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24/11/2006

Two exhibitions

Galleria Continua, Beijing

Lucy and Jorge Orta
OrtaWater03

Lucy and Jorge Orta's latest exhibition is opening at the Galleria Continua in Beijing on 25 November (5pm).

This show by the two Anglo-Argentine artists offers a view of “operational aesthetics", a line of enquiry they have been pursuing for fifteen years together and which has taken them all over the world: to the Antarctic and Tierra del Fuego, the opulence of Venice and the favelas of Lima; to the research centres of the University of the Arts London, Eindhoven and Fabrica Treviso; the exhibition galleries of the Barbican in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and Tokyo, or the Fondation Cartier; not to mention the public space in the local neighbourhood markets, the banlieus of Paris and the slums of Mexico City.

The central part of the show is the third phase of the OrtaWater research first initiated by the Ortas during the last Venice Biennial, inaugurated at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, which toured to the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (Holland) and is now, for the first time in Beijing, China at the Galleria Continua.

This project will lead them, like modern-day Marco Polos, to symbolically connect Italy and China in this very special year of friendship and negotiations between the two nations.

Water is essential to our existence. The absence of freshwater for drinking or water for, agriculture or industry is an element that links Europe with all continents. Hyper industrialized nations and nations that are just commencing mass industrialization, rich and poor rural areas, places where war is a source of conflict and others in which there is competition for economic progress. No matter our differences, this resource is the common thread that unites us, and for which we so desperately need to find common solutions for the safeguard of our planet and the generations ahead.

The artworks presented at the Galleria Continua in Beijing feature, with a mixture of playfulness and dramaturgy, practicality and utopia: machines for pumping, desalinating and purifying dirty water and that have already transformed the canal waters of Venice and Rotterdam into drinking water. Canoes and Piaggio Api three-wheeler vehicles modified into water treatment plants and motorized transporters, bicycles and hand-pushed trolleys that can arrive anywhere under any circumstance. Water to be collected with buckets, flasks, jerry cans, and water bottles. These objects may not be fully operational yet, but perhaps in the not too distant future we will have to figure out ways of using them: how to collect, transport and store this precious liquid, avoiding those common wasteful practices that manifest themselves whenever we turn on the tap, in London, Rotterdam, Venice or Beijing. The artists create a hypothetical territory where the poetry within each of the artworks offers a trigger to and an alternative way of exploring this crucial issue.

Progress or regress? How can we balance the future technological developments of advanced nations with that of the plight for the survival of developing countries with no environmental conservation laws, for example? Local problems that become universal ones, in the hope that even those nations that have not yet completed the process of industrialization may find new solutions applicable to other nations that think they have nothing to worry about.

The show at the Galleria Continua, although it is centred on the OrtaWater project, also includes a second part, which is representative of another strand of Lucy and Jorge Orta's work. Amongst the most significant of these is a collection of Body Architecture sculptures referencing the intricacies of our human relationships, networks and communication systems and that deal with issues of solidarity, the social bond that unites us as individuals to the community at large.

These artworks demonstrate a contemporary vision of the world receptive to the links between global and local. They offer an open discussion platform to the uncertain nature of our common destiny as Europeans, Africans, Asians or Americans, an issue which requires a long-term commitment to find satisfactory new solutions with imagination, courage and awareness: solutions for every single human being but also for every community, big and small alike.

Lucy and Jorge Orta's work is impassioned, lucid and full of beauty, civil empathy and concrete imagination, an ongoing adventure marked by great curiosity, which is presented here for the first time for a Chinese public.


Liu Jian Hua
solo exhibition

Liu Jian Hua's latest exhibition is opening at the Galleria Continua in Beijing on November 25th 2006. (5pm)

This exhibition features Liu Jian Hua, who commenced the evolving process of nurturing his aesthetic development and me'tier as a sculptor early on in his career. Subsequently he succeeds in refining several of his signature motifs that are embedded in his entire body of works. The purity of line created by the use of white porcelain ceramics and his alertness to his mercurial environment render artworks that are artistically and socially relevant.

Liu Jian Hua's artworks present an unflinching illumination of the all too intimate relationship between materialism and humanity. These questions and issues that are raised in his artworks are for instance evident in works like “Do You have an answer?" This artwork is a mixed-media piece wherein Liu Jian Hua uses both stainless steel sculpture and technology to create a singularly unique work. A projection of text comprised of rhetorical questions is tantamount to the stainless steel books themselves. This work has the goal of stimulating the viewer's own insights on the current state of contemporary Chinese Society. These are questions that penetrate the fabric of day-to-day modern Chinese life. They also suspend our former assumptions on contemporary Chinese society for the more important issues it raises, such as how Modernity and rapid urbanization are defined within the specific context of Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, or any other major Chinese Cosmopolis?

The artwork “Floating Object" is likewise a piece that evokes a myriad of interpretations pertaining specifically to the forum of Chinese political life. A floating glass sculpture of an island is set against the projected backdrop of Eastern Asia; the island being a clear representation of Taiwan. When viewers venture in for a closer look at the glass Taiwan, mini ceramic sculptures of pandas are seen inhabiting its terrain. This artwork in fact has significant correlations to actual events. Pandas, one of the most prominent symbols for China were given to Taiwan as a political gesture to promote more friendly ties. Like his other works, the interpretative dialogue remains open for viewers to arbitrate a meaning on their own.

“Reflection-Mirror Illusion", made from white porcelain celadon, is a 12 metre long sculpture depicting the hyper-cosmopolitan skylines of Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen. This piece is hung on a white wall, with site-specific spotlights to render a silhouette effect. The sculpted buildings, upon closer examination, are in fact crooked, to symbolize the fact that they are a mere reflection of the west. Like a true reflection, the silhouette is temporary and transient, giving the overall piece an ominous veneer. This piece exudes again highly relevant issues such as massive rapid urbanization and its effects on traditional Chinese architecture and modernization.

“Beijing Olympic Commemoration" is a painting by Liu Jian Hua that satirizes a photograph taken during the Olympic games in Greece, with the intention of dedicating a pastiche to the German painter Gerhard Richter.

Time and again, Liu Jian Hua's artworks delve into subjects that are at the heart of current Chinese culture. The visual and cognitive experience of viewing a Liu Jian Hua work is immediate, and often evocative of the animated and multi-valent relationships between people and their surroundings. Through his sensitivity and powers of observation that are evident in his works, Liu Jian Hua comments lucidly on the changing world.

Liu Jian Hua is exhibiting for the first time with Galleria Continua in Beijing. His presence confirms the continuation of Galleria Continua's mandate of preserving and nurturing the dialogue between the east and the west.

Galleria Continua, Beijing
Dashanzi 798 # 8503, 2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dst. Pechino 100015 Cina

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