SPRING 2019 EXHIBITION
DAWN OF SRPING
“Dawn of Spring” is an artist in residence program initiated by P8, Yuanda. As the residency site, Yuanda industrial city has its own ecological environment with the uniqueness of combining natural wetland with the contemporary industrial site. Over the decades, the environment has been an important inspiration for artists around the world encompassing a range of ecologically and politically motivated works of art in different media.
As a response to the evolving ideas about the environment and a rethinking of our behaviors, meanwhile, as a form of celebrating our internationalizing art community, we take global voices into account by having artists selected from Europe, as well as China, to participate in our program.
The exhibition features Chinese artists Tianyou Huang, Xiaoyue Zhang, Jiaqing Mo, and Polish artist Kamila Szejnoch and includes 12 pieces of work created on site during residency both within the gallery and out in Yuanda industrial city. Tianyou Huang, is an artist based in China and the UK. His work explores the absurdity of urbanism. With the specific interest and study of kinetic art and semiotics, he often questions his own expression through the lens of the viewer’s eye and experience. Xiaoyue Zhang has been working on her life Line series for more than three years now. During this residency, she continued her Life Line and practiced on a much larger scale in comparison with her past work. It was challenging moving from a gallery to a land art scale platform, meanwhile maintaining the artist’s way of storytelling.
The surrealistic factors play significant roles in filmmaker Jiaqing mo’s work. Combining installations and set building with moving image is part of the philosophy of creating her metaphorical visual language. Through her work, she arises societal, environmental and relational questions which provoke deeper understandings.
Kamila Szehnoch is known for her art in public space. With the interest in “art in context”, without deconstructing the original, in its specific site, the artist brings new forms of conventions to the already existed. In this regard, the “Dawn of Spring” artist in residence program exhibition reveals the shifting visions and realities of nature as artists reflect and shape societal attitudes toward the environment, at the same time, compels us to reconsider the relationships between art, the environment, and ourselves.
