Tang Contemporary Art Beijing is proud to announce the opening of “Compounds of Aura,” a exhibition for artists He An, Xu Zhen-Produced by MadeIn Company and Zheng Guogu, and curated by Lu Mingjun on December 3, 2017.
Religious feeling and aimless movement do not resolve He An’s daily anxiety and impetuosity; they often collide, creating sparks of inspiration and almost-forgotten textures. Xu Zhen (MadeIn Company) unexpectedly transformed the four-thousand-year-old monument of Stonehenge into a stage for Chinese traditional martial arts performance. Giorgio Agamben called this an aura space—a mystery that cannot be expressed. However, the“compound” nature of this exhibition also tells us that this is not a personal mysticism, and not purely metaphysical.
Curator: Lu Mingjun
Lu Mingjun has a PhD in History from Sichuan University (2011). He is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Art College, Sichuan University. Lu’s research interests include history of modern and contemporary art. His thesis was found in Literature & Art Studies, Art Studies, 21st Century, Artforum,Leap, etc..His recent books include Writing and Narrating of Vision: The Vision of History and Theory (2013); Visual Cognition and Art History: Michel Foucault, Hubert Damisch, Jonathan Crary (2014); and On Meta-Painting: An Art Institution and Cognition of Universality (2015).Since 2015,he held the post of artistic director of Surplus Space. The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2015 Grantee. He received the 2016 Yishu Awards for Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art.He was ACC fellowship award reciplents from China.
He An
Born in Wuhan, Hubei Province in 1971. Currently works and lives in Beijing.
HE An is one of the most representatives artists of his generation, his practice covers installation, sculpture, photograph and other media. With the Chinese economic expansion as a background, HE An’s works reflect the phenomena of Chinese urbanization and its psychological or emotional repercussions. Combining light boxes, billboards, neon lights and other materials, HE An turns urban symbols into a language. In his search for the city’s emotional truth, the artist creates various set-ups with architectural elements, inviting viewers to experiment a space affected by violent, romantic, intimate, almost obsessional thoughts.
Zheng Guogu
b.1970, Yang Jiang, Guangdong Province, China
Zheng Guogu belongs to the trend-setters of contemporary Chinese art. Born in 1970 he grew up in Yangjiang, a small town in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province, where he still lives and works today. He graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 1992.
Zheng's work utilizes a wide range of media, and he moves between performance, photography, painting, sculpture, embroidery and environment. He made his renown in the 1990s through his experimental series of tiny photographs and of performances inspired by the daily life of Yangjiang youth. The remote provincial town of Yangjiang is like a cradle for marginal, non-mainstream artistic creation with Zheng Guogu as the centre for a circle of artists, photographers, architects, designers, musicians, novelists and poets. Resources and possibilities seem endless and many ingenious and ambitious artistic projects are born out of this climate—like for example Zheng's "Liao Yuan", the "Accomplished Garden", originally named after the online game the "Age of Empires", a kind of artificially created literati garden with several buildings serving as studios and exhibition halls. Everything can be art and art is everything. Zheng Guogu took part in numerous international exhibitions, like for example the documenta X, and the Venice Biennial.
Xu Zhen-Produced by MadeIn Company
Xu Zhen, born in Shanghai in 1977 and Graduated from Shanghai Arts & Crafts Institute in 1996. He was the Art director of BizArt Art Center in 2001-2010. He Initiated together with other artists Art-Ba-Ba Contemporary Art Forum in 2006, and establishes MadeIn Company in 2009. Xu Zhen was a reciplents of 2016 artnet Awards ”Artist of the Year Award 2016”, 2008 AAC Award ”Best Young Artist of the Year”, and 2004 CCAA (Contemporary Chinese Art Award) ”Best Artist” .
MadeIn Company is a contemporary art creation corporate, focused on the production of creativity, and devoted to the research of contemporary culture’s infinite possibilities. In 2013, MadeIn Company launches the art brand “Xu Zhen”.
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