed the Bachelor and Master study in Multimedia Department in 2013. Zhong participated in an exchange program in LUCA school of Arts, KU Leuven in the city of Ghent, Belgium in 2012.

Zhong expresses his art mainly by the means of video and installation. In his early arts creation, the works he had made indicate that what his attention was drew on the social, political, religious and so on. His stay in Europe brought the experience of being contacted with the western society, culture, politics, religion and Art, which have huge difference with the environment he was born and grown up. Zhong then started to turn his focus to the personal experience and the living environment which is closer to him, from whom he seeks the points to get start, then constructs and expresses his art in an indirect way. In this exhibition, the works he presents and the way how the works are exhibited are kind of presenting of Zhong’s study and research on Art in this period of time, his thinking mainly draws on how to deal with the artistic media language in arts creation, including the experiments and researches about the strategy and the way that are able to be introduced when the concept is translated in the media language.

Gallery

UP ABOVE DOWN BELOW

root — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:01:19 +0000

Opening

June 29 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

June 29 till July 20, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Van Breest Smallenburg

Van Breest Smallenburg is a visual artist based in the Netherlands, Amsterdam and is visually investigating the interaction -time & space & human- through artistic interventions: multidisciplinary installations, video installations and art projects in public space. In this visual research, concepts as connection and the unborn possibilities of void play a central role. Van Breest Smallenburg explores temporality substantively in different ways in various artworks and tries to depict the flow of time itself in (video) installations.

Van Breest Smallenburg is doing an individual research project about “transforming the crystallization of the volatile” via visual investigations. These transformations are shown on different locations in a specific form only once. Natural performance will be included in the (video)-installations, which are tailored to the conditions of the exhibition space. In the visual investigations the artist goes in search of clues in the environment.

Personally the artist feels a long-standing connection with China and is already for many years being intensively involved with internal martial arts. This is reflected in the works of art, influenced by a philosophic interest in Taoism and in nature. Van Breest Smallenburg did investigate the relation between internal martial arts and visual arts also together with students from Xiamen University doing the workshop “Research on the impact of internal martial art meditation on the visual art design process!”

In Xiamen at the Chinese European Art Centre Van Breest Smallenburg is going to exhibit a multi-screen video-installation in her solo show ”UP ABOVE DOWN BELOW” in Chinese 上上下下 (shàng shàng xià xià). The title is referring to the content of the images. In this video-mapping installation the temporal plays an important role and all the images shown, were recorded in Xiamen.

The projected images on moving screens transform every moment to the past. In the videos, the artist shows images reminiscent of life UP ABOVE as well as DOWN BELOW. What’s close-by on several levels is very far away on the other hand and is input for the screened images. The soundscape accompanying the moving images include sounds from Nanputo temple in Xiamen and from radio-plasma waves from outer space.

Van Breest Smallenburg is staying at CEAC in Xiamen from April to July and is thrilled to reshape on a skin-to-skin level the connection between being a European artist and contemporary Chinese life, art and culture through this residency.

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Untitled – Motivation

root — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:23:21 +0000

Opening

May 18 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

May 18 till June 1,2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Lin Xiuqing

As a postgraduate graduation exhibition, the current exhibition stages works which represent Lin Xiuqing’s achievements in art practice throughout the year.

What Lin tries to image is her perspective of view for life. Her works picture certain unintentional conducts in the daily life. Her keen sense to detect the surroundings is largely due to her origin in a farmer’s family. Experiences in the rural areas directly inspire and motivate Lin, who currently lives in the modern city of Xiamen, in her artistic creation. She pays special attention to how people manage to solve the problems in daily life by their own to meet their basic needs under poor living conditions. Those casual and simple conducts, which are full of wisdom in her eyes, embody their unsophisticated value of life.

On the one hand, Lin aspires to seek those who strive to make a living and their conducts aimed at survival in the increasingly high consumption society. Though with neither high-tech, nor intentional style and idea for fashion in their creativity, these conducts manifest not only the optimism between people and space, people and objects and human relations, but also the amicable attitude and way for living. On the other hand, her behavior is unintentional to a large extent. She bridges the unrelated objects by discovering their bonds, which may be interpreted as a way to find and build a context for dialogue and thoughts in the level of life and culture at different hours and in different spaces.

Gallery

Oh My Lovely City

root — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:08:40 +0000

Opening

March 9 at 5 PM, 2013

Duration

March 9 till 20, 2013

Location

CEAC, Xiamen, China

Artist

About Rumiko Hagiwara

Rumiko Hagiwara is a Japanese visual artist based in the Netherlands. Her subtle actions in conceptual art practices suggest people the different angles of perceptions in daily life. She draws attentions to ordinary phenomenon with her subtle sense of humors. These minimal interventions do not add, but rather address and point out the memories that usually pass by unnoticed as our attention is drawn away by the distractions of daily life. By making these subtle and tiny adjustments, she intends to return the viewers attention to these seemingly daily situations.

Rumiko had started an individual research project about sense of humors on Asia since October 2012 via several artists in residency programs in Institute for Provocation (IFP), Beijing, Tokyo Wonder Site (TWS), Tokyo and Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen. She has been collecting humorous phenomenon in societies and documenting them into her weblog-archive rumikohagiwara.enter-office.net

Humor has created certain aspects in different fields confronting our daily reality. Rumiko believe this effect contains very interesting characteristics to turn out the meaning of the signs on mundane objects. It is for creating the new perceptions in daily life to confront the frames of the world. She is therefore interested in mechanisms of humors especially in Asia which is her origin, and regarding them as prospective characters to address in her conceptual art practices.

She is going to exhibit several art works in her solo show “oh my lovely city”. They were developed during a process of her research. The title of the exhibition came from one of presenting art works, a set of postcards consists of images of anonymous Utopians that were posted on streets in Xiamen.

Since Rumiko has been staying in Chinese European Art Centre in Xiamen from January, She often saw images of depicting ideal cities in street posters. These images were drawn as “Utopias” besides slogans and these Utopian images were collected all throughout different parts of the city. These Utopian images used similar iconography in its rendering of the city. She photographed the posters and focused on the generic elements of these Utopias. Rumiko then created this set of postcards allowing the audience to have their own pocket sided versions of ideal Utopias.

“Oh my lovely city” is representing Rumiko’s subtle sense of humors that was greatly improved during her stay in China.

This residence/exhibition is made possible with the support of
– Mondoriaan Fonds, The Netherlands