Where: Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU
When: 17 November -21 November 2015 10.00-18.00
Admission Free
VIP and Press View: 17 November 18.30-20.30
Please RSVP to Lang Xiao (lang.xiao@artouchconsulting.com)
Garden of Dreams at Royal College of Art
Chinese artist Liu Weidong’s debut solo exhibition in London
Gardens, a passion shared in both China and Britain for centuries, are deeply rooted in both cultures. In C.18th England, the landscape architect Capability Brown established new trends with smooth-surfaced, undulating grass park-land, intermittently dotted with mature trees and occasional serpentine lakes. In China, classical gardens, consisting of walls, ponds, rocks, trees, flowers-beds and winding paths, date back even further, inherited from thousands of years of tradition.
Similarly, in both countries, these beautiful garden vistas, attracted artists keen to record them. The garden is an endless theme throughout Chinese art; the ancient traditional Chinese Shanshui (landscape) paintings, immortalizing these often-inaccessible utopias for future generations of artists and scholars. This ancient legacy has been reinterpreted by some of China’s leading contemporary artists, such as Zhan Wang’s ‘scholars’ rocks’, displayed in the Great Court of the British Museum in 2008 and Xu Bing, who transformed the John Madjeski Garden at V&A into an idealised landscape through his installation in 2013.
This November (17th-21st), British audience will have an opportunity to see another such reinterpretation, with the exhibition of 20 oil paintings themed on Chinese Gardens by artist Liu Weidong at the Royal College of Art, in the UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange.
Liu Weidong grew up in Jiangnan, south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, where these private gardens were created for their literati and scholar owners, to nurture and encourage poetry, relief, sanctuary, pure delight and harmony between man and nature. Now in China, with an urban population of over 700 million following the breakneck speed of urbanization in the past 30 years, many of those small garden oases and the memories and mysteries associated with them, have disappeared. However, not all. As Liu Weidong said, “Luckily, the UNESCO World Heritage listed Classical Gardens of Suzhou are well preserved, which has provided me a possibility to restore my gardens-related memories today”. The gardens, more than a type of landscape, also embody the humanism and the spirit of ancient Chinese scholars and literati society. Being a scholar in art history and English literature makes Liu even closer to the essence of the Chinese gardens.
Liu Weidong’s Garden of Dreams paintings have a ghostly, surrealist appearance that paradoxically evokes feelings of calm and anxiety. The muted palette, occasionally enlivened by a dash of peach blossom pink, have a mysterious, haunting atmosphere – these walled gardens, void of anything animate, receptacles perhaps of hidden secrets and past misdemeanours, have become prisons to such hushed memories. Fusing Liu Weidong’s deep knowledge of both eastern and western art history – the Garden of Dreams series reflect this duality of source. From traditional Chinese ink painting and it’s classical imagery, to the flattened planes and monochrome colours of ‘synthetic cubism’ and the psychological ambiguity of surrealism, Liu Weidong’s work nevertheless has it’s own, unique pictorial language, that pose universal and metaphysical questions about the meaning of our lives.
About the Artist
Liu Weidong (b.1960) was born in Nantong, a city on the northern bank of the Yangtze River in East China. Liu is the President of Nanjing University of the Arts (NUA), which is the largest and one of the most historical arts universities in China. Liu also becomes well known as art historian, art theorist, and artist. Liu graduated from Nanjing Normal University in English Language and Literature in 1984. He obtained a Master degree at NUA in European art history in 1987, and furthered his study in Montana State University in 1992-1993. He resided at the Fine Art School at University of Kassel in 1997 as Senior Visiting Fellow, and at School of Art & Design at West Virginia University in 1998. His PhD research was comparative study on art education between China and the West. As an art historian and art theorist, Liu serves as the Vice Chairman of the National Art Theory Teaching Advisory Board (Ministry Of Education) and has published about 20 books and essays on iconography, Chinese and western art history. As an artist, though without an institutional training of painting skills, Liu has developed his own artistic narratives on presenting oriental and individual subject matters using the most traditional western painting medium of oil and canvas. Fascinated by the walls, ponds, rocks, trees and flowers, winding paths and zig-zag galleries enclosed in Chinese gardens, which have evolved over three thousand years, the artist pursues the harmony of nature and human rooted from his childhood memory.
‘作为一个从事西方绘画理论的研究者，我相信伟冬对“什么是绘画”有着全面和深刻的认识，但是，相对于自己的创作，他选择了一条最贴近自己血管的路。‘——毕飞宇
作者： 肖朗
园林在几个世纪以来深深根植于中英两国文化中，并一直激发着人们不灭的热情。在18世纪的英格兰，被世人称为“万能布朗”的景观设计师，使得柔软起伏的草地、穿插点缀的茂盛树木和不时出现的蛇形湖泊成为英国的园林景观新风尚。而在中国，园林的历史甚至更加悠久。人们继承了千百年来的传统，让古典园林中泉眼无声，廊腰缦回。有亭台楼阁，有树木花卉，情景交融，意境相生，亦虚亦实，亦动亦静，彰显天人合一的境界。
在中英两国，美轮美奂的园林都吸引了大批艺术家，成为他们创作的灵感源泉。从古代中国文人墨客在山水画中表现出的对“世外桃源”的无尽向往，到中国当代艺术家对“园林”的再创作，都证明“园林”这一主题和意象自始至终都贯穿在中国艺术之中。对于英国观众而言，中国当代艺术家创作的“园林”作品也许并不陌生。2008年，中国艺术家展望在大英博物馆中央大厅里展出作品金属“假山石”，表现在工业文明笼罩下的传统文化；而2013年徐冰的大型装置《桃花源的理想一定要实现》，在维多利亚与艾尔伯特博物馆中John Madjeski Garden的基础上进行改装，表达了我们每一个人对理想生存环境的向往。
2015中英文化交流年之际，英国观众将有机会观赏到艺术家刘伟冬对中国园林的另一种阐释。20幅主题绘画作品将于11月17日-11月21日亮相英国皇家艺术学院展厅。
刘伟冬出生于江南。中国古代的文人雅士为了追求写意山水、自我愉悦、精神慰藉、天人合一，依托江南秀丽的自然景观，在这里修建了许多私人园林。然而，随着中国经济发展，城市化规模不断扩大，这片本是作为人类与城市工业文明之间隔离带的珍贵绿洲在过去的30年里渐渐消减，随之湮没的还有那些与园林相关的记忆与迷思。然而，值得欣慰的是，被UNESCO列入《世界遗产名录》的苏州古典园林被较好地保存了下来，这也给了刘伟冬“恢复记忆的范本”。中国的园林不仅仅是一种景观，更被文人雅士赋予了人文精神和情怀。英语语言文学和艺术史专业出身的刘伟冬更为众人所熟知的身份是艺术理论家 、艺术史学者和美术学教授，从这个意义上讲，他的学者背景使其可以更接近中国园林的思想精髓。
刘伟冬的《园中梦》系列作品具有一副苍幽的超现实主义样貌，唤起观者内心安宁又紧张的矛盾情感。高墙深院像固守着秘密往事的容器，没有一丝生命迹象，成为深锁静谧回忆的监牢。灰冷的主体色调被偶尔跳跃出几抹粉色所点亮，赋予作品萦绕不绝的神秘感。刘伟冬对中西方艺术史皆有着深厚的理解，而《园中梦》恰恰是二者的融合，反映出其艺术根源的二元性。从传统中式水墨画的风雅和古典的意象，到合成立体主义的用色以及超现实主义氛围营造的混沌心理，刘伟冬的作品在东西方艺术风格的游走间发展出了独一无二的画面语言，提出了普世却深奥的问题，引发我们对生活意义的思考。
注：谢斯曼对文末段中文翻译亦有贡献
关于刘伟冬
刘伟冬，1960年生，江苏南通人。现任中国最大、历史最悠久的的艺术类专业院校南京艺术学院院长。 刘伟冬也是一位知名的艺术理论家、艺术史学者、美术学教授、艺术家。他曾于南京师范学院就读英语语言文学专业并于1987年在南京艺术学院美术系获硕士学位。在1992至1993年，他在美国蒙大拿州立大学进修学习。在1997-1998年期间，先后在德国卡塞尔大学艺术学院以及美国西佛吉尼亚大学艺术学院作高级访问学者。刘伟冬是教育部艺教委员会委员，教育部专业艺术硕士教学指导委员会委员，并担任学报《美术与设计》主编。他先后在各类学术刊物以及研讨会上发表论文数十篇，出版著作十余部：《东西艺谭》、《图像的意义》、《群星灿烂——欧洲文艺复兴时期的美术》、《外国美术史》、《俞剑华先生学术研讨会论文集》、《苏天赐文集》、《艺术学新视域》等。2012年主持的《图像与中国美术史研究》课题获国家社会科学基金艺术学重点项目。作为艺术家，刘伟冬虽然并未接受过系统的训练，但其深厚的艺术理论及艺术史功底，使得其在自己的艺术创作中形成了独特的风格。其作品中经常出现的“园林”主题既与艺术家童年记忆相关，又与其作为艺术理论家对“符号与图像”的研究相得益彰。
This exhibition is supported by AMNUA (The Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts), and is presented by ARTouch Consulting.
本展览由南京艺术学院美术馆支持，由英国艺触咨询出品呈现。
