Collapsing Borders: An exploration in art of the fluidity of boundaries
Xiong Yu: Master Bedroom, 24 July – 16 September, with live painting 25 – 29 July
Chen Qiang: AV Gallery, 24 July – 2 September
Opening: Monday 30 July from 6pm
Traces of the presence of borders are everywhere in our lives, as individuals, as societies and as nations. In the actualization of our individual and collective selves, our individual and collective identities, borders are anxiously constructed to maintain illusory points of difference.
Beyond the collapsing borders evident in the world of nations, via the networked economy, we can also detect in global culture and art making an egalitarian inspired critique and collapse of the system of official coordinates that establish artificial borders of division between what for some in society is visible and for others invisible, for some audible and for others inaudible, for some sayable and for others unsayable. In the between-ness, the liminal space at these boundaries of the sensible in society, there is fluidity, in both the virtual and the real, a fluidity that becomes "a trajectory; one which may collapse, or may perhaps instigate another development entirely.11]
While retaining their cultural identity but working across national, ideological and theoretical borders both artists exhibiting in Collapsing Borders, digital media and performance artist Chen Qiang and painter Xiong Yu from Chengdu in China, have an interest in working beyond their respective frames in the creation of navigable virtual spaces; Chen Qiang with his videos, animations and film collages and Xiong Yu with his paintings and painting installations.
Xiong Yu, Associate Professor, Head of Painting at the Art College, Sichuan University, is an artist whose painting background in Classicism is influenced by cartoon and e-culture. Constructing his own artistic language of surreal and virtual worlds he has had solo exhibitions in Chengdu and Beijing (from 2002 to 2018), Shanghai (2018), Hong Kong (2011) and has been represented in many group exhibitions in China and internationally in Chicago, Havana and Tokyo (2009), Berlin and Singapore (2011), Seoul (2012), Venice (2013), Sao Paulo (2014) and Dusseldorf (2016). Xiong Yu will be creating a painting installation for the Collapsing Borders exhibition at the Pah Homestead July 25 - July 29. This work can be viewed until 16 September.
Chen Qiang is an experimental artist working in film, digital animation, performance art and mash-up. His work includes the film trilogy: Cut Off, Stream Cut and Heart Sacrifice (2005) performance art and music film works including Heart Voice (2010), September (2011) and Twinkle (2012). His work has been included in film festivals in Beijing (at 798), Dusseldorf, Berlin and Paris (2015) and Hong Kong (2013). Chen Qiang will present animation, collage and cartoon digital media works at the Collapsing Borders exhibition at the Pah Homestead, July 23 - September 9, including his mash-up work Little Red Girl (2018) and the animation Works on Dream (2018). As a performance artist Chen Qiang will be performing with musicians from the now defunct Wukong the Monkey King and others at the Audio Foundation at 7pm, Thursday 26 July. Both Chen Qiang and Xiong Yu will speak at the Auckland Art Gallery Auditorium at 1pm, Thursday 26 July.
Curated by Warren Pringle and Yanxin Zhong in association with AUT University
[1] Qingwei, L. (2016) Silence Like Heaven: Xiong Yu's Paintings, Sichuan University Publication, Chengdu, CN
