The allegory of "continuity" - Chen Wenling's solo art exhibition will be on display at the Beijing Minsheng Art Museum across the New Year!
- suyangstudio
- Dec 20, 2024
- 8 min read
The Allegory of "Continuity" - Chen Wenling's Art Solo Exhibition
Organizer: China Minsheng Bank, Beijing Minsheng Art Museum
Co-organizer: Beijing Minsheng Culture and Art Foundation
General Planner: Zhou Xujun
Curator: Lv Peng
Assistant Curators: Wang Yan, Su Yang, Li Guohua
Time: December 29, 2019 - February 28, 2020
Location: Halls 1, 2, and 3 of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum
On the afternoon of December 29, 2019, the Allegory of "Continuity" - Chen Wenling's Art Solo Exhibition was exhibited at Beijing Minsheng Art Museum across the New Year. This exhibition is the latest achievement of the "Artist Case Study Series" of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, and it is also a very important solo exhibition in Chen Wenling's artistic career. It is hosted by China Minsheng Bank and Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, co-organized by Beijing Minsheng Culture and Art Foundation, and curated by Lv Peng. The exhibition will focus on the artist's artistic creation since 2006, fully demonstrating his new artistic exploration process and achievements.
Opening ceremony
Chen Wenling's art and creative process can be divided into three themes and parts: personal experience, human desire, and community illusion. These three processes are complementary and orderly, forming the "continuity" of the artist's artistic and life experience. This exhibition will fully demonstrate Chen Wenling's "continuity" artistic process. Corresponding to its three themes, Beijing Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum will use the entire space on the first, second and third floors for the presentation of this exhibition, exhibiting a total of 3 groups of large-scale installation works, more than 50 sculptures, and more than 80 painting manuscripts.
Zhou Xujun, Director of Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Zhou Xujun, director of Beijing Minsheng Contemporary Art Museum, said in his speech: Chen Wenling is a pioneer artist of contemporary Chinese sculpture and an important representative of magic realism. For many years, he has always been rooted in real life, using the personal experience of an independent artist and his unique keen insight to perceive the changes of the times and the various phenomena brought about by social transformation, and created a group of works with distinct language characteristics that have an important impact in the public context.
The energetic state of life he presents in the face of art and the fierce burning passion projected into his creations all constitute the endogenous driving force for Chen Wenling's art to continue.
Xu Li, secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Artists Association, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Xu Li, secretary of the Party Committee of the Chinese Artists Association, said in his speech: Chen Wenling is charming, Chen Wenling is vital, and Chen Wenling is creative. Chen Wenling is also a hard worker, and he is hungry for art. His fate is different from others, and his fate cannot be repeated by others. He has come back from the gates of hell twice, so Chen Wenling's understanding of life is more thorough and his perception is more than others.
In Chen Wenling's works, you feel more love for life, yearning for life, and praise for life! Whether it is the "little red man" who has seen the past in the ordinary life of the bottom, or his later creations from ecology and various aspects, to these masterpieces today, we can feel the love from the heart that Chen Wenling truly shows for life.
Fan Di'an, Chairman of the Chinese Artists Association and President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Fan Di'an, Chairman of the Chinese Artists Association and President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said in his speech: I appreciate Mr. Lü Peng's planning for the exhibition, especially the theme of "Continuous Fable". Fables come from reality, but are different from reality; fables come from individual experience and have collective consciousness; fables are related to today's reality, past history and even the future. Use the image world as its embodiment. I think the design of the theme poster of the exhibition is very interesting, especially the "continuity of fables" is well visually conveyed in the continuity of Chen Wenling's creation.
Lai Guoxian, General Manager of Beijing Parkview Green, delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Curator Lü Peng delivers a speech at the opening ceremony
Artist Chen Wenling delivered a speech at the opening ceremony
Opening ceremony group photo
Chen Wenling is an artist who cannot be avoided in the history of contemporary Chinese art since 1978. With sculpture as the main medium, he faced various phenomena brought about by the rapid changes in contemporary Chinese society and created a series of works that have an impact in the public social context, reflecting the thinking and creation of contemporary Chinese artists facing the present.
The Banality of Evil Variable size Mixed media 2019
In the view of curator Lü Peng, Chen Wenling's artistic journey is a "continuous" road. "Continuity" comes from the concept of philosopher Bergson: "Beauty is continuity", which is also the theme of this exhibition. Lü Peng believes that the traces of China's social changes in the past 40 years, especially the transformation of the grassroots society, are deeply imprinted in Chen Wenling's creation. Some of his personal special experiences in a rapidly changing society, the sudden increase in wealth and consumer desires created by economic development in China, and the mixture of multiple civilizations and Chinese folk and traditional culture caused by globalization have become important factors in his creation and the support for his continuous "continuity" of art. These "continuous" arts seem a bit illusory and dramatic, but they are facts that the public faces every day, and they are also allegories about the continuous "continuity" of human beings presented by artists through art.
Curator Lv Peng on-site tour
Fable of Duration
Lv Peng
Bergson has a concept: "Beauty lies in duration." He believes that all living things are continuous, and the more continuous an object is, the more it can reflect the essential characteristics of life. When duration develops to a higher level, it can more fully express the essence of life. He describes the highest level of duration as "beauty". When we look back at the artistic journey of artist Chen Wenling, his creative path seems to be in line with Bergson's "duration" path.
Curator Lv Peng on-site tour
Chen Wenling is an artist who cannot be avoided in the history of contemporary Chinese art since 1978. As a contemporary art, sculpture is targeted at different issues: the traces of China's social changes in the past 40 years, especially the transformation of the grassroots society, are deeply imprinted in Chen's creation. His personal special experience in a rapidly changing society, the sudden increase in wealth and consumer desires created by economic development in China, and the mixture of multiple civilizations and Chinese folk and traditional culture caused by globalization have become important factors in his creation and the support for his continuous "continuation" of art. Based on his changes in the language of his creation, his art and creative process can be divided into three themes and parts, namely: personal experience, human desire, and community illusion. These three processes are complementary and orderly, forming the "continuation" of the artist's art and life experience.
Personal experience: Chen's creation in this part is undoubtedly directly and closely related to his personal life. His experience of fighting gangsters on the beach became the original source of his "Red Man" series. It also metaphorically represents the struggle and resistance experienced by the grassroots people during the period of rebuilding the grassroots order brought about by social changes. This constitutes the initial "continuity" of his artistic life.
Human Desire: In this part of the work, the artist's understanding of life "extends" to a higher level. He is no longer limited to personal feelings, but turns more attention to society. He feels that social wealth is increasing, but at the same time cultural interests are constantly lost, which leads to the infinite magnification of human desires: gorgeously dressed pigs, weird elephants, crude cows, etc. The artist uses extremely vulgar images to dissolve the elegance of art and replaces civilization and interest with primitive impulses, but this can be regarded as a "social landscape" conveyed to the current audience by naked reality.
Community Illusion: Perhaps it is because of the growth of age and experience, or perhaps it is some special experiences of his own life, in recent years, the artist's thinking has risen from individual life to the concern for the fate of the human community with universal significance. In the creation of the series of all things and communities, the artist takes the interweaving of more eternal life and various civilizations as his main object of expression. The development of globalization has made trade and communication more convenient, but the differences in values and the barriers between civilizations have not disappeared, and even various sharp conflicts have occurred. The existence of these conflicts and barriers has undoubtedly planted the possibility of rupture in the contemporary society that looks bright but has many problems. There is no doubt that civilization has a desire to maintain continuity, and different human civilizations have been seeking the combination of communities. This seems to be inevitable in the era of globalization. However, in the process of people discussing and combining communities, the real situation is conflict and controversy, and "community" is still a beautiful illusion, which is exactly the artist's worry and anxiety. And because of this, the "continuity" of the artist's thinking about art and life seems to be closer to the highest level characteristics.
"Community" 1800x1000x500cm Stainless steel 2014-2018
Curator:
Lv Peng was born in Chongqing in 1956. He studied at the Department of Political Education of Sichuan Normal University from 1977 to 1982. He was an editor of Drama and Film Magazine from 1982 to 1985. He was the deputy secretary-general of Sichuan Dramatists Association from 1986 to 1991. He was the executive editor of Art Market Magazine from 1990 to 1993. He was the artistic director of Guangzhou Biennale in 1992. In 2004, he graduated from the doctoral program of China Academy of Art and received his doctorate degree. He was an associate professor of the School of Arts and Humanities of China Academy of Art from 2005 to 2016. He was the director of Chengdu Contemporary Art Museum from 2011 to 2014. He is currently the president of Nat Art University and a professor of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts.
Artist:
Chen Wenling is one of the internationally renowned representative artists of Chinese contemporary art. He is known as the magician of magic realist sculpture and the pioneer of large-scale contemporary public sculpture in China. His representative works include "Red Boy Series", "Happy Life Series", "Chinese Landscape Series", "Niu Qi Chong Tian Series" and "Miao Di Yin Xin Series". He has participated in more than 100 important exhibitions at home and abroad. He has been selected as one of the "ACC China Top Ten Sculptors of the Year" organized by Artron for three consecutive years. He is the first Chinese to win the Public Art Award of the Australian Coast International Sculpture Exhibition and was awarded the title of "China-Australia Art Ambassador". His works are collected by more than a dozen public institutions such as the National Art Museum of China, the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Denmark, the National Gallery of Korea and the Melbourne Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, Australia.
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