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Indepth Arts News:
"Re-Configuration: Works on Paper Sponsored by the CourtYard Gallery"
2001-05-19 until 2001-06-12
Yanhuang Art Museum
Beijing, ,
CN China
The CourtYard Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a group exhibition on Saturday (April 21st) at the Yanhuang Museum in Beijing. The show features new works on paper by 12 artists currently living in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and Beijing. The artists exhibited represent a cross-generational and cross-cultural mix, as well as a perfect gender balance (six male and six female artists), and all work mainly as figurative artists.
The underlying theme of the exhibition, as curated by CourtYard Gallery Director Meg Maggio and co-curator and artist Robin Tewes, is the shifting positions of the body and its contexts as represented by artists of equally diverse backgrounds. Of the foreign artists, Mark Tansey, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Robin Tewes, and Jane Dickson all work out of New York, Kim McCarty hails from Los Angeles, and Marlene Dumas is a South African currently living in Amsterdam. Of the Chinese artists, only two - Liu Wei and Liu Xiaodong - currently reside in Beijing, while both Zhao Gang and Cai Jin now call New York home, and Huang Yongping lives in Paris. All of these artists use the body (or its substitute) as a way of investigating various degrees of positioning and alienation within society, history, and ultimately, individual subjectivity.
We are especially pleased to have the opportunity to exhibit for the first time in China the works of Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and Mark Tansey, whose artistic careers have inspired many of Chinas contemporary artists. European-based artists Marlene Dumas and Huang Yongpings willingness to be included in this group show is a reflection of their on-going enthusiasm for the Chinese contemporary art scene following their participation in last Novembers Shanghai Biennale.
This exhibit represents on-going, collaborative trends in the international art world aimed at bringing together diverse art communities under one roof, pairing seemingly unrelated artists side by side, in order to highlight the level of cross-fertilization - influences and reverse influences - that dominate much of contemporary art.
Even though all of the participating artists have exhibited extensively abroad, these kinds of mixed exhibitions are harder to come by within China. But the enthusiasm and willingness of the artists to participate in such a show is a clear indication of both the high level of interest in Chinese art as part of the international contemporary art scene, and of the immense opportunities for more of these exchanges in the future. Several of the participating artists from abroad are expected to be in Beijing to attend the opening.
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