Light and Dust - Qiu Qijing Solo Exhibition
Nov 24 - Dec 19, 2011
Nov 24 - Dec 19, 2011
Press Release
Light and Dust - Qiu Qijing Solo Exhibition
Press release
White Box Museum of Art & JOYART are proud to present “Light and Dust”, Qiu Qijing’s solo exhibition. The White Box Museum will present his latest blue and white porcelain & white jade series of works. The style of these works can be traced to the Chinese classical culture and oriental art and the fact that he uses very precious materials became an exhibition that everyone should take into consideration. At the same time, JOYART will exhibit more than 500 pieces of seal works which took more than 5 years to be completed. With this massive realization, Qiu tries to interpret the depth of our humanity influenced by the traditional Patriarchal society and natural human’s desire.
In 2007, Qiu Qijing’s installation “Migration” brought the Shoushan stone sculpture from the traditional handicraft works into Contemporary art. In this way, thanks to his young imagination, the artist put traditional sculpture into a new fresh dimension.
The Shoushan stone is one of the most important kind of material used in sculpture of the Fu Jian province, but still the craftsmen are living in a very traditional condition. Today, thanks to Qiu Qijing’s “Great Migration” and the “Seal” series, we assist on an evolution of the stone sculptures: his works crush the traditional craftsmen’s concepts by using one more actual.
Qiu Qijing once affirmed: “How many barriers we have broken, and how many steps we have taken to reach today’s civilization. Although desire might be the most terrifying enemy of mankind, but it is also the strongest energy to our civilization, which tempts the most primitive desires, at the same time, it somehow like a huge magnet to attract every moral aspects of mankind and sins. Through his works, we can felt the self-examination about the spiritual subject and force us to face a very sharp question: the condition of our lives”.
While we watch “Light and Dust”, we can eventually discover the turning point of the artist’s style into an Asian aesthetic. Previously, his style was more contemporary. As in the “Migration” series, we can realize how the work’s structure, the creation process and the installation, completely belong to a current style. It already breaks the common sense of our understanding as a piece of “work”, it is more like incidents of creation in a more broaden view, which gives to the artist the chance to express his academic point of view. However, his newest works are completely different from the past; we can see the difficult choice that the artist made between the values of oriental cultures and the western values. Moreover, we can see that he gave up many materials and sculpture styles, just like we evict viruses from our body, and from now on Qiu Qijing’s works can express his sensitivity and remembrance of his culture by focus on the oriental anesthetic’s naturalism.
Qiu Qijing’s works were created during a period with a great collisions between different cultures. He did not intentionally try to follow the main stream of today’s creation, and he is never been a worshipper of the traditional concepts, but he tries to find a distinctive style to re-examine the natural transformation of the world. Therefore, we can see his deep effort on creating incisive works that can defy and challenge the traditional craftsmen styles. This oversteps the difference between men and cultures to find a way to express in a contemporary language our spiritual condition.
We can affirm that Qiu Qijing’s work “Light and Dust” presents the trace of the turning point of the artist’s thought, and, through this process, he achieved the traditional concept of purification in which through the practice, the artist escapes from reality to reach a transcendental condition. Facing the rapid changes of nowadays society, the main topic of contemporary art became the description of people’s life and their personal conditions, but this topic about reality can change its own form preferring a more spiritual aspect more than a visual one.
ACADEMIC CONSULTANTS: Gu Zhenqing, Wang Min'an
CURATOR: Dai Zhuoqun
PRESENTED BY: Sun Yongzeng
ART DIRECTOR: Wang Haitao
EXHIBITION ASSISTANTS: Hao Danmeng, Li Yunxia
ASSISTANT CURATOR: Xie Jinyuan
PUBLIC RELATIONS: Wu Wei, Sara Bortoletto (Italy)
SPONSOR: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, JOYART
OPENING: Thursday, November 24, 2011, 3p.m.
DATES: November 24 - December 19, 2011
MUSEUM OPENING HOURS: 10:00 - 18:00, Tuesday - Sunday
VENUE: WHITE BOX MUSEUM OF ART, 798 Art Dist., NO.2 Jiu Xianqiao Road, Chaoyang Dist., Beijing, China
CONTACT US: +86-10-5978 4801
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: www.798whitebox.com
Curator Article
Qiu Qi Jing: light and dust
Dai Zhuoqun
“Rough the sharp parts, solve the chaos, with the light, with the dust, that’s the law of Xian----Lao Zi “The book of Tao” chapter56
“it’s half past seven in the morning, a wood sculpture master called, who was one of the idol I adored when I was in school. He said:’ hey, are you Qiu Qijing? ‘I said, yes, and he replied ‘I’m Lin Xue shan.’’’ I said, ‘Mr. Lin!’ Then I got excited, extremely excited, it just feels like I’m a dying man who found his cure, and it makes me believe that hope exists. And he went on saying,’ how much are your works?’ He wanted to buy my works! I was even more excited, the fucking cash is really important to me. He said,’ how much for one, like this one and that one.’ I said what about this one? My stones are not that fine anyway.’ But you still have to offer me a price right? ’ well, what about 700, this one is 700, that one 800……they are all below1000Yuan. ‘After that he ordered four of them at once. Hah, I just can’t help laughing, 700 for one piece of work that only takes me two or three days to complete. While my classmates an only get 1000 per month for a part time job outside, what an incredible wealth I earn! I finally got a guarantee for my future; the light of hope suddenly shines my path.
The scene happened in 1999, Qiu Qijing was only about seventeen, and just graduated from Fujian technology school sculpture profession. It’s a turning point for his long suffering childhood. In the past, he lived a very poor life, lacked of material, he drop out from school, took part time jobs to make a living……that’s why we said it’s a very pivotal thing for him to get this money. Sometimes for everyone of us, just in your life‘s journey, when you are desperate, ready to change your mind and give up, even started to doing something different, but a chance suddenly came and lit up your life.
Qiu Qijing started to get known in this industry, and his works’ price went high, then he soon got involved in the treasure jade stone industry, after that he frequently attended to some national exhibition and evens and won “The silver price for the Shanghai industrial arts masters award”, then he held an exhibition in HongKong, all this happened in year 2000. Time elapse quickly, in 2002, Qiu Qijing held the first solo exhibition in Fuzhou, at the same time he achieved the best laurel in treasure jade stone industry—“The Chinese arts and craftsmen master’s gold medal”, the 22 years old young man, isn’t the isolate, sensitive, self-abased and fragile boy anymore. The magnificent achievements expressed his clear message, and helped him established his value step by step, and finally affirmed his extraordinary gift and talent. At that time, he could earn millions dollars per year. Not only his able to buy a house for his parents in Fuzhou, help his family get rid of poverty, but also economically aided his brother to get married. His untiring efforts let the family finally get rid of poverty which they had suffered for long time. His sense of happiness and achievement made him more ambitious. Because if a person were constrained for too many years, just like the weeds tossed on the road, which thirst for sunshine and raindrops, you can imagine what will happen once the chances were given, they would grow up in a wild style.
Once, qijing qiu told me a story that he would never forget. During his most helpless and measurable times, he lent 4000Yuan to attend an expo, he brought several pieces of his works with him, and a broken hand bag, dragged with a worn, dirty black cloth baggage that once belonged to his brother. A man knows carve should also known how to modeled after an antique, then he polished the suitcase with shoe cream, and took it to Hangzhou. There were about ten people in this trip. An older man said, you came with such a dirty old bag? Maybe he’s didn’t meant to said that, but at that time Qiu’s self-esteem was deeply damaged. Even though it’s only a short comment, but you may felt so embarrassed, goose bumps almost came out, the fact that we tried various efforts to cover, unexpectedly point out by the old man. Actually he didn’t mean it; it’s just a joke though. Years later, every time he reminds me of this story, it feels like centuries. Today, Qiu Qijing, has thoroughly remolded himself, he could face the vain of this mortal life, and enabled to handle the real power from his heart, and not just from the surface of the flip material world. The value of life should be your pure spiritual experiences, which has no relevance to the extrinsic things.
In August 2003, Qiu qijing ride again. He arrived in the central academy of fine arts for sculpture, which he’s been earnestly long for. Carrying his lofty dream, he deviate from the treasure and jade stone industry, and firmly stepped into the institutional carvel &sculpture area. The new puzzles were getting much more complex while the study gets deeper. Insomnia, painful, hesitation entangled in his mind day and night. The academic atmosphere of the institution is far too different from his ideal atmospheres; the environments of free art were stubborn and despair. During those days, Qiu qijing rent a house in a secluded countryside named Cui ge village, and lived a pent-up life, and was anxious to read abundant of atlas on modern art. Finally he found a new direction, and his thoughts are getting clearer.
In 2005, when the course ended, Qiu qijing went back to Shoushan again. There are times, when our behaviors are driven by our natural instincts. A sense of predestination pushed him back to his original start. Then he begins to create “the great relocation”, which made him shoot to fame among sculpture field. Deep in Qiu’s heart, not only the spirit of the wild grass widely spread, but also the natural sincerity preciously maintained, he decidedly followed his inner pursue to set him free from the fame and wealth. Maybe he intentionally getting away from Beijing’s blatant art environment, after he came back to Fujian, he moved to shoushan with his assistants, and freed himself to the nature. During this year, they were almost isolated from outside world. They turned the shoushan stone, which had been made as folk arts and crafts, back to its physical attribute, with their simplest original impulsive. It’s not easy to live in a mountain, they worked day and night. Got up at six every morning, clean up near a river stream, and then worked until noon. After lunch, they would go swimming together and got back to work again. They were deeply indulged working until dark. Hiding in the mountain away from people, their heart became brighter and cleaner, and they never stopped cultivating.
The famous humanity magazine <new weekly> released a statistics data on the exclusive version “all farmers” of March 2009, which said: in 1949, 112 out of 1000 Chinese lived in towns. In 1978, every 180 out of 1000 Chinese lived in towns. While in 2008, in every thousand Chinese there are 456 of them lived in towns. Nowadays, 606 million Chinese spread in 655 cities and 20000 towns. What’s more, there are 226 million labor force from the countryside enter the towns and became “civilian workers” each year.
The Chinese society is now speeding on the road of “urbanization”, it advances irresistibly. In the beginning of the 1950s, Mao Zedong initiated the back to Countryside Movement, until the end of 70s, tens of millions of young citizens, bid farewell to their parents, relatives and hometowns, and rush in to the countryside and frontier regions. It became a great peculiar metastasis’ movement in the human history that citizens and cadres were transferred away from cities. “To root in rural areas” is the slogan of that time. “All intellectuals should be honor to work in countryside. “Rural is an extensive space to fully develop your skill.” Mao Zedong’s quotation was well-known around the country. The vast flow of rural movements was overwhelming, and the slogan “go work in rural areas” rooted into the heart of countless Chinese people. People usually say “Every dog has its day”, which has become the most suitable definition for our era, for we have been through the 30 years’ ruralization in the city and another 30 years’ urbanization in countryside. For the first 30 years of rural burst, the great migration will be performed even more vastly.
“The great migration is based in this background, and we must keep running and relocating all the ways, because that is our faith.------- Qiu qijing
From his first portrait, then tenth, hundredth, thousandth of portraits, Qiu earned a hysterical cheer from those works, and he just can’t stop creating them. Finally when he stopped in the end of 2006, there had been two thousand primary stones, which in different shapes and materials. Shoushan stones weight 40 tons, steel weight 8 tons and woods 2 tons, all of them were set off by wedding bands, burial bands, lion dancers, people marched from Shoushan to Fuzhou, conquered Beijing and battle in shanghai, permeating into metropolis like clouds and smokes. The enormous shoushan formation will carry on their migration. As the author said: in the boundless “migration” progress, we relocate all the time……It’s hard for us to define his state of creation, for he’s not only stepped out of the traditional crafts’ origin, but also walk beyond the fetter of academicism.
In 2009, Qiu had just successfully held his solo sculpture exhibition——“twinborn”, after that he initiated the national gallery exhibition plan for his new series” late Jurassic”, but it was considered too sensitive by the authorities, because it refer to sexual contents, then its first exhibition in the Fu Zhou gallery was abrogated. That leads to a hasty end of such an important plan he had spared no efforts, and without any excuse.
Maybe I left a very important plot; in fact, Qiu’s working plot is closely processing between orientalnism and modernism. In a long time, Qiu kept running in the Fuzhou province and Beijing. He built up Fuzhou’s graving office which create works made out of precious jade stone, and the Beijing graving office which create with normal carve material like glass reinforced plastics and cast copper. Not only he’s a schizophrenia patient, but also a drifting lover.
As Bo yang said on “The History of Chinese”:” The 21th century is catastrophe era for China, since 2700 BC., the day when the first dynasty was established, all the things happened during 4600 years later, can not even compare the significant changes during the last 100 years.” In this century, China has lost almost every single battle between the Chinese traditional cultures to the western cultures. Many Chinese even gone mad because they are insist on finding the root of their losses, therefore the Chinese soil turned into a field of trial for the western cultures.……After the 1980s, Chinese people turned to self-criticism, for their tradition cultures had been badly beaten by the western culture, which turn our culture environment into a land of misery. We have to confess that: the 21th is a shameful century for all the Chinese; also we did not even contribute a single thing to the human civilization. By looking forward to the future, the first 100 years of the 21th, I’m afraid it will be more difficult for Chinese people.”
All conditioned, a dreamlike, like dew and lightning, should see them.-- "Diamond Sutra"
Since the 1980s, the western academic thoughts rushed into china in various ways. Chinese modern art dash forward like a hurricane, with the obvious tattoo of western modernism, while Chinese artists has just awaken from the suppression of thoughts and were keen to absorb every new theory they can collect. The whole sales westernize of the Chinese contemporary art has become overwhelmed with the economic expansion overturn both in system and speed. But its open in economic and thoughts didn’t resurrect the local traditional civilization, and that’s just the reason why the Chinese contemporary art often be castigated as the copy of western art, even though they might did a great job.
The excessive western idealism knowledge thoroughly reform and overthrown the value of Chinese art. The thoughts replaced the skills, the creation of originality became artists’ main work. How to do and who to do it has been the tiniest questions, methodology becomes much important than practicing and taking, the refine process of tradition skill makes no sense.
There is a story written by "Chuang Tzu “about a legendary butcher whose blade skills are so flawless and it seems like he is doing a piece of art. But the very humble butcher only described himself as an skillful craftsmen.
Nowadays, artists do not need to pursue for a perfect painting skills, as for Hongyi master’s method, some key factors like personal accomplishment, temperament and skill refinement are all replaced by “initiation” or “conception”. Artists became originality creators one after another. Originality became the thoughts calculation that racks wits, labors became the manufacture process that works die, art’s creation has been seal up by scheme and originality. This state from learning, feeling and absorbing cannot met with nowadays’ artists any more.
The latest works that Qiu presented in 2011, we can see that the artist has made a difficult choice between eastern and western cultural values; he has totally abandoned a great numbers of sculpture materials and concepts, like glass reinforced plastic and various metal that he used before. Also the precise shape and model skill are all eliminated. Qiu’s works contained his sensitivity to form and inspire human culture resources, which were all within the orient aesthetics naturalism.
Our youth has nowhere to go; Qiu’s shoushan sculpture series are about authority introspection, in which he exerted his utmost effort works for 5 years. These works are all-inclusive and there are 500 in total. The masks of hypocrisy like genital organ, power, war, sex and customs civilization develop a profounder merciless explosion to humanistic and society evolution logics, by means of comprehensively introspecting to man-power tradition and the society full of lust. In the book “changes” says” Makes good use of the devine nine, circulate with in the universe, that’s how the universe works.” While “the book of inductive study” says: the god’s principle is’ the matters that grown to extreme might collaped’, that is to say a thing will turn into its opposite if pushed too far. Qiu’s thoughts and mind is also changing while creating these works. It require to him work persistently, with enormous scope, extremely exaggerate it and finally he could outburst without restrain. He has changed from sharp to calm, from strong to mild. As the “Zhou yi” described as the “diagram of the universe”: chaos is limitless but primal. The primal chaos change and appear Yang, change then calm, calm then appear Ying, calm to extreme then change again. Change and calm, depend on each other. Ying and Yang appear, and then two rites stand. "Zhou YI", is to explain how significant it is to balance hard and soft. Hard and soft is refers to natural disposition of the myriad things: “Righteousness of the myriad things, would not be firm if changed, could not contribute if still, could not be just if move permanently. Not flexible not static, not quiet not eased, fixed if keep static, and not soft when loss. ”
In 2010, Qiu initiated the creation of a series of blue flowers and white jade. By traced back to the Chinese classical tradition of civilization, he derived nutrition from oriental art. Many years’ refinement and skills gives him the ability to create within the facility. The traditional culture in mind nourishes his spirit and qualities are calm and intelligent. The calm grows from the restrain past, and intelligent grows from calm. Qiu devoted his admiration and reconstruction to classical aesthetics. Traditional landscapes, blossoms, birds and people who deconstructed to inner-creation factors. In his representational works “the copy of lotus and kingfishers in Badashanren’ calligraphic style”, not only contains Badashanren’s calligraphic style and his aloof and proud feelings, but also the Qiu’s works. From Badashanren’s incomplete landscapes and the isolated birds and fishes, to Qiu’s rotten wood and trees, wane lotus and rivers, they share the same feeling both in the traditional concepts and modern concepts. Another fine work is “view of mixed sad and joy”, which is inspired by master Hongyi’s painting last work. The distant mountain, confused clouds, all getting bluish in the dawn, while lights and shadows obscured. In the middle of the sky, the moon is shining upon the spring branches.
The art for Qiu Qijing, has been a kind of cultivation, together with light and dust.
