.com
home | artist | installations | paintings | exhibitions | contact | links
exhibitions (2005) / (2000-2004)
|
BLACK ■ GREY 2 - 29 September 2005 Hong Kong |
|
■■■Qin Chong solo exhibitions
BLACK WHITE ■, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, 8 April - 6 May 2005 ■ WHITE GREY, GdK Galerie der Kuenste, Berlin, 10 June - 8 July 2005 BLACK ■ GREY, Art Beatus Hong Kong, 2 - 29 September 2005
|
catalogue■■■ |
||||||
|
■■■ BLACK ■ GREY Art Beatus Hong Kong, 2 - 29 September 2005 opening: 2 September 2005, 6 - 8 p.m. exhibition: 3-29 September 2005 place:
Art Beatus curated by: Dr. Annie Wong organizer: Art Beatus, Shops 301-302, I Exchange Square Podium, Central, Hong Kong T:
(852)
2522-1138 F:(852) 2905 -1761 e-mail: dyiu@artbeatus.com.hk
■■■ ■WHITE GREY GdK Galerie der Kuenste, Berlin, 10 June - 1 July 2005 opening: 10 June 2005, 19.00 exhibition: 11 June 2005 to 1 July 2005
place:
GdK, Galerie
der Kuenste curated by: Selina Lai / Silvia Donzelli organizer: GdK I Galerie der Kuenste, Potsdamer Str. 76/78, 10785 Berlin T:
0049-30-2535
8678 e-mail: selina.lai@gdk-berlin.de silvia_donzelli@yahoo.com
It’s
just a matter of balance The
difficult game of balance between antagonist forces always implies an
interaction between two elements. It’s a just a matter of body proportions who
want to assert their presence and their existence.
There
is balance when two subjects accept and permeate themselves, when they have the
same weight. The German word GLEICHGEWICHT is, at this purpose, exemplar: it
includes, actually, GLEICH that means “same” and the word GEWICHT, that
means “Weight”. In
this case, a condition of stability is assured, a neutrality whose point zero is
supposed to endure endlessly. But
with the interference of a foreign element, a lack of balance occurs: this way,
a conflict is established, i.e. an active and plain interaction between two
subjects who try to impose their own laws in order to assert their existence
again.
Qin
Chong, works out the precariousness of balance by raising tension and border
situations, by stressing each time how thin the edge between two conditions is.
He plays with the fragility and
apparent anonymity of natural phenomena: it could be water that chokes, a
silk thread that twines around a plant preventing it from growing up or black
ink that saturates. In
any case, he questions and abolishes a static condition: he stages a balance
game between two antagonist forces. “BLACK
White Grey”, so is the title of Qin Chong’s solo exhibition at the GdK
Galerie der Kuenste, are three border areas whose boundaries communicate,
overwhelm each others and leave, eventually, traces. It
deals with
purity who is inexorably tainted: a whiteness which, by getting into
contact with its antagonist black, becomes grey.
Although
Qin Chong’s reduction into primary geometrical forms such as the cube, the
cylinder and the abolition of the colour which obliges to use exclusively white,
black and transparent elements, may be traced back to the tradition of
minimalism in the 60’s, the Chinese artist distinguishes himself for the kind
of artistic operation he carries out: his act is not aseptic but it’s invasive
and silently aggressive. His minimalism includes existential elements as it
shows the never ending fight between two antagonists.
The
taskmaster for paper couldn’t be but fire or ink, what prevents from breathing
is apnoea caused by water and the only natural element which can stop a plant
from growing up causing eventually its death could be only a silk thread whose
strength is so hard that it will never break. What
associates each one of this existential conditions is the expanded time: they
don’t deal with the crash of either sudden or accelerated moments but they
show the slowness, the calm, the patience and the silent of a process that is
going to accomplish or that is inexorably occurred.
In
their disarming refinement and bareness, they loose themselves into the clear
evidence of a moment.
Selina
Lai 2005,
Berlin
■■■ Tuning
of opposites A
kind of fight, a conflict between opposite tensions is shown in almost all the
works of Qin Chong. The
tensions arise between a pure and genuine element and one or more external
elements, intervening to limit and to contaminate its pureness, thus modifying
its being. In
his paintings the artist brings to view this contrast through the reduction of
the colour range to white and black only. White and black visualize in a clear
and catching way the idea of the corruption process of pureness, which brings to
mind the traditional image of spotted candour. Furthermore,
the use of just these two colours stresses the contrast between opposites as a
drastic relation without compromises. But,
on the other side, this conflict is not likely to find a solution. Neither the
black nor the white will be the winner of this struggle, because as the white
cannot exist without black, so the black will never subdue the white completely.
The complete prevalence of one of the principles would mean a lack of movement,
of tensions, thus of life. The
two colours are opposite but complementary and exist together, and the meaning
of their conflict is limiting each other, creating new identities. This
brings to mind the relation between the opposite but inseparable principles yin
and yang of the Taoism, the alternation of which generates all the things in the
universe. This
theme is taken up again in the installation “birth”, made of white paper
sheets and dark burns, where the contrast exists not just between the colours
but also between the materials. The
fire attacking the white paper doesn’t destroy it completely, it burns just a
part of it, impressing its mark on it, thus creating a new identity. In
other works of Qin Chong the representation of this conflict takes often the
form of a struggle between an impulse of life and other elements, which would
condition and hinder its development and natural growth.
This
concept is visualized in the installations through metaphorical images, for
example, we see plants wrapped in a net of white thin strings. These strings are
an artificial element affecting the genuineness of the natural impulse of life:
we understand, that the artist is not just talking about nature, continually
ruined by human activity, but is also talking about the human condition. Because
every human being owns at the beginning of his life freedom and innocence, that
will inevitably be neutralized through the rules and conventions of society. In
the artworks of Qin Chong the representation of this theme is not accompanied
by pessimism and resignation, but
by stating, that the corruption process of purity and the contrast between
natural growth and artificial structures are apparently something unavoidable,
tendencies deep inside the nature of the things. In
spite of the represented dramatic tensions the artworks of Qin Chong are
realized in a very simple and refined style. The paintings of Qin Chong are pure
and essential, they communicate a feeling of quiet and peace and invite to
reflect. For
his carefully made installations the artist uses preferably natural, elementary
materials, such as water, fire, wood and paper; the impression of lightness and
delicacy given by his works is often enhanced by the presence of transparent and
wavering elements. Silvia
Donzelli January
2005
■■■ BLACK WHITE ■ Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, 8 April - 6 May 2005
opening: 8 April 2005, 7 p.m. exhibition: 8 April to 6 May 2005 place:
Duolun Museum of Modern Art curated by: Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shen Qibin / Plum Blossoms Gallery, George Chang organizers: Duolun Museum of Modern Art / Plum Blossoms Gallery T:
0086-21-65875996
BLACK WHITE ■ opening of the exhibition
Notes
on Qin Chong: German-based
artist Qin Chong’s installations exude a disarming lack of structural
constraint or context, existing instead as something akin to model environments,
forcing the viewer to confront elemental form that because of its very
materiality is held in delicate suspension, subject to air currents, humidity,
vibrations, gravity.
To
understand Qin Chong’s work, one must first know that Chinese ink was
traditionally made of soot residue from various burning processes.
Working with fire on paper, Qin Chong, whose elder brother Qin Feng is
himself a highly regarded calligrapher, unites the ink and brush tradition with
a more contemporary, conceptual approach.
Some of his works, for example, ‘Losing’ (Diushi,
soot on paper, 2001), indeed closely resemble ink paintings.
However, whereas a good ink painter distinguishes himself by control over
the brush and ink, Qin Chong’s soot adds a level of instability and
randomness.
His works possess a transformative dynamism, they are ritual realized as
art object, where the application of fire suggests both a hideous disfigurement,
as in his floor installation ‘Concave – Convex’ (Ao - Tu, paper, fire,
2001), and at the same time a process of purification.
There
are overlaps too with human understanding of the life cycle: creation through
destruction, cremation of the deceased body, the white of untouched paper as
white mourning garb or white as infinite afterlife.
Perhaps ‘Birthday’ (Shengri,
four units: wood bases, white paper, fire, 2002), amongst other works, is most
representative of this serene violence that characterizes Qin Chong’s art.
Here, a pristine block of paper stands as counterpoint to three other
units that have been variously burnt.
The resulting shapes are themselves beautiful but they also capture a
temporal passing—as though time, not fire, were eating away at the paper—and
the relationship between all four units becomes a series of mnemonic
reconstructions at play between a temporal idealized form and an immediate
instinct to understand a transpired event from inherited clues and traces.
When did the artist stop the burning?
Why?
Is ‘Birthday’ a lifetime remembered?
Or is it the start of something new? Ultimately,
what Qin Chong creates are artifacts, strange constructs, such as the Stone
Henge-like ‘Instant News’ (Shunjian
Xinwen, paper, fire, 2004) that suggest a meaning always escaping its
pursuers, always open to another viewpoint or another theory, and yet always at
a remove from the artist’s original intent.
As our paradigms for decoding empirical knowledge slowly give way like
paper to flame, something else emerges: an individual confronted by himself, an
open-ended, indefinable artwork.
Andrew
Maerkle New
York, 2004
|
|||||||
|
|
