There and Back Again – the Scandinavian Student’s Exhibition

There and Back Again – the Scandinavian Student’s Exhibition

Opening: 2012.5.4 8pm
Gallery open time: Mon – Sat, 10am – 10pm
Place: TCG Nordica UP Gallery / Xiba Road, No.101/Loft
Tel: 4114692

  

Forward:

For the past eight months we have been living in China and experienced the Chinese culture and society. Through inspiring meetings with people, memorable trips and interesting lectures, we have come to know this country that we have learned to love.

For each one of us, it has been a part of this cultural exchange to do an individual project. A variety of mediums, such as painting, photography, writing and calligraphy, are represented. Some of us have focused on the Chinese culture and our experiences of China, while others have used the stay in China to develop their own artistic idea.

We have been working on our different projects over the last few months. The results are now displayed in this exhibition. Please enjoy.

A Categorisation of a Mountain Landscape

A Categorisation of a Mountain Landscape
HILLSIDE PROJECTS – JONAS BÖTTERN AND EMILY MENNERDAHL

Exhibition Opening: 8pm, April 6th, 2012
Exhibition Duration: April 6th – May 1st , 2012
Add: TCG Nordica-UP Gallery, Xi ba lu 101, Kunming

 JONAS BÖTTERN AND EMILY MENNERDAHL

A CATEGORISATION OF A MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE – ARTIST STATEMENT

A Categorisation of a Mountain Landscape is a detailed study of a mountainous region in South-western China. The study involves three parts that examine flora, fauna and geology. Using artificial environments to depict elements from the natural landscape the project concentrates on the correlation between man and nature. It questions and challenges ideas surrounding the artificial and “the natural”.

Focusing on an arboretum, a zoo and found postcards of mountains we are working with subjects that are either native to the region or play a significance politically or culturally.
Removed from their natural habitat, the subjects now dwell in man-made environments. These sculpted and architected new “homes” articulate how humans look upon and relate to nature. The boundaries between the natural and the artificial become blurred. Although continuing to be a source of wonder and meaning the subjects are reduced to exist in places isolated in time and space.

The Arboretum

The “natural landscape” of the arboretum is an organisation and systemisation of nature.
It consists of a living collection of trees grown for scientific observation, for pleasure, or both. It is a conception of a landscape where nature can become both accessible and compliant.
In A Categorisation of a Mountain Landscape five trees from an arboretum are studied and documented. Eucalyptus Globulus is a large tree with fine silver green crowns. Fully leafed, the trees shade is characteristically patchy. Towering and majestic it was introduced to China in 1896. At the foundation of the People’s Republic of China the tree was applied for use in large-scale plantations. Today it plays a major part in China’s export industry. Another tree in the series, Trigonobalanus Doichangensis, appears delicate yet its alternate leaves remain despite winter. An evergreen, it is threatened by habitat loss. It is native to a climate tempered strongly by low latitude and high elevation. Now contained within the walls of the arboretum, the tree is part of a historical record in an archive of nature.

“Landscape is the historically constructed “mirror” of social, economical and cultural conditions in each area.”1

The Zoo

In a place seemingly remarkable and impressive, a wolf is collected and contained within walls of glass. Against invisible partitions lean brittle trees, rocks are spread out on a cement floor. The wolf, a symbol of the wild, subsists in an institution in which wild animals are kept and exhibited to the public. It is suggested that this institution, a zoo, is a place in which humans can come to understand their relationship to animals. With only a fence, a shallow moat or a wall of glass that separates, the viewer can stand in peace as he looks into the “wild”. As part of the study of fauna we photographed the wolf in three different positions. Captured in its den the animal becomes frozen in time. By then physically removing the original image’s background using oil paint, the wolf is isolated and taken out of its context. The wolf lingers in an empty space destitute of earlier conditions and signifiers. The application of paint as an act to erase is not a renunciation of space but rather an encouragement of space. The void comes to symbolize the ambiguity of the real.

The Mountains

In South-western China the mountain range spreads over massive areas. Having travelled from a far, it dramatically changes direction as it stretches south. In the East, mountains have always been seen upon as sacred. In the West, up until the 18th century, mountains were considered as something ugly and dangerous. In the era of industrialism and romanticism people’s views began to change. Suddenly there was an obsession with experiencing the sublime. To be immersed in blinding whiteness whilst accompanied by daunting peaks. Encountering vast landscapes in a continuous strive for a summit. In this pursuit, mountains become objectified; they become entities to be conquered. Surroundings and culture are disregarded in an attempt to reach the top.

Displayed on a table ten postcards describe mountains as objects. Conducted in a similar manner to that of the studies of flora and fauna, white paint erases whatever information is left of the surroundings in which the mountains rest. What remains is a strangely shaped object; almost abstract it is devoid of any meaning other than its form. In the process of categorising a landscape we objectify and take apart. We no longer know how or where things exist. The subjects come to remain in an indeterminate state, somewhere between the real and the imaginary.

“We read landscapes, in other words we interpret their forms in the light of our own experience and memory, and that of our shared cultural memory”2

–

1, Robert Macfarlane, ”Mountains of the Mind”, page 18, Granta Books, 2008
2, Zhang, P. G. Shao, D. C. Le Master, G. R. Parker, J. B. Dunning Jr. and Q. Li, “China’s Forest Policy for the 21st Century”. Science 288.5474 (June 23, 2000): p2135.

“Wu Wei” Zhang Yongzheng Paper-based Painting Exhibition

“Wu Wei” Zhang Yongzheng Paper-based Improvisational Painting Exhibition

Exhibition Opening: 8pm, April 6th, 2012
Exhibition Duration: April 6th–May 26th, 2012 (Sunday Closed)
Exhibition Address: TCG Nordica Gallery, Chuangku, Xibalu 101, Kunming

Art Tasting: 14:30–16:00, May 12th, 2012
Art Tasting Address: Kuangyu Gallery, 5th floor, Caiwei Shuncheng, K, Shuncheng, Kunming

Curator: Luo Fei
Academic Host: He Libin
Invited Writer: Anders Gustafsson (Sweden)
Translator: R. Orion Martin (US)
Exhibition Assistants: Sha Yurong, Zhu Xiaolin
Co-hosted by TCG Nordica Gallery and Kuangyu Gallery
Tel: 0871-4114692
Website: www.tcgnordica.com

Gansu Artist Zhang Yongzheng came to Kunming in 2004 and has been making art here ever since. Yunnan’s climate and culture have left a deep impression on his art, particularly on his “Process” series of abstract works. At the same time he has been engaged in a great number of paper-based improvisational works and it is these that will be exhibited in the upcoming exhibition.

Zhang Yongzheng’s paper-based improvisational works are made with materials such as string, rope, rags, clothing, and palette knives. These he wets with ink in order to whip, rub or drip the image onto the paper. The paper, having gone through these “actions,” carries the vestiges that are left behind in the form of lines or shapes. These forms are related in the way they crisscross, hedge, and superimpose upon one another. The shapes on the page rise, fall, and interact, resulting in a feeling of unrestrained movement. They emphasize the expressiveness of the paint and ink while exposing the vividly spiritual nature of the tools. The works are unaffected and nimble, brimming with dynamism and humorous delight. They are reminiscent of the metaphysical view in Daoist philosophy that an entity in the universe is ceaselessly growing and multiplying, unstoppably, meticulously in motion.

Zhang Yongzheng held an exhibition in TCG Nordica Gallery in 2005 that had profound repercussions. Now, after seven years, he returns to TCG Nordica Gallery to collect and display the paper-based improvisational works he began making in 2004, works which until now have never been displayed. 50 works have been specially selected to share with the public in this special exhibition. The exhibition has been named “Wu Wei”, in reference to the Daoist concept of active inaction and its close relationship to abstract art.

This exhibition has been organized by the combined efforts of TCG Nordica and Kuangyu Gallery in order to present a rare chance to experience the works of this abstract artist. The exhibition opening will be held on April 6th, 2012 at Xiba Road 101, Artist Loft, TCG Nordica Gallery, and the exhibition will continue until May 26th.

Related Articles:
The Dao: To Ceaselessly Grow and Multiply(Luo Fei)
Travel 1000 li in one day(Anders Gustafsson)
Interview with Zhang Yongzheng(He Libin)
Interview Zhang Yongzheng(R. Orion Martin)
Zhang Yongzheng’s CV

Photos from opening:

Works:

  

  

  

  

  

Happy Tuesday Painters

Happy Tuesday Painters
Together with artist Kristina Kinder(Germany), Valentina Sgro(Italian) to improve your creativity

Date: 2012.3.27 THU 7:30pm
Material costs: 25 RMB per person
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we hope you enjoyed last Tuesday evening as much as we did, and looking forward seeing you next Tuesday, 7.30pm.

We´ll do our regular warmup speed drawing, shortly present and discuss our last work (some really nice pieces there worth seeing!!!) and of course,
we have a new challenge for you: we will create some phantastic funky new creatures, out of 2 objects,
one animal and one technical item, which will be picked by chance.
You will decide if you go for a good or an evil one, and also find a name and invent a new Chinese character for your pet 
Choice of material will be up to you, we will provide acrylic paint, markers and ink and of course, paper.
There´s also a little amount of clay left, if somebody likes to work with that.
Please bring your brushes and whatever you fancy!!!

Price for material and Nordica : 25RMB

Have a lovely and funky weekend!!!
Kris and Vale

Happy Tuesday Painters

Happy Tuesday Painters
Together with artist Kristina Kinder(Germany), Valentina Sgro(Italian) to improve your creativity
* We have changed Monday painting day to Tuesday

Date: 2012.3.20 THU 7:30pm
Material costs: 25 RMB per person

next week (after regular seed drawing) we`ll read from “The never ending story” by Michael Ende, about Fantastica being taken by emptyness.. People will help saving Fantastica by creating and imagining parts of this world. Mixed media. People should bring brushes and whatever they like to use. We`ll provide ink, paint, markers, paper

Monday Painting

Monday Painting
Together with artist Kristina Kinder(Germany), Valentina Sgro(Italian) to improve your creativity

Date: 2012.3.12 7:30pm
Material costs: 25 RMB per person
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next class will start with 15 min clay modelling, to study the landscape of our faces with both hands as an exercise instead of and for the usual speed drawing. After that we will mess around a bit doing inkblots (Rorschach-like), and interpret the created forms which we will then work out with acrylics.
Students are requested to bring their own brushes.

Monday Painting

Monday Painting
Together with artist Kristina Kinder(Germany), Valentina Sgro(Italian) to improve your creativity

Date: 2012.3.5 7:30pm
Material costs: 15 RMB per person
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For next Monday we are going to get on canvas, so get ready to do it! We are going to play a bit with alternative techniques, such as using your fingers and your hands as brushes and the blind painting. So you will all get very familiar to the paint and its texture.
We need you to have all the materials on Monday, so you should tell us if you want to meet one of these days to go to the art shop and buy them or if you want us to buy those things.
Those who don`t organize their own material won’t get it on Monday. Please email or contact us asap.

Kristina and I would like to remember you all to be a little bit more helpful and clean your own stuff after you finish. We are all happy to be hosted by Nordica and it would be nice from all of us to clean up our own mess. If you want to paint or you already do it, you need to be a bit disciplined with your workspace; otherwise you will ruin your brushes, colours, etc.

We hope you had fun and look forward seeing you on Monday!

Kris&Vale

The Cell’s Longing: Jonathan Aumen solo exhibition

The Cell’s Longing
——TCG Nordica resident artist Jonathan Aumen(US)’s solo exhibition

Curator: Luo Fei
Exhibition Opening: 8pm, 25th of Feb, 2012
Exhibition duration: 25th of Feb – 31st of March, 2012
Address: TCG Nordica Gallery, Chuangku, Xibalu 101, Kunming
Tel: 0871-4114692
Website: www.tcgnordica.com
Email: info@tcgnordica.com

Press Release

American artist Jonathan Aumen arrived in Kunming in September 2011 for an artist residency at TCG Nordica gallery. The works on display were all completed during the following six months of his residency in Kunming and all of them are intimately focused on the city, its people, and their inner longings. They also relate to the continuous demolition and relocation situation present in Kunming in recent years.

Before he arrived in Kunming, Aumen read a popular science article that said that a single cell is just as functionally complex as a city the size of Kunming. It has its own laws of operation, centers, transport hubs, and lives. In short, your very own finger tip contains 100,000 cells.  If you continue  this train of thought and do the math, we find the human body is a biological wonder and the complexity mind-blowing.  Aumen was stunned and captivated by the beauty and wonder of life. In light of this extravagant complexity, how can one argue that there was no designer? This inspires a train of thought and a scope of work.

TCG Nordica will display Aumen’s more than 30 oil paintings in different sizes during this exhibition, from the eyes of an American, that look through the city to reflect on our living conditions and inner longings.

The exhibition opening will be 8 pm, 25th of Feb at TCG Nordica, Chuangku(loft), exhibit until 31st of March.

Related posts:
Jonathan Aumen’s CV
Interview Jonathan Aumen: An artist’s responsibility is to recharge society

The Cell’s Longing

Luo Fei

American artist Jonathan Aumen arrived in Kunming in September 2011 for an artist residency at TCG Nordica gallery. The works on display here were all completed during the following six months of his residency in Kunming and all of them are intimately focused on the city. Before he arrived in Kunming, Aumen read a popular science article that said that a single cell is just as functionally complex as a city the size of Kunming. It has its own laws of operation, centers, transport hubs, and lives. In short, your very own finger tip contains 100,000 cells.  If you continue  this train of thought and do the math, we find the human body is a biological wonder and the complexity mind-blowing.  Aumen was stunned and captivated by the beauty and wonder of this knowledge. In light of this extravagant complexity, how can one argue that there was no designer? This began a train of thought and a scope of work, but it truly originates in a belief.

Aumen’s interest in cities is deep. Upon finding a computer motherboard he said, “Isn’t this a city? Look, here are the buildings, here are the districts, the factories…” His newest works all feature views of Kunming. If you look carefully, you will notice that the majority are slums or traditional homes from old-fashioned districts. Aumen is a nostalgic person, possibly because he is influenced by the memories from when, at the age of eight, he lived in Beijing for ten years.

In the paintings there are many houses – whether from above, from a distance, in our gaze, whether crowded or inverted or askew, whether a panoramic view or a fragment. This unfamiliar city gives Aumen much insight; first into the relationship between the complex structure of a cell and a city, but also into the longings of people. Consequently, his works can roughly be divided into two groups that focus, respectively, on these two themes. The first group features a series of expansive paintings in which apartments are densely packed together and solar water heaters are bustling with activity, all of it under a cloud-filled sky that suggests a coming storm. From the windows come sparkling bits of radiant light, as if prophesying that within moments, something important will occur. These paintings are organized in the form of grid. Aumen believes that if there wasn’t something supporting this complex city, it would have already exploded, just like atomic explosions occur when atoms lose their cohesiveness. Therefore, the grid represents a certain kind of conscious energy that holds together all the varied bits and pieces. This sort image is also transcribed onto 192 square pieces of wood that appear as if drawn from a Rubik’s cube. These groups of works all stand for Aumen’s understanding of the relationship between city and cell.

A city is not merely a community of convenience, materiality, and consumption, but rather a gathering of living beings. It has order. It has soul. It has moods, contemplations, and stories. They live in these towering apartments, one moment blissful, and the next moment they would be destroyed, if not for some force holding them together.

Aumen’s premonition of urban crisis is informed by the Jewish prophet Isaiah (Old Testament, Book of Isaiah), who says, “The earth turns gaunt and gray, the world silent and sad, sky and land lifeless, colorless. Earth Polluted by Its Very Own People. Earth is polluted by its very own people, who have broken its laws, disruptedits order, violated the sacred and eternal covenant. Therefore a curse, like a cancer, ravages the earth. Its people pay the price of their sacrilege. They dwindle away, dying out one by one.”(Isaiah 24:4-6) This excerpt prophesies that when the world no longer respects the laws of God, when there is no longer justice and rectitude, the world will pay a price and become a place of terrible decline and corruption. There will be no possibility to uplift oneself from the midst of squalor, due to the fundamentally fallen nature of the world. This premonition of crisis is reminiscent of “Be concerned about the affairs of state before others”, a traditional mindset among Chinese scholar officials that refers to the cultivation of a forward-looking awareness of approaching threats.
But Isaiah and other Jewish prophets were not overcome by a destructive nihilism. Rather, they noted that after God judged human’s for their sins, there was always the possibility of redemption. Therefore, shortly following the above passage, the Book of Isaiah reads, “At that time the deaf will hear word-for-word what’s been written. After a lifetime in the dark, the blind will see. The castoffs of society will be laughing and dancing in God, the down-and-outs shouting praise to The Holy of Israel. For there’ll be no more gangs on the street. Cynical scoffers will be an extinct species. Those who never missed a chance to hurt or demean will never be heard of again”(Isaiah 29:18-20) Notable in this Jewish scripture is that two themes, the punishment of sin and the longing for a coming righteous kingdom, alternate throughout the work.

I think these two views influence Aumen’s painting. In addition to works which focus on the darkness of urban decay, there are also scenes depicting one’s heart’s desire. This group of images is not broken up by the restricting image of the grid. They gaze into the distance at the city around us, with a slight glimmer coming through the layered clouds over our heads. They seem quite peaceful and every day, without any particular temperament. Within the house, we dwell. Below the sky, we live. Everything is in order, but one has the feels that their heart is heavy.

Chinese writer Shi Tiesheng writes, “Whether art or literature, one need not be and imperial attendant or vocal promoter. One needs to be a detective, listening to the rocky voice in the otherwise flowing order, looking at every familiar place as if it was strange.”
I believe that in any age, this is the value of art. We don’t need art to confirm once again the progress, accomplishments, and arrogance of human beings. Nor do we need to sing once more the praises of the pleasantly livable city, all the while neglecting that which is lacking, that which is broken, the sins and longings. Aumen says, art must let one look upon the truth, and give them hope.

In this collection there is one painting where, as we peak behind a dark brown wall, we raise our heads to see a building, and from that exact point of view we see a sharp sliver of sky mediated by thin clouds. It is as if another kingdom is emerging clockwise little by little. In the moment it occurs, do we feel it in our hearts?

Written February 11, 2012
Kunming
translated by R. Orion Martin (US) 

  

  

 

Ke Yi’s solo exhibition: Fairy Tales for Grown-up

Ke Yi’s solo exhibition at TCG Nordica UP-Gallery
Fairy Tales for Grown-up
–seeing the world through a child’s eyes

Artist’s Statement:

The wonderful memories of childhood are like clouds, swept by the wind, getting father and farther from us. It seems we also have buried our childhood dreams; dreams which strive to surface in the expanse of our minds. Time has made our lives too busy, turning us into machines while shattering our innocence and childhood reality.
I once tried hard to recover my times as a child and my childhood dreams. I hoped that I could recreate their innocence, however I have now come to realize that our childlike nature is always with us. When you see the world through a child’s eyes, and listen to the world through their ears, you realize that a child reality lingers within you.

TCG Nordica UP-Gallery (Upstairs space)

Exhibition Opening: 8pm, 25th of Feb, 2012
Exhibition duration: 25th of Feb – 31st of March, 2012
Address: TCG Nordica Gallery, Chuangku, Xibalu 101, Kunming
Tel: 0871-4114692
Website: www.tcgnordica.com
Email: info@ tcgnordica.com

  

  

 

Monday Painting

Monday Painting
Together with artist Kristina Kinder(Germany), Valentina Sgro(Italian) to improve your creativity

Date: 2012.2.27 7:30pm
Material costs: 35 RMB per person
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For next Monday, after our 15 min warm-up speed drawing session, we would like to introduce you to the basics of acrylic painting: mixing colors, washes, blending colors, brushwork. We will have a brief overview on the art of painting with acrylics and then we will practice our skills on canvas.

Check More About Monday Painting