Firstindigo&Lifestyle

21-century art

Category: art review&curating

  • CHEN Wei’s post-Chinese realities in photography

    CHEN Wei’s post-Chinese realities in photography

    Two international galleries will present Beijing-based photographer CHEN Wei’s works this Spring, starting on April. Hong Kong-based Gallery EXIT hosts Chen Wei’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, which opens on April 4th. Gallery EXIT was established in 2008 aiming to focus on artwork that is controversial, progressive, and representing all media. Chen Wei will present a selection of his photographs, light-boxes and installations that feature the inherent and dissonant contradictions between expectations and reality. Carefully staged and narrated frames show fragments of personal memories and fantasies. His compositions imply hidden symbols telling about contemporary realities, and marking histories. Additionally, Chen’s first solo exhibition in the UK will be Slumber Song. It opens in London at the end of April at Ben Brown Fine Arts.

    Chen Wei belongs to a new generation of emerging Chinese artists who depict a more diverge approach to the culture than previous generations, as they come after the Cultural Revolution era. Rather than critiquing the historic past, he uses photography as a vehicle to capture human encounters with a changing and developing China. Chen Wei’s still-life photography captures the mundane and the ordinary, the portrayed objects look old-fashioned and rustic; yet the images echo drama and presence through the designed scenes.

    CHEN Wei, Coins, 2012, 150x120cm, Archival inkjet print
    CHEN Wei, Coins, 2012, Archival inkjet print, 150x120cm

    Chen Wei’s photographs are Inspired by cinematic methodologies where suspense creation rules the dynamics of narration. Objects are referencing to allegories that imply many meanings, and Chen is cautious of leaving the narratives open.

    Coins, statues, books and light reappear throughout the narrative of the exhibition, hinting at contemporary themes and taboos such as desire in a consumptive society, the spectacle of the art world and the human condition in urban environment. (Gallery EXIT)

    Chen Wei constructs his works by creating situational installations which he then photographs. The images radiate intimate everyday settings, slowly revealing an unclear, unsettling, yet uncategorized state of emotion.

    — — —

    Chen Wei (b. 1980, in Zhejiang Province) is now living and working in Beijing. The artist has made appearance in numerous group exhibitions across the world since 2003, and more than 10 solo exhibitions in Asia and Europe since 2008. He received the 1st Asia Pacific Photography Prize at ShContemporary Art Fair in Shanghai in 2011. He is awarded the Best Photography Artist of 2011 by art journal Randian. Chen’s exhibitions include: Seoul Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Poznan Biennale, etc.

    Info about upcoming exhibitions:

    Chen Wei’s exhibition at Gallery Exit, Hong Kong:

    4 April – 3 May 2014

    Opening: Friday, 4 April, 6 – 9 pm

    Gallery EXIT, 3/F, 25 Hing Wo Street, Tin Wan, Aberdeen, Hong Kong

    Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 1100 – 1800

    http://www.galleryexit.com/

    Chen Wei’s Slumber Song – exhibition at Ben Brown Fine Arts, London
    12 Brook’s Mews, London W1K 4DG, UK

    30 Apr – 5 Jun 2014

    Hours: Monday to Friday: 11am – 6pm
    Saturdays: 10.30am – 2.30pm

    www.benbrownfinearts.com

    Chen Wei will be presented in a group exhibition at Tampa Museum of Art/My Generation: Young Chinese Artists
     7 Jun 2014 – 28 Sep 2014
     Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, USA
    www.tampamuseum.org
  • Christy Rupp’s animalistic art

    Christy Rupp’s animalistic art

    Christy Rupp was presented at VOLTA NY’ 14 by Frederieke Taylor Gallery. The artist who is known for her 1980s public art projects, was at the art fair with her new work that raises questions about environmental threats and issues around wild animals and nature. One part of her presentation was a series of sculptures around microfauna from the Gulf of Mexico; artworks are made from welded steel and encaustic wax.  In another series of sculptures (images above), Rupp explored the relationship between ivory and energy. These were made in response to threats coming from drilling, addressing also accurate issues around poaching. The artist has made sculptures called ‘The Fake Ivory Series‘ (welded steel and encaustic wax) pointing that wild animal spices are threatened to extinction as they are poached for their tusks. The art stands for trophies as desired objects that include animal parts such as ivory.  Scrimshaw or tattoo-like scribbles on them make comments on the value placed on energy over life. The sculpture ‘Walrus‘, 2014, a mixed media work with credit card solicitations, concretely points to currency over humanistic ideals that protect our environment.

    Rupp, Walrus Tusks with Greenhouse Gases, 2012. Courtesy of Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NYC

    The artist’s past includes diverse projects that are politically, socially and environmentally engaging. Rupp participated in the legendary “The Times Square Show” and “The Real Estate Show” of 1979-80, and she is affiliated with Colab and Group Material. To address artist’s past and her works in context, the gallery also showed video and documentation of her art projects from the early 80’s period.

    Christy Rupp’s recent notable shows include:

    “Dead or Alive” at the Museum of Arts and Design, NY 2010, “Dear Mother Nature” at the Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz, NY 2012, “This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980’s”, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL 2012, “American Dreamers” Pallazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy w/ Hudson River Museum, and “XFR STN” Transfer Station at the New Museum, NY 2013, among numerous others.

  • Erwin Redl: ‘InMotion’

    Erwin Redl: ‘InMotion’

    Erwin Redl had his recent exhibition InMotion at Bitforms Gallery in New York City. He is known for works that emphasize perception, architectural space, kinetic elements, LED-installations, social space and corporeality. The Ohio-based artist visited the gallery himself, and spoke to visitors during the Armory Show week in March. It was fascinating to see how the ping-pong balls rise into the glass pipes in different rhythms making a specific sound-effect. Redl told that his background is in electronic music, which makes perfect sense. The glass pipes of ‘Levitate’ sculpture also reminds of an instrument like organ. It takes an entire wall, and has thirty-one vertically suspended glass pipes. Each of them has a fan installed on the bottom to propel a ping-pong ball up. The fans are then synchronized to create sequences. Acoustics in the small room is amazingly intimate fitting for the works.

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    Another incredible installation was ‘Breath of Light’  that is composed of structures each having nine acrylic plates on them. The installations hang in the air and reflect beautiful configurations with green-colored laser beam. The mode of these plates is to go from transparent plain to an origami of variations that radiate around with green reflections. If ‘Levitate’ is fun and sound-oriented, ‘Breath of Light’ is deeper and  more mysterious. ‘The third installation, ‘Swing’ is a series of floor sculptures made of spring-loaded metal rods. It raises curiosity as an engineering project. The fans installed on top of the rods make them move or swing back and forth in an airy manner. The rods swing in formation, which makes them seem robotic, and less human-attached. The fourth one, ‘Inclined Plane’ propels ping-pong ball upward with fans. It is the most minimalistic one, perhaps a script for the project.

    Erwin Redl is an Austrian-born artist, who is internationally acclaimed installation artist. His most large-in-scale public installation is Fetch (2010), which is a computer-controlled 580-foot long outdoor LED installation that he created for the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio.

    …  InMotion related video at https://vimeo.com/86196863

    …  More info on Erwin Redl’s web-site at www.paramedia.net