Leo Xu Projects announces He An’s participation in the 2013 Carnegie International at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. The Carnegie International (est. 1896) is, after the Venice Biennale (est. 1895), the oldest international contemporary art survey exhibition in the world. Co-curated by Daniel Baumann, Dan Byers, and Tina Kukielski, the 2013 Carnegie International includes four components as a major exhibition of new international art, a playground, the museum’s collection, and an engagement with the city. And it brings together 35 artists from 19 countries. The International exposes powerful reinterpretations of the figure as a site of resistance, emancipation, and healing. It confronts everyday existence in all its beauty, imperfection, and confusion, while it makes a claim for the importance of place and reads history against the grain, paying homage to the multiplicities and dissonances that make our world richer and the future more interesting. A complete list of Carnegie International artists is available here:http://ci13.cmoa.org/artists .
For the 2013 Carnegie International, He An presents a series of site specific installations titled “What Makes Me Understand What I Know?”, which is an ongoing project he initiated around 2009. The installations comprise neon signs that He An collected throughout China. Each set of neon signs are Chinese characters, spelling out two names: One is the artist’s father He Taoyuan, the other He An’s favorite Japanese porn actress Miho Yoshioka. Short and concise like a tweet, the text-based piece represents a story of love and fantasy, distance and intimacy. It further explores the multifaceted relationship between Chinese calligraphy and modern typeface design. He An’s installations have two presences in The International, two commissioned new sets at the museum entrance, an earlier installation occupying the hallway adjacent to the CMA Theater..
Born in 1971 in Huhan and currently living and working in Beijing, He An is part of an emerging generation of artists born after China’s Cultural Revolution who are making work in the midst of an enormous industrial expansion. His work largely deals with the physical and psychological atmosphere of China’s growing cities, especially the signs, lights, and language that populate the built environment. In 2000, He started incorporating into his art neon light-box characters—gathered from the ubiquitous signage of fast-growing cities like Shenzhen and Wuhan. His work was featured in numerous institutional exhibitions in China and abroad, among many others, “The Unseen: the Fourth Guangzhou Triennial”, Guangdong Museum of Art, “Pulse Reaction—An Exchange Project on Art Practice”, Guangdong Times Museum, both in Guangzhou, 2012; “What Makes Me Understand What I Know?” (solo), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2008; “Rendez-vous 2008”, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, 2008; Off-Site Project, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2008; “In Contradiction”, Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, 2001; “Documentary Exhibition of Chinese Avant-Garde Art in the 1990s”, Fukuoka Art Museum, Fukuoka, 2000.
Image: © He An, Leo Xu Projects
