2017.05.18 Thu, by
Disturbing Beauty. An International Moving Images Collection Presented by Mr. Fei Jun

[Press Release]

Alicia Aza (Madrid, 1966) is the largest private collector of moving images in Spain. Her entire collection has a predilection for images of a disturbing beauty. From 2005 to now, Alicia Aza has collected more than 150 artworks related with fine arts, dance, music, motherhood, childhood and innocence. The collection has been already exhibited in prestigious European museums and moving images festivals. This screening program reflects on how the traditional concept of beauty has been subverted in contemporary art.

For a long time we were told that beauty was ideal. For Winckelmann, the “inventor” of the History of Art, the essence of art is a model to be attained or an ideal. Namely the beauty of the ideal nude of Greek statues. Historians of art like Kenneth Clarck in his book The Nude (1956) continued that line of thought. The Birth of Venus (c.1486) by Sandro Boticcelli represents a clear example of this isolation between idea, form and desire. Clarck and before him Boticcelli himself ignored the cruel and disturbing part of that beauty. However, for Aby Warburg the history of the classical Western civilizations were traversed by the polarity of tragedy and knowledge. Apollo and Dionysus. So, for him beauty is impure, dialectical and contradictory. Venus is double, it is not a pure entity. And we should not be content with the humanistic analogy of Venus Veritas (beauty-truth).

The present curated screening contains several moving images works by renowned international artists who are part of this Spanish collection. The screening program is presented by Mr. Fei Jun, Mrs. Margarita Aizpuru, and it is curated by Susana Sanz with the support of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, Government of Spain and China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.

Venue: Red Chair Lecture Hall, Bldg 7, CAFA
Huajiadi nan jie 8, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Date: May 20th, 2017
Time: 18:30-20:00

Organizer: Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, Government of Spain
Co-organizer: China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA)
Coordination: xd culture platform

Participants

Fei Jun Artist / Designer / Educator

Fei Jun holds an MFA in Electronic Integrated Art from Alfred University’s School of Art and Design in New York. Fei Jun is the head of CAFA Media Lab, a professor in interactive media art and design, China Central Academy of Fine Arts as well as a working artist and designer. He is also a chief creative director of Moujiti interactive and curator of Beijing Media Art Biennale. His art and design work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, museums and festivals, and has received many international awards including IF design award, Red dot design award and Design for Asia Award.

About the curator Susana Sanz

Spanish curator and art critic. Ph.D in Contemporary Chinese Art History (Complutense University, Madrid), Master in History of Chinese Art (Tsinghua University, Beijing). In 2004-2005 she worked as assistant curator of Régis Michel in the Louvre Museum, Editor in chief of the magazine Art in China (2011-2012) and Lecturer of Contemporary Spanish Art History at the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing (CAFA, 2013- 2014), while she held the position of Cultural Coordinator at Cervantes Institute in Beijing (2014-2015). She currently works as independent curator between Europe and China where she founded xd culture platform.

With the special participation of Margarita Aizpuru

Since the early 1990s she works as an independent curator, art critic and visual arts programmer. In 1994 she worked in the Department of temporary exhibitions of the George Pompidou Center, the Cartier Foundation of Paris or the Museum of Contemporary Art of Bordeaux. She has also been Associate professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid, Programmer of Visual arts of the House of America of Madrid (2003-2004) and of “The Emergeing zone Program” in the CAAC (Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art, Seville) destined to promote the emerging art.

Laura and Sira Cabrera, Dream, 2013

Laura and Sira Cabrera, Dream, 2013

Kaoru Katayama, ba-ji-ru-fu, 2000

Kaoru Katayama, ba-ji-ru-fu, 2000

Erwin Olaf, Dusk and down, 2010

Erwin Olaf, Dusk and down, 2010

Erwin Olaf, Dusk and down, 2010

Erwin Olaf, Dusk and down, 2010