Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
First time in China: Independent Art Critic Award
International jury announces the winner of the new CCAA initiative
A new award has been established this year by the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA), the CCAA ART CRITIC AWARD. It aims to encourage independent writing and the critical study of Chinese contemporary art by writers based in China, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Participation was open to both foreign and Chinese applicants on the condition that they are based in China and not resident abroad.
Uli Sigg, Founder of CCAA, comments on the reasons for establishing the Art Critic Award: "The vibrant Chinese art scene clearly lacks sufficient independent art criticism. In times now past, this was due to a not yet differentiated art system, lack of independent media and lack of independence within these media. This situation provided insufficient resources only to sustain a career as an independent writer. In today's booming art market, art media, artist books and exhibition catalogs abound, the material conditons have improved. Yet most of this writing has to cater to the needs of a market."
The Art Critic Award wants to address this issue twofold: raise the discussion on independent art criticism, which is so essential to advance art creation in China, and to further educate the participants of this vibrant art scene. And encourage independent writing by enabling a profound research project on Chinese contemporary art that otherwise may not have found financial support.
The four members of the highly profiled international jury: Jörg Heiser (co-editor of frieze magazine, London), Xu Jiang (professor of National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou), Georg Schöllhammer (editor in chief of documenta 12, Germany, and Springerin magazine, Austria) and Yi Ying (editor in chief of World Art Magazine, Beijing) unanimously announced Pauline J. Yao the winner of this newly established Art Critic Award. The award includes a grant of 10.000 EUROS, to elaborate a paper. This paper will be published as a book. To make it available to an international audience as well, the paper will also be published in English.
The jury has stated that Pauline J. Yao's proposal to critically enquire the rapid change of artistic production modes of contemporary art in China is of particular interest for the current situation. This situation is characterized by the increase of semi-industrial productions involving the use of assistants and laborers and a seemingly growing commodification of the artwork.
Given the high quality of proposals submitted, the jury would like to include a pronounced honourable mention of Carol Yinghua Lu¹s highly original project abstract, suggesting a comparative study of Chinese conceptual art practices between the 1980s and after 2000.
A new award has been established this year by the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA), the CCAA ART CRITIC AWARD. It aims to encourage independent writing and the critical study of Chinese contemporary art by writers based in China, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Participation was open to both foreign and Chinese applicants on the condition that they are based in China and not resident abroad.
Uli Sigg, Founder of CCAA, comments on the reasons for establishing the Art Critic Award: "The vibrant Chinese art scene clearly lacks sufficient independent art criticism. In times now past, this was due to a not yet differentiated art system, lack of independent media and lack of independence within these media. This situation provided insufficient resources only to sustain a career as an independent writer. In today's booming art market, art media, artist books and exhibition catalogs abound, the material conditons have improved. Yet most of this writing has to cater to the needs of a market."
The Art Critic Award wants to address this issue twofold: raise the discussion on independent art criticism, which is so essential to advance art creation in China, and to further educate the participants of this vibrant art scene. And encourage independent writing by enabling a profound research project on Chinese contemporary art that otherwise may not have found financial support.
The four members of the highly profiled international jury: Jörg Heiser (co-editor of frieze magazine, London), Xu Jiang (professor of National Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou), Georg Schöllhammer (editor in chief of documenta 12, Germany, and Springerin magazine, Austria) and Yi Ying (editor in chief of World Art Magazine, Beijing) unanimously announced Pauline J. Yao the winner of this newly established Art Critic Award. The award includes a grant of 10.000 EUROS, to elaborate a paper. This paper will be published as a book. To make it available to an international audience as well, the paper will also be published in English.
The jury has stated that Pauline J. Yao's proposal to critically enquire the rapid change of artistic production modes of contemporary art in China is of particular interest for the current situation. This situation is characterized by the increase of semi-industrial productions involving the use of assistants and laborers and a seemingly growing commodification of the artwork.
Given the high quality of proposals submitted, the jury would like to include a pronounced honourable mention of Carol Yinghua Lu¹s highly original project abstract, suggesting a comparative study of Chinese conceptual art practices between the 1980s and after 2000.
tragedy!
no computer for several days...totally incapacitating...but I have nobody to blame but myself as I dropped it on the floor accidentally and the hard drive broke. Got a new hard drive put in but it is empty and I still have to take the old one somewhere to get the stuff off of it (if anything is recoverable). But it feels nice to be back in the saddle again, finally.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
hidden heirarchies
apparently there is a sophisticated logic of heirarchy that goes with the colors of hard hats on construction sites...white for architects, red for engineers and yellow for workers or something along those lines. I went to see the new olympic stadium the other day while I was standing there taking photos when - within one minute - these three people passed by, pretty funny.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
The party of the century
Things have been in total whirlwind lately...the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art opening was on Nov 2 and 3 and so there are literally hundreds of people in town for it (600 people alone for the dinner on Friday night!). in case you don't already know, the Ullens Center is a privately funded international center established by Belgian collectors Guy and Miriam Ullens. They went all out and spared no expense in putting on the opening event of the decade that was not to be missed. One could tell by the number of black audis lining the streets of 798 arts district, guys in black suits with headsets, european women in furs, etc. However, the fact that no artists (besides those participating in the '85 show）were invited to the VIP dinner on Friday night (they were instead invited to the party the night after), and that speeches at the dinner were done in english with no Chinese translation managed to piss off a fair number of people. and rightly so. Scads of famous artworld types and personal friends of the Ullens' were flown in just for the party and put up in hotels around town. God only knows how much money was spent on these 3 days alone...let's hope the same amount of attention is put toward the art itself!
With the opening, tons of artists, curators, are in town and I have been running around like crazy. today is my first day with more than an hour at home and so I can finally catch up on some things. My friend Doryun Chong from the Walker Art Center is in town so it is fun to have someone to pal around with, we went to part of the Ullens forum on the '85 New Wave show, to see Guan Yi's art collection in Songzhuang and took part in a nice salon type artist discussion that led into a crazy late night karaoke session...I think that was the marathon day I got up at 6:20am to have a meeting with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guan Yi and then drove out to the outskirts of Beijing to show him a plot of land near the airport...but I can't be sure since it is all blending together now.
I am supposed to write something about the Ullens opening and '85 New Wave show for Flash Art..aiiiyaaaa I have had barely time to think straight. will have to try to pull something together and take a stab at it before all the energy and excitement is totally dwindled and forgotten.
With the opening, tons of artists, curators, are in town and I have been running around like crazy. today is my first day with more than an hour at home and so I can finally catch up on some things. My friend Doryun Chong from the Walker Art Center is in town so it is fun to have someone to pal around with, we went to part of the Ullens forum on the '85 New Wave show, to see Guan Yi's art collection in Songzhuang and took part in a nice salon type artist discussion that led into a crazy late night karaoke session...I think that was the marathon day I got up at 6:20am to have a meeting with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guan Yi and then drove out to the outskirts of Beijing to show him a plot of land near the airport...but I can't be sure since it is all blending together now.
I am supposed to write something about the Ullens opening and '85 New Wave show for Flash Art..aiiiyaaaa I have had barely time to think straight. will have to try to pull something together and take a stab at it before all the energy and excitement is totally dwindled and forgotten.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
pix from australia
downtown sydney
the Blue Mountains
Heri Dono show at Sherman Galleries
paintings at Ray Hughes gallery
Is China ready?
Tickets went on sale for the Beijing Olympics the other day and guess what??--the computers crashed due to overload. Something like 8 million hits in the first hour and 200,000 requests per second! news story here
