| Plum Blossoms Gallery New York: | Plum Blossoms Gallery Hong Kong: | |
| Tianyuan Space Station | Tianyuan Space Station ¡V Air | |
| Recent Photography and Paintings by Li Tianyuan | Recent Photography by Li Tianyuan | |
| February 25 ¡V March 26, 2005 | March 9 ¡V 19, 2005 | |
| 555 West 25th Street, Ground Floor New York, NY 10001 | G6 1 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong | |
| Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30am - 6:30pm Sunday and Monday Closed | Hours: Monday ¡V Saturday 10:00am ¡V 6:30pm Sunday and public holiday Closed | |
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Plum
Blossoms Gallery is pleased to present Li Tianyuan's first solo exhibitions
in New York Tianyuan Space Station, consisting
of recent photographs and paintings and in Hong Kong, Tianyuan
Space Station ¡V Air, consisting of his recent photographs.
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Li
Tianyuan, like many contemporary artists in China today, defies conventional
expectations by using a variety of media to express his creative vision.
His Space Station series of photographic triptychs have become widely
recognized after inclusion in 2004's influential curated exhibition Between
Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, currently traveling
through 2006. Utilizing satellite imaging and microscopic magnifications
to view the subject from polar extremes, these triptych portraits redefine
the individual in space, reflecting the changing modes of perception and
self in a technology-driven, rapidly developing new China, while also
drawing upon a lineage of Buddhist Chan (Japanese: zen) philosophy that
understands existence as a cosmology of opposed but mutually interacting
relations, such as the yin and yang. Through their employment of precise
technological coordination, the Space Station triptychs meditate upon
the dynamics of place and happenstance, creating a uniquely 21st century
type of mandala. |
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| Li Tianyuan's latest photographs, expansive landscapes shot with a large-format camera further illustrate the artist's taste for combining deadpan humor with conceptual investigation. Playing between horizon and immediacy, these photos address emptiness (kongqi) through strange, unsettling detail: scarations, tears, obfuscations, evaporations, lead pipes and kissing fish, all residual reminders of extinguishing experience and the transitions between corporeality and transparency. |
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Included
in exhibition for New York are also Li's paintings that are quirky perceptual
studies of positive and negative volumes. Using active brushwork and subdued
hues, Li Tianyuan¡Xoriginally trained as a painter¡Xcreates disorienting
planar landscapes that suggest both futuristic reveries of outer space
and tightly controlled geometric abstraction. Deliberately open-ended,
they are visual ko-ans that call upon the viewer to discern an always
escaping meaning, challenging, likewise, subjective interpretations of
place and projection. |
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Li
Tianyuan graduated from China's Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988 and
has since established his own studio at an artists' village in the countryside
on the outskirts of Beijing. Currently teaching at the prestigious Qinghua
University (Beijing) arts program, Li Tianyuan has exhibited previously
with Beijing's Red Gate Gallery and was included in 2004's curated exhibition
Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, traveling
internationally through 2006. Other recent group exhibitions include Landscape,
at Xray Arts Center, Beijing (2003); Dreams and Portraits, Eastlink Gallery,
Shanghai (2002); Virtual Future, Guangdong Art Museum, Guangdong (2001);
Art and Science, China National Art Gallery (2001); and The Third Gender-Net
Art, Beijing (2000). |
Copyright 2005 Plum Blossoms
(International) Ltd. All Rights Reserved.