From/To: the Frontier of Chinese Art Education

Poverty of Sensibility: Art / Education in the 21st Century III
November 16: Osher Lecture Hall, Chestnut Street Campus 
November 17: Atrium, Fort Mason Campus, Pier 2, 2 Marina Boulevard 

The year of 2018 is the 50th anniversary of the “May Storms” in France in 1968, the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and  opening up, and also the 90th anniversary of China Academy of Art. Meanwhile, the year of 2018 is the end of countless hidden and even obliterated historical processes, but it might as well be regarded as the starting point for the future to reminisce every urgent moment of the present time. These complicated and interwoven signals from time are flocking to us and keep reminding us that those great revolutions and significant moments which have laid the foundation for the situation and setup of today’s world, combined with those thoughts and actions which have been ignored and emasculated in the history of discourse, have in time’s repeated reconfiguration and narratives manifestly shown as some omen and allegory reflecting the current world—which suggests the possibility of relaying the foundation of some lost ideals, intends to challenge our perceptions of reality and history, and reconstructs some imaginary dimensions to ponder over the time to come.  

From National Academy of Art in 1928 to its new name China Academy of Art (CAA), from the social movement of 1968, which profoundly influenced the state of California to the Californian Ideology of today, in which technical cybernetics is mingled with free market economy and counter-cultural liberalism, from the China’s reform and opening up in 1978 to the quickly forming of today’s landscape of Chinese contemporary art which is measured by globalization… we can see time is not viewed and stored as the passing of minutes and seconds. Instead, time constructs a multi-world complex, each world being independent but overlapping with others, thus making them interdependent and interrelated. The human beings’ presence and absence and art’s “coming into being”, seem more and more marginalized by technology’s revolution and development, revolution’s process and disillusionment, and even art’s education and creation.

On November 16, 2018, from Hangzhou to San Francisco, China Academy of Art is to jointly have an exhibition From/To:  the Frontier of Chinese Art Education with San Francisco Art Institute, an old friend of more than 3 decades, and at the same time there will be a theme forum Panel 21: the Poverty of Sensibliity. The exhibition will use From/To Art Education：90 Questions as clues, in order to go through and reconsider those overlooked and distorted implications of historical omens, and make inquiries about numerous established and to-be-established ideological dilemmas. With the interaction and “presence” of different experiences of individual lives, we are to reconsider the intellectuality of art and the perseverance of an art academy, and their purpose and potentiality in this age of secret dominance of capital and power and the universal deprivation of sensibility.

Participating artists: Cai Feng, Cao Xiaoyang, Chang Qing, Chen Haiyan, Fang Liming, Gao Shiqiang+Institute of Spatial Image, Guan Huaibin, Han Likun, Huang Jun, Jiao Xiaojian, Jing Shijian, Kong Guoqiao, Li Ming, Lin Haizhong, Liu jian, Liu Wei, Lu Lei, Lu Yang, Luo Ying, Qiu Zhijie, Ren Yi, Shao Wenhuan, Shi Bing & Maria Ganeva, Shi Hui, Tong Biao, Wang Chao, Wang Dongling, Wang Jianwei, Wang Xin, Wang Zan, Wei Xiaorong, Wu Qiong & Wang Yang, Xu Jiang, Yang Canjun, Yang Fudong, Yao Cong, Yao Dajuin+Open Media, Yi Lian, Yu Xuhong, Zhang Gumin, Zhang Jie, Zheng Li