Exhibition | Xiong Wenyun: The Flowing Rainbow– The Third
Organizer: A Thousand Plateaus Art Space at The Temple House
Artist: Xiong Wenyun
Media: Painting, Photograph, Installations
Opening: 14:30 – 17:30, May 21st , 2016 (Saturday)
Exhibition Time: 2016.05.21– 2016.06.21
Venue: The Temple House, No. 81 BitieshiStreet, JinjiangDistrict, Chengdu, China
Contact: The Temple House 028-6636 9999, A Thousand Plateaus Art Space 028-8512 6358
Talking: 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. (Sat.), May 21st, 2016
Interlocutors: Artist / Xiong Wenyun & Director of A Thousand Plateaus Art Space / Liu Jie
Xiong Wenyun’s Solo Exhibition: The Flowing Rainbow will be presented by The Temple House – A Thousand Plateaus Art Space. It will exhibit two significant series of artworks of this well-known artist from 1993 to 2012 -- “Japanese Rock-Dyestuff Figure Painting” and “The Flowing Rainbow”.
The series of Japanese rock-dyestuff figure painting from mid 1990s are super important works in this artist’s career experience. This series combines the artist’s early study of traditional Chinese painting, and also absorbs the methods learned from Rock-dyestuff Painting in Japan. These artworks are luxuriant and special in their painting languages and materials. The contents of the artworks is from Xiong Wenyun’s early labor life experience in Tibetan area during The Great Cultural Revolution. This series of works was ever exhibited on the solo exhibition at National Art Museum of China in 1996.
Xiong Wenyun’s “The Flowing Rainbow” is a comprehensive art project created in 1999 and continued to this day, which integrates multiple complicacy including conceptual art, performance art, land art, environment intervention, etc. It has made a lot of social influence and interactions through all kinds of media dissemination. “The Flowing Rainbow” project also derives from the Xiong Wenyun’s impressive memories about her youth experience in Tibetan area. At the beginning of 1999, on 4200 meters’ altitude of Quer Mountain, the first high wave was set off, creating the most powerful works and video documents of the first time. Then she continued this project in Palermo, Italy in 2006 and in Niigata-ken, Japan in 2012. From the memory with rainbow colors of Tibetan youth life, the artist further extracted the abstract minimal blocks of colors. In order to settle them at places such as mountain of Tibet plateau, wilderness, ancient city of Italy, Japanese fane and so on, Xiong Wenyun makes colors into canvas tops, curtains and through methods like daubing colors, etc. Thus, through these artistic behaviors, personal life experience and youth memories have made a complicated meaning of sense, calling us for multiple reflection about nationality, habitation, environment and history, etc.
“Xiong Wenyun: The Flowing Rainbow” solo exhibition is going to be exhibited at the historical building of The Temple House on Bitieshi Street. It will combine The Temple House with the history and culture of Taikoo Li, and also transform the relationship of The Temple House and the international pluralistic pattern of Taikoo Li into dialogues. And this will benefit the public to study cultural subjects including history and culture, modern habitation and natural environment, cultural differences and the blending of multiple nationalities, etc.
Xiong Wenyun,Temple of Diety, Japanese Mineral Color on Linen and Mixed Material, 73×61cm, 1995
Japanese Rock-Dyestuff Painting
In 1987, Xiong went to study in Japan with her own expense. She studied and worked there for 14 years. Afterwards, Xiong admitted that when she just started Japanese painting, it was a hard process to adapt from using normal traditional Chinese pigment to mineral pigment of different degree of thickness. The difficulty seems come from the complexity of skill and material at the beginning, but later Xiong found out that although traditional Chinese painting and Japanese painting are two congeneric arts, they started to separate since modern times. Studying Japanese painting like converted to Buddhism and choose “Ritsu”. The process was hard even painful, because Japanese painting is particularly about workmanship. The process of using mineral pigment and the patience and ability of stimulating the artistical feeling are ordeals for artists. There is no absolute standard about Japanese painting, but they have a full set of rule on the skills. It offers many possibilities but implies serious restrictions. For examples, it requires the paintings keep fresh color and lustre of the mineral pigment to the best emergence of color, and avoid them look monotonous while the pigments are simple and pure; it requires the painting has a flicker of mineral crystals and also gold and silver luster spot, but also to make those dazzling bright spot in the picture not float on surface but in the depths of the gamut; it requires the pictures structured, decoratively neat and clear, but also thick, saturated with mottled implication ...... All in all, it requires to convey something complex, full-bodied and rich from something simple and pure .
From 1993 to 1995, Xiong created more Tibetan theme rock-dyestuff painting, dancing Tibetan girls, white walls and gold tile temples, white totem and red Lama. She combined her memories of the past and her understanding of the freedom of painting through a mode close to a decorative way. She solved the difficulties of binding the subject matters and methods, and showed the Tibetan images clearly on the canvas.
Xiong Wenyun, Flame, Japanese Mineral Color on Linen and Mixed Material，116×91cm，1994
Xiong Wenyun, Orange Eyesight / Purple Eyesight / Green Eyesight，Japanese Mineral Color on Linen and Mixed Material，41×32cm×3，1994
Xiong Wenyun, an artist who was born in Chongqing,Sichuan, grew up in the ‘heavenly realm’ of Abaand studied painting in the Sichuan Fine Ar ts Institute. It appears like those of her past experiences are quite in common with her contemporaries in China. However, two things literally mark her out are that the strict professional art education she received in Japan as well as her strong passion for Tibetan culture in southwest and northwest of China，which by all means establish the unique and distinguishing structure in her work of art.The West and the east, neither of them is de fac to her own cultural env i ronment, though ext remelydifferentiated from each other, have become the two essential keys in her creative process. I myself wouldassume that she would work very hard and always ruminating on these two remotely related places, butshe is also very diligent and determined so much so that she would delve deeper into those cultures thatare absolutely disparate. Xiong Wenyun’s vigorous endeavor and resolution that permeate through theworks form the style of her paintings.
——From the West to the East by Shui Tianzhong,
Art critic
Xiong Wenyun,The Flowing Rainbow, Advancing Motorcade--Xue Jila Mountain，1999 - 2001
Rainbow beyond Easel
In April 1999, as an experiment of “The Flowing Rainbow" campaign, Xiong made 7 pieces of colorful canvas top for trucks. She arrived at Quer Mountain at altitude of 4200 meters, asking for helps from workers there to find the mountain trucks to put up, take pictures and do recordings.. Since the cold combined with altitude sickness, Xiong struggled on the line between life and death and at last survived the first night. The next day she got a few trucks consent, then hung colorful hood and took pictures, after that unexpectedly, the drivers wanted to keep the colorful canvas tops even wanted to buy them. Since then, Xiong began to liberate her art from painting and graphic arts, and she decided to use a way of flows of images and colors to show her thoughts. Tibet is a source of many people's strength, and Xiong’s spirit has been purified there again and again. From seeking the source of creation to “The Flowing Rainbow”, which has a meaning of environmental protection, she accepts the call of nature step by step. During about 3 years, she has sent more than 200 trucks with colorful canvas tops to the plateau, the ultimate goal of Xiong is no more the work itself, but rather to raise people’s awareness of the natural environment. Interestingly, this non-profit work also allow authors to get the most attention. Indeed, people gradually began to participate in the project, painters, businessmen and the audience although they had never met, voluntarily share the financial problem of canvas tops, and contributed more than just 100 tarps. Thus this work of Xiong has also evoked an artistic topic about "public benefit" and "interaction“.
Xiong Wenyun,The Flowing Rainbow, Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale，2012
Xiong Wenyun,The Flowing Rainbow, Palermo Italy，2006
Xiong Wenyun intends to introduce a sort of order to the world. Color is the visualperceptual proper ty that derives from the spectrum of l ight. Each range of l ight corresponds to a range of frequencies (or wavelengths) of light vibrations, which deeply interconnected with the fundamental nature of the universe.I presume that Xiong Wenyun had perceived the order of the universe that was inaccessible to the naked eyes while admiring the boundless and infinite nature o f Tibet, and then she tried to convert what she had experienced to a visual performance in which colors were adapted to adorn the entrances to the houses in Tibet. In order to extend the boundary, a large-scale activity called 'Flowing rainbow' had been carried out by the fleets of trucks advancing along the winding roads while bearing various colors on the tarpaulins.
——Color of the Universe by Toshio Shimizu,
Well-known art critic and independent curator in Japan
A Thousand Plateaus Art Space at The Temple House
Located inside The Temple House is A Thousand Plateaus Art Space at The Temple House. This new art space is the product of a long-term collaboration between The Temple House and A Thousand Plateaus Art Space for the exhibition, communication, and promotion of contemporary art. In regularly occurring seasonal exhibitions, the art space will display outstanding works, introducing groundbreaking contemporary art from fields such as paintings, photography, sculptures and videos. In addition, it will hold monthly lectures and intermedia artistic exchange activities.
The art space is located in a traditional Chinese courtyard that was firstly established over a hundred years ago during the mid-Qing dynasty. Combining a modern minimalist interior with construction methods that are faithful to the unique characteristics of traditional Chinese architecture, the multiplex space is excellently suited to the display of diverse artworks and the organization of related events.
Art and architecture are inextricably linked: both originate in innovation and independent creative thinkings. Seeking out and exploring new experiences, both exhibit the most stunning aspects of modern technological and intellectual development. In order to promote exchange between these two spheres, A Thousand Plateaus Art Space at The Temple House is working together to incorporate a fully functional professional art space into the concept and design of the hotel, thereby expressing Swire Hotel's promotion and advancement of arts and culture. While guests are enjoying their comfortable accommodations, they will also have access to rich experiences of art so that further the artistic function of the holel to new levels.
Address: The Temple House, No. 81 Bitieshi Street, Jinjiang District, Chengdu
千高原艺术空间 A THOUSAND PLATEAUS ART SPACE
开放时间：周二至周日（周一闭馆），10:30-18:30
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