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"GOING GREEN" OPENS AT SCHUYLKILL CENTER

  • Date:2010-09-10

The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and the Asian Arts Initiative are pleased to cooperate with the Taipei Cultural Center in New York City to present the exhibition ?Going Green: New Environmental Art From Taiwan.? The show will open at Asian Arts Initiative, 1219 Vine St, Philadelphia 19107, on Friday, August 6, 5:30 ? 7:30 PM with a reception and panel discussion on contemporary Taiwanese environmental art by the curator, Jane Ingram Allen, Mary Salvante, Art Director at the Schuylkill Center and two visiting artists from Taiwan, Chao-chang Lee and Ping-yu Pan. The panel discussion will begin at 6PM. On Saturday, August 7, 3-5 PM, there will be guided tours at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, 8480 Hagy?s Mill Road, (Roxborough area) Philadelphia, to see the outdoor works in the exhibition created by two visiting artists from Taiwan.

Chao-chang Lee and Pin-yu Pan will be artists in residence for two weeks at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education from July 26 to August 6. The visiting artists will create outdoor site-specific environmental art installations as part of this exhibition. Lee will create an installation titled ?Everything is Buddha? using found natural materials and vegetables and fruit collected and shared with visitors. Pan will create a work titled ?Ark for Plants? that will be made of fallen branches and surround a young native tree with a protective boat-like structure. The indoor part of this exhibition will be in the gallery at Asian Arts Initiative and will feature works by Lee and Pan as well as works in all media by 14 other contemporary artists from Taiwan. The works in the exhibition focus on environmental issues such as global warming, pollution, waste disposal, loss of habitat, urban encroachment and other issues.

The artists and the artworks for this exhibition were selected by Jane Ingram Allen, an American independent curator, artist and critic living in Taiwan since coming there in January 2004 with a Fulbright Scholar award. She has curated exhibitions in Taiwan and other countries that focus on environmental issues and written feature articles and reviews for Sculpture, Public Art Review and other magazines. She initiated the Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture Festival in Taiwan in 2006 and was the curator of this environmental art exhibition for four consecutive years. She also curated an exhibition of international environmental art for Taiwan?s National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in 2009, and in 2010 Jane curated an international environmental art exhibition for Cheng Long Wetlands in Yunlin County, Taiwan. Jane is also an artist herself who creates environmental installations.

The ?Going Green? exhibition is sponsored by the Taipei Cultural Center, New York City, and funded by the Council for Cultural Affairs, Taiwan. The exhibition will open in New York on July 9, 2010, at Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing, NY; and then go to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia, PA, opening August 6 and 7; to Accident Gallery, Eureka, CA, opening Sept. 4, and then to the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, opening on Oct. 14. The exhibition will offer to the USA audiences an international perspective on environmental art and reflect the unique viewpoint and approach to nature of Taiwan?s contemporary artists who are just beginning to focus on the environment as an important issue for their country and the world. Taiwan is a very urban and highly developed technological country with many contemporary artists specializing in video art and new media. It is only recently that a few artists in Taiwan have begun to focus on the environment, and re-introduce to contemporary art the use of natural materials and a focus on the natural world that has always been of major importance in traditional Chinese art and culture. The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education and the Asian Arts Initiative are happy to cooperate in presenting this international exhibition in Philadelphia as part of their art exhibition programs to raise awareness about environmental issues and contribute to greater understanding and cultural exchange about the common environmental problems faced by the world today. The exhibition ?Going Green: New Environmental Art from Taiwan? will be on view at the Asian Arts Initiative and Schuylkill Center in Philadelphia from August 6 ? August 20, 2010.

For more information:

Jane Ingram Allen, Curator
Emai: allenrebeccajanei@gmail.com
Tel: 857-234-2432

or
Mary Salvante, Art Director
Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education
8480 Hagy?s Mill Rd., Philadelphia, PA 19128
(215) 482-7300
www.schuylkillcenter.org
Mary Salvenate?s email: salvante@earthlink.net
Tel: 215-816-7744

or
Gayle Isa, Executive Director
Asian Arts Initiative
1219 Vine St., Philadelphia, PA 19107
(215) 557-0455
Email: info@asianartsinitiative.org
www.aisanartsinitiative.org