Lecture:The Unrecognized Exchange between Morandi and the Chinese Literati

The Unrecognized Exchange between Morandi and the Chinese Literati
(On the occasion of publishing a new book from People’s Art Publisher, “A Space of Quiet Observation”)

Lecturer: Gao Xiang (Dr in oil painting of Central Academy of Fine Arts, associate professor at Yunnan Arts University)

Time: 8pm, Nov, 2, 2011
Add: Culture Course Classroom at TCG Nordica
Tel: 0871-4114692
Website: www.tcgnordica.com

Seminar Background:
Giorgio Morandi (1890—1964) was an Italian painter who had a profound impact on world art. Although his art is related to the styles that gained popularity in Western Modernism, it retains distance, particularly in its independent concentration on individual worth. Morandi’s work continues to draw the attention of art circles worldwide, and has been particularly important to the Chinese art world. Many Chinese artists have discovered that Morandi’s paintings have many similarities to the aesthetic characteristics of traditional Chinese art, and they have questioned whether or not his work was influenced by traditional Chinese art. The lecture will address this question and attempt to provide a scholarly answer.

About Gao Xiang:(www.gaoxiang.artnews.cn)
He teached in Yunnan Art lnstitute from 1994. In 2008, he received Ph.D of Fine Arts in China Central Academy of Fine Arts. His Ph.D Dissertation tation researched Italian master Giorgio Morandi’s Art. He has researched in Morandi Art Museum of Bologna twice.

Gao Xiang’s art works has received Excellent Prize in The Third Young Artists‘ Exhibition of China China National Museum of Fine Arts. His works focuse on how to use elements of Chinese Traditional Painting into Contemporary painting. He has been invited to show his work and participate art projects in China, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, America, France and Belgium.

Choiced exhibition:
2011 Distance: China-Noway Art Exhibition, Beijing White Box Art Museum and Norwegian VEST-AGDER FYLKESMUSEU.
2009 From Nature to Mind – A Joint Exhibition From New Intellectual Artists China National Museum of Fine Arts, BeiJing
2009 Societe National Des Beaux-Arts Salon 2009, Carrouse Louvre Museum, Paris
2008,2009 Open Art2008 Exhibition Örebro Konsthall City Art Gallery Örebro Sweden
2006 Self-Made Generation—2005 A Retrospective of New Chinese Painting
ShangHai Zendai Museum of Fine Arts Shanghai
2004 Asian Contemporary Art Exhibition Gwangju National Museum of Fine Arts Gwangju
Korea
2003,2004 The Mekong Project—Artist’s Residency Program, Snowanpn Opera, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Chiang Mai University Art Museum, ChiangMai, Thailand

Lou Nick: Dandyism(by Aiai)

Dandyism
Written by Aiai

The first time I met Lou Nick (李爻Li Yao) was by his poetry and sculpture. Reading his words, one cannot help but feel that the reality is seemingly insignificant to him, and nothing matters. Yet from time to time there has been a secret worry paradoxically embedded in his heart, one that is almost in despair. Perhaps this has something to do with his family background. With favorable conditions, his parents constantly exerted pressures of various sorts to him in an attempt to force him into taking over the family business and the complex relationships associated, without being able to understand the love and dedication he has for arts. Therefore, Lou Nick has chosen to “escape” again and again to against the high hopes from his parents, even went so far as to break with them. So much so that he kept on trying to numb himself with alcohol for many years, only to realize the fact that it has made his soul all the more awakened. His crazy words and insane behaviors after got drunken made him a madman in the eyes of those who don’t know him, thus sincere loyalty and contemptuous looks have never been any foreign to him. In his earlier years, in order to live as well as keep on artistic creation Lou Nick would often take part-time jobs and rely on friends for help due to his financial situations. Many things have changed since then, and I often joke and say he should have just stayed in his hometown, living an easy life as a dandy from wealthy family without worry of food and clothing. Lou Nick’s father once said that for some people suffering is doomed, but it is a self-inflicted one for Lou Nick. No matter what kind of distressful situations he is in, Lou Nick has not given up his love for sculpture. I think it is because of these unusual experiences and his firm belief that forged the unique tension in his works. Of course, efforts of many years are not enough, talent cannot be over emphasized.

In this country where falsehood is ubiquitous, straightforward and pure are things of on the verge of extinction. Economic development and the interests demand have forced people to speed up production; machinery has replaced the uniqueness of craftsmanship; people have gradually forgotten and lost traditions, and accustomed to the mass production from the assembly line. Lou Nick has for many years based his creation on the simple and natural limestone, without premeditating specific images prior to his creation. It is as if spontaneity and uncertainty are all over the place, which can be liken to the philosophy of Zen, which stresses the emptiness within the being or the being within the emptiness, i.e. “existence”, “being” and “otherness” When it comes to artistic style, Lou Nick invented a way of working called “Burin Flow”, from a poet’s temperament and sculptor’s insightfulness. By hammering and chiseling, he has broken away from the “beautiful” of mainstream aesthetic orientation. His works are like products of the ancient times, disrupting the audience’s habitual thinking, bringing shocks to the perceptions of viewers with images. His sculptures are different from those that are hot and popular currently. They carry the power to revolutionize anything out there, from the coarse and heavy materials used to the hand-polished handlings throughout the process, to those works presented in a way that can hardly be regarded as pretty. There is nothing is not originated from his heart sincerely. In others eyes, to turn up nose at pleasing the market demand is to destroy his career completely, and is not a wise creation approach, but in my opinion it is a rare and precious thing. People today are living their life with heavy a heart, bowing before fame and fortune on their knees. Being duplicitous, they are sophisticated at ways of the world, and prudently react to different circumstances in a careful manner, while having had their backbone thrown out the window. Social and economic changes have become ever more intensified, whilst artists are no longer the makers of human spirit, but veteran traders being skillful at maneuvering the ways of business with sophisticated experiences. Abide by principles and have faith in arts should have been their duties, yet in this era of focusing solely on profit those who don’t are really like the minority few.

It was as if a man fell off from the sky when I met Lou Nick for the first time. He seemed to be a man of determined but a bit of splitting. With small stature, he is but very strong, but unlike what I thought a man from Shandong should be. Worn dirty and old clothes, he left with me no trace of the particularity hid in his words and works at all. The untamed air over him did not agree with the quiet and dignified temperament presented when he was handling the sculpture. All in all, there was a good number of paradoxical and reasonable stuff from him when I saw him personally for the first time after looked at his works. A weird swordsman like character!

As to Lou Nick’s unconstrained and uncontrollable style, I finally found the origin later from his paintings. He has never been institutionalized by any so-called institutions of fine arts, nor had he any “rules and regulations”. With his brushes moving on the canvas freely, he’s so much like Chaim Soutine, from the feeling of painting to the methods employed. Traditional as well as wild, his artistic style is in direct contradiction to current popular taste out there. Perhaps painting for Lou Nick is an alternative way of emotional abreacting and contemplating other than words. It is about whether his inner appeal can be met. Influenced by the Buddhism since late 2008, Lou Nick’s painting style has gradually changed, with no more unbridled exhilaration and bizarreness. Simpleness and quietness has become what he pursues in the scenes. However, there is one thing remains the same, something like what Giorgio Morandi had practiced with all of his life, “(I) would rather let my works sleep in a drawer than just trader them for money.”
For a man merely spent a few years in school and never received arts education, I admire his perception of art, and like to compare his sculptures to those of Giacometti’s. With a disdainful look, he always keeps a pride of his own kind, or perhaps more precisely, he is always immersed in his own world. Lou Nick speaks highly of Modigliani. Unlike those self-acclaimed “artists” nowadays, he merely refers himself as a mason. Apart from those artistic expression methods in his field, he has dabbled in many of other areas too, such as music, film, and literature, as if they were parts of his body. When he meets some congenial friends he could be quite a talker on these topics. Even when some professionals come along now and then, he can get their eyebrows raised.

Over the years, he has encounter a lot of people, gone through many things, Lou Nick still has the spirit of pressing on to the end, no matter how bumpy the road of arts may be. After all, night is needed to pave the way for the down. I still remember the first time when I saw Lou Nick’s sculptures on the internet, I became so convinced that his works won’t simply be artistic items on display as time goes by. Even now, I still think so.

October 19, 2011 in Daxing Huangcun

Monthly Program Of 2011 November

Sat 5, Tracing the Classics – Commemorating a Great Artist – a Classical Music Performance

Mon 7, English Corner – Racism & Prejudice, Tolerance & Openness
Fri 12, “Latitude 59.9″ Art Exhibition Opening 8pm
Sun 13, Lori Rhoden (USA) Piano Recital

Mon 14, English Corner – Talk about Latitude 59.9
Fri 18, Piano Pedagogy Workshop: Developing Expressive Piano Performance 2:00-5:00pm
Sat 19, Movie night

Mon 21, English Corner – Fairytale From Northern Europe
Fri 25, Advent Event
Sat 26, ‘Kui’ Percussion Music Band Live Show

Mon 28, English Corner – Making Ginger Cookies—-Need to book ticket! Tel: 18213973441

Highlight Event:

+ Tracing the Classics – Commemorating a Great Artist – a Classical Music Performance
+ “Latitude 59.9″ Art Exhibition Opening
+ Advent Event

Activities begin at 8PM unless marked otherwise

For detail Info please look at “stage event” or “gallery event”

“LATITUDE 59,9″ art exhibition

Exhibition Theme: latitude 59,9

Artists: Madlen Herrström(France) and Marianne Blankenberg(Norway)

Exhibition Opening: 20:00, 12th of Nov, 2011
Exhibition Duration: 12th–28th of Nov, 2011 (Sunday close)

Address: TCG Nordica Gallery, Chuangku(LOFT), Xibalu 101, Kunming
Tel: 0871-4114692
Website: www.tcgnordica.com

Artists statement:

It is from the hikings that we – Marianne Blankenberg and Madlen Herrström – have done together regularely during the years in the Norwegian mountains, that this project has taken form.
We have been working on one hand individually with our personal projects and on the other hand, together on a common project.
Marianne Blankenberg’s plan is to work with bases like the northern light and the norwegian landscape painters from the 18th century.
Madlen Herrström’s idea is to define the inscape with notions of lines that put limits between the fundamental elements water-earth-sky but also on a more metaphysical state.

Our common work is about the manipulated nature contra the non manipulated nature, represented in different scales of Time.
The other parts of our work is developped more freely. The position of the human being in the landscape, the level of the eyes, the hiker’s attitude towards pure nature must be WHOLE. There is the sky, the high skies, the low ones, the earth flat or not, the light, the shadows, mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, snow, rain, sun, heat, cold… The positions in the nature and the human’s position shape the image gotten or created.
We have with the years made sketches, photos, paintings and we have been discussing about what we could create from those hikings. TCG Nordica gives us here the chance to confront our ideas and works and to develop another way of working our art.
Here are the visual thoughts of those axes and their contrary. These make us ask the question of closure facing overture and liberty facing constraint in the nature.

Introduction by Madlen Herrström

Moving the body inside the landscape, becoming the landscape and concentrating the mind makes the brain feel, know and recognize something deep in the layers of life and time. During hiking in nature many views of my vision are like mirrored inside my brain while watching outside. Lines are frontiers between different elements in nature and have aspects in a spiritual sense like matters of inside/outside, of symbolic, of visibility/invisibility, of doubleness and at least but not to forget the limits-lines of laws, geography, politics and history. There is inside a landscape, another landscape. It is secret. It is an invisible landscape.

From those ideas I have developped a serie of photographies for this exhibition concentrating on the line: those pictures have a connection with the world as landscape( the masses of earth, of water, of sky in the norwegian mountains and the constructed nature as the gardens in Versailles) and with the human being (as the head or the body). I have chosen to work photography in black and white and to re-work my pictures in different stages, drawing on them, scrapping on them or using collages, reversing them, working with different layers in the process. When I work in my studio, when I hike in raw pure nature, similar sensations can grow and make me feel in intense meditation, in a space of tranquility, of infinite and peace. It is in those INTERmediary states that I start my work. Like a line in the landscape, motion is slow and low. Words are put as reflection on the sensations, they are mentalised, concrete and abstract at the same time. Here I use some sentences of H.D.Thoreau, an american naturalist, writer and philosofer of the 18th century and with his words -translated in french- draw a labyrinth. I am interested by the position one has as a human being in the landscape : the level of the eyes, the feet on the ground, the movement and the human´s attitude towards the nature. By the human’s position it also means where one stands -latitude, longitude- in the world.
The point is about the line which completes the whole process of THINKING a picture for me. To draw -in one way or another- is to specify an idea, to precise it.

Paris-Kunming November 2011

Introduction by Marianne Blankenberg

I got the idea of the works I am showing in TCG Nordica through hiking in the Norwegian mountains with Madlen Herrström.
I am interested in Norwegian traditional landscape painting from the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19 th century when Norway became an independant country. With my contemporary photographies of the Norwegian nature I want to get into dialogue with paintings made by I.C.Dahl such as ” Bjørk i storm” (” Beerk in tempest”), ”Vinternatt” (”Winternight”) by Harald Solberg and ”Sommernatt”
(” Summernight”) by Eilef Pettersen that I have pictured in black and white and thereafter used the negative of. I have put my contemporary photographies face to face with those negatives. The tree ”Beerk in tempest” is the symbol for Norway´s young nation. It’s negative is facing the picture titled ”22-07-2011”.That day is a peculiar one in Norway, being the day we had a terror in the government quarters in Oslo and a massacre of more than sixty youngsters staying on an island called ” Utøya” outside of Oslo.
With this work I want to show how one can get ideas from elder art and put it in a contemporary context.

Sonic Geography

Sonic Geography: An Interactive Installation Art Piece
Taurin Barrera
20：00, 10.31.2011 @TCG Nordica

How does sound define a place?
How closely do we listen to the sounds of everyday?
How do we interact with the sounds that define our lives?

“Sonic Geography” is an interactive sound installation that addresses place, identity, and awareness through field recordings of Kunming, China.

Using field recordings captured from all over Kunming, the artist creates an immersive environment in which participants and gallery visitors can listen closely to, interact with, and explore the everyday sounds of their city. The objective of this installation is to give participants an opportunity to contemplate the seemingly “casual” and “mundane” soundscape of the city, and to realize the symphony of human interaction that culminates in the sounds that define us as people, a community, as a city.

Upon entering the installation space, participants will hear pre-recorded sounds from rooftops, underpasses, quiet alleyways, loud storefront sidewalks, as well as recordings of geographic landmarks, such as the bird and flower market, Dianchi lake, etc. The sounds inside the installation, like the sounds in the city, are always changing, thus each participant will walk away with a unique experience.

About the artist
Taurin Barrera is an American electronic musician and sound artist currently living in Kunming. His works focus on interactive connections between technology and perception. Barrera combines computer vision, chance, and computer music techniques to program audio-visual instruments and environments. Barrera current focus is upon emerging technologies that allow viewers and listeners to experience sound and visual art in experimental, often indeterminate ways.

Tracing the Classics – Commemorating a Great Artist – a Classical Concert

Date: Saturday, November 5th, 2011, 8PM
Add: Xi Ba Road No.101, Loft, TCG Nordica
Price: 50RMB/person

Ticket Sales Location
TCG Nordica Tel:4114691 4114692
Mai Tian Bookstore (Wen Lin Street)
Yi Sa Bookstore (Chun Yuan Xiao Qu )
San Lou (Xi Chang Road)

Saturday, November 5th, 2011, 8PM.
Youth violinist Li Qi will collaborate with He Kang Ming and American pianist Belle James in performing the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky’s Op. 50 Trio in A minor. This piece, completed in 1882, is infused with melancholy and reminiscence. It was written by Tchaikovsky to commemorate his good friend and teacher, the famous pianist and educationalist Nikolai Rubinstein. Once completed, he added another title, “In Memory of a Great Artist.” The piece was first performed at Rubinstein’s memorial service, and remains Tchaikovsky’s only piano trio.
At the concert, you may also enjoy Johannes Brahms’s Op. 78 Piano Violin Sonata in G Major. Because the melody arises out of Brahms’s artistic use of song, this piece is also known as “Song of Rain.” Brahms was an artist who held himself to extremely high standards. He destroyed much of his early work because he was not satisfied with it. If not for Robert Schumann’s mention of it in a commentary, we might never have known that in his adolescence, Brahms had already written three complete violin sonatas. Among these is Op. 78 in G Major. Completed in 1978, it became famous when Brahms and violinist Joachim•Joseph performed it during a tour through Australia.

Live pictures

An Evening in Honor of Tomas Tranströmer

On November 11th, 2011, TCG Nordica held a special event in honor of its namesake, the great Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. Tranströmer was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature this week in recognition of lifelong contributions to world poetry. The Nobel Prize commission wrote of him, “through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality”.

In a candlelit corner of the stage, 40 guests and supporters of TCG Nordica gathered to reflect on Tranströmer’s poetry and his unique connect with the cultural center. Select poems of his were read in three languages with the accompaniment of Chinese traditional instrument Er Hu played by Ms. Huang Shan. Martin Berggren improvised a piano tribute to Tranströmer using only his left hand, in recognition of the fact that even the stroke which paralyzed the right side of the Tranströmer’s body could not weaken his deep affection for the piano.

Anna Mellergård, who cofounded TCG Nordica with Wu Yuerong was also present at the event via a Skype connection. She explained that when TCG Nordica was founded in 2000, Anna Mellergård and Wu Yuerong asked Tranströmer if they could use his name for their new cultural center, and he responded that he would be honored. Then, in 2001, Tranströmer decided, on his own initiative, that he would personally visit TCG Nordica to celebrate the publishing of a Chinese translation of his works. TCG Nordica was honored to receive him, and his visit made ripples throughout the Yunnan poetry world.

Those gathered concluded the evening by wishing Tranströmer congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. His writing has reached across national boundaries to touch the lives of those living in Yunnan, and we hope that with this small ceremony it may be possible to reach him as well, and thank him for his contributions as one of the 20th century’s finest poets.

 

Chinese Standards – Famous Chinese Songs Meet Jazz and Improvisation

Chinese Standards – Famous Chinese Songs Meet Jazz and Improvisation
Jazz Concert with Pianist Martin Berggren and Friends

Date: 29th of Oct, Saturday,8pm
Ticket in Advance: 45RMB
Ticket in Door: 50RMB

Ticket Sales Location
TCG Nordica Tel:4114691 4114692
Mai Tian Bookstore (Wen Lin Street)
Yi Sa Bookstore (Chun Yuan Xiao Qu )
San Lou (Xi Chang Road)

Martin Berggren is a Swedish jazz pianist and composer who has been living in China since 2010. He is well known in Kunming as a performer and teacher. This evening he will challenge himself and fellow musicians by playing famous Chinese folk- and popsongs in jazz style, thus inventing “Chinese Standards”. Martin Berggren is an animated and creative improviser and will be joined on stage by local and foreign musicians. There will be grand piano duets, trio performance and much more.

Live pictures

Congratulations to Tomas Tranströmer for 2011 The Nobel Prize in Literature

In the spring of 1999, when Anna Mellergård, also being a poet herself, shared with Mr. Tomas Tranströmer, who has already been an established “Master of Poetry”, the idea of establishing in Kunming, the Spring City in China’s Southwestern frontier, a cultural exchange center that would directly get connected with Scandinavian Counties, Tomas generously authorized his name to Anna. In May 2000, The Tomas Tranströmer Cafe / Cultural Gallery was opened to the local Kunming folks who love life and cultural affairs just outside of Kunming University. A historic chapter of linking Kunming of Northern Europe has since then been opened.

In the spring of 2001, at the invitation of Anna Mellergård, Mr. Tomas came to Kunming and visited the cultural gallery named after him, accompanied by his wife, the poet Mr. Li Li, the Sweden copper plate artists and the Cultural Counselor of the Embassy of Sweden. The old man beamed a hearty smile at the first sight of the cartoon portrait of himself engraved on a stainless steel. During his two-week stay, together with local poets and artist circle, the T’café Gallery held a series of in-depth exchange programs. Mr. Tomas, though being hemiplegia, had a heartily communication with his fellow local poets to the Cafe and had been in high spirits throughout the activities. He presented the autographed Chinese poem collection of himself to every Kunming poet who loved his poetry. Interestingly, the hemiplegic Tomas, while communicating with those Kunming people who were surrounding him, had his wife Monica acted as an interpreter for him. Whenever he wanted to say anything, by looking at his wife and uttering indistinct sound with his mouth, Monica was able to, by looking her husband in the eyes, accurately deliver the ideas that the Poet would like to express, even some profound concepts. The tacit understanding and friendship between them were so fascinating that his counterparts to the site, like Yu Jian, a poet from Kunming, Wu Weimin, the president of Yunnan Art Institute, and other artists like Su Xinhong were greatly marveled!

T’café Gallery moved into the “Loft of Kunming” at the invitation of artists like Tang Zhigang, Ye Yongqing in 2002. And the debut exhibition after the moving was a Tomas’ poetry writing program presented by a number of famous calligraphers from Yunnan, such as Mr. Sun Jiandong, with various styles. T’café Gallery has also officially changed its name to Tomas Tranströmer Cultural Gallery (TCG Nordica).

TCG Nordica invited the poet Yu Jian, Yi Sha together with another two to Sweden for the “Nässjö Poetry Festival” in 2003. Anna Mellergård brought these poets from China to the Småland and paid a special visit to the house where the Poet lived, bringing greetings to the couple from the literature and arts circles of Kunming. During their visiting Tomas even mentioned some of the details when he visited the Golden Temple in Kunming two years ago. A year later, the Sweden “Nässjö Poetry Festival” moved to Kunming, and it was the first Poetry Festival activity held in Asia ever in history. It was co-sponsored by TCG Nordica and the Publicity Department of Kunming.

In 2004, Wu Yuerong, one of the founders of TCG Nordica from China, went to Sweden and jointly hosted with the Malmö Art Academy a cultural program featuring the poetry reading of Tomas’ works . During that time, Mr. Tomas played the piano with one hand, while people from more than a dozen countries reading his poems with their own languages.

TCG Nordica established its second center in Sweden in 2008, and the Poet once again attended the event and observed another grander gathering where his poems were read with even more languages.

In the past eleven years, the Nordica Tomas Tranströmer Cultural Gallery in Kunming has been always adhering to the cultural purity of Mr. Tomas, and has been faithfully continuing the course of multi-cultural exchange between Nordic and Yunnan, China. Mr. Tomas has been watching this cultural bridge that is so far away from its home, yet has been named after himself. He as well as we all know that this cultural center located in Kunming is the only cultural fortress authorized by the poet Tomas Tranströmer himself.

Our most heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Tomas for being awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize for Literature!

Movie Night – From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China

Date: 15th of Oct, Saturday,7:30pm
This Saturday 15/10/2011, TCG Nordica invites your family and friends come to enjoy a movie ‘ From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China’. Free entrance.

From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China is a 1980 documentary film about Western culture breaking into China produced and directed by Murray Lerner. It portrays the famous violinist and music teacher Isaac Stern as the first American musician to collaborate with the China Central Symphony Society (Now China National Symphony Orchestra). The film documented Mr. Stern’s rehearsals and performances of Mozart and Brahms violin concertos with the famous Chinese conductor Li Delun, who also acted as his guide and translator on his trip. The film also included footage of Mr. Stern’s visit to the Central Conservatory of Music and Shanghai Conservatory of Music where he lectured to the Chinese music students on violin playing and the art of musical expression. Most of those musicians were playing mechanically, especially the String section, prior to the human improvements, concerning the qualities of the orchestras. One conductor was imprisoned in a closet, for playing Beethoven, during the great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when Western music was prohibited under Mao.Among many others talented players, young cellist Jian Wang (at the time only ten years old) is featured briefly, Jian Wang has gone on to international stardom. The film won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It was also screened out of competition at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.