Tag: Liang Shuo

ArtSlant: Food for Thought

GROW Food Justice Global Campaign China Launch Ceremony: Food Art Exhibition, curated by Xia Yanguo

PIFO New Art Gallery, B-11, 798 Art Area, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Rd, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China

11 – 20 August, 2012

[Author’s note: I acted as an unpaid consultant for the GROW Campaign at an early stage, however I have had no involvement with this show at PIFO Gallery]

Food Art Exhibition at PIFO New Art Gallery, organised by the international charity Oxfam as part of their global “GROW” campaign, aims to raise awareness of poverty in relation to production and access to food, but the art exhibition on show raises issues with the effectiveness of this form of presentation.

Although art shows to promote charitable issues have worthy intentions that should in most cases be supported, there is a troublesome tendency for the art to be the least considered part of the affair. In the face of the important or urgent issues to be supported, the artworks often appear irrelevant or ineffectual, and there is a tendency to favour unproblematic or vague artistic responses to avoid distracting from the issue. Given art’s potential as a creative medium one would hope that it could play an important part in productively contributing to the issues, rather than simply acting as a background or window-dressing.

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ArtSlant: Stories Sans Smoke

Crop Circle & Doughnuts: Chen Xinpeng solo show

C5Art, Building F, 5 Xi Wu Street, Sanlitun, Chaoyang District, 100027 Beijing, China

10 September – 9 October, 2011

Artist Chen Xinpeng describes his work as the creation of “small innovations.” The works in Chen’s solo show at C5 Gallery include his early photo and video works through to his latest experiments with blow up structures and game play, giving some clues as to what these innovations might be. But all the while the show displays the artist’s self-deprecating humour and his reticence towards overstating the meaning and significance of these “innovations.”

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Small Innovations: Chen Xinpeng interview

I first came across Chen Xinpeng in 2009 as the initiator of the golden tent structure which appeared around Beijing that year. The tent provided a temporary haven for the show Cou Huo (co-organised with Red Box Studios) which was in itself a commentary on a “make-do” aspect of Chinese society. For me the tent embodied Xinpeng taking advantage of his relation to art practice to use temporary approaches to presentation, working to get away from art-institutional practices while also providing new formats for broader activities, including business or event presentations.

Tent by Chen Xinpeng

Edward Sanderson: Where did you study originally?

Chen Xinpeng: I graduated from Luxun Academy of Art1 in 1994. Then I moved to the States where I stayed for 10 years, and moved back to China about 5 years ago.

While I was in New York, I was working my ass off and I didn’t have time to do the things I liked to do, so I came back. I think here I have better opportunities.

When I moved back here I saw everything was so temporary. All the building here – they build the buildings, then they tear down the buildings which they just built a few year ago. In the same way, I wanted to do something really temporary, so I made the Tent – you can blow it up and deflate it real quick and as it’s inflatable you can move it around easily – that’s pretty much the idea.

Actually I had made the plan for this a long time ago: I wanted to do a very temporary, easy to move, and very short-term exhibition. And not particularly for fine art, maybe as some other kind of venue. I really like the idea of people re-using my tent to do something else. They see the tent, and they are like “Oh that’s great! I can have a wedding in there!” – or they can do whatever they want, or they can make a tent themselves, or they can come and borrow it from me.

I’m also quite interested in different kinds of audience, not audiences specific to art districts. I’m quite interested in different locations, different people. How they take to different kind of shows. For me it’s a pretty fun approach.

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