Matjaž Tančič is a young Slovenian photographer who splits his time between Beijing and Ljubljana. He began his career as a photojournalist for Mladina magazine, but quickly made his way abroad. Tančič is a graduate of the London College of Fashion.

Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

Among the hundreds of galleries in Beijing, Intelligentsia Gallery is quite unusual in its interactive approach to exhibitions.

Created as a room of sorts, it regularly gathers the works of painters, sculptures and photographers into a shared space that enables visitors to interact with the art.

This March, it is presenting a group exhibition titled Hermeneutics of a Room. Featured artists include Meng Zhigang, Simona Rota, Matjaž Tančič, James Ronner and Camille Ayme.

The exhibition is curated by Garcia Frankowski, an architect who explores the room as container of space, experiences, relationships, feelings and identity. Each artist contributes to the experience through a different medium.

For example, Meng’s “Blank” series of paintings purges the room of furniture and leaves it as an open space for self-reflection and introspective analysis.

Ronner questions the role of generic matter in post-industrial manufacture and art creation by transforming objects of mass production into unique handcrafted glass works.

Rota’s photo series “Big Exit” tries to explain the relationship between a space and the human body. Her self-portraits capture instant dynamic tension between the body and its surrounding space.

Artist Tančič’s series “Timekeeper” recreates the multiplicity of semiotic layers usually absent in conventional photography, and Ayme’s “Chambre” presents a series of spaces and connecting psychology.

Art critic Chen Hao said the most intriguing quality of the space is that it can be taken as a whole. “ The backdrop is not a canvas, a wall or a decent museum, but a small anonymous room somewhere in Beijing,” he said.

“The space is so confined and basic that everything is concentrated and connected – a richness emerges through the limitation and with only few pieces at play,” Ho said.

The experimental nature of the gallery is founded in art, but is something usually missing in modern high culture exhibitions.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Born in 1983, Camille Ayme pursues a body of work evolving around the components of the modern city. Her 2010 collaboration on the TV series Skins in New York led her to rethink the notions of characters, sets and fictions.

Meng Zhigang was born in Guilin in 1975. Deeply rooted in philosophical foundations, Meng creates psychological dissections of the space that surrounds us – from the fictional landscapes of his early works to the ethereal architectural interiors scraped of context and depicted in his recent paintings.

Intelligentsia Gallery

 11 Dongwang Hutong, Dongcheng District
March 1 to 31, 1- 6 pm

Our friends at Beijing Today swing by now and then to introduce art and culture in the city.

Starting from the age of 10, Jiangnan Yiling, editor-in-chief of Size Outdoor magazine, traveled with his father to snowy mountains, harsh deserts, Buddhist shrines, and the Tibetan steppe. Last month, he spoke at UCCA about his travels and the inspiration for his charity projects.

A visit to an elementary school in Yushu, Qinghai province changed his life in 2009.

“I was traveling for fun that day. We were driving in the mountains when we bumped into this portable school,” he said.

The “school” was little more than a traveling tent that moved around the plateau to offer classes to local children.

“The contrast between developing regions like Guangdong and Jiangsu and truly isolated areas was simply shocking,” Jiangnan said.

The encounter inspired his documentary: a project in which he spent five to 10 years on the road recording village life and documenting living conditions and boosting awareness of poverty.

Jiangnan has visited nearly 50 impoverished regions since 2010, photographing the conditions and learning from the locals.

For the UCCA lecture, he talked about the 10 most touching places he visited.

His personal stories painted a very different picture of China’s development than the one portrayed in official media.

When Jiangnan revisited Yushu after the quake, he learned about the local government’s wild corruption and its plan to use the disaster to grab more land. He recorded the terrible conditions of the migrants and the struggles of the rescue team, many of whom fell ill due to altitude sickness.

His personal account is raw and unedited, written based on his first impressions rather than digested and refined.

Many people who attended the lecture said they were interested in volunteering as teachers.

“Speaking for myself, I do not support the idea of being a short-term volunteer teacher,” he said. “The more you see, the more you become aware that one person’s ability to make a difference is so small and so limited.”

That feeling is partly why he began the project: awareness is the first step in building a system that can provide real support, he said.

The massive turnover in volunteer teachers carries its own burden for the community, much of which consists of children who are left behind with aging, ailing grandparents as their only caretakers.

Jiangnan said he plans to visit all 468 of the government’s officially recognized impoverished counties. Along the way he will record and publish the contact information of children in need.

Although his projects have several sponsors, the majority of his work is entirely self-funded.

To learn more about Jiangnan’s project or his documentary, you can visit his websites at ngophoto.org or bbs.8264.com.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Alison Friedman (right)

Our friends at Beijing Today explore contemporary art and culture. Today, a profile of Alison Friedman, founder of a performing arts company that promotes cultural exchange.

Many foreign students come to China each year, but few are like Alison Friedman.

After studying, working and living in Beijing for a decade, Friedman decided to remain in China to establish Ping Pong Productions (PPP), a company devoted to “bringing China and the world together through the performing arts.”

“The great value of art is its ability to show diversity,” Friedman said. When people talk about American culture, they think of McDonald’s, Starbucks, Apple, Hollywood and Disney. “Performances can reveal other aspects of American history and society.”

For instance, a recent docudrama that the company toured, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers, examines American involvement in Vietnam.

The drama, first presented in China in 2011 in cooperation with L.A. Theater Works, tells the story of The Washington Post’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. It was an important moment in US history, and the subsequent trial pitted the public’s right to know against the government’s need for secrecy.

Cultural exchange is a two-way street, and Friedman is engaged in similar projects abroad.

While many foreigners’ understanding of Chinese culture is as shallow as Peking Opera and acrobatics, Friedman aims to show the country’s contemporary works abroad and build an international audience for Chinese creatives. Part of that is giving young Chinese artists the opportunity to perform in leading world theaters.

“Young and talented artists don’t have established financial support mechanisms in China,” said Friedman. Many culture companies prioritize commercial results, and even government-funded theaters will ask performers to cover venue rental and split ticket revenues.

One of PPP’s main projects is TAO Dance Theater, which it has sent abroad to places like Lincoln Center Festival (US), Sydney Opera House (Australia) and Sadler’s Wells (UK).

PPP handles TAO’s management and production.

“Founder Tao Ye’s physical vocabulary and aesthetic is unique, not just in China but anywhere,” Friedman said.

Treating dance as a visual medium devoid of narrative, Tao expands the body’s limitations and surprises the audience.

CVNC Online Arts Journal North Carolina said TAO Dance Theater “confounds and amazes. It is rare to be able to say, ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it,’ and really mean it.”

Friedman met Tao while working at Beijing Modern Dance Company.

“Tao is very creative and we recognized a like-mindedness in each other during our early conversations at BMDC,” Friedman said. Both share the same ideas about dance and art.

PPP helped TAO Dance Theater book performances in nine cities this year. It has another 11 scheduled for 2014.

Another Chinese artist with which PPP is working is Wang Chong, the artistic director of Beijing-based performance group Theatre du Reve Experimental.

Wang’s work challenges dated stage techniques to bring the audience a fresh experience

“Wang has a very clear voice and direction that he’s developing,” Friedman said.

Founded in 2010, PPP has  grown to employ four full-time staff and three part-timers this year. Friedman has to fly to different cities – sometimes different countries – for work at least once a month.

The most difficult part of starting her own company was the beginning: “to build something out of nothing,” she said.

In the last 12 years, Friedman prepared as much as she could: she became fluent in Chinese, applied for the Fulbright scholarship to study contemporary performing arts, built media experience at China Radio International and networked with leading artists, art companies and musicians like Tan Dun.

In 2009, she went to Washington DC for a nine-month fellowship in art management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“I started the company as something project-based,” Friedman said. At the beginning, she did not have an office or hire any full-time employees. That humble beginning has laid a solid foundation for growth.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Dream of Sea by Chen Ren

Our friends at Beijing Today will be swinging by now and then to introduce art and culture around the city. This week, get acquainted with modern creations as the National Art Museum of China reexamines the New Wave movement.

The New Wave movement began in 1985 with an essay and series of pictures by graduate students at the Zhejiang Art Academy (now the China Academy of Art). They ran wildly counter to the Chinese mainstream at the time, emphasizing a deeper perspective on humanity – one that respected individuality and free expression.

The art seemed to draw energy from modern philosophy and literature and reshape it to represent urban life. Critics said the works did not simply mimic Western Modernism: they rediscovered and reconstructed reality, the individual’s role in society, and the absurdity of life.

Thirty years later, the style has become commonplace, and many of the students from that era have gone on to become the darlings of auction houses.

The movement is, in many ways, the foundation of Chinese contemporary art. The story of its birth and growth within the academies explains the very significant role of schools in this movement.

Enter ’85 & an Art Academy.

The National Research Center of Modern Art, National Art Museum of China, and China Academy of Art are collaborating to explore the dramatic events of 1985 at the Zhejiang Art Academy.

Their new exhibit discusses the history and social implications of the New Wave movement in the context of modern art in the 20th century. It’s intended to correct many wrong assumptions about and place the artists in their historical context.

The exhibition, which includes both art and documentaries, is divided into four sections. The first features works related to the article published in Meishu magazine in 1985.

A second sections explores the founding history of Zhejiang Art Academy in 1928 and its first principal, Lin Fengmin. Lin and other academics founded an art community to devote themselves to promoting modern art in society. From 1929 to 1934, the art society hosted exhibitions in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Japan, and founded a couple of art magazines.

The art movement in China has always focused on the relationship between art and reality, and art and revolution. In the 20th century, there were many intense disputes over whether styles should be formed by or reflect society.

Art historians reckon that the 1980s were the second age of enlightenment in China’s modern culture. After the Culture Revolution, China reopened its eyes and ears to its own traditional culture and began accepting information from the West.

The third category showcases an era of breakthroughs, with lectures about modern art from American historians and students’ explorations in modern water and ink painting.

The last section focuses on the New Wave movement and includes works such as Tai Chi, a massive conceptual painting by Gu Wenda, one of China’s first artists to experiment with modern water and ink.

The works represent the vanguard of creativity in Hangzhou in 1985. All artists were from the Zhejiang Art Academy.

This post originally appeared in Beijing Today.

Woman by Zhao Wuji

’85 & AN ART ACADEMY

Where: Floor 5, National Art Museum of China, 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng District
When: Through December 20
Open: 9 am – 5 pm
Tel: (010) 6401 7076

Via Beijing Today, which swings by now and then to introduce art and culture around the city.

The bar Alfa was hopping last Friday as actors / patrons gathered for a casting call / fundraiser for indie director Moxie Peng’s newest project, My 17 Gay Friends.

Eighty percent of the night’s collected cover went to support the production.

Attendees had the choice of being a judge or trying out for a role in the film. Judges were given masks to protect their identities and limited to choosing only two candidates.

More than 300 people showed up and raised 13,000 yuan, bringing Peng a step closer to his goal of 76,000 yuan.

~

My 17 Gay Friends will be Peng’s sixth film, but his first to use Dreamore, a Chinese crowdfunding site that allows anyone to back a project in exchange for rewards set by the creator.

“Every backer’s name will be shown at the end of the film,” said Peng, whose 2012 documentary Micro Search was featured on iQiyi.com and viewed a million times. “We also opened our casting to the crowd. Keeping our backers involved in this project is an important part of making this film.”

As on Kickstarter, the most popular crowdfunding platform in the US, projects that fail to reach their goal within the allocated time will not receive any money.

“The platform can help you get started, but you still have to work hard to achieve your funding goal,” Peng said.

Peng grew up in rural Hunan province and loved telling stories as a child. He spun yarns to entertain his neighbors while they played mahjong.

His latest story is an avant-garde short that digs into Beijing’s gay scene.

“Most gay films are gloomy, dark and depressed,” Peng said. “I want to show the optimistic, light-hearted side of gay life.”

Director Moxie Peng

The planned 20-minute film will offer glimpses into the lives of 17 of Peng’s friends, showing their personalities, living situations, and love lives.

The film takes lighthearted jabs at many of the stereotypes and labels that cut across gay society, such as concepts of femininity and masculinity.

It opens with one gay relationship that is breaking down in its fourth year. After years of compromising, the couple has to come to terms with the fact neither wants to be the “man” in the relationship.

The dispute comes to a head on Halloween night, when they fight over which of them will dress as Snow White and which as Prince Charming. In the end, one dresses up as Snow White and the other as Snow White’s evil stepmother.

With their relationship in shambles, the two talk to sister Zhixin, who knows everyone in the gay community and offers comfort and advice.

The film’s Dreamore campaign began in October and closes later this month. Shooting is scheduled to begin in January at 10 locations across the city.

“It’s hard [for indie films] to play at the cinemas, but I guess more people will get to see it when we put it online,” Peng said.

Those interested in supporting the project have until December 31 to donate on Dreamore.

This post originally appeared on Beijing Today.

Our friends at Beijing Today will be swinging by every now and then to introduce art and culture around the city. This week, please meet independent filmmaker Lei Yong, whose debut The Young Play Games, The Old Play Tai Chi tells the life of China’s “parasite singles,” young people who have enjoyed education and opportunity but remain unemployed and hapless.

It’s hard to say when Sheep, a 31-year-old Beijinger, last held a job.

While he’s quick to defend his sloth as “waiting for the chance to achieve something great,” Sheep’s life primarily consists of sleeping, drinking and watching porn.

He and his father fight often. Sheep complains that his father failed to provide him with a comfortable life, while his father bemoans his son’s lack of income.

Sheep’s best friend is a thief named Bread, who frequently brings his other thieves to Sheep’s apartment in search of something they can swipe and hawk.

None of them has anything that can be considered a job.

Sheep’s daily excitement is stalking strange girls and scaring them. He does seem to care about one of them, but that story ends in tragedy.

“Sheep has many problems, but he’s not really a bad person,” said director Lei Yong. “His parents have plenty of their own issues.”

The family is designed as a common product of the nation’s family planning policy, which has created a generation rife with single children who are spoiled until they break.

Although many young people go through a transitional phase during which they live off their parents, Sheep is an extreme example. His character seems to blend all the worst aspects of Don Quixote and writer Lu Xun’s character Ah Q – maybe with a bit of the shameless thrown in just to make it weird.

He shouts at his father, blaming him for “destroying me” by failing to become a high-ranking government official or businessman.

Even without a job or income, he likes to brag. He often asks his mother for money to treat his friends to dinner.

The film takes a brutal look at the human tendency to lie or complain when one is unable to face his shortcomings. Lei said he believes all viewers will recall a few moments when they’ve acted uncomfortably similar to Sheep.

Lei’s first film

Born in 1974 in Shanxi province, Lei got his start in media as an editor and reporter. He also wrote several short stories, published in Literature of the Yellow River.

Director Jia Zhangke’s film The Pickpocket was Lei’s primary inspiration.

“Before I saw that film in 2008, I thought cinema stories had little to do with me,” Lei said. “The world of commercial film is too unrealistic.”

But he soon realized film could be about things the average person knows or feels.

“My main disadvantage was a lack of basic filmmaking skills,” Lei said. “I had no experience in using a video camera, composing scenes or editing clips.”

His actors and actresses were all normal people rather than professionals.

“The friend I asked to play Sheep had been out of work for several years. I was also working as a freelancer. His story was something that resonated with both of us,” Lei said.

Other actors were selected among migrant workers Lei met on the street. The actor who plays Bread was very interested in the film and willing to work for free. He also rounded up several friends to be part of the production.

“Amateur actors and actresses are what I needed,” Lei said. He could not afford professionals, and the story of the film is much closer to the lives of normal people.

Lei said he wrote the script in a black notebook one week before shooting. He reworked the dialogue based on how the actors interacted on the first day.

“Some of the original lines seemed too stiff and unnatural for the actors,” Lei said.

Lei is currently working on a new film, Guarder, Guarder’s Friend, the Girlfriend of the Guarder’s Friend.

The film continues to tackle the extremes of modern Chinese society with irony, criticism and wit.

This post originally appeared on Beijing Today.

Our friends at Beijing Today will be swinging by every now and then to introduce art and culture around the city. This week’s focus is on 798′s Galleria Continua Beijing, which currently is featuring a solo exhibition by Qiu Zhijie. This post is reprinted with permission.

Born in Zhangzhou, Fujian province in 1969, Qiu graduated from the printmaking department of the China Academy of Art in 1992 to become one of the nation’s most active conceptual artists.

His work spans many media, from printmaking to video, photography, performance, sculpture and painting.

Although he wears many hats – artist, curator, writer, professor and scholar – Qiu has been amazingly prolific. Most of his exhibitions present striking themes and new material.

This constant innovation has made Qiu an intellectual powerhouse in the world of contemporary Chinese art. Most of his works are heavily involved in historical, social and academic issues, outlining Eastern and Western culture of the past and present.

Satire, his latest exhibition, was inspired by The Name of the Rose, a book by Italian philosopher Umberto Eco.

The story explores a chain of murders in a monastery. While first attributed to evil spirits, an investigation proves they are connected to the legendary second volume of Aristotle’s “On Poetics,” the only copy of which is in the monastery’s library.

Aristotle talks about tragedy in the first volume and how laugher can bring pleasure to the world in the second. The idea was unbearable for a medieval world under theocratic rule – especially at a time when the church believed laughter would subvert order and the authority.

The exhibition is Qiu’s version of the lost book, with each “chapter” showcasing one of his pieces related to laughter.

The entrance has 80 masks painted with colorful faces that visitors can wear. The assortment was inspired by traditional masks worn in Chinese festivals in ancient times. Qiu said the masks would allow viewers to become part of the exhibition.

In the main hall is an installation with 30 laughing Buddhas carved on bamboo roots. Together they support large crossties: a contrast between industrial and political oppression and the laughing Buddha of Chinese culture.

The second floor has 50 laughing Elmo toys scattered about the floor beside serious books such as The Bible and Theories of Marxism.

The exhibition also included a performance piece on opening day, as well as an ongoing display of photos and videos.

Galleria Continua Beijing

Where: Dashangzi 798 Art District, 2 Jiuxiangqiao Lu, Chaoyang District
When: Through February 23, 2014
Open: 11 am – 6 pm, closed Mondays
Tel: (010) 5878 9505

This post originally appeared on Beijing Today.