Beijing Beizine

genius phone design

2008-08-16T23:40:00.005+08:00

2008-08-15T09:31:00.000+08:00

Family book collection

2008-07-17T15:46:00.002+08:00

Some interesting new information just surfaced about my great grandfather's book collection that was donated to UBC (University of British Columbia) library some years ago. Very interesting, now I just wish I had time to get into that family history project I have always wanted to do...

a video show with no electricity

2008-07-01T23:05:00.000+08:00

found these photos in my files and forgot that I wanted to post them. Close to a month ago I went to see a show over the new Legation Quarter, a new luxury complex along the lines of Shanghai's Three on the Bund--fancy shops, restaurants and of course, a top notch art gallery. It was their inaugural show called "Where are we?" with an impressive line up of artists so I went to see what the fuss was about. However, the whole complex is still under construction and we arrived to discover that the power was turned off. These spaces meant for video became eerie and a bit haunting, like something had spirited away the images...where are they?

Patty Chang talk at UCCA

2008-06-10T11:05:00.002+08:00

I am working on a new project with artist Patty Chang for Arrow Factory, she is in town right now shooting some film segments that will be shown in July. She is also giving a talk at UCCA this Thursday, June 12. if you are in town please come by!

《西部概念里呈现的中国风味》：张怡(Patty Chang)
艺术家讲座本次讲座与北京箭厂空间共同主办
2008年6月12日下午5点
尤伦斯当代艺术中心

纽约艺术家张怡将在尤伦斯当代艺术中心讨论她近期在北京的拍摄项目。

在张怡的行为艺术作品里，影像和摄影创作尤其备受注目。她的作品主要题材来源于艺术家在行为作品里对自身的洞察和考验观众的界限。在近期影像作品里，张怡关注的主题包括传奇的演绎过程，建构同一性，现实生活中和虚构的文化假象。2005年的作品《香格里拉》纪录艺术家在云南中甸县的一次实地考察，在文学虚构里的香格里拉重复塑造一个具有当地代表性标志的雪山。2007年，张怡在长江的宜昌市拍摄她的最新的作品《漂浮物》（与大卫。凯利合作）。作品的背景描述三峡大坝引起的变化，同时应用叙述的手法建立一个围绕环境和同一性的主题。

在这次讲座中，张怡将和观众分享她对艺术创作的概述，和特别介绍她的作品《西部概念里呈现的中国风味》，作品主题来源于1928年瓦尔特·本雅明为美国亚裔女影星黄柳霜写的一片文章。艺术家希望通过一系列短片来反映再现，翻译，误译和跨文化传译的演变。张怡在北京拍摄作品的第一部分，近期将在北京的箭厂空间里播放。

张怡于2008年候选于Hugo Boss Prize, 她的作品《漂流物》（2007）被入选为MOMA举办的新导演系列作品之一。张怡的个展和群展在国际上备受注目。这次讲座是尤伦斯当代艺术中心和北京箭厂空间的首次合作。

*******************************************************************************
A Chinoiserie out of the Old West:
An Artist Talk by Patty Chang
Thursday, June 12
Time 5:00pm
UCCA auditorium

Organized in collaboration with UCCA and the Arrow Factory, Beijing

New York artist Patty Chang comes to Ullens Center to talk about her artistic practice and the project she is currently working on in Beijing.

Patty Chang is perhaps best known for her work as a performance artist and the videos and photographs that derive from these often provoking performances. As the principle subject, Chang's performance work often tested her own physical limits and the limits of the audience. Her more recent film based projects have taken a slightly different course, focusing on processes of mythmaking, constructed identities and the production of real and fictive cultural imaginaries. Shangri-La (2005) documented a real visit to the imaginary place of Shangri-La located in Zhongdian, Yunnan Province and included the repeated sculptural construction and reconstruction of the town's principle icon, Snow Mountain. Her most recent work (in collaboration with David Kelley), Flotsam Jetsam (2007) is a layered narrative addressing themes of landscape and identity against the backdrop of Yichang, a small town along the Yangtze River affected by the Three Gorges Dam project.

In this talk, Chang will give an overview of her artistic practice but will primarily introduce A Chinoiserie out of the Old West, the project she is currently working on here in China. Based on a 1928 text written by Walter Benjamin about the Asian American film starlet Anna May Wong, this work will take the form of several short film pieces that deal with representation, translation, mistranslation, and crossed meanings. Chang is in Beijing to film the first segment, which will be shown in late July at the Arrow Factory, Beijing.

Patty Chang is a 2008 finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize, and was recently featured in the MOMA New Directors series for her work Flotsam Jetsam (2007). Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions internationally.

http://www.ullens-center.org

Blue Skies in Beijing

2008-06-01T19:55:00.000+08:00

There have been major winds blowing through the city and even though it leaves a layer of dust over every surface, it has the added benefit of clearing away the pollution. Today was a crisp and gorgeous day...the CCTV tower was looking picture perfect. blue skies! white clouds! sadly these things are so rare here...

better late than never - arrow factory new show

2008-05-11T08:51:00.002+08:00

SLICE
Featuring works by

Rania Ho and Wei Weng
April 30– June 3, 2008
Arrow Factory
38 Jianchang Hutong(off Guozijian Jie) Dongcheng District, Beijing

www.arrowfactory.org
www.jianchang.org

Arrow Factory is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition Slice now on view in its newly opened downtown Beijing location. Designed to be viewed from the street only, Arrow Factory exhibitions represent a unique approach to contemporary art making that is defined by mediating relationships with the local surroundings and the aesthetics of urban space. Slice is the first in a series of site-specific projects intended to respond to factors, patterns, habits and activities characteristic of the immediate environment. Created by Beijing-based artists Rania Ho and Wei Weng, Slice is a collaborative project that seeks to uncover relationships between perception and movement, ephemeral experiences and the concrete materiality of everyday life.

In “Stop-Action” artist Rania Ho has handcrafted a scale reproduction of a familiar everyday object—a ping-pong table—out of low-cost commonly found materials. The inertness of this mundane object is humorously offset with a hint of movement through the form of a constantly levitating ping-pong ball. Echoing the outline of a ping-pong table and alluding to sparks of movement and certain perspectival shifts, painter Wei Weng has created a site-specific wall painting entitled “As Prospects Get out of Range”. This painting and accompanying set of papercuts is part of Weng’s ongoing Anti-mapping series in which the artist seeks to invent idiosyncratic visual narratives in inadvertent urban spaces through the use of diverse media including paintings, cutouts and installations. The acts of cutting, slicing and carving undertaken by these artists yield valuable associations to craft and the handmade, while simultaneously tackling the underlying mechanics that define contemporary life.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Rania Ho (born San Francisco, USA; currently resides in Beijing) received her M.A. from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University in 1999.

Wei Weng (born Nanning, Guangxi province; currently resides in Beijing)received her M.F.A. California College of Arts in 2005.

侧切
新作品

何颖宜翁维
2008年4月30日−6月3日

箭厂空间
北京东城区箭厂胡同38号
(国子监街内)

www.arrowfactory.org
www.jianchang.org

箭厂空间在此荣幸地宣布展览《侧切》的开幕。箭厂空间位于北京市中心的一条小胡同里，它以橱窗的形式进行当代艺术的展示。《侧切》是箭厂空间的系列现场项目之一，这个项目的出现将致力于推动艺术家在创作中更加关注日常生活的多种模式与元素。

展览《侧切》的两位艺术家通过她们的项目合作，在作品中进一步探讨彼此之间洞察力的变化与感应。何颖宜使用人们熟悉的低成本的材料，按实物的比例手工打造出一台乒乓球桌。作品《静止的运动》试图通过一个异质化的表层衬托出一种世俗的惰性－艺术家在作品中以低科技的手段设置了一个永不休止，悬浮在空气中的乒乓球。翁维的作品《再变迁》仿佛在回应乒乓球桌的轮廓，空间透视的戏剧性改变与创作过程中肢体语言的巧妙借用，既是其作品概念的出发点也成为了连接两件作品的视觉纽带。作品《再变迁》也是翁维一直创作中的Anti-mapping系列的一部分，整个系列用绘画，剪纸和装置的形式在一些被忽略的城市空间里创作异质的图像叙事。这次展览的两位艺术家在作品中共同运用了对于纸质材料的剪裁，切割与粘接，她们试图在证实日常生活里常见的手工制作方式亦能呈现出的视觉动力。

艺术家简介

何颖宜（出生于美国旧金山，现生活工作于中国北京）1999年毕业于纽约大学互动艺术系，获硕士学位.

翁维（生于中国广西南宁，现居住北京）2005年获加利福尼亚艺术学院硕士学位。

walking from art fair

2008-04-30T20:09:00.000+08:00

Arrow Factory 箭厂空间

2008-04-16T16:29:00.002+08:00

www.arrowfactory.org

spring is coming....

2008-04-05T23:04:00.000+08:00

...can't wait!

Huang Yong Ping opening at Ullens

2008-03-23T17:31:00.003+08:00

I recently attended the opening for Huang Yong Ping, a Chinese born French artist based in Paris. His solo retrospective is also his first major exhibition in China. The exhibition, "House of Oracles" is a traveling show organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneaopolis, where the show opened in Oct 2005 (I published an interview with him in Yishu). From there it traveled to MASS MoCA and, eventually here to the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. Huang is one of the founding members of Xiamen dada group that was active in the early 80s in Fujian province, and is widely recognized as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. As expected, the opening was a somewhat glamorous affair, though the sit-down dinner for 80 was termed "intimate" by a UCCA staffer (this is in comparison to their UCCA grand opening which featured 600 person dinner).

swank dinner catered by The Peninsula of all places

Releasing the animals in "Theatre of the World" at public opening. "Theatre of the World" houses several different kinds of cold-blooded animals (snakes, lizards, spiders, scorpions, beetles) in an turtle shaped container with a separate compartments and a central arena-like space. The idea is that over the length of the show the animals will fight and eat one another (leaving one victorious), thus mirroring the national struggles for power we witness daily on political and cultural levels.

Installation view

Zhu Jinshi at Arario gallery

2008-03-17T15:54:00.000+08:00

Qiu Xiaofei install at Universal Studios, oops I mean Boers-Li

2008-03-11T09:45:00.001+08:00

Qiu Xiaofei at Boers-Li Gallery

2008-03-11T09:44:00.001+08:00

Michelangelo Pistoletto at Galleria Continua

2008-03-11T09:41:00.000+08:00

Wang Qiang at Marella Beijing

2008-03-11T09:40:00.000+08:00

the new art season is ON

2008-03-07T23:26:00.002+08:00

brace yourself--tomorrow marks the beginning of a new cycle and a whole new year of art mayhem with, like a gazillion openings around town. Did everyone hold a meeting and decide that March 8 would be the unofficial start of the art 'season' whereby which the Beijing artworld is bombarded with exhibition openings? If so, one hopes there would have been better planning since everything opens not only on the same day but more or less at the same time. I have been away for a month so I am sure I don't know the half of it but off the top of my head there is Zhu Jinshi at Arario, Qiu Xiaofei at Boers-Li Gallery (formerly Universal Studios Beijing), group show of young artists at Platform China, Wang Qiang at Marella, group show at Tang Ren, ?? show at new museum headed up by curator Li Zhenhua, group show titled Critical Mass at Imagine Gallery...the list goes on. ahhh, let the art circus begin!

back in the saddle

2008-03-06T08:41:00.002+08:00

Finally back in Beijing. It was over a month in the States, which was great, but now time to settle down and get some work done. still fighting jetlag. lots of openings this weekend, hope there is something interesting!

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, LA

2008-03-01T00:43:00.000+08:00

installation by Chris Burden

NYC bergdorf goodman window

2008-02-09T23:31:00.000+08:00

another comfortable marriage of art and commerce...Phillips de Pury auction house is now working with Bergdorf Goodman, displaying high fashion clothing with highlights from their upcoming contemporary art sale in their Fifth Avenue store windows

nyc

2008-02-09T23:27:00.000+08:00

lake michigan

2008-02-03T10:08:00.001+08:00

chicago

2008-02-03T10:08:00.000+08:00

bookish imaginations

2008-01-31T08:52:00.000+08:00

please excuse the bit of self-referentialism...this came from a friend recently:

"One clicks on an image of a bookshelf, offered on a website, and spies
on the things someone reads, the words and thoughts that have been in
someone's mind, the pages on someone's lap. Art in Theory 1900 to
2000. That book must have thousands of words, hundreds of pages, and
maybe not even one picture plate. Jonathan Spence's old dissertation
on China sits a few away from a compact travel guide, a few more from
My Life as Emperor. Wonder what that's all about, which ruler we're
talking about. Another cover looks to have Kanji characters among all
the Chinese stuff. More heavies. The Anti-Aesthetic, next to Art &
Otherness. Next to Semiotic Warfare. The Past, another book
explains, Is a Foreign Country. How to get there, and back, one
wonders -- until one moves further down: the answer may just be inside
Archeology of the Future. Fake, another proclaims. You want to
believe that, until you come to the simple white one with red
lettering - Uncertain States of America. One's astonished to learn
what titles people come up with. Tomorrow I should try one of these
books or at least build a bookshelf of my own."

The author of this passage, intending to innocently yet humorously comment on the photos of my bookshelf posted below (who knew someone would look that close? eeks), unwittingly managed to touch upon another aspect, a nerve currently running through two separate but interconnected spheres of my daily life. One is the connection to collecting and display, something which I have spent considerable time thinking about and researching over the last year or more, especially how collections and objects create narratives and inform us about their owners; and the other being the persistence of memory that comes with material possessions, namely books. Faced with the odd task of packing up my library of books over the last two weeks (attempting to move in opposition to the nostalgic leanings of Benjamin's essay "Unpacking My Library"), thoughts on collecting, ruminating on the past through objects and the significance of books have not been far from my mind. Moreover, I have always had a fascination for the ways in which the titles of books, especially when lined up on a bookshelf next to one another, inadvertently create curious yet fun associations and cryptic meanings.

Queen's Nails Annex, SF

2008-01-27T09:54:00.000+08:00

Rebecca Goldfarb

Ana Theresa Fernandez