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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20230616T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20230616T210000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20230606T125034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230608T081820Z
UID:90766-1686938400-1686949200@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:Artist Talk Arnold Dreyblatt with Dr. Stefan Römer
DESCRIPTION:KANG Contemporary is pleased to announce the Artist Talk with Arnold Dreyblatt alongside the current exhibition INVENTORIES\nFriday\, 16th of June at 18:00\n  \nAbout:  \nWays we remember history\, collect memories and hold on to information is a reflection of the present more than a representation of the past. If the past and present seep into each\, how does one reinvent the inventory as a record of past lives? The artworks in the exhibition INVENTORIES confront the reproduction of a past that has been observed through singular perspectives and told with condensed words. Through the archive as a memory we seek evidence of the stories that have passed and people who are beginning to be forgotten. The multi-disciplinary artist Arnold Dreyblatt interrogates these ways of remembering and the archive as a space. In his installations of information and text he poses the question of how information and stories are told\, saved and erased and why certain information persist over others. One gazes upon the letters and digits that fill this exhibition and realizes that information floats through and transforms our world and our consciousness. As the mind attempts to focus\, isolate or connect the textual fragments in the exhibition they stand as a union that lifts these components taken from documents\, records\, and inventories into a metaphorical sphere. \n\nArnold Dreyblatt (b. New York City\, 1953) is an American media artist and composer. He has been based in Berlin\, Germany since 1984. Since 2007\, Dreyblatt is a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin and is the Vice-Director of the Visual Arts Section. He was a Professor of Media Art at the Muthesius Academy of Art and Design in Kiel\, Germany from 2009 to 2022. His artistic practice of the last 30 years has ranged from large staged multi-day performances\, involved installations\, and lenticular wall works such as “Ephemeris Epigraphica” as well as interactive artistic research projects like “Performing the Black Mountain Archive” (2015) at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art. At the same time\, he has continued to develop his unique work in composition and music performance. Dreyblatt’s visual artworks create complex textual and spatial visualizations for memory and history. These projects\, which reflect on such themes as recollection and the archive\, include permanent installations\, digital room projections\, dynamic textual objects\, and multi-layered lenticular text panels and public artworks.
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/artist-talk-arnold-dreyblatt-with-dr-stefan-romer/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Artist Opportunities,Visual Arts (Events),Workshop & Talks (Events)
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20230421T180000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20230616T180000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20230419T075141Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230419T075141Z
UID:89687-1682100000-1686938400@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:Arnold Dreyblatt | INVENTORIES | Kang Contemporary
DESCRIPTION:Arnold Dreyblatt – Inventories\nKang Contemporary\n21.04.23 – 16.07.23\n  \nKANG Contemporary is pleased to present the exhibition INVENTORIES with US-American multidisciplinary artist Arnold Dreyblatt\, which showcases recent and rarely exhibited works. New lenticular artworks reference crisis of Europe in texts by historical and recent visionaries and critics. The artist Arnold Dreyblatt interrogates ways of remembering and the archive as a space. In his installations of information and text he poses the question of how information and stories are told\, saved and erased and why certain information persists over others. As the mind attempts to focus\, isolate or connect the textual fragments in the exhibition they stand as a union that lifts these components taken from documents\, records\, and inventories into a metaphorical sphere.    \n  \nIncluded in this exhibition is the artwork The Black List based on the original site-specific memorial by the artist on the Königsplatz in München that was inaugurated by the Munich City Council in 2021. The new immersive staging of The Black List makes it possible to experience this profound artwork in Berlin for the first time. A spiraling sequence of words taken from booktitles by the 310 authors who were outlawed by the Nazi regime and whose books were burned across Germany. For each author Dreyblatt selected the last published work up to and including 1933. What unfolds is a passionate discussion of the archive as a space that carries history\, that can be mobilized to express new meanings but that can also be manipulated. The upper level of the gallery showcases the digital installation Inventar/ Inventur. In his 2008 artwork Dreyblatt dives into the sea of information that are the records of the 1938 auction of the entire estate of Berhard Altmann’s Vienna villa. To take on the inventory becomes a much larger task in which one has to combat storytelling that prioritises data over people. On a white wall the individual items that were part of the circa 1400 auctioned objects are projected suggesting a literal past space. As the words on the wall are positioned at the relative height of the objects they describe we are reminded that these objects that scroll across the gallery wall carry meanings and memories. The passive descriptions from the auction records are transformed and activated. Instead of centering the narrative on the auction as a moment of injustice and crime\, the inventory here becomes a story about a life that was lived\, a home that was built. It transforms the narratives and shifts the focus to the people as the subjects instead of the systems that foretold their end. \n  \nText Paula Böke \n  \nAbout the Artist \n\nArnold Dreyblatt (born 1953 in New York City) is an American media artist and composer. He has lived in Berlin\, Germany since 1984. Dreyblatt has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin\, since 2007  and recently appointed Vice Director of the Visual Arts Section. He was professor of media art at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel\, Germany from 2009 to 2022. His artistic practice over the past 30 years ranges from multi-day performances\, to digital installations to interactive artistic research projects such as “Performing the Black Mountain Archive” (2015) at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum für Gegenwartskunst. At the same time\, he has continued to develop his unique avant-garde music composition and performances.
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/arnold-dreyblatt-inventories-kang-contemporary/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20230202T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20230202T210000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20230120T135336Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20230127T035511Z
UID:89199-1675360800-1675371600@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:RUPTURED MYTHS OF PRESENT
DESCRIPTION:Peculiar fruit\, ceramic pigs\, levitating women\, and collapsing cakes. The artworks in Ruptured Myths of Present seem wondrous\, in their eclectic assemblage of symbols and characters. Frank Jimin Hopp and Sara Umar pull the veil on the ever-present archetypes of society\, some of which have existed for centuries while others are new actors who enter the stage. We are confronted with the question: Is it possible to rupture these ancient forces that linger in contemporary life and\, like shape-shifters\, adopt new forms? Exploring these themes through personal experience creates an authentic tone in which one can find resonance and the relief of commonality and togetherness.
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/ruptured-myths-of-present/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Visual Arts (Events)
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://artsequator.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/2023/01/ruptured-myths-of-present-kang-contemporary-4.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Kang%20Contempoary":MAILTO:contact@kang-contemporary.com
GEO:52.5024568;13.3945245
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20221111T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20221121T213000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20221103T053100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221103T053100Z
UID:87003-1668189600-1669066200@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:Opening - RESET : Fields of Sensation
DESCRIPTION:Pause. Reset. Reload. In today’s fast-paced world\, we seldom take the time to reenact what is only too familiar in the digital realm of gaming and scrolling. This exhibition is an open invitation for our visitors to imitate this practice and pause\, reset\, and reload the way they approach visual media. Central to this experience is an enthusiasm and commitment to curiosity and intuition. RESET – Fields of Sensation is a clarion call to all of us who have been consuming but not actually seeing images. The quiet art of sensing is championed in this space in which we perceive and connect. The exhibition offers the receptive visitor a room in which they can open themselves to the sensations of colors and composition to investigate the materials and dynamics of the artworks. A curious mind may discover that a resourceful interaction with art also creates the potential for resetting the dynamics within the gallery space. Each artist in this exhibition allows the observer to discover a variety of connections to art and themselves through intuitively observing and sensing what is right in front of them.  \nSensation is perhaps the driving force behind Jaehong Ahn’s creational process. The inception of his paintings is solely guided by the artist’s physical movements. Through automatic painting\, Ahn creates abstractions only to then move to figuration. His intuitive motions on the canvas turn into wondrous and sometimes bizarre landscapes. The foreign species and odd landmarks change and undergo continuous metamorphoses\, disorientating the observer. Theatrical elements such as stages and curtains\, as well as the steadily transforming subjects\, remind us that these scenes are carefully constructed imagination and separate themselves from our known visual vocabulary. The contenders who enter this world of tension are often separated and linger\, unable to overcome the divide. The theme of separation weaves itself throughout all of Jaehong Ahn’s paintings. Nevertheless\, there is always a strong sense of balance. The artworks enter a game of severed and yet balanced conversation\, of emerging and being separated. The artist\, the canvas\, and the viewer are divided forces that isolate and conceal and nevertheless come together in an aspiration for unity.  \nVemo Hang’s sculptures and paintings contemplate spatiality and travel across boundaries in a time of rapid pace and overwhelming impressions. Her work is based on transcultural histories and theories\, especially the comparisons of European and East Asian thinking through which she links the past to the present and crosses the spatial and temporal boundaries. In this synthesis of knowledge and sensuality\, the artist creates atmospheres in which understanding is achieved through intimacy. Her ceramic sculptures create dynamic compositions on the walls\, which reference the Go/Weiqi board game. The round shapes invade the room with their expanding fragments. As they disembark\, the orbs transcend their formerly limited dimension\, exploring finite enclosedness and explosive openness. The color blue prevails in the sculptures and the canvases in this exhibition\, exploring notions of the “Blaue Stunde”. Vemo Hang reflects on Berlin’s recent visual condition\, which she observed during the pandemic. The sudden reset and impossibility of travel shifted the focus to the immediately local. The imagined places are a harmonious combination of a multitude of independent scenes. Thereby\, Vemo Hang finds solutions to bridging spaces and creates a potential for travel between channels.  \nThe artworks by Sabine Laidig satisfy a longing for “less” as they reduce data into grids of lines and mists of color. They are a subtle ode to the sensations of the human eye. The materiality of the artworks has a calculated effect on the observer and creates illusions of space as the artworks seem to vibrate with the weightlessness of color. Her pigment studies and awareness of materiality enable her to honor these without being restricted by color\, material or form. The lines drawn with immaculate precision vary in width and interval\, resulting in different tonalities of color on every sheet\, each with its own steady and stimulating tone. This potent symphony of lines and pigment enter a dialogue with the viewer. Notably\, the impression of the artworks depends on the observer’s standpoint\, effectively including them in the creation of meaning. In Sabine Laidig’s artworks\, precision does not negate warmth\, and the grid is not void of personality and narrative but rather a source for experiences of still perception. Despite the concrete and reduced nature of the grid\, Laidig’s works are\, first and foremost\, a sensory experience. \nTatjana Schülke stimulates the viewer with tactile anticipations. The curious tubes\, spikes and arches protrude into the space. Her objects radiate expressiveness and personality\, yet\, they seem guarded and defensive to the intruding gaze. With their ability to balance the tension between reaching out and holding back\, these artworks embody sensitivity. The communicative sculptures\, reliefs\, and wall objects make us intuitively reflect on interpersonal exchange and relationships. Tatjana Schülke creates these artworks from objects she finds in her immediate surroundings. They express enthusiasm for openness and connecting. Thereby\, her artworks radiate vitality and human complexity. The unexpected materials such as tubes\, toothpicks\, yarn\, and styrofoam indicate her innate curiosity\, which leads her to playfully pursue the expression of inside and outside\, order and chaos and visible and hidden. These concepts get unraveled in such nuance through exploring material that the observer cannot help but sense and empathize with these objects.   \nPaula Böke
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/opening-reset-fields-of-sensation/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Visual Arts (Events)
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://artsequator.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/2022/11/RESET-onlinegraphic-4-1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="kang%20contemporary":MAILTO:contact@kang-contemporary.com
GEO:52.5024568;13.3945245
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Kang Contemporary Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz Berlin Berlin 10969;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz:geo:13.3945245,52.5024568
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20221111T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20230120T180000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20221103T053129Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20221103T053129Z
UID:87001-1668189600-1674237600@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:RESET : Fields of Sensation
DESCRIPTION:Pause. Reset. Reload. In today’s fast-paced world\, we seldom take the time to reenact what is only too familiar in the digital realm of gaming and scrolling. This exhibition is an open invitation for our visitors to imitate this practice and pause\, reset\, and reload the way they approach visual media. Central to this experience is an enthusiasm and commitment to curiosity and intuition. RESET – Fields of Sensation is a clarion call to all of us who have been consuming but not actually seeing images. The quiet art of sensing is championed in this space in which we perceive and connect. The exhibition offers the receptive visitor a room in which they can open themselves to the sensations of colors and composition to investigate the materials and dynamics of the artworks. A curious mind may discover that a resourceful interaction with art also creates the potential for resetting the dynamics within the gallery space. Each artist in this exhibition allows the observer to discover a variety of connections to art and themselves through intuitively observing and sensing what is right in front of them.  \nSensation is perhaps the driving force behind Jaehong Ahn’s creational process. The inception of his paintings is solely guided by the artist’s physical movements. Through automatic painting\, Ahn creates abstractions only to then move to figuration. His intuitive motions on the canvas turn into wondrous and sometimes bizarre landscapes. The foreign species and odd landmarks change and undergo continuous metamorphoses\, disorientating the observer. Theatrical elements such as stages and curtains\, as well as the steadily transforming subjects\, remind us that these scenes are carefully constructed imagination and separate themselves from our known visual vocabulary. The contenders who enter this world of tension are often separated and linger\, unable to overcome the divide. The theme of separation weaves itself throughout all of Jaehong Ahn’s paintings. Nevertheless\, there is always a strong sense of balance. The artworks enter a game of severed and yet balanced conversation\, of emerging and being separated. The artist\, the canvas\, and the viewer are divided forces that isolate and conceal and nevertheless come together in an aspiration for unity.  \nVemo Hang’s sculptures and paintings contemplate spatiality and travel across boundaries in a time of rapid pace and overwhelming impressions. Her work is based on transcultural histories and theories\, especially the comparisons of European and East Asian thinking through which she links the past to the present and crosses the spatial and temporal boundaries. In this synthesis of knowledge and sensuality\, the artist creates atmospheres in which understanding is achieved through intimacy. Her ceramic sculptures create dynamic compositions on the walls\, which reference the Go/Weiqi board game. The round shapes invade the room with their expanding fragments. As they disembark\, the orbs transcend their formerly limited dimension\, exploring finite enclosedness and explosive openness. The color blue prevails in the sculptures and the canvases in this exhibition\, exploring notions of the “Blaue Stunde”. Vemo Hang reflects on Berlin’s recent visual condition\, which she observed during the pandemic. The sudden reset and impossibility of travel shifted the focus to the immediately local. The imagined places are a harmonious combination of a multitude of independent scenes. Thereby\, Vemo Hang finds solutions to bridging spaces and creates a potential for travel between channels.  \nThe artworks by Sabine Laidig satisfy a longing for “less” as they reduce data into grids of lines and mists of color. They are a subtle ode to the sensations of the human eye. The materiality of the artworks has a calculated effect on the observer and creates illusions of space as the artworks seem to vibrate with the weightlessness of color. Her pigment studies and awareness of materiality enable her to honor these without being restricted by color\, material or form. The lines drawn with immaculate precision vary in width and interval\, resulting in different tonalities of color on every sheet\, each with its own steady and stimulating tone. This potent symphony of lines and pigment enter a dialogue with the viewer. Notably\, the impression of the artworks depends on the observer’s standpoint\, effectively including them in the creation of meaning. In Sabine Laidig’s artworks\, precision does not negate warmth\, and the grid is not void of personality and narrative but rather a source for experiences of still perception. Despite the concrete and reduced nature of the grid\, Laidig’s works are\, first and foremost\, a sensory experience. \nTatjana Schülke stimulates the viewer with tactile anticipations. The curious tubes\, spikes and arches protrude into the space. Her objects radiate expressiveness and personality\, yet\, they seem guarded and defensive to the intruding gaze. With their ability to balance the tension between reaching out and holding back\, these artworks embody sensitivity. The communicative sculptures\, reliefs\, and wall objects make us intuitively reflect on interpersonal exchange and relationships. Tatjana Schülke creates these artworks from objects she finds in her immediate surroundings. They express enthusiasm for openness and connecting. Thereby\, her artworks radiate vitality and human complexity. The unexpected materials such as tubes\, toothpicks\, yarn\, and styrofoam indicate her innate curiosity\, which leads her to playfully pursue the expression of inside and outside\, order and chaos\, and visible and hidden. These concepts get unraveled in such nuance through exploring material that the observer cannot help but sense and empathize with these objects.   \nPaula Böke
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/reset-fields-of-sensation/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Visual Arts (Events)
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://artsequator.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/2022/11/RESET-onlinegraphic-4.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="kang%20contemporary":MAILTO:contact@kang-contemporary.com
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20220908
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20221106
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20220906T084749Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220906T084749Z
UID:84992-1662595200-1667692799@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:MENG HUANG - Striking Distance
DESCRIPTION:It is the empty space surrounding a mountain’s summit that accentuates its grandeur. Similarly\, the sky above a field\, the distance the human eye can suppose\, emphasizes its vastness. Gazing into these distances suggests a visual-mental journey from the viewer’s position to somewhere else. The distance has no direction and no destination; the only clear variable is the point we are moving away from.  \nMeng Huang’s paintings have landscapes as their subject as much as the empty spaces above and around them. The formal and thematic immanence of distance in the artist’s works can be retraced in his biography. Despite Meng Huang’s move to Berlin 10 years ago\, the artist’s thoughts and concerns remained with China. Already here and not yet arrived – that is one of the starting points of this exhibition\, as well as the emotional and mental processes that follow the experience of cultural displacement and an encounter with distance. Evidently\, the idiom “Striking Distance” implies a dual distance that can emerge when leaving a culture behind. Close enough to touch and simultaneously conspicuously distant. However\, this year marks an immanent change in Meng Huang’s artistic work. For the first time\, he is not exclusively painting Chinese landscapes but now also German and Austrian sceneries. Putting these landscape paintings from China\, Germany and Austria into a dialogue captures a turning point. This incision perhaps suggests hope and the possibility of overcoming the emotional and cultural distance between oneself and a new environment. Learning to navigate the distance and find solitude\, not in proximity to culture but to beliefs\, permits new clarity to spread across the void and offers an unparalleled perspective on the world.  \nAdditionally to the landscape paintings\, Kang Contemporary shows waterscapes by Meng Huang on the upper level of the gallery. These paintings were initially created after the death of Liu Xiaobo. The waves\, which in nature are never static\, stop their movement as they are captured on the canvas.  They mark the attempt to preserve a condition that cannot last; rather\, it transforms continuously with persistent movement. Holding on\, trying to make a moment last\, and recognizing the impossibility of petrifying waves\, reflects the process that comes with an involuntary distance between a person and their home. While the gallery’s lower level depicts Meng Huang’s journey of overcoming the mental distance between him and his new surroundings\, the upper level offers an immersive experience into the emotional depths of cultural displacement. The viewer can be surrounded by the abysmal water and empathize with the moment of being midway between holding on and letting go\, mirroring the natural pattern of water itself. \nBesides the biographical themes\, Meng Huang’s formal vocabulary unites his connection to two countries and cultures in an effortless and unexpected amalgamation of traditions. The philosophy of distance as a subject has greatly influenced Meng Huang’s paintings which were especially common during the Song dynasty. Moreover\, the subject of remote locations as a retreat from the turmoils of political and civil society has a long tradition within Chinese art history. Vast landscapes and empty spaces serve as a representation of the self within a culture in which it is forced to withdraw into an internal exile. However\, despite these parallels\, the format of Meng Huang’s paintings is unlike these ancient Chinese landscapes. The monumental canvases he works with are more reminiscent of Western art history. Rather than moving along a scroll\, the viewer is standing at a fixed point\, gazing upon the scenery. While the artist does not include people in his paintings\, they convey the unmistakable feeling that the human observer and with them\, human turmoil is minuscule measured against the vastness of nature. Through his compositions and a muted palette\, Meng Huang’s paintings are reminiscent of the philosophy and poetic emotions of German Romanticism. Moreover\, the artist expands this vocabulary to a global magnitude. The themes of yearning for peacefulness and the longing for rest from social and political turmoil connect German and Chinese art histories. Adopting formal strategies that are intuitively legible in both nations\, the artist employs his combined cultural knowledge into a new artistic tradition that can be understood universally.  \n  \nPaula Böke
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/meng-huang-striking-distance/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Visual Arts (Events)
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://artsequator.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/2022/08/Meng-Huang-Wilderness-2020-oil-on-canvas-155-x-180-cm-courtesy-Kang-Contemporary.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="kang%20contemporary":MAILTO:contact@kang-contemporary.com
GEO:52.5024568;13.3945245
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20220830T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Shanghai:20220830T210000
DTSTAMP:20260604T013640
CREATED:20220906T084745Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220906T084745Z
UID:84994-1661882400-1661893200@artsequator.com
SUMMARY:EXHIBITION OPENING - Striking Distance
DESCRIPTION:It is the empty space surrounding a mountain’s summit that accentuates its grandeur. Similarly\, the sky above a field\, the distance the human eye can suppose\, emphasizes its vastness. Gazing into these distances suggests a visual-mental journey from the viewer’s position to somewhere else. The distance has no direction and no destination; the only clear variable is the point we are moving away from.  \nMeng Huang’s paintings have landscapes as their subject as much as the empty spaces above and around them. The formal and thematic immanence of distance in the artist’s works can be retraced in his biography. Despite Meng Huang’s move to Berlin 10 years ago\, the artist’s thoughts and concerns remained with China. Already here and not yet arrived – that is one of the starting points of this exhibition\, as well as the emotional and mental processes that follow the experience of cultural displacement and an encounter with distance. Evidently\, the idiom “Striking Distance” implies a dual distance that can emerge when leaving a culture behind. Close enough to touch and simultaneously conspicuously distant. However\, this year marks an immanent change in Meng Huang’s artistic work. For the first time\, he is not exclusively painting Chinese landscapes but now also German and Austrian sceneries. Putting these landscape paintings from China\, Germany and Austria into a dialogue captures a turning point. This incision perhaps suggests hope and the possibility of overcoming the emotional and cultural distance between oneself and a new environment. Learning to navigate the distance and find solitude\, not in proximity to culture but to beliefs\, permits new clarity to spread across the void and offers an unparalleled perspective on the world.  \nAdditionally to the landscape paintings\, Kang Contemporary shows waterscapes by Meng Huang on the upper level of the gallery. These paintings were initially created after the death of Liu Xiaobo. The waves\, which in nature are never static\, stop their movement as they are captured on the canvas.  They mark the attempt to preserve a condition that cannot last; rather\, it transforms continuously with persistent movement. Holding on\, trying to make a moment last\, and recognizing the impossibility of petrifying waves\, reflects the process that comes with an involuntary distance between a person and their home. While the gallery’s lower level depicts Meng Huang’s journey of overcoming the mental distance between him and his new surroundings\, the upper level offers an immersive experience into the emotional depths of cultural displacement. The viewer can be surrounded by the abysmal water and empathize with the moment of being midway between holding on and letting go\, mirroring the natural pattern of water itself. \nBesides the biographical themes\, Meng Huang’s formal vocabulary unites his connection to two countries and cultures in an effortless and unexpected amalgamation of traditions. The philosophy of distance as a subject has greatly influenced Meng Huang’s paintings which were especially common during the Song dynasty. Moreover\, the subject of remote locations as a retreat from the turmoils of political and civil society has a long tradition within Chinese art history. Vast landscapes and empty spaces serve as a representation of the self within a culture in which it is forced to withdraw into an internal exile. However\, despite these parallels\, the format of Meng Huang’s paintings is unlike these ancient Chinese landscapes. The monumental canvases he works with are more reminiscent of Western art history. Rather than moving along a scroll\, the viewer is standing at a fixed point\, gazing upon the scenery. While the artist does not include people in his paintings\, they convey the unmistakable feeling that the human observer and with them\, human turmoil is minuscule measured against the vastness of nature. Through his compositions and a muted palette\, Meng Huang’s paintings are reminiscent of the philosophy and poetic emotions of German Romanticism. Moreover\, the artist expands this vocabulary to a global magnitude. The themes of yearning for peacefulness and the longing for rest from social and political turmoil connect German and Chinese art histories. Adopting formal strategies that are intuitively legible in both nations\, the artist employs his combined cultural knowledge into a new artistic tradition that can be understood universally.  \n  \nPaula Böke
URL:https://artsequator.com/event/exhibition-opening-striking-distance/
LOCATION:Kang Contemporary\, Lindenstraße 90 / Mendelssohnplatz\, Berlin\, Berlin\, 10969
CATEGORIES:Visual Arts (Events)
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