ESLITE GALLERY has traditionally devoted the summer to young artist exhibitions. This year, we are launching a long-term “Young Artists Cross-Strait Exchange Exhibition Program” that entails two consecutive exhibitions for Chinese and Taiwanese young artists. Divided by country into China and Taiwan, each show will be made up of a curator with students from their respective country, as well as two critics who will follow both shows. This program will provide an important platform for young artists to showcase their important works. In the inaugural year, the first show will be “Unspoken Understanding” curated by XU Bing, the Vice President of Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (next will be by GONG Jow-Jiun, Director of the Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory, Tainan National University of the Arts, Tainan, Taiwan). The exhibition will run from July 6 to August 11, and includes seven graduate students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts: KONG Xi, WU Lin, PARK Miri, GENG Xue, ZHANG Wenchao, ZHANG Xiaoxue, and YANG Hongwei.
KONG Xi’s works are all created through physical contact with the artist himself. For instance, one work shows a gold foil in the shaped of KONG’s body. The creative process required long, careful coordination between the eyes and hands so that the gold foil would softly mold into the shape of KONG’s body. The result is a work that is stunning, refined and at the same time fragile.
WU Lin’s Xiaoqian’ World is its own flipbook with its pages turning like waves, even when there is no reader present. The book is divided into four parts: “The World,” “Big Wish,” “Fine,” and “Leap.” These four themes show a process of gradual realization. Common yet incredible, faraway yet close, from ancient times until now, this story encompasses every aspect because “the heart is everywhere.”
PARK Miri graduated with a bachelor degree in Western painting from Seoul Women’s University. She is currently a graduate student of printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and will bring a series of vibrant works on aluminum plate.
GENG Xue’s Growth is an interactive video work, where the visitors can enter into the computer any name or text or passage, and her program will produce corresponding plant symbols. The more you type, the more symbols will accumulated and projected onto the wall, growing into a beautiful and colorful world.
Life experiences and memories are an importance source of creativity for ZHANG Wenchao. He is like a traveler reflecting back on his journey, reviewing experiences and memories. His recently produced works use electronic graphics to draw his personal experiences into separate tablets. When these tablets sync up, one can see his life in the constantly changing city of Beijing.
ZHANG Xiaoxue injects ink into silicon, a material she believes symbolic of today’s world which is increasingly becoming more superficial and placing less focus on the internal substances.
The woodcut prints of YANG Hongwei are both natural and gorgeous. Millennium Monument that was exhibited in his solo exhibition at Today Art Museum in Beijing last year will come to ESLITE GALLERY. The knife carvings of the works reveal traces of spiritual strength and sophisticated technique of the artist, as well as his devotion to the development and exploration of contemporary printmaking.
*image (left)
Xiaoqian World·Across the Big Sea No. 10, 2012-2013
Italian coated paper, ink, 66x95cm
© Wu Lin
Courtesy of Eslite Gallery
