MAY 7 - June 13, 2009
Opening reception: Thursday, May 7th, 2009 6:00 - 8:00pm
Reception "Asian Contemporary Art Week in Chelsea," May 14, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: May 7 to June 13, 2009 (NEW YORK, NY- May, 2009)
THE Gallery and Elga Wimmer PCC proudly presents THE Secret Garden. In this exhibition, artists present widely varying art works that address themes of Poetic Garden, Landscape in Motion, Wonderland, and Hidden Garden, co-curated by Howard Chen and Luchia Meihua Lee.9
Organizers:
Taipei National University of the Arts, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts Elga Wimmer PCC and THE Gallery
With thanks for their support:
Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan Taipei Cultural Center of TECO in New York First Federal Capital
Artists:
CHANG Lishan, CHEN Ching-Yao, CHEN Chun-Hao, FAN Yang Tsung, Jessica Pi Hua HSU, Kay LIN, Kaoruko, YAO Jui -Chung, PAN Hsin Hua, TZENG Yong Ning.
Treatment of gardens has evolved into a genre featuring many aspects of nature: Flowers, trees, water, and fauna ? all of which are messages to the dreamer. Gardens are realms of longing, both spiritually and physically, and one expects them to be pleasant, visually colorful, or playful. These qualities and other more surprising ones are evinced in the work of these Asian artists who challenge the mainstream culture discourse that relegates Asian contemporary art to a curiosity. Their collective oeuvre elucidates the diversity of experiences and culture that may be grouped together under the rubric of Asian contemporary art, Gardens change according to the season and as a result of human involvement. They are moving landscapes, and children's wonderlands, where fairy tales start. More frequently grounded in literary contexts, Asian gardens provide meeting places for poets, scholars, and literati; and mystical legend love stories flower in the back garden.
A framework for Dream in an Asian Contemporary Secret Garden consisting of the four areas of poetic garden, landscape in motion, wonderland, and hidden garden, located artists to distribute within these areas. Within these broad categories, these idiosyncratic visions generate a kaleidoscopic array of works that take part in manifold artistic dialogues. Juxtaposed with an Oriental floral motif is a Wall Street money matrix; pop images look down on kinetic installation art; finely decorated kimonos share wall space with fantasmatic paintings; dayglow pink polluted flamingos line up to lure sirens and forest messengers. Some of the gardens conjured up are neither enjoyable nor welcoming, and contain secrets that can only be unveiled by an artistic journey. Such gardens might be overlooked or ignored by untutored eyes. The wide variety of different interpretations of and responses to gardens is the theme here.
The flowers blossom and fade, then re-blossom and the sprout is reborn again in another spatial resolution. The cycle revolves any changes like daily incantations, offering an eloquent meditation on cities' daily movements, with mutability and eternal rhythms.
THE Gallery and Elga Wimmer PCC
ELGA WIMMER PCC, 526 W 26 #310, NY NY 10001, Tel: 212.206.0006
www.elgawimmer.com
Opening hours: Tuesday ? Saturday 12:00 pm-6:00 pm or by appointment