"(re)Turn to (re)Form: Chinese Classicism in New Media" @ Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art

16 février 2009

"(re)Turn to (re)Form: Chinese Classicism in New Media" @ Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art

Hong Lei, Speak Memory

SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Mark Wolfe Contemporary Art will present a group exhibition of new works by Chinese artists Wang Tian De, Hong Lei and Gao Yuan, all of whom combine digital media and print photography to reinterpret the themes and iconography of classical Chinese painting.

These artists represent a generation of Chinese visual artists whose practices matured during the country’s rise to political and economic prominence in the 1990s and 2000s. Bypassing the outsized faces, political kitsch and other Western-influenced modes of expression that typified “Contemporary Chinese Art” in the past decade, these artists re-adhere to the core principles of compositional form and aesthetics that have shaped the Chinese visual tradition for millennia. At the same time, their use of new digital technology to create their classically influenced images renders them unambiguously contemporary.

Wang Tiande, "Gu Shan 3b" (detail). 2007. Digital image, xuan paper, pi paper, stone rubbing. 64 x 12.5 inches

Schooled in calligraphy, Wang Tian De has exhibited throughout the world, and his works are included in the Collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the National Art Museum of China. Here he has re-interpreted the classical West Lake landscape painting using piles of ash, burnt scrolls and stone rubbings. He is based in Shanghai.

Hong Lei is perhaps best known for his elusive, photo-based works that appropriate the iconography of ancient Chinese ink painting. He has mounted solo exhibitions at Today Art Museum in Beijing, and the Zhu Qizhan Art Museum in Shanghai, and has participated in international group exhibitions such as the Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the Berlin Art Expo, and recently at the Berkeley Art Museum. He lives in Changzhou.

Gao Yuan received her MFA in Photography from the University of Japan, and studied under renowned Japanese photographer Jun Miki. Her series “12 Moons,” a series of digital portraits of 12 Beijing mothers with their infant children, was featured at MOCA Shanghai in 2008, and at the Asian Contemporary Art Fair in New York. She lives and works in Beijing and New York.