Beijing Stockroom
PAST FEATURED EXHIBITIONS
Huang Yongping “Leviathanation” – 2011 Tracing the Milky Way
“Leviathanation” by Chinese-French artist Huang Yongping was a featured spectacle of the group show curated by then-UCCA director Jérôme Sans. The enormous work is a composition of a ferocious fiberglass fish head mounted on a replica of Mao Zedong’s private train, with an arrangement of taxidermied animals attached. The exhibition’s statement piece plays between the fantastic and the obscure, amid a selection of other notable works of similar dynamic by Chinese artists Chen Zhen, Shen Yuan, Yang Jiecang, Yan Peiming and Wang Du.
Yan Lei “Limited Art Project” – 2012 dOCUMENTA_13 in Kassel, Germany
A veteran participant, Yan Lei was one of only two Chinese artists invited this year’s 13th edition of Documenta. This year’s program featured his monumental painting installation titled “Limited Art Project,” on notions of production, image consumption and time. Over 350 canvases of iconic images were brought to Kassel, one painted each of day of the year, and arranged to create a vibrant sea of color in this evolving work – a select number of these canvases were individually sent to the nearby Volkswagen production-line to be painted with a monochrome finish and returned to the exhibition over a 3 month exhibition period.
Yang Jiang Group “Garden of Pine also Fiercer than Tiger II” – 2010 Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
From the southern industrial hub of Yang Jiang, Guangzhou, this artist trio by Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, and Sun Qinglin communicates their experience of urbanizing China through creating notoriously avant-garde work . “Garden of Pine” was a performance-turned-installation that reenacts the social practices of gambling and pleasure: the artists invited friends and peers to eat, drink, and gamble on a football match in a whimsical setting resembling the historical Pine gardens of Chinese literati. With works that often blur the line between art and living, Yang Jiang group negotiates between the old and new traditions of China.
Yang Jiechang “Tale of the 11th Day” – 2011 Shenzhen OCT Art & Design Gallery
“Tale of the 11th Day” is the title of two distinct series of works: an ensemble of 200 ceramic sculptures and a series of paintings in Yang Jiecang’s signature take on the style of traditional Chinese painting. Inspired by Il Decameron, Yang depicts on silk a fantastic imaginary land where various species interact, play and mate where boundaries of difference seem to be forgotten. The work plays on unstable relations that often transform into disparity, contempt and indifference – “Tale of the 11th Day” reminds us that even though we are interconnected in the essential unity of existence, harmony is still is based on power play.
He An “I am Curious Yellow, I am Curious Blue” – 2011 Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
For his first solo show at Tang Contemporary, He An created a dystopian urban mise-en-scene using bashed up light-boxes stripped of their colourful skins and commercial messages, fitted with either yellow or blue neon lights that correspond to the exhibition’s title. The use of film quotes is something He An started in 2002 with a series of works inspired by scenes from Hollywood films in which he turned dialogue into physical sculpture. He An brings his love of the high and low into almost every aspect of his work, where porn and poetry go hand in hand.
FEATURED WORKS
Ling Jian “Wind Angel” – 2010 Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Well-known for his ambiguously seductive portraits of beautiful women and androgynous men, Ling’s Moon in Glass series employs portraiture, mirrors, installation and spatial design to create a seamless visual experience and an atmosphere that invites contemplation. Moon in Glass is an exhibition that invites us to contemplate our own shifting self-portraits and shades of identity.
Ji Zhou “Dust No. 1” – 2010 Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
Ji Zhou’s photography is premised on the motif of ash and everyday objects. The scenery of a world of ash eliminates any nature of symbolism; there is a fundamental separation between Ji Zhou’s photography and the context of “spectacle” or “solution” in contemporary photography. A conception of time has immediately materialized from a landscape of dead ashes, and through the film shutter, produces images of parallel realities of time and space.
Yan Lei “Baroque – Tiger” – 2011 Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
Yan Lei’s Baroque series adapts icons from traditional Western imagery in a discussion of value systems in the contemporary world. Foregoing the basic attachments of these icons, their contents and concepts, Yan Lei sees these symbols through the development of modern society and culture, the paintings emphasize on desire, emotion, spirit as well as contemporary values. With his visual linguistic ability, Yan Lei transforms these to further a contemporary discussion. “Baroque – Tiger” is a twelve-canvas piece subtly decorated by the pages of a Sotheby’s auction catalogue on Contemporary Chinese art.
Wang Yuyang “Falling like a Feather” – 2012 Shanghai Biennale
Wang Yuyang, born in 1979, is an accidental new media artist. Interested in obsolete technology, an aesthetics of the broken, and material waste, his practice involves highly conceptual installation, photography, and video. Wang’s opulent fluorescent light installation titled “Falling like a Feather” was a centerpiece at this year’s Shanghai Biennale. The installation consists of identical fluorescent light tubes hung meticulously from the ceiling in the form of a feather.
Wang Gongxin “Still Life Series” – 2012 Tang Contemporary Art Beijing
Wang Gongxin is Chinese video artist, one of the early pioneers of this generation. Following his new media style of ‘moving paintings’ – Wang Gongxin’s aptly titled “Still Life” series features four highly digitalized yet obscure close-ups of natural processes on HD panels. In each screen, artificial and natural objects are juxtaposed as a mesmerizing dance between man versus nature, where the ugly notion of decomposition plays out beautifully in focus and slow motion. The series was featured in this year’s “Until the World Ends” image-based group exhibition.
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