Tyler Rollins names top Asian artist line-up for new season

CONTEMPORARY ART SOUTH EAST ASIA ART PROMOTION EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Tyler Rollins Fine Art has announced its 2010-2011 exhibition schedule. The gallery will present solo exhibitions by four of the most highly respected artists from the Southeast Asian region starting from 16 September, this year.

Tyler Rollins Fine Art is a gallery in New York’s Chelsea area that has a primary focus on contemporary Southeast Asian art; one of the art world’s most culturally diverse and dynamic areas. As the gallery says, its objective is to put the spotlight on some of the most exciting trends in contemporary art, drawing attention to the interconnectedness of today’s globalised art world and fostering inter-cultural dialogue between the East and West.

“Rollins’ timing is perfect: while prices for Chinese works dropped in the fall auctions, Southeast Asian art broke records.” Contemporary Art Philippines

The gallery will first show the Filipino artist, Manuel Ocampo, the most internationally-know contemporary artist from the Philippines. Ocampo has been a vital presence on the international art scene for over twenty years and is known for fearlessly tackling the taboos and cherished icons of society and of the art world itself. Marking his sixtieth solo show, Ocampo will be presenting new paintings and woodcut panels featuring traditional Christian iconography combined with secular and political narratives.

“The theme that comes up again and again is of figures that connect to a sort of myth-induced stereotype, rendered iconic but bludgeoned into a farcical conceptual iconoclasm made absurd by its exaggerated impotence as a carrier of meaning or the esthetics of politics. The paintings are a comment on desire, as painting itself is an object accustomed to this wish of being desirous, yet in the series they have a knack of providing some difficulty to the viewer as the conventions of painting are dismantled to the point of ridicule.” Tyler Rollins Fine Art

Following Ocampo, is Vietnam’s most prominent female contemporary artist, Tiffany Chung. Chung, noted for her sculptures, videos, photographs and performance work, will showcase her works at Tyler Rollins from 14 November to 31 December this year. Inspired by maps of urban regions, Chung’s solo show at the gallery explores the topographic after-images of some of the past century’s most traumatic conflicts.

'Berlin Wall', 2010, embroidery, painted metal grommets, and buttons on canvas. The maps that Chung is showcasing tell us about our relations with the past and our visions of the future. Image courtesy of Tyler Rollins Fine Art.

 

Moving away from Southeast Asian art, Tyler Rollins Fine Art will also present works by Tracey Moffatt, an Australian artist who is one of today’s leading international visual artists working in photography, film and video. Many of her photographs and short films have achieved iconic status around the world; Moffatt takes her inspiration as much from popular culture and the idea of fame and celebrity as she does from art history.
In January 2011, Tyler Rollins will be featuring her recent photographic series, Plantation, as well as Other, the final work in her video series inspired by Hollywood films.

'Plantation (Diptych No. 1)', 2009, digital print with archival pigments. 'InkAid', watercolor paint and archival glue on handmade Chautara Lokta paper. Tracey Moffatt's eerie pictures delve into a troubled history of exploitation. The man in the image is an alien, an outsider who is not welcomed into the colonial-style house. Image courtesy of Tyler Rollins Fine Art.

As a finale to this artist line-up, Tyler Rollins will be presenting Agus Suwage from March to April, 2011. Suwage is often named as one of the most important Indonesian contemporary artists. Although little of his work has been seen in the U.S., it has been exhibited around the world over the past few decades and is included in most major collections and surveys of Indonesian contemporary art.

Suwage's paintings explore the predominant theme of the self-portrait, employing the artist’s own body and face in a number of guises to address questions of identity and change in his surrounding socio-cultural condition. 'Playing the Fool' (2004) is the artist’s continuing exploration into violence, pain and joy. Image courtesy of Tyler Rollins Fine Art.

JAS/KN/HH

Related Topics: promoting art, Southeast Asian artists, gallery shows

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Globalisation of contemporary art market evident in growth of art fairs – The Economist

ART FAIRS ECONOMY

A recent article in the Economist comments on the globalisation of art and how art fairs accelerate the transnational exposure of artists, something that could become necessary for artists if they want to attract the attention of serious collectors and art investors. Importantly, it also identifies the current international art fair hot spots. Read on for our summary of this article.

Globalisation of the art market

Globalisation is one of the most important phenomenon in the history of recent art. Contemporary art needs the potential of a global market and thus enters the art fair. Biennials and landmark exhibitions help to initiate global change in the art scene. International art fairs spread belief in contemporary art through the help of banks and royalty, from Deutsche Bank to local rulers in the Middle East.

In addition, the article quotes Marc Spiegler and Annette Schönholzer, co-directors of Art Basel, as saying that private collections are becoming increasingly international. Collectors start by acquiring art from their own nation and eventually acquire internationally. In many countries contemporary art has become an economic project involving collectors, dealers and huge cultural districts with museums and art fairs.

Art Basel 2009.

For an art fair to be properly diverse, careful curation is essential. For good international fairs, this not only means that attending galleries show talented artists, but also that they show artists that live in the country the gallery is located in. As quoted in The Economist,

As Lucy Mitchell-Innes of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, a New York gallery, warns: ‘It’s a problem if four or five booths have the same artist’s work. A good international fair wants Chinese galleries to bring talented Chinese artists, not another Antony Gormley.’

International art fair hot spots

The locational hierarchy of art fairs differs from that in the auction market. For art auctions, the three most prominent cities are New York, London and Hong Kong, in that order. When talking about art fairs, Basel would come first, but what follows this lead is unclear: Miami or London, New York or Paris?

Even more notable are the art fairs currently sprouting up in Asian countries. These are creating alternate markets for art and challenging Western leadership. Adding to the hierarchical ladder are two newcomers: Hong Kong’s ART HK (Hong Kong International Art Fair) and Abu Dhabi Art, operating from the Middle East.

What art fairs mean for artists and their art

In general, art fairs can accelerate the transnational exposure of all artists represented. Art Basel is unrivalled in this category and it may be because it has always defined itself as international. The frenzied demand for new art peaked with the creation of smaller art fairs. Some of them work as satellites to the major European events, the biennials, art festivals and fairs such as Basel. These budding fairs cater to lesser known, emerging artists.

Within the art market, that an artist is “international” has become a selling point. Consequently, the local artist has become almost insignificant, while those called “national” are damned with faint praise.

Art fairs, with their aggregation of art dealers forming a one-stop shoppers’ marketplace for art, attract high-spending collectors, generate greater sales and have to some extent replaced galleries with their increasing drawing power. Still the globalisation of the art is not just about money. There are a growing number of non-profit biennials that are developing along with the market structures. As quoted in The Economist,

Massimiliano Gioni, a curator based in Milan and New York, who is overseeing the Gwangju Biennial, which opens in South Korea in September, recalls that the avant-garde was ‘built on a transnational community of kindred spirits,’ adding, ‘sometimes I long for that.’

This is an Art Radar summary of “Global frameworks – Art-fair musical chairs“, first published in The Economist.

JAS/KN

Related Topics: art fairs, international artists, market watch – globalisation

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Wu Guanzhong, influential and non-conformist Chinese painter, dies at 91

CHINESE PAINTING MODERN CHINESE ART

Modern Chinese master painter Wu Guanzhong passed away in late June this year, aged 91. Wu became known for using traditional Chinese ink brush techniques to produce an aesthetic that is distinctly influenced by western art, in both ink and oil mediums. In his last years, Wu donated many of his works to public museums.

Wu Guanzhong, 'The Call of the Gods', 2009, oil on canvas.

According to The New York Times, Wu gave 113 works to the Singapore Art Museum in a donation valued at 73.7 million Singapore dollars, about $53 million in 2008. He also donated dozens of paintings to the Hong Kong Museum of Art, adding to a collection of previous gifts. Just before his death, he donated five more of his works to this museum.

The Guardian headlined that Wu “emerged from a cultural straitjacket as a modern master”. The article went on to state,

In the summer of 1950, soon after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic, Wu Guanzhong, happily studying painting in Paris, made the fateful decision to return to China. Appointed to teach in the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, his head full of Cézanne and Van Gogh, he soon found that he was forbidden to mention those names, and felt unable to face his radical students until he could talk about socialist realism in the Soviet Union, and its foreshadowing in the art of Ilya Repin. This was the beginning of almost three decades of harassment and victimization that, for him and countless others, ended only after the death of Mao in 1976.

About Wu Guanzhong

Wu Guanzhong

Wu Guanzhong was born in 1919 into a peasant farm family in a village near Yixing, in east China’s Jiangsu province. In his teens, he was studying to become an electrical engineer, but Wu changed his path after attending an art exhibition at the National Arts Academy of Hangzhou. He decided to transfer to this institution to study and it was here that his talent started to blossom.

After studying both Chinese and Western painting under Lin Fengmian and Pan Tianshou, Wu graduated from the National Arts Academy of Hangzhou in 1942. After teaching art in the architecture department of National Chongqing University, he won a scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He left China in in 1947. Here, Wu studied under Professor Jean Souverbie, whom according to Wu had affected him deeply. But by 1950, he began to feel cut off from his roots and decided then to go back to China.

The three-year study in France enabled Wu to capture the essence of modern art in the West. Growing up in withinChinese culture, he also had a deep understanding of Chinese painting style. After his return to China, Wu taught at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and other institutions. He introduced Western art to his students, but the Academy was dominated by Soviet social realism and he was branded as “a fortress of bourgeois formalism.” Refusing to conform to political dogma, he was transferred from one academy to another, painting in his own style.

During the Cultural Revolution in August 1966, he was forbidden to teach, write or paint. Eventually he was sent to the country to work as a farm labourer. It was only after two years that he was permitted to paint again.

Gradually, things got better. In 1973 Wu was one of the leading artists brought back from the countryside, an initiative of Zhou Enlai, the first Premier of the People’s Republic of China. He was painting again, travelling around China and writing articles. His rehabilitation was marked by an exhibition of his work in 1978 at the Central Academy. From that moment, he never looked back. Major exhibitions of his work were held in the British Museum in 1988, in the US in 1988-89, in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, and today he is recognised around the world as one of the masters of modern Chinese painting.

Mr. Wu had an impact on the way the Western art world viewed Chinese painting. In 1992, he was the first living Chinese artist to have a solo exhibition at the British Museum in London. In 1991, France made him an officer of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2002, he was the first Chinese artist to be awarded the Médaille des Arts et Lettres by the Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France. The New York Times

Wu’s importance within Chinese art

Unlike some other modern Chinese artists, he never found the choice of styles a problem. Asked whether he preferred the Chinese or the western style, he said: “When I take up a brush to paint, I paint a Chinese picture” The Guardian

Wu Guanzhong, 'Flower', 2000, ink on paper.

Like Van Gogh he painted not just the form, but “with his feelings”. He found inspirations in the beauty of nature. Wu’s style of painting has the colour sense and formal principles of Western paintings, but tonal variations of ink that are typically Chinese.

“Don’t be afraid of it,” he insisted, “because it is all around us in nature – in the design of the trellis in a garden pavilion, in the shadow of the bamboo leaves on a white wall… The line that connects the painted image to the real thing can never be broken.” The Guardian

In his work, natural scenery is reduced to its essentials – simple but powerful abstract forms. In rows of houses built along the contour of the hills, Wu discovered abstract patterns, the white houses with black roofs standing out against the soft grey tones of the mountains or water. In all his work, objective representation loses its importance, overtaken by the beauty of the abstract forms, lines, colours and subtle ink tones.

Wu’s works are unconventional and full of passion. In the eyes of the West, the images are very Chinese, but to Chinese viewers, the images appear modern and Western.

Read the obituaries and other related articles

• Wu Guanzhong, Leading Chinese Painter, Dies at 90 – Obituary, The New York Times, June 29, 2010
• Wu Guanzhong Obituary – The Guardian, July 7, 2010
• Wu Guanzhong, a Leading Chinese Painter, Has Died at 91 – ARTINFO.com, June 28, 2010
• Famous Chinese Painting Master Wu Guanzhong Passes Away – The China Daily, June 26, 2010
• Last Donation of Great Artist Wu Guanzhong to put on display – Xinhua News, June 29, 2010
• HK receives another donation from master of painting Wu Guanzhong – Xinhua News, June 25, 2010

JAS/KN

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