45°
The new exhibition will focus on two of the world’s leading centers of art and offers a visual pairing of five New York-based artists with five Beijing-based artists, according to a press release.
The 10 artists have engaged in global, cross-cultural, artistic dialogues for two years about issues ranging from "political and social upheaval within their respective home nations, to the concept of global culture, to questions about their use of certain materials and techniques," according to the release.
The show is based on the collaboration curated by Pan Qing at Columbia University’s Studio X in Beijing in 2010 between New York-based artist Michelle Fornabai and Beijing-based artist Qin Feng, both featured in the Greenwich show, according to the release.
“Watching Michelle Fornabai and Qin Feng communicate silently through the brush helped to open my mind to the myriad possibilities of visual dialogues between artists from very different artistic backgrounds,” Qing said. “After discussing this idea with the other curators and advisors of this exhibition — Michelle Y. Loh, John Rajchman and Sarah McNaughton — a decision was made to expand on this theme by seeking out more opportunities to pair artists from disparate cultures.”
The curators matched the pairs based "partly on the kind of work that they do and their artistic processes, but more importantly on the type of dialogue in which they suspected the artists might engage within the context of their respective urban environments," according to the release. The pairings are as follows:
- Michelle Fornabai(NYC) and Qin Feng (Beijing)
- Joan Snyder (NYC) and Wei Jia (Beijing)
- Alois Kronschlaeger (NYC) and Lin Yan (Beijing)
- Jorge Tacla (NYC) and Li Taihuan (Beijing)
- Simon Lee (NYC) and Chen Shaoxiong (Beijing)
"Selected artworks illustrate parallels between the pairs’ work and themes that arose during their conversations," representatives said in the release. "Some of the artists are represented by existing or historic artworks, some have created new pieces for this exhibition, and some have collaborated to create site-specific work at the Museum."
The works range from Joan Snyder’s "My Pain Is No More Than Being’s Pain," which dates from 1983 and is in the Bruce Museum’s collection, to individual installations from paired artists Alois Kronschlaeger and Lin Yan.
“We hope our viewers will examine the relationships between the artists,” says Susan Ball, deputy director of the Bruce Museum. "Not only within each cross-cultural pair or among the group of 10 multi-national artists, but also more broadly as part of the larger geopolitical and aesthetic dialogue taking place between the two cultures.”
Tales of Two Cities: New York & Beijing opens May 3 and runs through Aug. 31. The exhibition is supported by Century Way Enterprise Ltd., The Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund and a Committee of Honor, co-chaired by Mamie Lee and Susan Lynch.
The Bruce Museum is located at 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich. For more information, call 203-869-0376 or visit its website.
The Bruce Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays and 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for students ages 5 to 22 with valid ID and for seniors. It is free to museum members and children under 5.
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