Cui Guotai
dal 30/9/2008 al 30/9/2008
Segnalato da
30/9/2008
Cui Guotai
ChinaSquare, New York
The artist's large-scale expressionist-style paintings express a remarkable irony, questioning and deconstructing China's planned economy. Cui Guotai depicts evidence of a lost era, a disappearance of an industrial age in China, built on disillusionment.
Curated by Robert C. Morgan
ChinaSquare Gallery New York is
pleased to present Cui Guotai's first U.S. Solo show, Evidence of a Lost Era,
curated by Robert C.
Morgan.
Evidence of a Lost Era will be on view October 1 - November 1, 2008,
with an opening reception Thursday October 2nd, and will be
accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Robert C.
Morgan.
Cui Guotai's large-scale expressionist-style paintings express a
remarkable irony, questioning and deconstructing China's planned
economy. Cui Guotai
depicts evidence of a lost era, a disappearance of an industrial age in
China, built on disillusionment.
Cui Guotai reveals the signs of a partial history, a history of frantic
production where goods and commodities were produced less with an
intention
of economic stability than as a strategy to maintain a salutary
appearance to the world outside. Many of the recent paintings are done
in black and
white and therefore suggest a newsprint veneer, a concealment of
reality reminiscent of Picasso's politically-charged painting of
Guernica from
the thirties. The bridges, tunnels, and smokestacks appear dreary and
empty, without function, without hope of revival. They confront us with
the emptiness of another time, another period of history, invariably
tied to idealist hopes and aspirations, yet removed from China's
present-day
image of slick entrepreneurship.
Cui Guotai was born in Shenyang Province in Northeast China in 1964. A
graduate of the Northeast Normal University, Ginghua University and the
Central Academy of Fine Arts, Cui currently lives and works in Beijing.
His work has been shown extensively throughout China, was in the 2nd
Beijing
Biennial and a solo show at Beijing's National Art Museum of China. His
work is currently on view in Half-Life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese
Art
from the Logan Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Robert C. Morgan is an international critic, artist, curator, and
lecturer in New York City, who is focused on the problems of the artist
in an era
of accelerating globalization. He is the recipient of the first Arcale
award in Art Criticism and a Fulbright senior scholar. In addition to
his
many books and literally hundreds of essays (with translations in 17
languages), Professor Morgan has curated over 60 exhibitions, and is
Consulting
Editor to The Brooklyn Rail, Contributing Editor to Sculpture, and a
New York Correspondent to Art Press (Paris).
Opening reception on October 2, 2008, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
ChinaSquare
545 West 25th Street - New York
Free admission