Month: Friday April 14th, 2017

Artist Talk | Highway to Hell on Valentine's Day: Performance, Media and Mummification

Artist: ZHANG Lehua

Date: 23.04.2017

Time: 15:00 -16:30

Venue: Chronus Art Center

Address: Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

*Free admission. To reserve a seat, please click here.

This event is organized in conjunction with the nomination exhibition of Three Rooms currently on view at Chronus Art Center. It will consist of a 60 minute artist talk by the nominee ZHANG Lehua, followed by a 30 minute Q&A session. The talk intends to unravel some of the key elements behind ZHANG's work Highway to Hell on Valentine's Day, including its motives, techniques, and the employment of a mixed array of media that altogether constitute a seemingly casual, playful and even perfunctory aspect of art making that is intended by the artist. In his practice, ZHANG attempts to intervene existing performances by a way of substituting his own re-creations of scenarios, which had already been written and performed in the history of cinema and culture. For the artist, the medium of painting provides a physical and ontological basis for the execution of ideas where the images, while stripped of sensations and feelings, are hardened, truncated, transformed and thus preserved as mummies to invite the touch and visitation by human eyes and souls.

How does love appear as a pretext in artistic works? Romance on Lushan Mountain, a Chinese film made in 1980 and fashioned as an early international prototype, was once popularly embraced and viewed as “adult movie” by young men and women in its time when the screen was laden with rigorous political implication. It is based upon the “first screen kiss” scenario in this movie that ZHANG Lehua created his work Highway to Hell on Valentine's Day, wherein the artist initiated a live painting performance as a ritualistic process to re-activate and transform memories, dreams and tales that had been uploaded and inscribed onto the screen as well as other daily objects and artifacts that are obsolete today. After his bodily intervention, the resulting images, which in the artist’s own terms are like “mummies” or “zombies”, are eventually displayed as a series of hybrid forms of painting, video and projection in the gallery.

Highway to hell on valentine's day, ZHANG Lehua, 2017

Painting&video

270cmx640cm

About the Artist

ZHANG Lehua, born in 1985, Shanghai, China, currently lives and works in Shanghai, China and Spain. He graduated from the New Media Art Department of the China Academy of Art in 2008. ZHANG's work combines painting, video, and performance. He is adept at sensitively and deftly seizing on certain rudimentary glimpses of the overlooked in everyday life. This may give his work the impression of being casual and perfunctory, to the point where this even gives off a false impression of being flippant and frivolous. In fact these impressions are all ‘intended’ by the artist, and constitute part of the logic underlying his work.

Artist Talk | Alchemy Revisted

Workshop | How to Control the Movement of a Photon through Shadows?

Artist: DENG Yuejun

Date: 15.04.2017

Time: 14:00 -17:30

Venue: Chronus Art Center

Address: Building 18, No 50 Moganshan Road, Shanghai

How do we perceive time as a form of matter? How is it possible that sound can become flesh and make its dwelling in a worm? How to control the movement of a photon through shadows?

This event is organized in conjunction with the Nomination Exhibition Three Rooms currently on view at Chronus Art Center. It will consist of a 30 minute artist talk, followed by a 150 minute workshop led by the artist DENG Yuejun：

< Artist Talk | Alchemy Revisited  >

14:00-14:45

In this sharing session, DENG Yuejun will discuss some of the recurring ideas in his artistic practice, as well as his working method, which resembles that of an ancient alchemist, and his continuous experimentation with biological forms in resonance with the perception of time and space through mechanical installations.

< Workshop | How to Control the Movement of a Photon through Shadows？ > 

15:00-17:30

This workshop introduces some basic principles in mechanics and the knowledge-creation of sensing modules and circuits. Participants will learn to make small mechanical installations featuring the movement of photons through interactions with the shadows of their body parts involving their emotional perceptions. By engaging in different processes of interplay with matter and material (such as light and, shadow, ect.) to derive a cognizant, sense of active creation, the participants will experience the dynamic flow and exchange of energy between themselves and other non-human agents within their surroundings.

Timing & Structure:

15:00-15:45  Introduction to basic knowledge of mechanics and circuits. Participants will be divided into three groups.

16:00-16:45  Installation making. How to control the movement of photons?

17:00-17:30  Group presentations & discussions.

Requirements for participants:

1.  Maximum number of participants: 10

2.  With relevant hands-on experience and skills.

Material prepared by the participants themselves:

1.  2 AA batteries

2.  1 button cell

Additional materials will be provided by the artist.

 

* Free admission for each of the two events :

- To reserve a seat for the ARTIST TALK, please click here.

- To paticipate in the WORKSHOP, please send your name and contact information via email to: mengru.xie@chronusartcenter.org.

Note that the WORKSHOP is limited to 10 paticipants, meanwhile other audiences are always welcome to stay and audit.

 

About the Artist

DENG Yuejun was born 1986 in Guangdong, China. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from New Media Department and his Master’s degree from the School of Intermedia Art, both from the China Academy of Art in Hanghzhou. His work covers a wide range of media including installation, Chinese ink painting animation and sound installation. DENG now lives and works in Hangzhou, China.

More info at: yuedream.net

CAC's current exhibition "A Nomination Exhibition of Three Rooms:International Touring Exhibition of Young Media Artists" presents his work Iridaceous No.1. Iridaceous No.1 is a new work that forms part of the Easel Electrical Circuits Series, which focus on energy transmission. The mechanical part begins to work slowly upon receiving light. Two circuits, each framed as a painting, are placed in juxtaposition: One collects light to provide power for the other’s mechanical movement.

Iridaceous No.1, 2016,
Part 1: solar cell, conductive patch, wooden frame,
153cm×153cm×10cm
Part 2: brass, aluminum, acrylic, motor,
160cm×46cm×15cm