Archived entries for Featured Artists
About Eric Leleu
About Featured Series, 696
I arrived in Weihai lu 696 only 1 year ago. And busy as always, i could not get the chance to meet all the artists of 696. So this project was a good chance to get into their space, into their world, into their imagination. That is probably what i preferred in shooting this series, mixing their imagination with mine.
My idea was to shoot the artists in their own studio, with eyes closed:
- to give access to their imagination, like if they are dreaming, we can imagine with their studio around them what is inside their mind, their next work.
- to be a metaphor of the closing of the place, like closing curtains…
If the closing of such a place as 696 happened in France, people would have complained. Maybe even demonstrate… The feeling in Weihai lu 696 today is both resignation, Chinese “mei banfa” but also confidence in the future. Confidence that everyone will find something as good.
Featured H.A.L. Artist: Jean-Louis Wolff and Jeong-Hyun Lee
Jean-Louis Woff and Jeong-Hyun Lee have been shooting together for six years. With a focus on fashion and editorial photography, they also maintain a flow of fresh ideas with personal and fine art projects. While working together in Seoul, something clicked and the duo was formed. By 2004, Jeong-Hun and Jean-Louis had set up a new base-studio in Shanghai. Since, they have had advertising contracts with Shanghai Tang, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Gore-Tex, as well as contributing regularly to Modern Weekly, China Vogue, and Elle. In January 2010, they relocated to Berlin.
Featured H.A.L. Artist: Patrick Wack
About Patrick Wack
A child of suburban Paris, Patrick has been based in Shanghai since 2006. After spending several years in the United States, Sweden and Berlin, he arrived in China with the ambition to become a photographer. Patrick focuses on the human aspect via portraits, reportages and fashion series. His work has appeared in Marie-Claire, Monocle, le Point, Capital, El Pais and Travel & Leisure. His commercial clients include agencies such as BBH and Wieden+Kennedy for Nike, the Shangri-La group, L’Oréal, Novartis, Daimler Benz and GE. Patrick is part of the German photo agency LAIF.
Featured H.A.L. Artist: Hsuan-Ying Chen
About Hsuan-Ying Chen
Hsuan-Ying Chen was born in Taipei and moved to Shanghai in 1999, where she continues to live and work out of her Weihai Road studio. Dividing her life between two massive and rapidly changing cities, Hsuan’s paintings and prints draw inspiration from the ever-modulating urban landscapes around her. Hsuan studied at the Boston University College of Fine Arts. Her work has been featured in international public exhibitions and private collections.
Featured H.A.L. Artist Xiong Wenyun
About H.A.L. Featured Artist Xiong Wenyun
Born in 1953 in Congqing, Sichuan Province, Xiong Wenyu is a contemporary multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in Beijing. After teaching for several years in Japan, Xiong returned to China where she spent three years in the late 1990s working on her multimedia project, “Ten Years of Moving Rainbow,” on the Sichuan-Tibetan highway. The terrain and climate of the area proved challenging, with frequent earthquakes, mudslides, and other natural disasters. But the Tibetan people, Xiong notes, live a very unique life, providing her with bountiful inspiration. The colorful clothing and Buddhist prayer flags enabled her to apply her keen sense of color. She relies on these symbols to approach the conflict between modern civilization and ancient traditions, examining the intersection of man and nature, and the attempt of harmonious living.
For more information, or to purchase some of Xiong’s work, please visit http://www.StudioDoorChina.com/, or http://www.ArtSpeakChina.org/.
Featured H.A.L. Artist Wang Qiang
About H.A.L. Featured Artist Wang Qiang
Wang Qiang’s simple sculptures and paintings are unusually diverse but are untied by a single theme–the challenging of social taboos. Though his work often seems brusque, it is usually sharply political, and aims to offer insight into the psychological functioning of society.
Wang’s well-known Currency series is subtly derisive, setting out to highlight and challenge the commercialization of life for the “new Chinese,” the blurring of notions defined by material wealth, and the politicization of China’s Renminbi. Images of international currencies are joined with varying images from China’s communist heritage, along with depictions of the artist himself. Wang examines the bills removed from their original context, articulating his view of the personal effect globalization and economic policy has had on China’s people.
The No Subject series deals with our veiled sexual desires, critiquing the traditional Chinese thinking that calls for preserving the principles of nature and eliminating human desire–an impossible and dangerous ideal. Using fashion, painting, and performance, the artist asks the viewer to consider how sex has been covered up in contemporary society, and how clothes, one of civilization’s primary markers, have literally and symbolically facilitated this phenomenon. He questions the validity of such a trend by peeling back the garments to expose the naked female body.[1]
For more information, or to purchase some of Wang’s work, please visit http://www.StudioDoorChina.com/, or http://www.ArtSpeakChina.org/.
Featured H.A.L. Artist: Efstathia Milaraki
“Untitled,” 240 x 90, acrylic on canvas, 2008 Continue reading…
