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

Xiao Kaiyu

Xiao Kaiyu was born in 1960 in Zhongjiang, Sichuan, China. He was formally trained in traditional Chinese medicine, and worked as a doctor in Zhongjiang from 1980-1986. His poetry was first published in literary journals in the mid-1980’s and within a few years he won The Avant-Garde Poetry Award (1988). In 1989, he founded two underground poetry magazines The Nineties and against. Since then he has also founded the journals of talk and chat, Northern and Southern and Commentaries of Chinese Poetry. He has been a member of the Liu Linan Poetry Award jury since 1995. Three collections of poetry, Wild Pleasures at the Zoo, The Sweetness of Learning and Poems from Xiao Kaiyu were published in 1997, 2000 and 2004 respectively, in Beijing. Im Regen geschrieben was published in 2003, Frauenfeld. Xiao Kaiyu’s Works will be published this year, 2007, in Kaifeng. In 1997 he moved to Berlin. In 2005 he went back to Shanghai and now works as a Chinese literature professor in He Nan University, Kaifeng.

Xiao is considered a ‘narrative’ poet, like Sun Wenbo and others whose work caught on in the 1990s, first in the samizdat circuit, later also in regular publications. Xiao has also made his name as a critic. He says the principal question is what one writes rather than how one writes it, thus firmly distancing himself from the metaphorists and the language-squeezers. What one writes: experienceable and experienced reality, socially and morally committed. Thus in content his poetic creed has much in common with classical Chinese poetry - from which it differs in the form of his poems, which is mostly free verse. However, Xiao’s work may have its roots in a recognizable world, but no more than classical Chinese poetry is it a simple reflection of that world. And apart from the ‘narrative’, there is a lyrical Xiao Kaiyu, in a short poem like ‘Ahh, Mist’, and an imaginative one, in ‘Northern Station’, who feels himself ‘a crowd of people’: ‘I sense there’s another pair of feet in mine’. Xiao Kaiyu is a versatile poet. His work has been translated into German, English, Italian and Dutch.

About Panelists

Xiao Kaiyu

Xiao Kaiyu was born in 1960 in Zhongjiang, Sichuan, China. He was formally trained in traditional Chinese medicine, and worked as a doctor in Zhongjiang from 1980-1986. His poetry was first published in literary journals in the mid-1980’s and within a few years he won The Avant-Garde Poetry Award (1988). In 1989, he founded two underground poetry magazines The Nineties and against. Since then he has also founded the journals of talk and chat, Northern and Southern and Commentaries of Chinese Poetry. He has been a member of the Liu Linan Poetry Award jury since 1995. Three collections of poetry, Wild Pleasures at the Zoo, The Sweetness of Learning and Poems from Xiao Kaiyu were published in 1997, 2000 and 2004 respectively, in Beijing. Im Regen geschrieben was published in 2003, Frauenfeld. Xiao Kaiyu’s Works will be published this year, 2007, in Kaifeng. In 1997 he moved to Berlin. In 2005 he went back to Shanghai and now works as a Chinese literature professor in He Nan University, Kaifeng.

Xiao is considered a ‘narrative’ poet, like Sun Wenbo and others whose work caught on in the 1990s, first in the samizdat circuit, later also in regular publications. Xiao has also made his name as a critic. He says the principal question is what one writes rather than how one writes it, thus firmly distancing himself from the metaphorists and the language-squeezers. What one writes: experienceable and experienced reality, socially and morally committed. Thus in content his poetic creed has much in common with classical Chinese poetry - from which it differs in the form of his poems, which is mostly free verse. However, Xiao’s work may have its roots in a recognizable world, but no more than classical Chinese poetry is it a simple reflection of that world. And apart from the ‘narrative’, there is a lyrical Xiao Kaiyu, in a short poem like ‘Ahh, Mist’, and an imaginative one, in ‘Northern Station’, who feels himself ‘a crowd of people’: ‘I sense there’s another pair of feet in mine’. Xiao Kaiyu is a versatile poet. His work has been translated into German, English, Italian and Dutch.

Yang Jiechang

Yang Jiechang was born in Foshan, Guangdong, China in 1956. Yang Jiechang's oeuvre consists of a variety of artistic media: painting, collage, installation, site-specific works, performance and sculpture. Painting, for him, is a way of contemplation, not a means of representation. He was trained in the techniques of paper mounting, calligraphy and traditional Chinese painting at Foshan Folk Art Institute and the Fine Arts Academy Guangzhou (1978 -1982), where he taught until 1988. Living in Paris and Heidelberg (Germany) since 1989, he participated in numerous exhibitions around the globe. He started his artistic career in Europe with the exhibition “Magiciens de la terre” (Centre Pompidou, Paris) in 1989 where he participated as one of the three Chinese artists invited by Jean-Hubert Martin. Other exhibitions include Paris Pour Escale (Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000), Zone of Urgency—Venice Biennial 2003, the Lyon Biennial 2009.

In Yang’s works Chinese tradition and contemporary art form a stirring coalition, and how to implant Chinese traditional painting, aesthetics and thought into a contemporary context is one of his main concerns. Daoist thought, post-structuralist deconstructive strategies and an iconoclast attitude, which Yang has kept from his times as a Red Guard, are important means to attempt this integration. Yang Jiechang is known for his monochrome black large inks, entitled “Hundred Layers of Ink” (1988 to today), for which he applies in a meditative gesture uncountable layers of ink on one surface.

Li Zhengtian

Born in 1942 in Exi within the Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hubei Province . Li is a renowned philosopher, activist and artist. He is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Management Science and the director of the Institute of Post-Modern Research and further was a teacher at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, where as the founder of Studio 105 (105 Huashi) he was a major force in the Cantonese part of the Chinese avant-garde of the 1980s. In September 2011, he was invited as professor of aesthetics and research in philosophy at the International Institute of Science in the US.

Li Zhengtian’s position within contemporary China is rather unique—the rare combination of a scholar who is at once a philosopher, artist and activist who was struggled against during the Cultural Revolution. He earned his place in Chinese history with the wall poster "On Socialist Democracy and the Legal System" which co-published with Chen Yiyang and Wang Xizhe in 1974. After rehabilitation in 1978, he worked in the field of library science in the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Thereafter, he mainly focused professionally on art and philosophy. While he was a teacher and professor, he created large numbers of oil paintings like “The Nine Chapters of Life”, portrait series, landscape series, and abstract series, among others. Philosophical works include Guangyi Benti Lun [General Ontology], Gonghe Lun [Theory of the Republic], Xianding Panduan Piduan [Critique of Predetermined Judgment], Minzu Xinli Bixu Gengxin [The Mentality of the Nation Must Be Renewed], Di Si Chanye Lungang [Outlines of the Fourth Estate].

In September 9, 2008, “The Life and Affection of a Great Spirit—Li Zhengtian Exhibition” was held at the museum of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and attracted much attention. At the same time, Li Zhengtian is also an outstanding designer: in 2005, he was the creator and overall consultant for the proposal of the Chinese pavilion at the World Expo.