The University Museum and Art Gallery of The Hong Kong University will be showing an exhibition of artworks by 27 Austrian artists in China titled “Refuse the Shadows of the Past: Five Years of Austrian Art made in China” from the July 4 to August 24, 2014.
This commemorative exhibition celebrates the fifth anniversary of artistic creation and transformation by Austrian and other international artists working in China with a concentrated focus on the ‘Chinese’ past and present. Five years also mark a longer existing program of internationalisation, initiated by the Austrian government to allow artist to work around the world.
This summer, the University Museum exhibits a selection of works that have been shown in Beijing, Shenzhen, Chongqing and Ningbo in the last 5 years, and include video works by Hannes Böck, Thomas Weber Carlsen & Jan Krogsgaard, Sylvia Eckermann & Gerald Nestler, Johann Neumeister, Moritz Neumüller, Audrey Salmon, Bernhard Staudinger, Sylvia Winkler & Stephan Köperl and Heimo Wallner. Objects, installations and book works by Allan Au, Franz Amann, Anna Hofbauer, Ralo Mayer, Rainer Prohaska and Gerlind Zeilner as well as collages, drawings and photographic works by Lukas Birk, Karel Dudesek, Georg Frauenschuh, Tina Hochkogler, Heimo Lattner, Thomas Pakull, Anton Petz, Ida & Bianca Regl, Roswitha Weingrill and Andrea Witzmann.
Each exhibited artist developed his or her own method of artistic practice in a new environment, by working and living in China and not just visiting her. Thereby, they did not form part of a programmatic cultural exchange, but participated in a residency programme that allowed them to develop an approach driven by personal curiosity and subtle translations. The closest comparisons are the pictograms of the Naxi tribe, which have been communicating with images rather than with letters. Similarly, these artists communicate with, various materials, sounds, and forms to reach the visitors’ imagination.
Among the twenty-seven artists represented, Heimo Wallner features Mao Tse Tung’s selected works volume 2 with personal illustrations composed into an animation video, in order to draw and write a large map which shows historical and today’s connection of China. Roswitha Weingrill presents collages with mosaic intarsia showing female and male heads carved out of Chinese art school books.
This exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Austrian Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macau and the Austrian initiative Embassy of the Arts.
