Contemporary Dialogue Foundation

The first CDF club event was held with great success, enjoyment and intimacy on August 17th, 2008. We are very pleased to have all art professionals from various fields to join our first dialogue.  Although we chose our first topic on Contemporary Art from China, it only serves as a stimulus to allow us to think more in depth on art that we created, reviewed, criticized, and even imagined.

I want to give great thanks to Gigi Janchang, who introduced us to an artist from China, Zhu Feng, to join our first dialogue. Zhu Feng is an artist based in Shanghai, currently taking part in an exhibition in Bates, Maine. More works of Zhu Feng’s are available at www.r44.fotoyard.com.

Zhu’s art is a continuous experiment on the medium of photography. For example, his series “Top” are selected building tops from pamphlets, flyers, and brochures — free and easily found printed materials. Zhu reproduced them, turning them into “The second hand reality”. His portrait series “Face”, challenged the tradition of photographic portraits and their function as identification. The artist applies a method of scientific positivism to create a face, a de-constructed face, congealed in a virtual space of optics and mathematics.

However, The revolution continues: “New Chinese Art”, held in London’s Saatchi Gallery brought us to a very different, almost panoramic world of contemporary art from China, from well-established artists to new graduates, from traditional paintings to new media works. Jiin-yun Liang and Zhu shared their personal experience with the attending artists and their works to all of us.

We are definitely expecting more art professionals to join our themeful dialogue and share their thoughts, creation and experiences. The next dialogue will have the theme of ‘Found Objects’.   

– written by Liu Congyun/ edited by Jamie Windborne