March 11, 2012

The dense language and insider nature of contemporary art can befuddle even the most intelligent of us, but that shouldn’t ruin our enjoyment of it. Canadian art educator Sheila Greenspan offers a chance to learn the basics of art appreciation in an interactive workshop with a special lecture from curator and gallerist Rebecca Catching.

Class Format
The first hour and a half of the class will be a workshop taught by Sheila Greenspan where participants can develop their analytical skills to talk about and understand art without any prior knowledge of a particular art tradition. The class is very dynamic and involves a great deal of group work and participation.
Following this Rebecca Catching will give a short illustrated talk about the relationship between traditional Chinese philosophy, culture and art and how contemporary artists explore these themes in their work drawing on examples such as Shi Jinsong and Ni Youyu.

Instructors

Sheila Greenspan
Sheila has an M.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. She was the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Hamilton for 15 years and then was similarly the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Currently she teaches at Dundas Valley School of Art in Ontario, Canada.

Rebecca Catching
Director OV Gallery, Rebecca has a background in East Asian studies and art history and worked as an arts & entertainment editor for local culture magazine that’s Shanghai for five years, while freelancing for a number of international publications such as Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, Flash Art. Currently she is the Managing editor of Randian an online magazine dedicated to Chinese contemporary art. Rebecca’s latest curatorial projects include “Cold Comfort” an exploration of psychological and symbolic meaning of Winter.

Details: March 11, 2012, 6-8pm class, 8-9.30 dinner: OV Gallery Bldg 4A, No. 50 Moganshan Lu, by Aomen Lu

Level: Budding art enthusiasts who would like to refine their art vocabulary and analytical skills and those interested in understanding more about collecting and Chinese art history.

Price: RMB 300 includes dinner.
Language: English
Registration Deadline: March 5, 2012
Class Size: 15-20 people

To reserve: contact Rebecca Catching 139 1637 3474 or rebeccacatching@ovgallery.com

Payment Method: payment can be made in advance at OV Gallery in cash on the first day each class in cash.

For these works, I have used the technique of photo emulsion on metal plates.
The photos depicted on the plates are night scenes of Shanghai in a devastated state.

The final product is a nostalgic representation of movement and change. The photos give you a feeling of the passage of time – perhaps time is moving forward, but things are nonetheless preserved in our memories.

Arthub Asia, a non-profit foundation devoted to contemporary art creation in China and rest of Asia, and OV Gallery, an art gallery dedicated to creating a dialogue on contemporary issues, team up to host the launch of Who Cares? 16 Essays on Curating in Asia, a book commissioned by Para/Site Art Space, co-edited by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya and Michael Lee, and published by Para/Site, Studio Bibliothèque and seed | projects.

The launch will feature a presentation by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya of Para/Site’s mission and projects, including the context of this book, and then an introduction to this book by Michael Lee, followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.

About Who Cares?

Who Cares? is an anthology that compiles 16 essays on curating art in and of Asia. One of the themes addresses the politics of care, commonly understood as the basic role of curators, with regards to art and artists, across time and contexts. Another theme revolves around markers of success in the realm of contemporary curating. A third recurring theme deals with curating in the globalised art world of advanced travel and communication technologies. A fourth theme reconsiders the audience as active producers in a curated experience. Through a variety of perspectives and literary styles, these texts constitute primary notes towards ‘curatorial criticism,’ a subfield of art criticism that identifies the new in curating today.

About the Editors

Alvaro Rodriguez FOMINAYA is Executive Director/Curator at Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong). He has developed his professional career in Hong Kong, London and Spain. He was Chief Curator at Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno (CAAM) in Spain, where he curated exhibitions like Scrabble: Video, Language and Abstraction; Weather Report: Climate Change and Visual Arts, and Viva la Muerte! Art and Death in Latin America or Catherine Yass. Filmography. At Para/Site Art Space, he has organised projects with Shahzia Sikander, Surasi Kusolwong, Tatsumi Orimoto, Ai Weiwei+Acconci Studio, Tsang Kin-Wah and the Gao Brothers, among others. He is frequent lecturer and writer on contemporary art.

Michael LEE is an artist and curator based in Singapore. His research addresses representations of the built environment, especially the contexts and implications of its lost elements. His observations are mainly transformed into objects, diagrams, situations, curations or essays. His exhibition/festival participations include The 8th Shanghai Biennale 2010 (Shanghai Art Museum), The 3rd Guangzhou Triennial 2008 (Independent Projects section; Guangdong Museum of Art), The 2005 World Exposition (Singapore Pavilion; Nagoya) and International Film & Video Association Film Award & Festival 1997 (Winner, Experimental Category; Texas). His curatorial projects include Between, Beside, Beyond: Daniel Libeskind’s Reflections and Key Works 1989-2014 (Singapore Art Museum, 2007). His accolades include the Young Artist Award (Visual Arts) 2005, conferred by the National Arts Council, Singapore.

About the Publishers

Para/Site Art Space is a contemporary art space located in Hong Kong Island and founded in 1996. We host an ambitious programme of exhibitions, screenings, talks and events that bring into Hong Kong some of the leading practitioners in the international arena, encourage the visibility of artists from Hong Kong, and facilitate East-West dialogue. We have a satellite venue located at Hanart TZ Gallery which showcases a younger generation of artists. Para/Site Art Space has organized the official representation of Hong Kong in Venice Biennial in years 2003 and 2009, has also participated in Gwangju Biennial, Guangzhou Triennial, among others. Para/Site Art Space exhibitions and programmes have traveled to Germany, Thailand, Korea, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Singapore and Australia. Para/Site Art Space is run by a Executive Director/Curator, a Manager, a Programme Coordinator and an Education and Development Officer and governed by a board of directors. Para/Site is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council as well as vital contributions from patrons and Founding Friends of Para/Site.

Studio Bibliothèque facilitates experiments in making, writing, curating and publishing. The studio has an ongoing project series Things Artists Do, which addresses the gap amidst the onslaught of survey, thematic art projects by focusing on the being, consumption and activities of artists.

seed | projects is the resource and project management branch of seed, the thinking and working space of Singapore-based artist Brendan Goh, created to incubate creative processes between art and design. seed is about sowing ideas wherever they might sprout, catalysing their germination into better things, and welcomes collaborations between like-minded individuals and groups working in any discipline.

October 17, 31, November 7 & 14

OV GALLERY PRESS RELEASE

The dense language and insider nature of contemporary art can befuddle even the most intelligent of us, but that shouldn’t ruin our enjoyment of it. Canadian art educator Sheila Greenspan offers a chance to learn the basics of art appreciation in an interactive workshop with gallerists from m97, OV Gallery, Osage and Art+Shanghai Gallery providing a look behind the scenes of contemporary art.

Class Format

The first hour and a half of the class will be a workshop taught by Sheila Greenspan, the remaining half hour will be a short informal talk by the gallerist with a question and answer session. After class we’ll continue the discussion over a tasty meal at a nearby restaurant.

Topics

Sheila Greenspan will work with participants to help them develop their analytical skills so that they have the ability to talk about and understand art without any prior knowledge of a particular art tradition. The class is very dynamic and involves a great deal of group work and participation.

The gallerists will provide background on contemporary art and collecting. Rebecca Catching will give a talk on the history of the Shanghai Biennale. Steven Harris will explore trends and movements in photography and talk about the issues of collecting photography including editions and authenticity. Diana Freundl will explore crossover between art and design with a focus on collaborative exhibition projects that tackle urban sustainability. And David Chan will discuss exhibition making and curatorial practice.

Instructors

Sheila Greenspan
Sheila has an M.A. in Art History and an M.A. in Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. She was the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Hamilton for 15 years and then was similarly the Head of Education, Outreach and Public Programming for the Art Gallery of Ontario. Currently she teaches at Dundas Valley School of Art in Dundas.

Rebecca Catching
Director OV Gallery, Rebecca has a background in East Asian studies and art history and worked as an arts & entertainment editor for local culture magazine that’s Shanghai for five years, while freelancing for a number of international publications such as Art Asia Pacific, Art Review, Flash Art and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Rebecca’s latest curatorial projects include “Make-Over” an exploration the great renovation of Shanghai in advance of the Expo and the issues of history, image and face which accompany it.

Steven Harris
Steven Harris is the founder and director of m97 Gallery in Shanghai. A former photographer with a journalism and Chinese studies background, Steven has lived in China for most of the past ten years. He founded m97 Gallery in 2006 as a dedicated platform for contemporary photography, and it now represents over 30 Chinese and international artists, including world-renowned Michael Wolf, Nadav Kander, Han Lei, Wang Ningde, and Jiang Zhi, as well as young new talent such as Chen Wei and Zeng Han, to name a few.

Diana Freundl
Art director of Art + Shanghai Gallery, Diana has an academic background in comparative religion and philosophy with graduate studies in journalism. She was a reporter covering arts and features for the Taipei Times from 2002 to 2005, after which she moved to Beijing to study at the Tsinghua University Academy of Arts and Design. She relocated to Shanghai and joined the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai curatorial department from 2006 to 2008. She continues to correspond for Japanese bilingual magazine ART iT, among others.

David Chan
Former director of Shanghai Gallery of Art, David Ho Yeung Chan is now the Director of Osage. Mr. Chan, who has been the director at the Osage since February 2010, has extensive experiences in the contemporary art world. An MA graduate from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, his noteworthy curatorial projects include Para/Site: Open Work at the Vancouver Centre for Contemporary Art and An Unexpected Turn of Events – Chen Shaoxiong & Tsuyoshi Ozawa at Osage. Chan is widely published, with critical essays in publications such as Flash Art International, Yishu-Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, and Documents on Architecture.

Details

Dates: October 10, 17, 24, 31, November 7, 14

Cutting-edge contemporary artist Zhang Dali, known for his “Dialogue” graffiti series, is now tackling issues of history – how it is constructed, doctored and consumed. In his “Second History” project he’s collected photographs from various archives in China and displayed them alongside the altered images, which were cropped, dodged, burned and colorized for use in Chinese press and propaganda materials throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s.

The differences are evident with certain people being erased from the photos, leafy backgrounds painted in and slogans written onto flags and walls. Zhang’s findings were compiled into a book “Zhang Dali: A Second History” with over 100 examples – including images such as” Zhou Enlai’s Return to Beijing from Moscow” (1964) and “Lei Feng Loves Whatever He Does.”

These photographs will be displayed at OV Gallery as part of “Re-visioning History” (May 22-July 17, 2010) alongside Zhang’s silkscreen works based on these photographs. For our talk he will give a slide show of the works and explain the process of how they were doctored and how he managed to get his hands on them through a complex process of negotiations.

Zhang Dali
A Harbin-native, Zhang Dali graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Beijing in 1987. Zhang’s work calls attention to the changes taking place in Chinese society primarily due to the destruction of long-standing communities and increasing estrangement brought about by the drive towards modernization. He expresses this concept in his work “Dialogue,” where he spray-painted the outline of a human head across the crumbling hutongs of Beijing and then documented it in photographs.

Zhang Dali’s work also looks at issues of migrant workers, the actors bringing about the physical changes to the environment, with haunting resin casts of the workers’ faces and bodies in two series “100 Chinese” and “Chinese Offspring.” Other works such as “Man and Beast” a series of bronze sculptures featuring humans and panthers in acrobatic poses, explore the complex balancing act of power relationships.

OV GALLERY PRESS RELEASE

During the last five years Paul Gladston has conducted extensive research into four of the most important contemporary Chinese art groups of the 1980s: the Stars (Xingxing), the Northern Art Group (Beifang Yishu Qunti), the Pond Association (Chishe) and Xiamen Dada. In this talk Gladston will present the findings of his research and offer a critical reappraisal of the work and activities of the groups in question revealing not only that they were far more strongly influenced by traditional Chinese cultural values than has hitherto been acknowledged, but also, that their views on the function of art in relation to society diverged markedly from those espoused by modernist and postmodernist artists in the West.

Paul Gladston

Paul Gladston is Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Visual Cultures at the University of Nottingham. For the last five years he has been seconded to the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China where he has been both Head of the Department of International Communications and Director of the Institute of Comparative Cultural Studies. He studied fine art at Edinburgh College of Art and Yale University before receiving an MA and PhD in critical theory from the University of Nottingham. His recent book length publications include Art History After Deconstruction (Magnolia, 2005) and China and Other Spaces (CCCP, 2009). Paul is a regular contributor to Yishu, the journal of contemporary Chinese art, and is currently preparing a monograph on the theory and practice of contemporary Chinese art for Reaktion press.

Details

Dates: May 8, 2010
Times: Class 5-6pm

5pm, September, 8, 2009

OV Gallery

In the early 80s and 90s, Chinese contemporary art was, for most Westerners, a faint glowing spec on the eastern horizon. But through visiting lectures, student exchange programs, commercial gallery exhibitions and museum exhibitions – an image of Chinese Contemporary Art slowly began to take form. Though small in number, high-profile museum exhibitions made a huge impact on the globalized language of Chinese artists and the worldwide acceptance of Chinese Contemporary Art in the late 90s. These exhibitions attempted to study the art, cultural and political conditions of the time and to give a particular reading of the CCA movements. Through comparing a series of five exhibitions between 89-95, we will explore the convergence/divergence of issues to further understand the trajectory of Chinese contemporary art.

Huangfu Binghui

Born in Beijing, Huangfu Binghui witnessed the early days of Chinese contemporary art while studying painting at the Beijing Cultural Palace. Towards the end of the 80s she immigrated to Australia where she studied at Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University, Wollongong University and the University of New South Wales. Later she went on to direct the Asia-Australia Arts Center in Sydney, the Earl Lu Gallery in Singapore and was the deputy director of Shanghai’s Zendai Museum from 2008-2009.

Huangfu’s curatorial practice has revolved around the cultural politics of diaspora, as evidenced in projects such as In and Out (1997), Text and Subtext in 2000, Asian Traffic (2004) and Asian Attitudes – Soft Power (2007). Currently Huangfu is a senior visiting fellow at the University of New South Whales and a researcher for the project “Construction, Connection and Community: Measuring Asian Art’s contribution to Contemporary Culture at the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics,” at the University of New South Whales in Sydney.