Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art

Olafur Eliasson, "Your Atmospheric Colour Atlas", 2009. Courtesy the artist: Gallery Koyanagi, Tokyo. Photo: Studio Olafur Eliasson. ©2009 Olafur Eliasson.

BEIJING.- The Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) presents the exhibition "Feelings are Facts", from 3 April to 20 June 2010, fruit of the first collaboration between Olafur Eliasson, the Danish-Icelandic artist, and Ma Yansong, one of the most prolific Chinese architects. Together the artists have created an installation specially conceived for the of UCCA’s Big Hall, uniting architecture, light and fog. Eliasson is known for his exploration of human perception, and he often works with light, shadows, color, water, wind, or fog to create a specific environment in order to move us to think about our experience of our surroundings – perceptions we usually take to be self-evident. Ma's architecture stands at the forefront of new experimentation in building structures, refashioning form in bold pursuits of perfection. Their collaboration invites the audience to enter an endless space of fog, with color emanating from fluorescent tubes of red, green and blue. By moving through the space, the colors blend, and so the viewers will endlessly create their own color spectrums. In Feelings are facts, Olafur Eliasson and Ma Yansong challenge our everyday patterns of spatial orientation, thereby suggesting the need to invent new models for perception. The installation was specially crafted to fit the Big Hall of the UCCA, the dimensions of which were altered by substantially lowering the ceiling and constructing an inclined wooden floor. “UCCA is proud to present Feelings are facts, an exhibition which catalyzes a dynamic cross-fertilization between art and architecture. The final result is born of a unique collaboration between Eliasson and Ma. This breathtaking installation promises to transport the viewer on a journey which reverses his normal art experience. Here the spectator, rather than simply viewing an art object from the outside, surprisingly witnesses himself becoming an integral part of the artwork. The viewer enters a world of extra-sensorial perception whereby color, light and architecture enable him to re-evaluate his relationship with his surroundings,” says UCCA Director, Jérôme Sans. Basing this project on a series of previous experiments with atmospheric density, Eliasson introduces condensed banks of artificially produced fog into the gallery. Hundreds of fluorescent lights are installed in the ceiling as a grid of red, green, and blue zones. By permeating the fog, these lights create colored walk-through spaces that, in Eliasson’s words, function to ‘make the volume of the space explicit’. The colored zones introduce a scale of measurement in the gallery, their varying size and organization referencing urban-planning grids. At each color boundary, two hues blend to create transitional slivers of cyan, magenta, or yellow, and so the visitors will create their own unique color spectrum when making their way through this seemingly endless space. The artists use this structural marvel to present inquiries into the nature of reality. What should be the basis of our thinking and judgement in a space where reality and illusion interconnect? As we stand amidst such accomplished phenomena, can we re-examine with greater concern our sensations and experiences of that which is around us? Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist living in Copenhagen and Berlin. Upon completing his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, Eliasson established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin. His Berlin studio today numbers around thirty craftsmen, architects, geometrists, art historians, and other cultural workers. In his studio, he deploys light, colour, and natural phenomena such as fog and waves to test how physical movement, sensual engagement, and the interaction of body and brain influence our perception of our environment. Eliasson represented Denmark at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and later that year installed The Weather Project in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London. In 2006, on the occasion of the reopening of Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Eliasson realised a special commission for the façade on the Grand Canal: Your Wave is. Take your time, a survey exhibition organised by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2007, travelled to several venues in the United States and is currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Eliasson has engaged in a wide array of public space projects, including the Flower pavilion, as part of the 5th Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition in Shenzhen, 2003, the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2007 in London, designed with Kjetil Thorsen; and The New York City Waterfalls, commissioned by Public Art Fund in 2008. As professor at Universität der Künste Berlin, Eliasson also founded the Institut für Raumexperimente in 2009, a public educational research project affiliated with the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). Feelings are facts is the first time Eliasson has worked with Chinese architect Ma Yansong and is his first exhibition in China. Ma Yansong, originally from Beijing, received his Master of Architecture from the Yale University School of Architecture in 2002. Prior to founding MAD in 2004, Ma worked as a project designer with Zaha Hadid Architects in London and Eisenman Architects in New York. He has taught architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His works have won numerous international design competitions, including: the 2006 Absolute Tower Competition in Toronto which is under construction and scheduled to complete in 2011. Ma’s work has been exhibited internationally. Two of his projects WTC Rebuilt – "Floating Island" and "Fish tank" were featured at the Beijing Architectural Biennale and the National Art Museum of China in 2004. His art installation "Ink Ice" was featured in the Chinese Calligraphy Art exhibition in 2005. In 2006, "MAD" was shown at the "MAD" in China exhibition in Venice during the 10th Architecture Biennial, and the "MAD" Under-Construction exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery in Beijing. In 2007, "MAD" in China, a floating city of MAD's work, was shown at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark. MAD’s concept proposal, "Super Star-A Mobile China Town" was on exhibition in the Uneternal City of the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice. In 2009, MAD was featured in the exhibition, "Heart-Made, The Cutting-Edge of Chinese Contemporary Architecture in Brussels", for the Europalia-China.

New director for the Ullens Center

New director for the Ullens Center

Changes at the top of Beijing museum‹just four months after opening

Gareth Harris and Emma Beatty | 18.2.08 |

French curator Jérôme Sans is expected to be announced as the new
artistic director of the Ullens Center of Contemporary Art (UCCA) in
Beijing at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday. Speaking to The
Art Newspaper last month, Guy Ullens, the Belgian foodstuffs baron
who has entirely funded UCCA, said that Jérôme Sans had been selected
as the new director and that an announcement would be made as soon as
the appropriate Chinese authorities had approved the appointment.

If all goes according to plan, Mr Sans will replace UCCA¹s current
artistic director, Fei Dawei, the Chinese art critic, who is to step
down from operational matters and take on a research-based role.
Dawei curated the museum¹s inaugural show ³Œ85 New Wave: the Birth of
Chinese Contemporary Art² which received mostly positive reviews in
the international press but divided opinion in Beijing.

The UCCA press office downplayed the staffing changes, saying that
Dawei¹s original remit was only ever to be ³instrumental in setting
up the centre as a museum.²

However when Dawei was presented to the press at the opening of the
museum last November he was described as UCCA¹s full-time, long-term
artistic director. Mr Dawei could not be reached for comment,
however, sources in Beijing say that Mr Dawei¹s disagreements with
his colleagues are believed to be behind his change in role.

Jérôme Sans is a distinguished figure in the contemporary art world
but his appointment will leave UCCA open to criticism that there are
no senior Chinese members of staff at the institution (deputy
director Colin Chinnery is half British).

Born in 1960, Mr Sans has worked for the Milwaukee Institute of
Visual Arts and helped establish the Palais de Tokyo in Paris in
2002. Most recently, he served as Programme Director at the Baltic
arts centre in Gateshead, England, but stepped down last July after
just 14 months in the role.

Asian Art Standing Apart

Asian Art Standing Apart
Auctions

By MARION MANEKER
September 20, 2007

"Everywhere I go, dinner parties, benefits, the Hamptons, people only ask me about Chinese contemporary art," an art adviser, Kim Heirston, said. In what feels like a blink of an eye, Chinese painters have become a focal point in the art world: Just last year, Sotheby's started holding its main sale of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese contemporary art in New York. Today, Sotheby's will sell 275 works estimated at between $19 million and nearly $28 million. Two weeks ago, Pierre Huber, the influential Geneva-based dealer and Lorenzo Rudolf, the former director of Art Basel, held their inaugural Contemporary art fair in Shanghai, which was widely judged to be a whopping success. And next month, Phillips will sell the Farber collection of Chinese contemporary art in a single sale of 44 works of contemporary Chinese art that were acquired from the seminal exhibitions and gallery shows mounted since 1986 that introduced these painters to the West.

What is so fascinating about Chinese contemporary art is that much of it was produced under the radar in the past 20 years — and it is now bursting into view as a newly rich society supports its own artists with high prices and museums. Over the summer, it was announced that Sichuan province offered personal museums to eight of the biggest names in Chinese contemporary art — including Yue Minjun, Zhang Xiaogang, and Wang Guangyi. The Chinese contemporary collector, Baron Ullens, announced his own art space in Beijing that would house Chinese and foreign art.

Though these developments point to the emergence of a domestic market for living Chinese painters, until now the bulk of the sales have been overseas. Last year, Sotheby's sold $70 million worth of Asian contemporary art. Also, 2006 was the first year the auction house brought Chinese contemporary painting to New York as its own sale. They broke 20 artists' records in the process. Sotheby's and the houses haven't suffered for including Chinese painters in their Contemporary art sales here in New York and London. In June, Yue Minjun's "The Pope" (1997), a clever allusion to both Francis Bacon and Velázquez, was sold for an astonishing $4.2 million.

This week's sale also features a Yue Minjun after Velázquez. "Infanta" (1997) is estimated at between $1.8 million and $2.5 million. The other Chinese superstar Zhang Xiaogang is represented by several works, but the most significant is "Chapter of a New Century — Birth of the People's Republic of China" (1992), which is estimated at between $1.5 million and $2.5 million.

"It's so exciting to see great works," Sotheby's expert Xiaoming Zhang, who put the sale together, said. Working in the Chinese contemporary field is still a journey of discovery because so many of the painters were previously working in obscurity to avoid the interference of censors. Others were simply overlooked until increasing value brought the work to market. "You don't know these paintings existed," Ms. Zhang said.

Chen Yifei is a prime example of the kind of painter and painting that one never knew existed. His numerous landscapes and city scenes painted in a misty realism are incomparable. But "The Cellist" (1983), estimated at between $800,000 and $1 million will be the star of his lots.

Other works not to be missed include Liu Dan's monumental "Dictionary" (1991), estimated at between $250,000 and $350,000, which depicts in massive photorealist splendor the open pages of a dictionary. Ai Weiwei's "Chandelier (2002)," estimated at between $400,000 and $600,000, is just that — a massive crystal and metal chandelier that seems suited in size, scale and opulence to a European opera house. A more whimsical work comes from Liu Ye: "The Little Mermaid" (2004), estimated at between $1 million and $1.5 million, is childlike in the way that Yoshitomo Nara's work represents children with wide eyes and expansive foreheads.

Don't let the bigger names distract you from the depth of the show. There is something in almost every style of contemporary painting from abstraction to graffiti-inspired work such as Wu Shanzhuan's "Today No Water–Chapter 29" (2007), estimated at between $30,000 and $50,000. There's even the Mark Tansey-like paintings of Shi Xinning, especially "Pride and Prejudice" (2004), estimated at between $40,000 and $60,000.

This sale makes a very good case that contemporary Chinese painting is better seen separately from the marquee sales in November where the biggest names jostle with their European and American counterparts. If nothing else, this sale will impress you with the variety and vibrancy of Chinese painters and surely justify the accelerating prices.

Collector sells £15m Turner collection to buy Chinese contemporary art

Baron Ullens is acquiring new works for his Beijing gallery
By Georgina Adam |
Posted 22 March 2007
LONDON. The Belgian collector Baron Guy Ullens
has consigned 14 Turner watercolours to auction, because he wants to
focus on contemporary Chinese art. The works, which will be sold at
Sotheby's London on 5 July, are expected to fetch £10m-£15m
($19.7m-$29.55m).

Baron Ullens has founded the first private museum for both Chinese and
international contemporary art in Beijing, which is to open in
October. Titled the Ullens Centre for the Arts, it is located in
Beijing's Dashanzi art district and its first chairman is Jan Debbaut,
former head of collections at Tate.

Guy Ullens, whose fortune derives from the food industry,
lived in China in the early years of his career, and collects
classical Chinese landscapes as well as his newest interest,
contemporary Chinese art. He acquired the Turner watercolours over the
past 20 years, some at auction, and some through dealers. Most were
kept in store at the Geneva Free Port and according to Sotheby's
specialist Henry Wemyss, there will be no problems exporting the works
out of the UK should they go to foreign buyers. Indeed, Sotheby's is
taking the group around the world, including Hong Kong and Los
Angeles, before the sale. "Turner is such an international name and
his technique of brush on paper resonates with Chinese buyers, as well
as the more traditional American collectors of his work," says Mr
Wemyss.

The Ullens collection covers everything from early, naturalistic
renditions of British coastal scenes to late, impressionistic views in
Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy. Among the most expensive
works is a large Swiss view, The Lake Lucerne from the Landing Place
at Fluellen, probably 1807-10, estimated at £2m-£3m ($3.95m-$5.91m).
This last appeared at auction in the Wills sale at Sotheby's just two
years ago when it made £1.86m ($3.35m). Another work, Oberwesel, 1840,
carries the same estimate.

Last year saw new Turner records established for an oil and
for a work on paper: a Venetian oil, Giudecca, La Donna della Salute
and San Giorgio sold for $35.86m at Christie's New York while the
watercolour The Blue Rigi sold for £5.83m ($11m) at Christie's London.
Christie's has traditionally dominated the Turner market so the sale
of this collection, which is the biggest to come to auction since the
Munro sales in 1878 and 1879, is a coup for Sotheby's, which offered a
guarantee on the group.