Artist Xu Bing's large-scale solo exhibition "Xu Bing's Language" recently opened in Shanghai, with his written language and artistic language as the core clues, combing through his artistic journey since the 1980s through prints, installations, documentaries, manuscripts, videos, documentaries, etc.
The Chinese edition of the late German scholar Ernst Berchmann's Chinese Architecture was recently published, and the first edition of the book in 1925 was a pioneering work in the field of ancient Chinese architecture research, which had a profound impact on the writing of Liang Sicheng's History of Chinese Architecture. Recently, Tate curator Li Shujing was appointed artistic director of the 2023 Gwangju Biennale, and she believes that art should face up to the current human crisis and solve it; in Xiamen, China, artist Wu Guanzhen held a solo exhibition "Trance", trying to find certainty in uncertainty.
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Shanghai | artist Xu Bing
"Xu Bing's Language": Combing through the origin and development of art
Xu Bing
On December 24th, the solo exhibition "Xu Bing's Language" opened at the Pudong Art Museum, which takes Xu Bing's written language and artistic language as the core clues to show the ideas and academic theories in the works. More than 70 groups of works since the 1980s are distributed on the first and third floors of the museum, and prints, installations, documentary records, manuscripts, videos, documentaries, etc. show the diversity and richness of their art.
"Book of Heaven" Pudong Art Museum Exhibition Site 2021 Pudong Art Museum
The exhibition on the first floor explains in chronological order the progression of Thinking and morphological flux of Xu Bing's writing language creation from experiment to maturity, from oriental vocabulary to world context. His printmaking work "Five Plural Series" is an important thread that runs through his creative process, and is also regarded as the prelude to the birth of "Book of Heaven". In the symbiosis of printmaking and writing, East and West, "Heavenly Book" and "English Square Character" were gradually born, until the "Book of The Land" in 2003, which was rapidly improved with the development of the Internet era, Xu Bing keenly captured the value and future direction of image text and network communication methods, especially in the installation "Monkey Fishing Moon" and "The Gravitational Force of Civilization" hanging in public space (to be presented in the central exhibition hall in April 2022) to visualize the expression of this proposition. These works use the special language of art to provoke the audience to think about the entanglement and competition between different cultural perspectives. How they influence, complement and correct each other, and explore the possibility of people of different races, beliefs, and values sharing and building the world together.
In the exhibition hall on the third floor, works such as "English Square Character Calligraphy Classroom", "The Story Behind it", and "Mustard Garden Landscape Scroll" activate the "symbolic" Chinese culture in the works, and the essence of China's thinking methods, cultural attitudes, and world outlook can become nourishment for the progress and development of thinking logic. The exhibition also exhibits works such as the "Character Sketching" series, hand-drawn animation "The Character of Chinese Characters", "Tobacco Project", "Phoenix" and so on.
"English Square Character Calligraphy Room" Pudong Art Museum Third Floor Exhibition Site 2021 Pudong Art Museum
"Phoenix" Pudong Art Museum Exhibition Site 2021 Xu Bing Studio
Xu Bing believes that another feature in the artistic language is about the complementarity and support relationship between each work. An old work is a commentary on a new work, and a new work is a rediscovery of an old work. The variation and energy of the social scene are constantly injected into the creative inspiration. Under the seemingly distorted appearance of sound and dislocation, multi-level social issues and cultural thinking are giving voice, and through the transformation of old artistic methods and the hints of new languages, the boundaries of art are constantly stretched and expanded. The exhibition will run until August 23, 2022. (Text/Huang Song)
China | German scholar Ernst Berchmann
He influenced Liang Sicheng Lin Huiyin, and Chinese edition of "Chinese Architecture" was published
German scholar Ernst Berchmann (1873–1949)
The Chinese edition of the important book "Chinese Architecture" by the German scholar Ernst Boerschmann (1873-1949) was recently published by the China Pictorial Press. The book is one of the results of Berchmann's 1906-1909 architectural expeditions in China, first published in 1925, containing more than 700 photographs and more than 130,000 words. The original book is divided into two volumes, containing a total of 20 chapters, starting from the architectural structures such as the city wall, gate, hall, roof decoration and so on, and discussing the essential characteristics of Chinese architectural art in the form of pictures and texts. It can be said that "Chinese Architecture" is a pioneering work in the field of ancient Chinese architecture research, which has had a profound impact on the writing of Liang Sicheng's "History of Chinese Architecture".
"Chinese Architecture" [de] Ernst Berchmann by Ye Ming, Du Weihua translated by China Pictorial Publishing House, 2021
Ernst Berchmann is a professor at the Royal Berlin Institute of Technology (the predecessor of the Technical University of Berlin) in Germany, and is the first person to comprehensively investigate and document ancient Chinese architecture. From 1906 to 1909, with the support of the Royal Foundation of the German Empire, Berchmann traveled tens of thousands of miles across 14 provinces and regions of China, and conducted a comprehensive investigation of China's royal buildings, temples, ancestral halls, and residences, leaving behind 8,000 photos, 2,500 sketches, 2,000 rubbings, and 1,000 pages of surveying and mapping records. This was 20 years earlier than the inspection of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, and he also received the title of "Originator of Chinese Architectural Photography". In 1932, Berchmann was invited to become a communications researcher at the China Construction Society. From 1933 to 1935, he was specially hired as a consultant for the heritage of traditional Chinese architecture. He has published works such as "Chinese Architecture and Landscape", "Chinese Architecture", "Chinese Architectural Ceramics", "Chinese Architecture and Religious Culture" and so on.
Qing Xiling Stone Arch. Berchmann Mapping.
Since its inception, China Architecture has been highly praised by relevant industry experts. Lai Delin, associate professor of fine arts at the University of Louisville, commented: "Berchmann's book is one of the few important monographs (only two) in the early 20th century that provides a comprehensive introduction to Chinese architecture. Although its German text may hinder the acceptance of the author's views by Chinese and English readers, the large number of exquisite photos and mappings undoubtedly provide a valuable reference for architects at that time to understand Chinese architecture. ”
People who know the history of modern Chinese architecture know the American architect Mao Fei and the Chinese scholar Le Jiazao. The former designed a large number of new buildings that conformed to the principles of modern materials and structural techniques, while at the same time having the official architectural style of the Qing Dynasty; the latter's book "History of Chinese Architecture" published in 1935 was the first of its kind in China.
Discussions and studies of the two men's biographies and their designs or writings are not uncommon, but two questions seem to remain to be answered: Although Mao had the opportunity to visit important Chinese cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Nanjing, and to visit examples of high-grade architecture such as the Forbidden City, his articles on Chinese architecture do not contain detailed survey materials other than a general overview. Why was he able to design a Chinese-style building with relatively accurate shapes and a variety of types? Le Shi is not a member of the Chinese construction society, and should not have as many fieldwork opportunities as Liang Sicheng and Liu Dunzhen. His book mentions many examples that have not been described in the publications of the Construction Society, and where did they originate? A further question is that in the early 20th century, most architects were not educated in the history of ancient Chinese architecture, and it was difficult to have sufficient time and conditions to conduct amateur fieldwork, so what was the sample they used to design Chinese-style architecture?
Part of the answer to these questions was in some publications of the time, and the German scholar Ernst Berchmann's books "Chinese Architecture" and "Chinese Architecture and Landscape" were among the best. (Text/Hatacho)
South Korea | Tate curator Lee Shu-kyung
Artistic Director, Gwangju Biennale 2023: Art Solves Common Crises
Li Shujing
Sook-Kyung Lee, senior curator of international art at Tate Modern in London, has been appointed artistic director of the 14th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, which will be held from April 7 to July 9, 2023, according to artforum public accounts and other reports. Affected by the epidemic, the biennial was postponed by one year from the original 2022. The 13th Gwangju Biennale was also postponed due to the epidemic and the number of visitors decreased significantly.
Lee Isuk Kyung is the first Curator born in South Korea since Sunjung Kim led the Gwangju Biennale. Prior to joining Tate Modern in 2019, she worked at Tate Liverpool and the Tate Research Centre, and curated the Korea Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Recently, she curated a critically acclaimed retrospective of Nam-Joon Paik's work at Tate Modern.
"The role of art is to solve our common crisis and set the way forward: racial and class conflicts, climate emergencies and environmental issues, and covid-19 are the earth-level crises that artists of our time are exploring," Li said. The upcoming Biennale will be based on a "non-Western perspective" that will show "a shift in the relationship between the center and the periphery, truly equal connections and exchanges, and an imagination of a better human community." ”
While the theme for the 2023 Gwangju Biennale has yet to be announced, organizers said in a press release that the exhibition will revolve around the "Gwangju Spirit" and place the South Korean city in a global context. The event will also reflect the "Vision of the Earth", taking into account "ethnic, cultural and historical diversity". (Finishing/Qian Xueer)
Xiamen | Artist Wu Guanzhen
Solo "trance", looking for certainty in uncertainty
Wu Guanzhen
A few days ago, artist Wu Guanzhen's solo exhibition "Trance" was held in Xiamen. The exhibition presents five groups of artists' newly created works, the "Na Shui" series, which are customized for this special field, breaking the form of painting on the shelf and merging with space in a more cinematic way. The exhibition places the painting outdoors, allowing "that water" to be truly immersed in the water, presenting the main creative intention of "vine" on the medium of "water" that is both real and memory. The intention of the vine is the recent artist's thinking and expression of the current situation and personal life perception.
Wu Guanzhen Na Shui works partial large installation 2021
Wu Guanzhen was born in Fujian, is an authentic northern Fujian native, and has always had a tradition of using lacquer here. Using "fragments of memories from childhood nature" as the source of his creation, in order to interpret his inner dream-like memories more freely, he broke off the wooden tire and spread out on a clearer and thinner ramie. Lacquer was born from nature, ramie is also derived from nature, and the life process of natural things makes people feel the meaning of the aesthetics of time. Wu Guanzhen constantly explores the relationship between virtual and real, void and color, existence and non-existence in the materials of lacquer and hemp, with special emphasis on the naturalness of the works, excavating the particularity of the material itself, breaking through the shackles of traditional lacquer art, and polishing his own contemporary art language in the time and space presented by light and shadow. The name of the exhibition, "trance," comes from chapter 21 of the Tao Te Ching: "The Tao is a thing, but trance is only a trance." There is an elephant in it; there is something in it; there is something in it; there is a spirit in it, and there is faith in it. (Finishing/Qian Xue'er)