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until 10.10. | #0191ARTatBerlin | Galerie Albrecht shows artworks by the Chinese Artist Jian-Jun Zhang in the exhibition “China Chapter Series” from 12th September 2015.
Jian-Jun Zhang’s art is concerned with the continuity of culture and of human values through time and space, with time in its role as creative tool. He believes, every era is marked by characteristic line, form, color, material. Linking the morphing visual markers is time. Culture is propelled in this manner, with human experience as a universal quality that unifies across time and distance.
He himself says about the «China Chapter»-Series:
I left China in 1989, and returned for the first time in 1995. When I came back for a visit, this 6-year gap had a strong visual impact on me. The whole society had changed tremendously, good and bad, I saw that everything had been squeezed together – East/West and traditional/modern. Impressions of a Chinese society undergoing drastic change and development are inherent in these sculptures. Over time cultures are altered by external and internal influences: the new adapting to the old (or vice versa), the foreign grafted onto the native. My work articulates and draws attention to this phenomenon using reconstructed artifacts.
The basic motif is a Chinese jar, which conceptually represents certain cultural traditions as well as contains time. Its shape, evoking Han or other ancient periods’ prototypes, is cast in the quintessentially contemporary material of silicone rubber. Deliberate appendages and warping signal current intervention. Particular shapes and their edges represent specific culture movements, for example, Bauhaus – the straight line comes from the modern time with speed and the industrial movement, currently the curved shapes evolved from computer technology. I add these new edges to the antiques, partially re-sculpting the object with these contemporary shapes. The jar is then juxtaposed with actual antiques to provoke a new visual dialogue.
Jian-Jun Zhang *1955 Shanghai, lives in New York and Shanghai. From 1987-89 he was Assistant Director of the Shanghai Art Museum, since 2007 Assistant Professor at New York University. Fellowships/Grants/Honors: 1986 First Prize, The Young Artist’s Exhibition, China; 1987-88 Asian Cultural Council, The Rockefeller Foundation, USA (to create artwork in the US); 1990+1996 The Pollock Krasner Foundation, New York, USA; 1997 The New York Foundation for the Arts, Sculpture; 2014 The New York Foundation for the Arts, Gregory Milliard Fellowship in Sculpture. He has had numerous solo-and group-exhibitions in the US, Japan, China, Korea, Hongkong and Europa, a.o. 2013 The Metrolopolitan Museum of Art, New York and Biennale Venice (Arsenale), 2008 Dresden State Art Collections
Vernissage: Freitag, 11. September 2015, 19 Uhr
Exhibition period: Saturday, 12th September — Saturday, 10th October 2015
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Image caption: Jian-Jun Zhang – China Chapter #5 – 1, ≈ 3500 BC – 2007 AD, Silikongummi, 21,5 x 23,5 x 22 cm
Jian-Jun Zhang – Galerie Albrecht – Art in Berlin ART@Berlin
