BRIDGES: An art project between Swedish and Chinese artists

BRIDGES

An art project between Swedish and Chinese artists
… everyday events, movement patterns, lifelines …

Project Coordinators:
Kajsa Haglund
Anders Rönnlund
Sanne Sihm
Johan Fremling

Exhibition Curator:
Luo Fei

Artists:
Kajsa Haglund, Anders Rönnlund, Sanne Sihm, Johan Fremling, He Libin, GuoPeng, Cheng Liangchun, Su Yabi, Sun Guojuan, Lei Yan, Luo Fei

Exhibition Opening: 20:00, 8th of Oct, 2010
Duration: 8th of Oct — 30th of Oct, 2010

Address: TCG Nordica Gallery, Chuangku, xibalu 101, Kunming, Yunnan, China
Tel: 0871-4114692
Web: http://www.tcgnordica.com

BRIDGES

Anna Mellergård, Cultural Coordinator at Arts Nordica, www.artsnordica.com, took in the spring of 2007 contact with Kajsa Haglund in Uppsala. Anna Mellergård which for a long period of time, has lived and worked in Kunming, China founded together with Wu Yue Rong TCG Nordica, a Nordic-Chinese Culture center. Today the cultural centre leads by Wu Yue Rong with the Chinese artists ‘ Corps and TCG Nordica.The following artists have now received an official invitation from Luo Fei, curator and artist and cultural Coordinator at TCG Nordica, Kunming, China.The opening of the exhibition will be on 8/10/2010.

The invited artists from Sweden are:
Kajsa Haglund
Anders Rönnlund
Sanne Sihm
Johan Fremling

All Swedish artists are professional artists and members of the KRO, artists ‘ National organization. The Chinese artists participating in the project are:
He Libin, teacher at art school
Guo Peng, artist
Cheng Liangchun, artist, cultural Coordinator
Su Yabi, artist, teacher at Dali Art college
Sun Guojuan, artist
Lei Yan, artist
Luo Fei, curator, artist

OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

by means of artistic processes, examine and analyze how a cooperation between the two cultures can be developed, as well as create understanding. We want to change attitudes, find out what unites and create conditions for meetings through our art exhibitions and through the educational work with children in both countries. The artistic process is carried out in cooperation with the Chinese artists, resulting in two joint exhibitions, in China and Sweden. Can we as artists through our jobs offer a contribution to a better understanding? We wish to work with dialog, with or without words, in order to reach the reflection and reflection. Can we as artists through our jobs, to play with a bet for better understanding? We wish to work with dialog, with or without words, in order to reach reflection. Is it possible to change attitudes and open other senses through artistic projects? Our desire is to build bridges across borders by creating a creative dialogue.

IMPLEMENTING

A common concept has been developed; the Swedish artists will travel to TCG Nordica In Kunming and together with the Chinese artists organize an exhibition on the theme: everyday events, movement patterns, lifelines. Later, in the fall of 2011, when the Chinese artists come to Sweden we will set up a joint exhibition of the same theme.Contact has been taken with the following institutions for an exhibition: Gallery 1 (Uppsala, the artists ‘ Club), Theatre Gallery, Bror Hjorths Museum, Uppsala Art Museum and libraries across the County.Workshops in schools will take place both in Kunming and in Uppsala County, Sweden. The educational work will consist of the childrens work in serialized visualized form: “A day in my life.”An image story without words. The Swedish report is read from left to right, and the Chinese from right to left. In the middle of the book there will be a meeting and a bridge has been built.

APPROACH

Anna Mellergård and Luo Fei contributes with their Chinese contacts and has selected the Chinese artists that we cooperate with. Preliminary schedule is that the Swedish artists exhibit in China by 2010, with opening 8/10, and that the Chinese artists come to Sweden for an exhibition in 2011. Exact date will be determined in cooperation with the relevant institutions.

THE TARGET GROUP

We want through exhibitions and workshops turn to children, students, people in rural and urban areas in both countries. We will conduct workshops in China as well as in Sweden.

THE EXPECTED RESULTS

To create a positive dialogue between our two countries and people and countries in General. We expect an active Exchange and a creative dialogue between Chinese and Swedish culture. We hope through the project BRIDGES found similarities between our countries. By focusing on what unites, we create greater opportunities for conversations and, therefore, understanding and more tolerance for differences. We will disseminate information, experiences and results through exhibition, meetings, workshops, and directory.

Monthly Program 2010 October

Oct 1, Fri, Polish Band – Iowa Super Soccer
Oct 2, Sat, Dance Performance – Choice

Oct 4, Mon, English Corner Animal- Friend or food?
Oct 5, Tue, Dance Club
Oct 8, Fri, Art Projects Between Swedish And Chinese Artists
Oct 9, Sat, Movie Night

Oct 11, Mon, English Corner Chinese and Swedish School System
Oct 12, Tue, Dance Club
Oct 16, Sat, Share Movie and Music -“Amadeus”

Oct 18, Mon, English Corner Can I Save The Planet ？
Oct 19, Tue, Dance Club
Oct 23, Sat, Empty

Oct 25, Mon, English Corner Game night
Oct 26, Tue, Dance Club
Oct 30, Sat, Concert with Emuelle, Martin and Helena

Dance Evening-Choice

Date: 2nd of Oct Saturday 8pm
Price:20RMB
TEL: 4114691 4114692
Choregraphy: Chen Jia

To choose what kind of clothes, to choose what kind of food, to make what kind of friend, and to choose which way to get the palace, to go through the baptism of life, this thinking not only the dancer who use their body to telling you story on stage, but you and me and others.
after the dance performance “Apple”, and “Keep Running “,
dancer Chen Jia and her friends will hold a show named “choice” in the evening of Saturday, 2nd of Oct. 2010. Invite you to join us and enjoy this show!

IOWA SUPER SOCCER

Date: 1st of October 8pm
Ticket at Door: 30RMB/person
Ticket in Advance: 25RMB

Ticket Sales Location:
TCG Nordica tel:4114691 4114692
Mai Tian Bookstore (Wen Lin Street)
1895 Movie Bar (Kun Du)
Yi Sa Bookstore (Chun Yuan Xiao Qu )

http://www.xiami.com/artist/76391
http://www.myspace.com/iowasupersoccer#ixzz0x8iguP5Y

The IOWA SUPER SOCCER consists of 7 musicians . They are from Poland. This Band be invited to join 2010 Lijiang Snow Mountain Music Festival. They will also hold a concert at TCG Nordica on 1st of October 8pm, welcome to join with us and enjoy the wonderful music.

IOWA SUPER SOCCER

The history of band has begun in July 2004.
In 2006 the band has released 2 demo EP’s (‘Iowa Super Soccer’ and ‘Teenage dreams so hard to beat’).‘Wild world’ (‘Iowa Super Soccer’ EP) was the most received song in british internet Zin The Mag.

Our debut album ‘Lullabies to keep your eyes closed’ was released in 2008 on GUSSTAFF RECORDS/LETTERBOX.
Songs ‘The River’ and ‘Cold’ promoted album in the Trojka radio, (‘The River’ was also ‘the song of the day‘), Trojka (Warsaw), Katowice, Gdansk, Piekary, Lodz, Antyradio, Roxy fm, Radio Em, Egida, 17 (Cracow), Zak (Lodz), Luz (Wroclaw), Afera (Poznan), Radioaktywne, Camus or Index from Zielona Gora.
Moreover songs from album were released on compilations like Alternative trippin’, Offsesje 1, Program alternatywny – Agnieszki Szydlowskiej, Pop Nation 2 (Spain), Artur Rojek Selection.pl OFF Festiwal;

Press articles about Iowa Super Soccer was in “Gazeta Wyborcza”, “Dziennik Zachodni”, “Ultramaryna”, “Dziennik Polska”, “Machina”, “Pulp Magazine” and more others.

Iowa Super Soccer was concerting with artists like Mark Kozelek (USA), Dirtmusic (USA/AUS/SLOVENIA), Matt Elliot (UK), Dakota Suite (UK), My Name Is Nobody (France), Tamikrest (Mali), Myslovitz (Poland), Czeslaw Spiewa (Poland), Stanislaw Soyka (Poland), Rykarda Parasol (USA), Lonely Drifter Karen (Austria/Spain), Troy von Balthazar (USA), Barbara Morgenstern (Germany), Imannu EL (Sweden), Ioseb (Sweden).

The band has also attended in Heineken Open’er Festival 2009, Off-festival in 2006 and 2009, Maj Music Festival 2010, Globaltica Festival 2009, PiotrkOFF Art Festival 2009, Feel on Festival, Ars Cameralis 2009. There was also concert in Agnieszka’s Osiecka studio in Warsaw, which you could hear in Trojka radio.

Iowa Super Soccer travelled to Spain to get an award for European Revelation group 2008-2009 (Festiwal Cáceres Pop Art). It was an amazing experience. There was also an award for wonderful Spanish vocalist Jeanette for whole artistic merchandise.

When no one is listening

Date: 25th of Sep Saturday 8pm
Price:15RMB/person

Er hu: Huang Shan
Cello: Zhou Zhou
Piano, guitar, vocal: Martin Berggren
Dance, flute, percussion: Helena Berggren

What do you do when no one sees you? What do you play when no one listens? What do you dance in the dark? These questions has challenged and inspired four young musicians and dancers to invite the audience on a journey through the dusk at TCG Nordica. In the secret corners of our lives we create what is not always heard or seen. This evening you will get an intimate meeting with music and movement which is shed light upon by a curious listener or viewer. “All the things that you never see” will appear for a split second and encourage you to step out into the light yourself.

Movie Night- Five Minutes of Heaven

Date: 18th of September 19:30
This month’s movie will be “Five Minutes of Heaven” from 2009. The movie is directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel , Liam Neeson ….Alistair Little as main character. welcome to join, it is free entrance.

Taste And Reality

Taste And Reality – Art Exhibition

Curator: Luo Fei
Artists: Liu Deng, Li Fan, Li Jihua, Lei Wei, Yan Renkui, Yan Linxiao, Zhang Xingwang
Opeing: 2010. 9. 17 Fri 20:00
Duration: 2010.9.17-10.2
Address: TCG Nordica, Loft, Xi Ba Road NO.101, Kunming
Web: www.tcgnordica.com
Tel: 0871-4114692
Email: info@tcgnordica.com

TCG Nordica gallery is going to present 7 local artists’ works in this weekend, they are Liu Deng(刘邓), Li Fan(李凡), Li Jihua(李纪华), Lei Wei(雷炜), Yan Renkui(严仁奎), Yan Linxiao(严琳骁) and Zhang Xingwang(张兴旺), all of them were born in 1970s. The exhibition theme is about Taste And Reality. They will present more than 20 pieces art works in this exhibition, include oil paintings, drawing, sculptures and video installation. The art works relate to the childhood memory, allegory, urbanism, bodily experience, games and abstract art. We invite you to attend the exhibition opening at 20:00, Friday, 17th of September. Thank you!

About the Taste and Reality Art Exhibition

By: Luo Fei

In 2006, seven artists Liu Deng, Li Fan, Li Jihua, Lei Wei, Yan Renkui, Yan Linxiao and Zhang Xingwang came to Kunming Mayuan Art Community one after another. That was in 2009 when Manyuan Art Community was about to be tore down according to the city planning that they decided moving to the “City of Tomorrow” Residential Quarter, where the rent back to then was cheaper. Before long, City of Tomorrow became the largest local artists studio community in Yunnan with approximately 50 local young artists, which is quite phenomenal in recent years.

Meet up for painting, drinking wins as well as tea, footballing, randomly talking, why not having an exhibition too? Simple, that’s a normal motive for artists coming together for an art exhibition in Yunnan, which is rare in other cities in China. An exhibition is to reflect and review one’s own works after a period of time, as well as to meet some more friends and have a bit of more sharing.

On this exhibition, we noticed some interesting details from the works of these seven artists. The dimensions of tastes and attentions given to the reality were artistically conveyed by the materials used, the way expressed as well as the theme chosen.

Taste was initially a concept about morality, rather than an aesthetic one. In the history of aesthetics, David Hume, a 18th century British empirical aesthetician, was the first person explicitly stated the idea of “taste”. The appeal for taste also has its profound lineage in China’s traditional poems and paintings. By the time when Liang Qichao looked at it, taste was not merely about aesthetic appreciation. It was uplifted to the very level of ontology and axiology where humanity finds its fundamental meaning. Taste is to be understood as lofty as life itself, is to be perceived from every specific life practice of one person. Regarding aesthetics as one’s real situation of living, a state of life, that is one of the most distinctive features of China’s traditional aesthetic approach. Thus, the spirit of Chinese aesthetics is that of the aesthetics of humanity and life. That is what you will find from the artists of current younger generation. Art is to achieve a unique life situation, experience and state. China is currently experiencing a very unique situation in her transition. Not every artist can just focuses on his/her own tastes and develop them into a way of living. The anxiety towards the cold reality keeps us from ignoring it exclusively. That was what we saw from the exhib that some artists made their addresses to the reality readily observable. On the exhibition, a proper balance was well maintained between the taste and reality, yet also perfectly communicating their individual way of looking at the world.

In the paper paintings by Liu Deng and Li Jihua, we found that two of them were practicing and cultivating in the stillness of night. A sense of form featuring lines and dots was presented either intentionally or unintentionally. One can sniff their taste for the preciseness and form from the liveliness in every detailed tittle and jot. The differences? Liu had his every painting well craftily designed which brought out the originality of a gardener; while Li’s were almost as if precisely duplicating the microorganism proliferation under the microscope.

Li Fan’s oil painting creatively blended the historical scenes and the fashionable beauty contest into a suspended sand table. A cruel war battle was put on like a puppet show that gave us so much to ponder upon. The history is presenting right in front every audience like a screen pulled down showing a 3 D movie. And fashion is no more than a palm-size showplace where people got entertained. People of all generations, ancient in the past as well as present right now, have been in the eyes of an Another, being presented to, being watched by.

Lei Wei’s sculpture grafted a flower onto the shoulders of a sexy woman. A body of flirting signified the ever-present temptation posed to the lust of the flesh in our city life. Having a city life full of lusts and flesh, are we more satisfied and comforted spiritually, or are we caught up in the crisis of moral corruption. Probably, that is a subjective question left for the audiences by the artist.

In Yan Linxiao’s works, the classical poetries and poesies or doggerels were interpreted as a bunch of QR Codes with the employment of digital techniques. Being presented on the canvas, reading was encoded as merely a process of transmission and identification, and literature as the information, finally ended up to be some cold and abstract patterns made of QR Codes. The doggerels, normally a personal taste, is used for mocking or teasing, however, itself was translated into barely a series of identification codes by the artists in a digitized era. This is a unique taste that ingeniously mingles traditional cultures and digital information.

In the last two years, Yan Renkui has made the colors of his oil painting both elegant and graceful, and the shapes lighthearted. Allegorical stories featuring the relationship between human beings or that of the insects, as well as the interests mankind has for the future or the unknown have frequently themed his works, presenting a refreshing childhood taste and a good sense of humor which brought back our sweet memories for the carefree childhood and the simply life in the countryside.

Zhang Xingwang had the video installation covered with thin glasses of spumescence, right over the TV screen that broadcasting programs. The images from whatever programs running, may it be about politics, sports, economies or health, became blur and ambiguous. We became so strange to what used to so familiar with, the TV or its programs. What was communicating here was contemporary society has so much been influenced by the television culture. Bubble crisis is hidden in the imagery information in an ear where even media has been exalted and worshiped.

The 5th Kunming Creative Fair

Come to join “The 5th Kunming Loft Creative Fair”! Have fun with us!!
Time: 11：30am-22pm, Sep 11-12, 2010
Address: TCG Nordica, Xiba Road No.101，Kunming
Tel: 0871-4114691

Curator/Host by: 943 Studio
Sponsor: TCG Nordica

Bazaar products to sell/exhibit:
Original designs or handicrafts! E.g. jewelry, toys, illustrations, scarf, shoes, handmade books/bag, things for wear, original music….. Performance art, installation art, live music and Organic food!

The vision of our Creative Fair is to encourage original creative spirit, support individual and collective creativity, and treat artistic play seriously.