Rockbund Art Museum

In recent years, exhibitions, academic activities and market events centering around Chinese traditional art (e.g. ink painting) have flooded the international and domestic art world, turning it into a trend. Most of these exhibitions and activities, however, have mainly focused on the value or effectiveness of the formalities, techniques, ideas and aesthetics of traditional art in contemporary contexts. Indeed, the responding strategies artists adopt when facing traditions—for example, "Advance through Retreat" as the main focus of this exhibition, and the profound significance of such strategies in history and the cultural environment—have not been thoroughly explored.

From this latter perspective, the contexts of the artists' individual practices, their cultural attitudes, cultivation and experiences, as well as the particular forms of art practice (e.g. writing) become the starting points to understand the dialogues with the traditions created by their work, and bring about wider implications beyond the boundaries of their own times and regions.

This seminar brings together some artists participating in this exhibition and sets out to discuss these issues in the three sessions below：

Session 1: Context and Strategy: The interactions between individual practices and historical contexts

Panelists: Zheng Guogu, Andreas Mayer-Brennenstuhl, Jiang Zhi

Time: 15:00 - 17:00  10th May

In recent years, exhibitions, academic activities and market events centering around Chinese traditional art (e.g. ink painting) have flooded the international and domestic art world, turning it into a trend. Most of these exhibitions and activities, however, have mainly focused on the value or effectiveness of the formalities, techniques, ideas and aesthetics of traditional art in contemporary contexts. Indeed, the responding strategies artists adopt when facing traditions—for example, "Advance through Retreat" as the main focus of this exhibition, and the profound significance of such strategies in history and the cultural environment—have not been thoroughly explored.

From this latter perspective, the contexts of the artists' individual practices, their cultural attitudes, cultivation and experiences, as well as the particular forms of art practice (e.g. writing) become the starting points to understand the dialogues with the traditions created by their work, and bring about wider implications beyond the boundaries of their own times and regions.

This seminar brings together some artists participating in this exhibition and sets out to discuss these issues in the three sessions below：

Session 1: Context and Strategy: The interactions between individual practices and historical contexts

Panelists: Zheng Guogu, Andreas Mayer-Brennenstuhl, Jiang Zhi

Time: 15:00 - 17:00  10th May

Session 2: The politics of poetry and the art of writing  

Panelists: Xiao Kaiyu, Yang Jiecang, Li Zhengtian

Time: 15:00 - 17:00  11th May

Session 3: Cultivation and subversion: Ttradition as nutrient, tool and enemy 

Panelists: Wang Qingsong, Yangjiang Group, Qiu Zhijie

Time: 19:00 - 21:00  11th May

About Moderator

Martina Koeppel-Yang, curator of Advance through Retreat

Liu Yingjiu, deputy director of Rockbund Art Museum

About Moderator

Martina Koeppel-Yang, curator of Advance through Retreat

Liu Yingjiu, deputy director of Rockbund Art Museum

About Panelists

Wang Qingsong

Born in Hubei province in 1966 and graduated from the oil painting department in the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Wang Qingsong is a representative figure of conceptual photography in China and can be considered the master of photographic mis-en-scène. In his staged environments he uses traditional cultural symbols, as well as contemporary imagery. By grafting these cultural symbols together with a modernized social reality, the artist questions the current social condition of unstable cultural values. For some of his works he employs large groups of people that he controls like a film director and the process of these large-scale productions is documented in video. Wang Qingsong does not see his works as conceptual art, but hopes to act like a kind of journalist. He states that his works have the attributes of “news photography”: “This ‘news quality’ as I understand it does not remain only on the surface but is the search for the truthful reality of essence.” Important exhibitions include ZHUYI! CHINA: Contemporary Photography from China, Photo Biennale, Over a Billion Served.

Yangjiang Group

The Yangjiang Group (Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin) originated in the Yangjiang Calligraphy Collective, founded in 2002 , which was renamed in Yangjiang Group in 2005.

While most artists are moving into international cities like Beijing and Shanghai to set up their studios, the Yangjiang Group, however, is reluctant to be close to political and cultural centers, choosing instead geographic marginality and thereby obtaining a cultural position with distinctive possibilities. Their works are inspired by the local culture and the vernacular and refuse grand narrative styles. Everything that is part of the life in the local community can be transformed into one of their works, which span a wide range of media, from calligraphy to installations and happenings.

About Panelists

Wang Qingsong

Born in Hubei province in 1966 and graduated from the oil painting department in the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Wang Qingsong is a representative figure of conceptual photography in China and can be considered the master of photographic mis-en-scène. In his staged environments he uses traditional cultural symbols, as well as contemporary imagery. By grafting these cultural symbols together with a modernized social reality, the artist questions the current social condition of unstable cultural values. For some of his works he employs large groups of people that he controls like a film director and the process of these large-scale productions is documented in video. Wang Qingsong does not see his works as conceptual art, but hopes to act like a kind of journalist. He states that his works have the attributes of “news photography”: “This ‘news quality’ as I understand it does not remain only on the surface but is the search for the truthful reality of essence.” Important exhibitions include ZHUYI! CHINA: Contemporary Photography from China, Photo Biennale, Over a Billion Served.

Yangjiang Group

The Yangjiang Group (Zheng Guogu, Chen Zaiyan, Sun Qinglin) originated in the Yangjiang Calligraphy Collective, founded in 2002 , which was renamed in Yangjiang Group in 2005.

While most artists are moving into international cities like Beijing and Shanghai to set up their studios, the Yangjiang Group, however, is reluctant to be close to political and cultural centers, choosing instead geographic marginality and thereby obtaining a cultural position with distinctive possibilities. Their works are inspired by the local culture and the vernacular and refuse grand narrative styles. Everything that is part of the life in the local community can be transformed into one of their works, which span a wide range of media, from calligraphy to installations and happenings.

Qiu Zhijie

Born in 1969 in Zhangzhou, Fujian province, Qiu Zhijie graduated from the printmaking department at the China Academy of Art. He is now assistant professor of Inter-Media Arts as well as assistant director of the Research Center of Visual Culture at the China Academy of Art, and also artistic director of the 25000 Cultural Transmission Center. He currently lives in Beijing and Hangzhou.

In the early 1990s, Qiu Zhijie became known in the field of contemporary Chinese art with his large-scale installation works fusing painting, installation and ad-hoc art. “Copying Wang Xizhi's ‘Orchid Pavilion Preface’ One Thousand Times”, which reflects on the dialogue between performance art and Chinese calligraphy, is another emblematic and influential work. Qiu is furthermore one of the earliest artists to explore the new field of conceptual photography. He uses a large spectrum of media such as painting, photography, installation, video, and performance art for his often eclectic yet always original works. His subjects are as varied as the techniques he uses, and his works encompass Chinese parapsychology as well as the “literati spirit". Qiu is also very influential as a theoretical writer and curator.