FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“CHINA seen by...”

a focused LOAN exhibition of CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY

Main GALLERY
Fine Arts Center Galleries, University of Rhode Island
October 2—December 9, 2007

Remarks by the Curator, Main Gallery, Friday afternoon September 28, 2-3 pm
(limited seating available); timed for URI Family Weekend

Public Reception Sunday afternoon, October 7, 2-4 pm

Sze Tsung Leong
Chaotianmen, Yuzhong District, Chongqing, 2002
From the series, “History Images” | C-Print
© Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery
Andrew E. Lewin Collection

“These days, it is a rather burdensome question to talk of ‘international cultural influence.’ I, particularly, and I am surely not alone, feel myself in the midst of vast trends of influence. It has no smell, is not tangible, but it has direction. To analyze it using economic, social, or political terms is more complicated than it seems. Today, to touch upon the issue of influence almost requires the same process as posing fundamental questions like: Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? But the real questions are: What are we influenced by? What are our choices?”
—Chaos Y. Chen, Chief Curator, Millennium Art Museum, Beijing, from an International Conference paper delivered in Honolulu, July 2004 (Published by apexart, 2006)

Kingston, RI—China seen by... is a bold, international, focused group exhibition opening October 2 in the premier Main Gallery of Fine Arts Center, University of Rhode Island. It coincides with a prestigious invited lecture series at the University, known as the Honors Colloquium, this fall examining several important facets of contemporary China, China Rising. China Rising explores China's dramatic transformation over the past three decades, a transformation that has returned it to the leading role it had played throughout most of world history. Guest speakers in the weekly forum present a dozen public lectures treating timely socio-economic topics, from education through environment. Visit http://www.uri.edu/hc for details.

Mounted as a programmatic complement to the Colloquium, the ambitious Fall, 2007 loan exhibition called China seen by... examines China through the medium of contemporary fine art photography. Specifically, it contrasts impressive works made by internationally recognized Chinese artists or “insiders” with those made by highly regarded western photographers, “outsiders.” Through the juxtaposition of typically large-scale color images, this exhibition intends to spawn meaningful and expanded cultural conversations on the nature of contemporary China and the influences of globalization.

The exhibition will keep in mind Ms. Chaos Chen’s comments (above) as it considers afresh the process of cultural negotiation by focusing on Chinese and Western encounters, real and imagined, physical and virtual, through the mediating imagery of photography. China seen by... offers mutable accounts of contemporary China, multiple interpretations that, taken together, help to construct our contemporary understanding. It aims to provide a lively relational ambience for visitors to gauge new freedoms of self-expression against the persistence of traditional iconographies.

Given its focus on native and Western interpretations of China, the exhibition intends to stimulate informed debate by our audiences—the immediate, extensive academic community of some 12,000 and the general public drawn from throughout New England, and beyond, including many teaching and practicing artists and photographers in the region. The public University setting, by definition a highly diverse educational site, encourages wide-ranging interaction with a topic such as this. (The University has more than 100 Chinese graduate students and 45 Chinese faculty members, research associates, and staff members. There are approximately 10,000 Chinese Americans living in Rhode Island.)

Inspired by the 1965 Paris Seen by..., the Barbet Schroeder film comprised of several sketches of Paris by leading New-Wave directors the China seen by... exhibition offers distinctive, sometimes idiosyncratic visual commentaries on the complex sensibilities of contemporary China. Through the vantage points of leading individual photographers the exhibition aims to look frankly at a country that has achieved meteoric primacy on the global stage.

The 30 exhibited works were selected by Judith Tolnick Champa, director/curator of the Galleries. They are temporary loans drawn primarily from commercial galleries in New York, and from private collections. Photographers selected intentionally represent various generations, backgrounds and training. Of the 14 photographers represented, Hai Bo, Weng Fen, Hong Hao, Hong Lei, Chi Peng, Wang Qingsong, Huang Yan and Liu Zheng live and work throughout China (Beijing, Haikou, Jilin). Their photographs will be seen with those by Westerners Tina Barney, New York and Rhode Island; Edward Burtynsky, Tononta; Lois Conner, New York; Michael Kenna, British/American, based in Oregon; Sze Tsung Leong, American and British, born Mexico, currently resides in New York; and Taiwan-born New York resident Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao. Striking visual conversations will take place in the gallery. In one instance, a large-scale lightbox panorama by Liao will speak to the hybrid lived and observed condition of bi-cultural experience. It will also converse keenly with Beijing resident Chi Peng’s digital montage of Times Square, New York superimposed with massive Chinese advertising.

Tolnick Champa is excited to be curating the Fall, 2007 exhibition in tandem with the China Rising Honors Colloquium organized by Profs. Tim George and Yan Ma of the University of Rhode Island. She has long been recognized for promoting “diversity” programming through various thoughtfully conceived exhibitions, and has more than 20 years experience in academic galleries, first at Brown University and since 1991 at the public research University of Rhode Island. In tandem with Honors Colloquia topics specifically, she has curated a half dozen enormously successful exhibitions. Each stressed the enduring conversation between the fine arts and the humanities. Among them are The War in Vietnam—Afterimages for Legacies of the Vietnam War (1999), and Translations/Transgressions for Genetic Technology & Public Policy in the New Millennium (2002).