June 2016 Red Gate Residents
Jun 05,2016
Georg Salner, Conceptual Painting/Sculpture/Photography, Austria
Last time I came to Beijing in 2005. I came with a speacial concept overland from Pakistan (having "followed" Xuan Tsang to Xi'an) and left for Chengdu, Kunming and Shanghai. Returning to Beijing after 11 years under completly different conditions will enable me to go deeper in to the subject CAPITAL.
Beijing is obviously one of the foremost political and economical centres in the world and is at the same time culturally outstanding and of great significance. Out of this reason any kind of study of the surfaces of this city is of paradigmatic meaning.
According to my special interests in signs, codes, colours, objects, architecture (especially the very modern one) and small, subjective moments in the city I want to bring together a great number of interesting details with the medium photography, conbined into detailed modular patterns. I will not produce explicit studio work in Beijing, because this I always and only do in my Viennese studio. So my studio will mainly be the City of Beijing.
According to my special interests in signs, codes, colours, objects, architecture (especially the very modern one) and small, subjective moments in the city I want to bring together a great number of interesting details with the medium photography, conbined into detailed modular patterns. I will not produce explicit studio work in Beijing, because this I always and only do in my Viennese studio. So my studio will mainly be the City of Beijing.
Grace Lang, Painting/Sculpture, USA
Grace Lang is 26 years old and living in Brooklyn,New York. Holding a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design, as well as a BA in Literature from Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts, Grace's goal is to give her internal demons form and, in turn, the warriors who will slay them. Continually preoccupied with the concept of personal “demons,” her work reflects the internal struggles that plague us all, creating visual manifestations of those dark little thoughts that are at once frightening and sort of funny. Much of Grace's art stems from the belief that these personal demons are not necessarily enemies but, rather, aspects of ourselves that can be utilized for good. With each difficult experience, our armor grows and we become the warriors of our own worlds.
Yonah Sichrovsky, Writer, Austria
I am currently a student at Bard College, in upper New York. My published work mainly consists of writings on contemporary Asian cinema, including film reviews and director/actor interviews. Nevertheless, the majority of my writing goes into my academic work. I study philosophy, and plan to concentrate on psychoanalytic theory and language. Most of my work in Beijing will be working on both of my projects. In other words, planning out my college thesis, as well as organizing additional reviews and interviews.
Kristie Sim, Painter, Singapore
Kristie Sim ZE MING is an emerging visual artist from Singapore.
Identity, destruction, modernity and other existential juxtapositions brought about from change (ie. life in death and death in life) are recurring themes in her semi-abstract work. The interest in figures and structural forms is no secret. The various subject matters chosen are often borrowed to reflect the personal development of her mental and psychological landscape. Meanwhile, she is questioning the institution's expectations of visual arts and its function in Singapore.
Identity, destruction, modernity and other existential juxtapositions brought about from change (ie. life in death and death in life) are recurring themes in her semi-abstract work. The interest in figures and structural forms is no secret. The various subject matters chosen are often borrowed to reflect the personal development of her mental and psychological landscape. Meanwhile, she is questioning the institution's expectations of visual arts and its function in Singapore.
Luke Casey, Photography/Video, UK
Luke Casey (*1985) is a Hong Kong based artist working primarily with photography, video and installation. Casey also works as a commercial photographer, informing a curiosity with how image-capital is represented under contrasting conditions in his artistic practice. His work frequently draws from the palette of references provided by global capitalism to question roles of gender and translation, primarily in South-East Asia and Africa.
Melissa Furness, Painting and Installation, USA
My work explores the life of the art object, building a visual dialog that extends from the internal to the external by testing the limits of narrative that exists not only within the work, but extending beyond it through process and intervention. Artifacts are created and eroded as weather, time and human interaction raise questions regarding the nature of external forces upon the artifact in the formation of its present history. It is these “translations” and reinterpretations of the artifact that my current work in both painting and installation explores. These fragments are leftovers of a more public history, which we then make personal through our own contemporary experience. With this residency, I will explore my contemporary experience of the city and artifacts of Beijing.
Roman Hagenbrock, Video / Performance, Germany
Roman Hagenbrock was born in 1987 in Dortmund, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin. After studying Audiovisual Media, Hagenbrock worked as cinematographer and editor for several new media projects and shortfilms. His interest has turned towards thinking camerawork as an extended practice. Questions of how images affect our bodies and their movements, questions of their perception and sensation have been crucial to most of his work. In collaboration with the artistic collective copy & waste he has been creating trans-media theatre pieces and performances, always dealing with the change of cities in the 21st century, with the blurring boundaries between fact and fiction. While in Beijing he - in collaboration with chinese artists - wants to create a trans-media performance dealing with the interdependency of body and city. The result will be both: a document of several research-walks through the megalopolis and the creation of a phantasmatic, inexistent Beijing, an imaginary, intermedial landscape only the audience of the performance space will be able to explore.
Yuanwen Lin, Sculpture, China
I have been in America for Five years. These fives years have been the most important period of time for me to format my view of the world. It is here that I have truly opened my eyes and felt deeply. I have used my unique eastern perspective to learn and critique my surroundings, which have effect me deeply. I am afraid, if I do not go back to China, in order to experience my culture first hand, that I will lose an aspect of myself that is so important to me. I have been trying my best to be an example of Chinese Culture. I truly hope that my western acquaintance cannot only see a little of China through me, but can learn to see a bit through my artwork. That is why in my Made In China series, I made huge industrial sculptures to represent the productivity of China; and in my mystery series I have made Roma letters in Chinese characters frames to exam western notions of writing and reading. I have true desire to form a bridge between western artistic practices and eastern culture. I am also very excited to be part of a Chinese artist community, to see how it compares with those I have been a part of in the U.S.A. I truly hope I do not loose myself in western culture, and this residency will help me connect with my roots in a way I deeply long for.
