Coalescence & Dispersion: Chinese National Academy of Arts and Macao Contemporary Art Exhibition
‘Coalescence & Dispersion: Chinese National Academy of Arts and Macao Contemporary Art Exhibition’, an exhibition co-organised by the Centre for Arts and Design of the University of Macau (UM), the Chinese National Academy of Arts, and Macao Painting Academy, is now on view at the Art Museum of the Centre for Arts and Design at UM. 20 pieces of artwork by 11 artists from three different institutions have been selected for the exhibition, which presents the dialogues and exchanges of ideas on the convergence, divergence, and interpretation of ‘contemporaneity’ by these artists. All are welcome.
The exhibition is an academic exchange programme between mainland China and Macao and is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China. ‘Contemporary art does not simply pertain to art produced at this time, but rather, artists’ self-conscious responses to contemporary aesthetic, current technological development, social issues of the present and synthesis of multi-cultures made their art “contemporary”,’ says Lampo Leong, one of the curators of the exhibition and director of the Centre for Arts and Design. In this exhibition, Prof Leong presents three contemporary ink paintings, where he explores creative possibilities afforded by the classical Chinese ink painting tradition. Ieong Dai Meng, another Macao ink artist and calligrapher and director of the Macao Painting Academy, uses an ‘overall painting’ composition typical of abstract expressionism in his vertical-scroll ink paintings, where bright yellow and red brush marks burst out with explosive energy while dark ink strokes persistently come through from behind.
The exhibition also includes works by some internationally renowned artists. The Commander, a large mixed-media painting by Xu Lei from the Chinese National Academy of Arts, sets an illusionary scene of horses storming across a theatre stage that is sectioned by wood carving drapery, implying the passing of time and that impermanence is imminent. The sheer volume of the artwork is the usual style of Xu’s work on silk — often awash with an ethereal mysterious and surreal quality.
Zhu Legeng, director of the Department of Literature and Arts of the Chinese National Academy of Arts, presents a conceptual version of his famous ceramic sculptures of horse busts to exalt and venerate a popular kitchenware style honglü cai (red and green colors) from the late 12th to early 13th century. Gao Zhengyu, a prolific pottery artist also from the Chinese National Academy of Arts, presents elongated vase sculptures whose multiple facets are sharply chiseled. The richly textured surface is a far cry from the smooth bulbous clay teapots coveted by tea aficionados. Yet they all are made from the same purple sand clay. Prof Leong and PhD student Yang Chao’s Cheers to Macao! is a postmodern take on blue and white ceramics — a smashed Macao beer can and a teapot covered with a mixture of bilingual texts, Macao’s local landmarks, and cursive calligraphy, representing the multicultural city.
Guo Mengyao is a PhD student at UM. Her paintings are set firmly in the European, early Modernist tradition of flat, hard-edged, nonobjective painting that flowered in the 1920s. Feng Yan, a digital conceptual artist from the Chinese National Academy of Arts, presents copper-plated computer codes on paper and colour-printed with a yellow pigment generated by computer codes. He entitled this clean, gradient yellow print ‘Moonlight’, creating an intriguing conversation between the technological, the humanistic, the mechanical, and the poetic.
This exhibition is located at the Art Museum of the Centre for Arts and Design, UM. (E34 Cultural Building: Highscape E34-1020, Lightcubator E34-1018 and E34-1012) The exhibition will last until 30 November 2022. It is open Monday to Friday from 10:00am to 1:00pm and from 3:00pm to 5:30 pm.
