[spectre] Pourinfos/ Today is Shanghai Time #3

Tue Jun 13 15:19:21 CEST 2006

Today is Shanghai Time #3

Note sur today is Shanghai time 2#
Malgré le gout prononcé du gouvernement chinois pour l'art et la culture 
s'exprimant par la creation de "Creative Industrial Parks", l'ouverture 
du Creative Garden par Solo exhibition... 38 Solo Exhibitions of Chinese 
Artists n'a pas pu avoir lieu. Les authorités locales ayant decidé de 
couper l'éléctricité au bout de quelques minutes, certaines videos ayant 
été jugées impropres à la vision.

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1.Platform for Urban Investigation on May 13 – 26 at Island6 Arts 
Center, Shanghai , China

During the residency of artist Allard van Hoorn at Island 6 Arts Center 
from May 13 – 26 2006 the Platform for Urban Investigation will research 
Shanghai as an environment for reinterpretation of form and movement in 
the city. Various activities will be ongoing during these two weeks .The 
audience is welcome to visit Island 6 Arts Center and participate and 
co-develop this open-door workshop environment. Allard van Hoorn will be 
giving workshops, conducting interviews with various cultural

producers and be doing continuous research while working in this space 
and the city around it. A calendar with precise schedule of activities 
will be posted on http://www.allardvanhoorn.com/projects_PUI.asp.

Re-appropriation of geometric forms

One of the projects that will take place at Island 6 Arts Centre is 
'Re-appropriation of geometric forms'. The public is cordially invited to

actively participate in the development of this activity.

Fellow humans like R. Buckminster Fuller have thoroughly proved we are 
the first generation that can fully make the whole of the

system of cohabitation on this planet work, that we have more then 
sufficient technological standards, non-organic energy resources etc. to 
provide a high standard of living for all people on earth. The only 
thing that keeps us from doing so is knowledge.

This project uses the re-appropriation of geometric figures as a method 
of stimulating an alternative look on the world. By defining the 
properties of the line, triangle, square and circle differently and 
using these physical forms accordingly is intending to change our 
perspectives on the world around us.

The way humans have evolved on our planet is to a certain extend 
arbitrary. So is the way we describe the world around us.

Accordingly, formulas and descriptions in physics and mathematics are 
developed over many generations, building theory upon theory.

One can imagine that in a slightly distinctly developed world these 
descriptions of the world around us would have developed differently, 
giving other meanings and functionality.

This project is an exercise in imagining other functions and definitions 
of very common forms in our daily lives like a line, triangles, squares 
and circles. Together we will investigate how to re-interpret or 
re-appropriate these forms in a different manner from their currently 
known geometric realities.

Some examples to start with:
Line (2 sides): as a shape to be used to shake one person's hand on the 
other side of the line
Triangle (3 sides): as a shape to be used to kiss people in three 
different directions
Square (4 sides): as a shape to be used to hug people in four different 
directions
Circle (infinite amount of sides): as a shape to be used to study the 
horizon in an infinite number of directions

In the gallery we will do an interactive exercise of redefining these 
geometrics for ourselves:

1)Come to Island 6 Arts Centre and study other peoples interpretations 
and solutions to this challenge

2)Take some tape, make your own form and re-appropriate it, giving your 
own meaning and use

3)Take these forms and use them in their new way in your day-to-day 
life. Put them in your house, office or even in the street and

use them according to your own definition

For more information:

Allard van Hoorn
http://www.allardvanhoorn.com
allard at allardvanhoorn.com

Island 6 Arts Center
Thomas Charveriat
Thomas at island6.org
Tel: 13761723704

Moganshan Lu 120, building 6, 2 nd floor, 200060 Shanghai China
http://www.island6.org

Exhibition open to the public from May 13 th
Reception for press and public May 20 th 19:00
Exhibit hours:
Wednesday – Thursday – Friday 13:00 till 18:00
Saturday – Sunday 11:00 till 18:00
And by appointment

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2. Venue: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Building 28, 199 Fang 
Dian Road Pudong New Area)

Date: 21h May 2006 – 11th July 2006
Opening: 21th May 2006 19:00 ( Sunday)

Presented by: Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Epidemic
Supported by: EU-Japan Fest

Curator : Richard Castelli

Artists : Romy Achituv (Israel), Gregory Barsamian (USA), Jean Michel 
Bruyère (France-Senegal), Du Zhenjun (China), Dumb Type(Japan), Ulf 
Langheinrich (Germany-Austria), Marie Maquaire (France), Thomas McIntosh 
(Canada), minim++ (Japan), David Moises(Austria), Erwin Redl 
(Austria-USA), Tomohiro Sato (Japan), Jeffrey Shaw (Australia), Pierrick 
Sorin (France), Time's Up (Austria -Australia), Holger Förterer ( Germany)

 From Flash to Pixel is an exhibition which presents four states of "the 
immaterial".

Starting with fire, the first domesticated energy, the exhibition 
follows man's development and transformation of energy production to 
ever higher degrees of sophistication that has followed in parallel to 
his own evolution. Electricity, light, and now the pixel which, like the 
spark for fire, is the basic cell of the electronic image.

Fundamentally spectacular because of its subject, From Flash to Pixel is 
also an eye-opening voyage into the most impressive expressions of the 
today's art.

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3.Aura-art
mythology
new works by yinzhaoyang

date: 20 may.- 20 jun. 2006
opening: 3:00pm-8:00pm 20 may.2006

Yin Zhaoyang's Myth
Leng Lin

"Chinese contemporary art" is being shaped by all kinds of passion and 
desire abroad and locally, white it is still something that is 
unfathomable and indefinable. She seems to have become a certain art of 
the future. Financial interests and historical responsibilities are 
closely intertwined and mixed up together. Excitement, obligation, 
strategy and instinct keep on arising alternatively in the atmosphere of 
"Chinese contemporary art" that is in the making as economic incentives 
and historical responsibilities with and take advantage of each other. 
Artist Yin Zhaoyang has emerged in such an environment and meanwhile his 
art intensifies the tension of this atmosphere through certain specific 
reference.

Like most artists working in China, Yin Zhaoyang is a young artist who 
has received realism education in art. Realism has become his most basic 
way of practice. However, unlike most Chinese contemporary artists, his 
realism has little to do with the specific nature of everyday life. His 
realism is not specifically related to any contemporary time, which 
distinguishes his work the most from that of the "new generation" of 
painters in the 1990s. In the meantime, his realism isn't critical of 
the reality in a comic way. "Cynicism" regains its gravity in his work, 
where specifically described objects and events are always tightly 
linked to some purpose and ideal. His paintings are not time-specific. 
On the contrary, they are tied to the timeless ideas of eternity, 
sublimity, grandness, ideal and tragedy. Unlike in classical art, this 
tie has clearly been ruled by the artist's own current intension. In his 
"Utopia" series of paintings, the artist himself frequently appears in 
the "grand" and "classic" images that we are familiar with. But his 
symbolic realistic depiction of the architecture and sculptures around 
the Tian'anmen Square doesn't mean that the artist has any interest in 
these specific icons. Instead, it is a way to painstakingly highlight an 
atmosphere, a self-contained heroic one. The artist portrays these 
specific icons repeatedly in his paintings. He doesn't mean to release 
the aesthetic meaning of these specific objects, but instead he tries to 
assemble an individual energy. In his work, we don't see the artist's 
response to trendy everyday events and objects. Instead we can picture a 
historical responsibility and an individual ideal of the artist. In his 
latest "Myth" series, this individual ideal and historical 
responsibility has further evolved into a desire to forcefully possess 
individual ideal and historical responsibility. The artist has directly 
borrowed the tale of Sisyphus but his intension doesn't lie in the 
philosophy of this story and he doesn't try to express this philosophy 
either. The real purpose of the artist is to showcase an irrepressible 
energy of the individual. From pure images of characters to images of 
both figures and rocks, then to pure images of rocks, a kind of 
unstable, glittery, and even violent element is always present in every 
corner of his paintings. Classic subject matters and realistic technique 
have gained a sense of being at the spot in this uncertainty. Eternity, 
sublimity, grandness, ideal and tragedy regain their existence in this 
sense of being at the spot. It's only that they no longer function
as a value being pursued by the artists but as an energy being occupied 
by the artist. This kind of possession has something to do with the 
greed brought out by the fast development of market economy in China.
In his "Myth" series, "rock" themselves are full of bizarre quality. 
Here, "rock" seems to have become huge "gem" and Sisyphus's spirit of 
moving the rocks up to the mountain has become an endless chase after 
profits. It is more of an everyday reality than a modern fairy bale. The 
artist has brought these two split extremes together in a miraculous and 
unobstructed way. Is this the characteristic of "Chinese contemporary 
art" or that of Chinese society? Or is it the characteristic of the 
artist himself? Whether realism is calling for a historical 
responsibility or a possession of the reality will become our issue and 
characteristic in a period of time. Yin Zhaoyang is inarguably a special 
holder of this issue and characteristic

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4.REFLECTION"
A Retrospective Exhibition of LIANG Weizhou

Opening Cocktail: June 9th from 7pm

Exhibition time: 2006.6.10 to 2006.6.29, daily from 10.30am to 7pm

VENUE: 1918 ArtSPACE Warehouse
N. 78 Changping Road (near Changhua Road)
Jing'An district SHANGHAI
Tel: 5228 6776
http://www.1918artspace.com
info at 1918artspace.com

Shanghainese artist Liang Weizhou's masterpieces from 1995 to 2005 get
exceptionally exhibited in 1918 ArtSPACE Warehouse, ten years after
his solo exhibition in Shanghai Art Museum. With a very sentimental
atmosphere, Liang depicts scenes from his ordinary family life and
from his inner thought, giving expression to the moments of
perplexity, despair but also of love and family happiness that came
across his existence. Liang is a one of these exceptional
expressionists artists who attempts to let us feel the intensity and
the challenging quintessence of life.

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5.Shanghart's H-Space

Here, The Scene Is Better Ji Wenyu Exhibition.

"Here, the scene is better" will feature new oil paintings by Ji Wenyu 
and 'soft sculptures' (textile sculptures) Ji Wenyu created together 
with his artist wife Zhu Weibing in the last few years. It is the first 
time several of their sculptures will be presented to the public.
Noted for his meticulous pop style since the mid to late 1990s, Ji Wenyu 
focuses in his paintings on the depiction of everyday elements he sees 
around him. His canvas is often filled crowdedly with ordinary people or 
a particular vulgar life scene. He is a keen observer of the 
contradictions, 'funny encounters' and problems occuring during the 
development of his home town Shanghai from a Chinese city to an 
international megalopolis and the modernization and internationalization 
of China in general.
Ji Wenyu creates his works very slowly. Even compared to other Chinese 
artists of his generation who got a well founded technical eduction in 
the art academies, Ji Wenyu is an extraordinary painter.
For a long time, Ji Wenyu has been thinking how to go beyond the canvas, 
switching from 2-dimension to 3-dimensions. During the last few years he 
started, together with his wife, Zhu Weibing, to develop a series of 
'soft sculptures', 3-dimensional objects made out mostly of fabric. 
Fascinated by the material, the couple developed a new visual language, 
which takes up a lot of Ji Wenyus themes and humour but creates entirely 
fresh and surprising sculptures.
While Ji Wenyu's works have been shown widly to the public, this 
exhibtion will feature for the first time the main pieces the artist 
couple created in the last few years.
This exhibition at Shanghart's H-Space will be followed by an exhibition 
of Ji Wenyu and Zhu Weibing at Museum 52 in London later in June.
Ji Wenyu, born 1959, graduated from the Shanghai Light-industry College 
in 1988 and is teaching today at the Art's and Crafts College

in Shanghai. His works have recently been included in 'Infintite 
Painting', a large exhibition on tendeces of contemporary painting

organized by Francesco Bonami and Sarah Cosulich at the Villa Manin in 
Italy.
Zhu Weibing: born in 1971, graduated from Central Institute of Arts and 
Crafts in 1995.

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6.Nouveau site internet

http://zhuanpan.org/

zhuanpan.org is a database of sites throughout China that reflect the 
exchange between architecture and cultural values.

A zhuanpan – or turntable – can be a wheel-of-fortune spinnner, a 
traffic circle, a slot machine, or a lazy-susan. Here zhuanpan is a tool 
for collecting and distributing information about the built environment 
in contemporary China.

Sites stored in this database include buildings, streets, urban spaces, 
websites, networks, temporary structures, fictional spaces, product 
design, building codes, spatial practices, interiors, landscapes, and 
infrastructures. To find a site, browse by selecting a category or use 
the search feature.

Today is Shanghai time #3
Une sélection de Jérémie Thircuir

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XAVIER CAHEN
Direction de la publication
xavier.cahen at pourinfos.org
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