People generally think of China’s contemporary abstract art as an import from the West, while the contemporary art in the West is no longer figurative. Through reverse thinking, Curator Mei Huang has built a bridge for the Chinese and Swiss artists to have an in-depth dialogue on the contemporary art, with the Chinese artist Tan Ping elucidating his abstractness and Swiss artist Luciano Castelli exploring his figurativeness. The exhibition has offered a rare visual feast for audience to enjoy the clash of and the resonance in different cultures.
Luciano Castelli
Luciano Castelli is an artist expressing himself in diverse media including painting, photography, video and sculpture. Castelli plays a central role in his artistic stagings; he casts himself as the lead performer in his filmic, painterly or photographic scenes where he appears as different characters in a variety of roles.
He becomes central to the anti-establishment “Junge Wilde“ movement that flourished in the late 70’s and 80’s in Berlin and was characterized by bold, expressive, gestural paintings. He expended his work to music and film.
In the renowned cultural collage of Pigalle, Paris, he began the “Revolving Paintings“, which redefine the medium by intending each painting to be viewed from all four sides. The quadruple perspective of each single painting reveals subject matter not apparent from the first perspective, and perspectives not apparent in the first viewing. These changing, multiple points of view with colorful tensions and stark black and white contrasts, all characterize and mirror multicultural realities in society today.
Tan Ping
Tan Ping received his Bachelor's Degree in Printmaking from the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 1984, and his Master's Degree and Meisterschule Degree in Freestyle Painting from the Universitaet der Kuenste Berlin, Germany in 1994. He was Vice President of CAFA from 2003 to 2014 and is now the Vice President of the Chinese National Academy of Arts. As one of the most influential contemporary artists in China, Tan Ping uses various media including painting, printmaking, multi-media and design in his art practice over the past 40 years. His art integrates the different thinkings of Chinese and Western cultures, bridging philosophy, history and the reality. As the renowned Italian art critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva comments: "Tan Ping has passed through many stages of contemporary art research. His production is profuse and unconstrained; the points he reaches are never beautifully frozen results, rather an unceasing process of overcoming each artwork for the next."
Curator Huang Mei
Born in China, Mei Huang graduated from the Peking University and acquired her master's degree as a disciple of the aesthetics master Li Zehou. She received her doctor's degree from the Goethe University Frankfurt on art education. Having stayed in Germany for more than 20 years, she has curated several large Sino-German art exhibitions. The curator also translates art works and writes novels. In the end of 2013, Huang's autobiographical novel "The Right to Speak in Marriage" was published and attracted public attention over the trans-culturalchallenges facing the female.
