"Suzhou Coloors" Hidemi Shimura Solo Exhibition
Guan Wei solo exhibition
Exhibition：2010年11月6日——2011年2月28日
Address：北京朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区2号门A01号楼 水木当代艺术空间
Tel：6433 4216
Exhibition：2010年11月6日——2011年2月28日
Address：北京朝阳区酒仙桥路2号798艺术区2号门A01号楼 水木当代艺术空间
Tel：6433 4216
Cloud in the Sky, Water in the Bottle
Guo Xiaoli 10. 2010
Li Ao, a philosopher of the Tang Dynasty, admired the eminent Zen-Master Yao Shan for a long time, paid him a visit in the mountain for the meaning of TAO。Master Yaoshan pointed a finger upwards then downwards, and asked："Got it?”While the Philosopher was totally confused, the Zen Master continued: "Cloud in the sky and water in the bottle." Cheerily Li Ao agreed with epiphany.
While the cloud is being high and far away, the water shallow and near, the TAO exists among the nature’s breathing. While few people could catch insight of the TAO-Cultivating and Tao-Seeing, probably not many people could regard the art as Tao-Practicing as Guan Wei does. In Guan Wei’s works, the gorgeousness of art and the silence of Tao-Practicing have wonderfully reached a wonderful combination.
Seeing Guan Wei’s works, you might be enchanted right away by the structure and conception. They are huge but delicately painted, reserving the fresco color. They are brilliant and full of life, instantly resuscitating our imagination.
Guan Wei comes from Beijing and of Manchu descent. After living in Australia for twenty years, he is now living as an Australian artist in Beijing and Australia. Apart from Beijing, the distant and calm Tasmania is probably Guan Wei’s second hometown having the decisive impact on his art. The special sense of grey in Beijing, the blue of the Australian Islands and the water as source of life, appears repeatedly in Guan Wei’s works.
Guan Wei is sometimes more like an intellectual or a writer than an artist. As an artist presenting art works, he has created art far beyond works, as an artist reflecting life; he keeps the most vigilance, constantly wandering between the works and the life.
Guan Wei experienced the cultural enlightenment of the eighties. Like his contemporary peers who consciously believed in objective knowledge, he was entangled by the fate into the rapids of history, pondering the personal and collective fates, getting to know the world and finish his initial enlightenment education by reading the western books.
Guan Wei’s earlier works show somewhat existential expression. Still he has trusted his receipt from the very beginning. We would rather say that Guan Wei experienced two major stages for his artistic creation from language essentialism to language objectification than that he underwent four stages, namely the Chinese stage, the Chinese-western stage, the experimental stage and the political stage.
Guan Wei is a strong skeptic, constantly exceeding the despotism of language, the methods, the rules, the logic, and the environment. Finally he transferred his writing from the noumenon to nescience, further to agnosticism.
History, humanities, culture flight, Geo-relation, environment, politics and human destiny, and even witchcraft, converge on Guan Wei’s works, constituting his special private language. It makes us believe, that "fragmentary writing is the only true writing."
Twenty years in Australia, the Western methods and the Chinese visual image have always been his instruments. He has trained himself to be like an ancient Chinese Zen-master, who, in the face of countless difficult problems of the human life, tries to tell us the Zen-secrets wit a variety of simple and humorous stories.
Eliot said that we exist in the wilderness. In the face of the human wilderness and the absurd existent environment, Guan Wei is like a preacher full of patience and discourses tirelessly. He knows well, that "the thought is a way". Thus he, like a mathematician, keeps analyzing, calculating and have finally deduced absurd logics again and again, which would remind us, that since the world is so absurd, what we could still believe, and what we as individual could still do. Nevertheless, after the jokes, he would be again in a deep sense of responsibility and continue the work of rebuilding of "the sporadic social projects”.
Guan Wei is a future-oriented artist, at the same time an actor. Armed with the power which grows from the inside of the life, he combines his personal writing and the social management, enters the social world and to the politics.
Guan Wei is also an active mover. Looking at his art history, you will see that he calmly accepts every endowment, which is his policy of treating of the fate. His works seem to have reached an agreement with the society, and then he loves the fate with lenity.
In the Ice Age of civilization, "the organizations and the systems are constantly undermining the world of individuals ". Guan Wei tells us quite calmly, that we should believe rather the existing of the Wildness than the fortune, a fortune of writing. This is the right path to the individual fortune.
Guo Xiaoli 10. 2010
Li Ao, a philosopher of the Tang Dynasty, admired the eminent Zen-Master Yao Shan for a long time, paid him a visit in the mountain for the meaning of TAO。Master Yaoshan pointed a finger upwards then downwards, and asked："Got it?”While the Philosopher was totally confused, the Zen Master continued: "Cloud in the sky and water in the bottle." Cheerily Li Ao agreed with epiphany.
While the cloud is being high and far away, the water shallow and near, the TAO exists among the nature’s breathing. While few people could catch insight of the TAO-Cultivating and Tao-Seeing, probably not many people could regard the art as Tao-Practicing as Guan Wei does. In Guan Wei’s works, the gorgeousness of art and the silence of Tao-Practicing have wonderfully reached a wonderful combination.
Seeing Guan Wei’s works, you might be enchanted right away by the structure and conception. They are huge but delicately painted, reserving the fresco color. They are brilliant and full of life, instantly resuscitating our imagination.
Guan Wei comes from Beijing and of Manchu descent. After living in Australia for twenty years, he is now living as an Australian artist in Beijing and Australia. Apart from Beijing, the distant and calm Tasmania is probably Guan Wei’s second hometown having the decisive impact on his art. The special sense of grey in Beijing, the blue of the Australian Islands and the water as source of life, appears repeatedly in Guan Wei’s works.
Guan Wei is sometimes more like an intellectual or a writer than an artist. As an artist presenting art works, he has created art far beyond works, as an artist reflecting life; he keeps the most vigilance, constantly wandering between the works and the life.
Guan Wei experienced the cultural enlightenment of the eighties. Like his contemporary peers who consciously believed in objective knowledge, he was entangled by the fate into the rapids of history, pondering the personal and collective fates, getting to know the world and finish his initial enlightenment education by reading the western books.
Guan Wei’s earlier works show somewhat existential expression. Still he has trusted his receipt from the very beginning. We would rather say that Guan Wei experienced two major stages for his artistic creation from language essentialism to language objectification than that he underwent four stages, namely the Chinese stage, the Chinese-western stage, the experimental stage and the political stage.
Guan Wei is a strong skeptic, constantly exceeding the despotism of language, the methods, the rules, the logic, and the environment. Finally he transferred his writing from the noumenon to nescience, further to agnosticism.
History, humanities, culture flight, Geo-relation, environment, politics and human destiny, and even witchcraft, converge on Guan Wei’s works, constituting his special private language. It makes us believe, that "fragmentary writing is the only true writing."
Twenty years in Australia, the Western methods and the Chinese visual image have always been his instruments. He has trained himself to be like an ancient Chinese Zen-master, who, in the face of countless difficult problems of the human life, tries to tell us the Zen-secrets wit a variety of simple and humorous stories.
Eliot said that we exist in the wilderness. In the face of the human wilderness and the absurd existent environment, Guan Wei is like a preacher full of patience and discourses tirelessly. He knows well, that "the thought is a way". Thus he, like a mathematician, keeps analyzing, calculating and have finally deduced absurd logics again and again, which would remind us, that since the world is so absurd, what we could still believe, and what we as individual could still do. Nevertheless, after the jokes, he would be again in a deep sense of responsibility and continue the work of rebuilding of "the sporadic social projects”.
Guan Wei is a future-oriented artist, at the same time an actor. Armed with the power which grows from the inside of the life, he combines his personal writing and the social management, enters the social world and to the politics.
Guan Wei is also an active mover. Looking at his art history, you will see that he calmly accepts every endowment, which is his policy of treating of the fate. His works seem to have reached an agreement with the society, and then he loves the fate with lenity.
In the Ice Age of civilization, "the organizations and the systems are constantly undermining the world of individuals ". Guan Wei tells us quite calmly, that we should believe rather the existing of the Wildness than the fortune, a fortune of writing. This is the right path to the individual fortune.
photos
exhibition view
exhibition view
exhibition
