Statement
There is a 110-year gap between the induction of the China pavilion and the establishment of the first national pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Hence, this selection of artists is essentially an investigation into the nature of national pavilions and, in the context of a multinational arena, how to represent the inaugural China pavilion in 2005 or any national pavilion in the 21st century.
Architect Yung Ho Chang uses bamboo to build an open net-like pavilion in the Virgin Garden, representing a container in a perpetual state of progress. Wang Qiheng, architectural historian and the most renowned fengshui specialist in China, uses fengshui principles to assess the quality of energy for the existing national pavilions, the Biennale, and the city of Venice. His investigation of fate and destiny of various sites will also assist in determining the future manifestation of the permanent China pavilion. Artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu invite Du Wenda, a Chinese farmer and his team to Venice to test launch a flying saucer that they spent the past several years working in earnest to build. An effort to connect a rural village to the larger universe, the project is a metaphor for the current development in Chinese society and the inauguration of the China pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Likewise, the indoor installation, Shout by Xu Zhen and Star by Liu Wei will emphasize the China pavilion's sense of arrival.
This collection of the artists' works revolves around the central theme of expressing spirituality and conveying essence. This approach not only relates to the underpinnings of Chinese traditional culture but investigates the contemporary artistic interpretation of the non-material world. The questions that lay before us are: what is the ontology of a national pavilion and, in the twenty-first century, what kind of national pavilion should China build.
There is a 110-year gap between the induction of the China pavilion and the establishment of the first national pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Hence, this selection of artists is essentially an investigation into the nature of national pavilions and, in the context of a multinational arena, how to represent the inaugural China pavilion in 2005 or any national pavilion in the 21st century.
Architect Yung Ho Chang uses bamboo to build an open net-like pavilion in the Virgin Garden, representing a container in a perpetual state of progress. Wang Qiheng, architectural historian and the most renowned fengshui specialist in China, uses fengshui principles to assess the quality of energy for the existing national pavilions, the Biennale, and the city of Venice. His investigation of fate and destiny of various sites will also assist in determining the future manifestation of the permanent China pavilion. Artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu invite Du Wenda, a Chinese farmer and his team to Venice to test launch a flying saucer that they spent the past several years working in earnest to build. An effort to connect a rural village to the larger universe, the project is a metaphor for the current development in Chinese society and the inauguration of the China pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Likewise, the indoor installation, Shout by Xu Zhen and Star by Liu Wei will emphasize the China pavilion's sense of arrival.
This collection of the artists' works revolves around the central theme of expressing spirituality and conveying essence. This approach not only relates to the underpinnings of Chinese traditional culture but investigates the contemporary artistic interpretation of the non-material world. The questions that lay before us are: what is the ontology of a national pavilion and, in the twenty-first century, what kind of national pavilion should China build.
Bio
Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China. Trained in stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and now accomplished in a range of media, Cai's work is scholarly and often politically charged. Cai initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppressive, controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, Cai explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale and the development of his signature explosion events. The explosion projects, exemplified in his series Projects for Extraterrestrials, are both wildly poetic and ambitious at their core, and aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them. During his tenure in Japan, Cai quickly achieved international prominence; his work is now widely presented around the world.
Cai Guo-Qiang's practice draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials such as fengshui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines and gunpowder. He was selected as a finalist for the1996 Hugo Boss Prize and won such prestigious awards as the 48th Venice Biennale International Golden Lion Prize and 2001 CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. Among many of the artist's solo exhibitions and projects are the notable Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune, Mass MoCA, North Adams, 2005; Cai Guo-Qiang: Traveler, Freer & Sackler Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 2004; curating and producing BMoCA: Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art, Kinmen, Taiwan, 2004; Light Cycle: Explosion Project for Central Park, New York, 2003, presented by Creative Time; Ye Gong Hao Long: Explosion Project for Tate Modern, Tate Modern, 2003;Transient Rainbow, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002; Cai Guo-Qiang, Shanghai Art Museum, 2002; APEC Cityscape Fireworks Show, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Shanghai, 2001; Cai Guo-Qiang: An Arbitrary History, Musee d'art Contemporain Lyon, France, 2001; Cultural Melting Bath: Projects for the 20th Century, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1997; Flying Dragon in the Heavens, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, Denmark, 1997; The Earth Has Its Black Hole Too, Hiroshima, Japan, 1994, and Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, Jiayuguan City, China, 1993.
Chinese