Through September 21, 2008
Chen Qiulin, Bei Fu (Farewell Poem), 2003Still from color video, 9 minutes, Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2007
This exhibition considers the rapidly changing conditions in China through the lens of new acquisitions created by two young Chinese artists, Chen Qiulin (b. 1975) and Yun-Fei Ji (b. 1963). Both artists have responded to the altered landscapes and human displacement caused by flooding, which is a result of China’s Three Gorges Dam project. Chen Qiulin uses video in Bie Fu (Farewell Poem), from 2003, to revisit her childhood memories and China’s past amidst the rubble of Wanzhou, her hometown and one of the cities flooded by the dam project. In Yun-Fei Ji’s monumental scroll-like painting, Below the 143 Meter Mark, from 2006, allusions to classical landscape painting are transformed by grim contemporary details - houses and hillsides crumbling, a ghost town littered with abandoned bundles and bicycles.
(Excerpt from press release)
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