Eonway’s Dialogue with Krzysztof Kieslowski
Hot on the heels of Art Changsha in mid-September, another large-scale inland cultural event, the fifth Chengdu Biennale, "
Changing Vistas, Creating Duration", kicks off in East Chengdu Music Park and Industrial Civilization Museum, Sichuan Province, from September 29 till October 30. The Biennale includes three sub-exhibitions, "
Pure Views: Contemporary Art Exhibition", "Holistic Realm: International Architecture Exhibition" and "
The Solution: International Design Exhibition."
Unlike previous Chengdu Biennales, this is the first time the local government has offered financial support. "They’ve invested about 30 million yuan this time, in order to accelerate the development of the cultural industry here," said Lü Peng, the art director. "Not only Chengdu, but other mainland cities are gradually concentrating on the so-called ‘soft power’ of urban areas."
Apart from the three main exhibits, there are 16 special invitation exhibits and some traditional art performances, as well as collateral activities which showcase contemporary arts such as paintings, installations, videos, new media designs, visual designs, architecture designs, fashion, and urban planning. By Friday, over 160,000 people had visited the Biennale, a new record.
Babel Library
Panoramic intro
Lü elaborated on the initiative, which aims to present a comprehensive cultural landscape. "Honestly speaking, the different aspects of the exhibition are intertwined with each other, reflecting distinguished parts of human lives and, meanwhile, attempting to create a more compassionate community.
The curator of the design exhibition, Ou Ning, considers the three categories to be somewhat overlapping, since "architecture is a branch of design." Lü also sees these three exhibits as a whole. "Yet they have their respective importance. The architecture exhibit figures out a blueprint for more livable surroundings, while the participating architects or scholars have pitched some fantastic ideas about future city plans," he noted.
Design is closely related to daily life, both visually and acoustically Lü said. Inspired by Joseph Beuys, whose project 7,000 Oaks made a successful impact on municipal governments and social activists, Ou’s ideal is to make design a multifaceted engagement with social movements through social operations, psychological structuring, system innovations, and the like.
Eonway’s Dialogue with Krzysztof Kieslowski
Pure ideas
"The theme of this art exhibition is Pure Views, a reference to the title of an ancient Chinese masterpiece of landscape painting
Pure Views: Far from Streams and Mountains by Xia Gui of the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279). The vast majority of artists selected for the show, apart from Chinese artists, come from Japan and South Korea, given the specific cultural references of the theme," Lü said.
"Contemporary Asian art is invariably another expression of Western artistic language and ideology," said Lü. However, in recent five years, he found that the some artists have changed their styles, such as Yue Mingjun.
"Thus, discovering new artistic phenomena and artists should therefore be the task of curators who understand Asian culture and history."
Lü is optimistic about the Chinese art world in the future. "Contemporary art is moving towards the future, and all Asian art can produce a new art in terms of Asia’s history and cultural tradition," he said.
While Lü strives for a combination of contemporary art and tradition, Ou displays a much more modern exhibit, where 50 designers have used their creative approaches to offer new plans to society.
Two special projects, the Bishan Commune Project and Architecture in Literature, are Ou’s invention as well. An vivacious figure, Ou is a multidisciplinary cultural practitioner interested in socially vulnerable groups. "The Bishan Project is about intellectuals returning to the countryside, which mainly addresses the compelling urbanization reality in Asia and the crisis caused by global agricultural capitalism, and tries to explore ways of rural rejuvenation," he explained. Ou plans to have this project annually.
Four architects, Yung Ho Chang, Ma Yansong, Wang Shu and Zhang Lei were invited to select four literary works from their own reading and to provide their explanations with imaginary space designs as the embodiment of model forms. "It is not designed to be a practical exercise. Rather, it serves as an independent experiment in personal ways of thinking," Ou explained.
"Addressing Chengdu’s inherent conditions, the city government has promoted policies in response to the call to create a modern world garden city," said Zhi Wenjun, the curator of the architecture exhibition.
"Chengdu would appear to be unique in the process of Chinese urbanization," Zhi said. "It’s bustling yet relaxed, modern and elegant, nestled among the mountains of Sichuan and located on the Min River, yet typified by alleys and rustic teahouses."
"We investigate what ultimately constitutes the modern garden, city and architecture for Chengdu, as we decode the modern relationship between man and the environment," Zhi concluded.
The dominant and overall theme of "Changing Vistas: Creative Duration", is intended to express how the garden city represents visible spatial changes. "Ancient Chinese concepts find echoes in modern Western concept; the conceptual fusion provides the theme of the exhibition this time," Lü explained. "as well as an annotation and response to Chengdu’s ambitious project of constructing a garden city."