From the moment I landed in Beijing on April 7th it has been non-stop gallery and museum openings, traveling, lunches and dinners with artists, gallerists, curators, and collectors. I have made many studio visits, attended a panel discussion and performance at Beijing University on the issues of art and censorship led by the students of the law department and the heads of art departments from the top art institutes of China.
On May 7 I boarded a Sichuan Airlines flight headed for Chengdu and Chongqing. The trip was my second outside of Beijing to visit artists, art schools, museums and galleries in regions not usually visited by westerners or, for that matter, the Chinese art world.
I came to Chengdu to meet with the artist Chen Qiulin and to be introduced to many of the artists there. Chengdu and Chongqing are both home to many important and well known contemporary Chinese artists, but they are a long way from the art capitols of Beijing and Shanghai.
FIRST MAJOR U.S. PRESENTATION OF PAINTINGS BY TOMMA ABTS ARRIVES AT HAMMER MUSEUM SUMMER 2008
On view at the Hammer July 27 – November 9, 2008
Los Angeles, CA - On July 27, the first major U.S. solo exhibition of paintings by London-based artist Tomma Abts (born Kiel, Germany, 1967) opens at the Hammer Museum. The exhibition originated at the New Museum in New York and is organized by Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator. The exhibition includes roughly fifteen paintings created over the past ten years, as well as a selection of colored pencil drawings. Abts’ works might be modest in size—18 7/8 by 15 inches (48 x 38 cm)—but actually they are extremely ambitious undertakings.
She makes paintings and drawings that upon first impression might seem rigid and obsessive. However, when seen up close and in person, that rigidity dissipates and an almost meditative quality
China has many sayings comparing the world above to the one below, such as: “above you have heaven, below you have Suzhou and Hangzhou; two magnificently beautiful areas not too far from Shanghai.” Another saying goes like this: “the best meat above is dragon meat, the best below is donkey.”
