Digital Art
|
 
|
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
SG Private Banking Gallery,
Alliance Française de Singapour
1 Sarkies Road, Singapore 258130
Contact: +65 6833 9314 Fax: +65 6733 3023
“NEW TIBETAN ART EXHIBITION”
organized by Yisulang Art Gallery
SG Private Banking Gallery
Alliance Française de Singapour
6th - 12th July 2005
(Opening at 7pm, Tues, 5th July 2005)
SINGAPORE, Monday, June 13, 2005
This July marks an exclusive preview of paintings by the New Tibetan Art movement.
Tibetan art and culture that has long been elusive comes to light under the spotlight of the new millennium after witnessing a recent turbulent history. The select nine artists’ works are distilled to showcase the impressions of fresh ideas, modern techniques and the new world, left on Tibetan artists of the New Tibetan order. Though the themes remain entwined with Buddhism, the artists’ approach serve as a cultural bridge between past and present.
Initial tours and exhibitions back home and across the globe swept up many awards and terrific appraise from critics and the art-loving public.Two of nine artists from the New Tibetan Art movement will be available for interviews from 4th – 6th July. Kindly inform us in advance if you should need a session with them.
Tibet - the Land, its People, and their Painting
By Susan Croft
Background to the contemporary art of Tibet
For those who are not on or part of the ’Roof of the World’, Tibet is a mysterious land, an extreme terrain and climate, a pure untouched wilderness of crystalline lakes and soaring mountains beneath painfully clear blue skies, a territory that has still not been entirely explored and mapped. It is home to the highest mountain on earth – Qomolangma or, as it is better known outside, Everest – home to a particularly refined, spiritual form of Buddhism, home to a nomadic people who are as rugged and tough as the landscape they inhabit.
Partly because of its geographic remoteness and inaccessibility, partly because of its people’s corresponding self-sufficiency and suspicion of those beyond their fortress-like borders, partly for political reasons, Tibet, even today, is one of the least known places on earth. Much that is commonly known comes from the writings of early travelers and, in the minds of many outsiders, it is this traditional, possibly romanticized view of Tibet that still prevails. We have heard of the yaks, of the turquoise- and coral-encrusted jewellery, of the huge palatial monasteries, of the ubiquitous maroon-garbed lamas, of the prayer wheels and flags. We have seen reproductions of the exquisite and complex tangka religious paintings (and sometimes the real thing) and marvelled at grotesque masks of Tibetan deities, at vibrant bronze and clay sculptures, and at temple murals the purpose of which was to teach the people about the scriptures. Those who have looked further into this culture have come across the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which describes the consciousness between death and rebirth.
Descriptions and examples of these religious aspects of Tibetan culture are readily available to anyone who wishes to study them. Tibetologists have been studying them for over a century so, in libraries and bookstores, and on the Internet, a quick search will yield a large amount of information. But what of Tibet’s contemporary culture? What is known about the art that is being created now? How has Tibetan art evolved historically? Even an in-depth study will reveal little in the way of information or even references to what is happening today or of how contemporary art has developed.
That is why the Yisulang Art Gallery’s exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art is so important - and surprising. It is a rare event indeed, and one that will help to turn the spotlight onto a rich and hitherto unknown source of artistic expression.
This exhibition showcases the work of nine artists whose work finds its inspiration, subject-matter, techniques, and/or raw materials in Tibet. All of them have laid themselves open to the influences of Tibet, the land, its people, their religion, their culture and their art. Anyone who spends time in Tibet cannot fail to be struck by the way in which these elements combine to form a rich, strong life force that includes a keen spiritual awareness. This consciousness pervades people’s lives, as established religion as well as in terms of their world view. The simplicity and harshness of life in Tibet has forged a people with a vital sense of the wonder and fragility of existence, of the transient relativity of life and death, and of the natural and spiritual forces that define their world. Their experience of a land of extremes, and of sudden changes in terrain, climate and circumstances, that encompasses the mundane everyday routine as well as the unexplainable unpredictable fluctuations in fortune, makes the difference between reality and fantasy or the world of the spirits seem small.
The work of these artists is instinctively informed by such considerations because they constitute the atmosphere and energy field in which the painters lived and worked. However, the various members of this group also made a deliberate effort to obtain an intellectual and aesthetic understanding of Tibetan culture and art by undertaking wide-ranging, practical research. Not for them, the classical, narrow theology-based studies. Their investigations generally revealed a lack of secondary sources except in relation to religion, so they were obliged to conduct their own first-hand investigations. This they did in the 1980s and 1990s. With an open mind, they examined the texts, artefacts and art they found, the folk songs and dances, the folk art, as well as the religious art, and the stories that have been handed down the centuries, and analysed these items in the context of their own artistic background. Prior to this, the artists variously had been educated to develop a familiarity with different artistic traditions, both ancient and modern, Asian and western, so they were able to make a vast network of connections between Tibetan art and art outside Tibet. In addition to their scholarly appreciation, the artists individually cultivated a more emotional and psychological bond with Tibet and its culture, too, by extensive pilgrim-like wanderings in the valleys and mountains of this fantastic land in order to fill in the blanks in the aesthetic history of Tibetan art. They collected, sorted, classified and analysed the rich heritage they encountered, and then prepared to present it to the world.
Susan Croft
21 May 2005
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
BIOGRAPHIES OF TIBETAN ARTISTS WHO COMPRISE NEW TIBETAN ART MOVEMENT
Bama Zhaxi – Born 1961, Shigatse, Tibet
As a self-taught artist, Barma began to win awards in his early twenties for paintings that acknowledge and may even highlight religious motifs, simultaneously expressing a thoroughly modern view of his native culture. The warmth of colours he uses – rust, ochre and touches of scarlet – communicate a humanistic spirit and are characteristic of New Tibetan Art.
Bama has held solo shows and done joint exhibitions in China, Paris, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur and Toronto. He is a vice-chairman of the Tibetan Artists Association and a member of the Chinese Artists Association.
Benba – Born 1972, Bainang Country, Tibet
A graduate from Hebei Normal University and the University of Tibet, Benba uses references to Buddhism and traditional Tibetan culture culminated with Chinese themes and unusual compositions to provoke new ways of seeing the world.
Benba is now a fine arts teacher at the Lhasa City Normal School and a member of the Chinese Artists Association.
Cering Namygai – Born 1976, Lhasa, Tibet
Cering graduated from the art department of the University of Tibet. First impressions of his work discover a strikingly innovative style, but a second look reveals employment of intricacies characteristic of classical tangkas. At times, much like his compatriot, Dezhoin, his paintings contain a tinge of cubism and a popular Tibetan symbolic motif of the painted eye.
Cering is now an art teacher at the Lhasa City No.1 Primary School and a member of the Tibetan Artists Association.
Dezhoin – Born 1976, Lhasa, Tibet
Dezhoin graduated from the art department of the University of Tibet. Her works sport a very human quality coupled with acute humour. Like Cering Namygai, a fellow Tibetan alumnus, Dezhoin’s paintings are modern and innovative, and she too uses the symbolic painted eye as motif to great effect. The occasional Chinese cloud formations are references to her Chinese heritage.
Dezhoin is now a teacher with the Braille Without Borders Organization, a member of the Chinese Association for the Promotion of Ethnic Minority Fine Arts, and a member of the Lhasa City Artists Association.
Jimei Chilei – Born 1958, Lhasa, Tibet
Jimei graduated from the art department of the University of Tibet before furthering his art education at the Ethnic Fine Arts Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His painting Roasting Highland Barley was the first work of a Tibetan artist to be selected for permanent collection by the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.
Currently, Jimei is known for his dramatic yet intimate portrayal of temples and houses. The colours he applies; maroon, ochre, black and white – are found in Lhasa’s great landmark, the 17th century Potala Palace. Similarly, his compositions, with buildings solidly interspersed, in seemingly higgledy-piggledy fashion, are reminiscent of the Potala’s hillside structure. In these works, there is a lateral-cum-aerial view of the buildings that, paradoxically, gives them a striking immediacy with a panoramic distancing effect.
Jimei is now the Secretary-General of the Tibetan Artists Association and a member of the Chinese Artists Association.
Lhaba Cering – Born 1978, Shigatse, Tibet
Lhaba graduated from the art department of the University of Tibet. His works are thought-provocative hybrids telling of his training in both Tibetan and Chinese traditions. His Tibetan heritage is represented distinctly in the myriad of Tibetan temple roofs depicted in traditional colours of ochre and black. Further Chinese influence is highlighted by his inclusion of flower-like clouds in pastel shades of pink and blue.
Lhaba is now a teacher at the Shigatse Prefecture No. 1 Senior Middle School and a member of the Tibetan Artists Association.
Li Zhibao – Born 1952, Jianghua, Hunan Province, China
Li graduated from the Fine Art Department of Hunan Normal University and has been working in Tibet since 1976. His cultural background, as a member of the Yao ethnic group, as a student of painting in China, and as a long-term resident of Tibet, gives him a particularly rich source of inspiration and technique. In some of his paintings, the female characters he depicts have an obvious Indo-Tibetan look about them.
Zhibao’s early affinity with New Literati Painting (xinwenren hua) has changed so that he is now identifiably a Tibetan artist, especially when it comes to his practice of painting on cloth and of creating and using his own mineral pigments.
Li is now a vice-chairman of the Tibetan Artists Association, vice-president of the Tibet Institute of Calligraphy and Painting, Chairman of the Lhasa City Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and a member of the Chinese Artists Association.
Yu Youxin – Born 1940, Juxian County, Shandong Province, China
Yu graduated from the Beijing Arts School, under the tutelage of masters like Wu Jingbo, Bai Xueshi, Zhao Yu and Wu Guanzhong. Since 1980, he has been working in Tibet and it would be fair to say that he has become a true son of his adopted land. Both professionally and personally, he has immersed himself in all things Tibetan. Working in ink on rice paper, Yu succeeds in conveying the vastness, strength, power and serenity of Tibet, be it in soaring mountain peaks or massive portrayals of yaks.
However, he contrasts these monumental images with fluffy white cloud formations, their edges reminiscent of frost, or delicate groups of flying cranes; these juxtapositions perhaps come from a Buddhist way of seeing the earthly world as elusive and ephemeral while, at the same time, testifying to the techniques and influences of Yu’s original training in Chinese art.
Yu is now a vice-chairman of the Tibetan Artists Association, an advisor to the Tibet Institute of Calligraphy and Painting, and a member of the Chinese Artists Association.
Han Shuli – Born 1948, Beijing, China
Han graduated from the Attached School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts shortly before his first, seven-year stay in Tibet. There, he greatly extended his artistic experience; this, eventually, after a second period of study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, under the guidance of Professor He Youzhi and Yang Xiangang, resulted in his famous MA graduation work Flowers of the Grassland which won prizes in Beijing and Switzerland.
Ever since, Han has gone from strength to strength, specializing, first, in colourful paintings on cotton cloth inspired by Tibetan folk culture and then, in works created in ink and colour wash that are imbued with Buddhist imagery and references. His Chinese media and brushwork and the Tibetan themes he has adopted form a powerful combination.
Han Shuli is a member of the China Art and Literature Union, Chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region Art and Literature Union and of the Tibet Artists Association, President of the Tibetan Painting and Calligraphy College, and Honorary Professor of Tibet University and Tibet National University.
For more images and further enquiries, please contact:
Adrian Goh
Yisulang Art Gallery
60B Pagoda Street
Singapore 059219
T: +65 6227 6288
F: +65 6227 2290
E: enquiries and followed by @yisulang.com
W: www.yisulang.com
Dawn Fung (Ms.)
Gallery Assistant,
Alliance Française de Singapour
Email : dfung and followed by @alliancefrancaise.org.sg
Tel : 6833 9314
Fax : 6733 3023
Online : alliancefrancaise.org.sg
 |
