China is getting closer to Italy and in Venice it has opened a very interesting and level collective exhibition not to be missed with works by international artists that highlights the wide and courageous cultural project of the Chinese gallery owner: Peishuo Yang.
Collective exhibition entitled: Pei’s World – A brief history of a Chinese gallery in Italy, at the Spazio Thetis, during the 58 Biennale Arte, on display until 2019, November 24th. This exhibition tells the world of gallerist Peishuo Yang of the relationship with artists he represents, curated by Luca Beatrice.
A collective exhibition with works by six international artists with paintings and installations site-specific, in relation to current and social issues. A travel towards wonder with: Afran, Jorge Cavelier, Huiming Hu, Tannaz Lahiji, Cong Ma, Giorgio Piccaia.
The choice of artists coming from all over the world derives from the desire to get in touch with different cultures. “There is no single truth – says Peishuo – it depends a lot on the point of view and on the interpretations. Those who come from a different culture see the same things different from you, I find it so beautiful. After all, it’s like climbing the tower of Babel, art is a universal language that unites differences. ”
For once, then – says curator Luca Beatrice – an exhibition is not only centered on artists, but also on those who have literally invented a project from scratch.
Afran (Francis Nathan Abiamba) was born in Bidjap (Cameroon) in 1987, lives and works in Italy since 2009. Trained in Africa, he studied at the Academy of Bergamo; works with different languages from painting to sculpture to public art. He has numerous international exhibitions in Africa, Europe and America. He has received various international art awards including the first San Fedele in Milan and the Liliana Nocera della Permanente award in Milan. In recent decades the geography of art has changed profoundly. While the concept of “local” has lost the charm that characterized it in the 1980s, now Western cities have become the gathering point for experiences from many parts of the world. New York, London, Berlin, Paris, Milan are therefore polyformal identities that are being realized through the sum of multiple languages. What fails in society, let alone in politics, finds fertile ground in art and culture, where exchanges, interactions and integrations are on the agenda.
Jorge Cavelier was born in Colombia in 1953, lives in Florida. Attentive to the images of nature, he is a painter, slow and sophisticated, introduces the dimension of the passage of time into his delicate watercolors. That in terms of painting we discuss in residual terms today is certainly not new. The contemporary painter prefers to call himself an all-round artist, painting is no longer a dogma and is necessarily called to dialogue with space, expanding beyond the limits of the two-dimensional. This condition also enters the poetics of Jorge Cavelier, who also know a cultured and refined painter. His new job, El Dorado. The legend is presented as an installation painted on eight sheets of silk, supported in an almost invisible way, freely floating and light. Accessible, traversable painting, to which a mirroring sculptural element is added. That is, Cavelier wants to rebuild an environment that refers to the “forest of fog in Colombia where the highest biodiversity in the world gathers”.
Huiming Hu was born in China in 1990 and like most artists of his generation works on specific projects, as in the case of Wall, the installation for this exhibition. In the MIA Photo Fair 2018 was selected among the top 15 photographers in the BNL A Curator’s Guide. The Wall is also the main theme of Hu Huiming’s installation, but the inspiration feeds once again on the relationship with the culture of origin. Inside each cement tile that forms this barrier, a pressed book is hidden, which can no longer be accessed or read.
Tannaz Lahiji was born in Tehran in 1978 from a family of artists, very active in every field of creativity, he recently completed his new project “Reflections on Dante” in Florence at the Palazzo Vecchio, at the Museo della Casa di Dante and at Palazzo Bastogi. Eclecticism, plurality of languages, constructions of great visual impact that likewise contain the system of conceptual art and the strong emotional approach. Between Tehran and Florence, Iran and Italy, Tannaz works as a global artist, he invents an always surprising world that makes the West dialogue with the East, sometimes clashing with it, the ancient native tradition with the aspiration to contemporary. His large environmental installations are open pages, the answers are lacking but there are always new questions. After all, art is revealing a mystery and the mystery leaves room for numerous interpretations.
Cong Ma born in Nanjing, born in 1970, instead devotes himself to design, 3D graphics, virtual sets for an extremely current proposal, between irony and social criticism. Red Dot Award Winner: Best of the Best in Germany. Very well known in China and in Europe in the field of design, a language through which he criticizes in an ironic, at times harsh, ways and fashions of the global contemporary society, Ma Cong often asks himself the question of the context, a determining element in attributing value and the meaning of a work. We are well aware, in fact, that in contemporary art the “context theory” is currently predominant even more than the so-called questionable quality concept. What is inside the museum, at the gallery, is defined as art regardless, and if the same object is hosted in an international context, the judgment will still be different. Thus a cultural background, a natural or stylistic environment, any other factor that determines an event, aims to define the “great context of art”.
Giorgio Piccaia was born in Geneva in 1955 but based in the province of Novara. Formerly the assistant of Corrado Levi, eclectic, versatile, in recent years he has concentrated on pictorial research. In 2019 he was invited by the Italian Embassy in Egypt for a Murales inside the venue. To frame the artist Giorgio Piccaia it is essential to retrace some of the many stages of the training process that led him to become a really interesting character on the Italian scene. There are different ways to reach painting, Piccaia has certainly chosen the less traditional and more eclectic one, built on solid cultural foundations and deep questions. In spite of its hypercontemporary vein, in the language of Piccaia often return words that refer to the classical tradition: logos, primary act of knowledge, wisdom, beauty, strength, terms that are hidden, hidden under the weave of his painting as sources of inspiration not declared yet still present.
Peishuo Yang, gallery owner of MA-EC: she live in Italy, over twenty years. Started young from Tian Jin, a metropolis in the North East of China with about 15 million inhabitants, attracted from Italy, by the quality of life, the history of art and the landscape in our country. Graduated in Literature and Philosophy and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. In 2008, she founded the company Present Contemporary Art, whose mission is to establish relations between Italy and China and in 2011 she opened a gallery first in Florence and then in 2013 in Milan, now in Palazzo Durini the: MA-EC: non- only a traditional gallery but a center of international meetings and exchanges between the West and the East, organizing events and promoting synergies.
INFO:
PEI’S WORLD group exhibition – A brief history of a Chinese gallery in Italy until 11.24.2019
Location: Spazio Thetis, Models building – Castello 2737 / f, Venice
Arsenale di Venezia – Sestiere di Castello
Stop Vaporetto Arsenale Basins 4.1 and 4.2, 5.1 and 5.2
From Tuesday to Sunday 11.00 – 18.00
Opening 10.05 h.17.00
Public info: info.milanart@gmail.com
www.ma-ec.it
She is an independent curator, art advisor and international marketing management consultant. For more than 20 years, he has been a cultural designer of events related to contemporary art with particular attention to unusual spaces and interactions with other arts.