Themes of fantasy explored at innovative art exhibition
“FANTASY Creator” and “Fantasy Access Code,” are the two new innovative art exhibitions which have been recently unveiled at the chi K11 art museum.
It is the first time that “Fantasy Access Code” arrived in China with MI-ART of Royal Palace of Milan, which not only includes creative works of design, fashion and arts, but also adds on photo shooting and interactions in the exhibition hall for an entertaining experience. While the Chinese contemporary art exhibition “Fantasy Creator” tries to explore the cultural value and social meaning of women via paintings, installations and images.
For many visitors, perhaps “Fantasy Access Code” impresses them more with a strong visual impact at the beginning. Curated by Davide Quadrio and Massimo Torrigiani, five international artists were invited to explore the possibilities applying high-end fashion materials.
The overture of this exhibition starts with Italian artist Nanda Vigo’s “Crash” --— a space ship crash — landed into the museum, wedged between the walls of the room, which has opened up a passageway into a “mysterious world” for the visitors, where they might be immersed in the bright and beautiful colors of an alien garden, among lush leaves, tropical palms and a sprinkling fountain of light. According to the artist, the work itself is an intervention that explores the variety and shades of Alcantara, accompanied by the light drawings that characterize the artist’s work destabilizing the visitors even before entering the heart of the show.
Another eye-catching piece is created by Lorenzo Vitturi, an Italian artist based in London, who has worked on the alternation of proportions. Starting from images of the various production phases that give life to the materials, the artist made enlargements of images and turned them into three-dimensional objects, which were then assembled into multiform sculptures with bright colors, forming a psychedelic jungle, entitled “The Garden Inside the Thread.”
"Crash" by Italian artist Nanda Vigo
Fantasy Creator
Soon after the journey of “Fantasy Access Code,” “Fantasy Creator” is waiting ahead for the visitors to begin another art trip inside the museum. The works created by nine Chinese contemporary artists are inspired by the quote of Simone de Beauvoir, “On ne nait pas femme, on le deviant.” (“One is not born a woman, but becomes one”). The worship of a motherly goddess can be found in the earliest forms of religion and sacred practice. Women, therefore, have not only taken the identity of creators but also the source of all artistic creations itself.
“This exhibition integrates and activates the perception of senses, and its narration begins with the physical characteristics of the female body, gradually unraveling the mystery behind the inner personality of the feminine nature,” said Cynthia Jiang, the curator of the exhibition.
Nine artists will be featured in areas covering painting, installation work, interactive VR, sound art and other forms of artistic expression, and the goal is to take the female perspective and adopt feminine characteristics, while deconstructing female thinking and reconstructing women’s iconography and social roles.
"Goddess No. 3" by Gong Jian
The spotlight of the exhibition goes to two canvas titled “Goddess No. 3” and “Goddess No. 4” created by Gong Jian, a graduate from Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2001. Since 2013, Gong has made many attempts to depict certain statues he has observed in a park along with the trees and houses found in “little Byzantium,” the small community where he lives. The motif of the “Goddess” statues is reminiscent of the pervasive Disney-esque consumption culture of today, and object itself seems temporary or even illegally constructed. With a similar pose to “The Little Mermaid” statue in Denmark, the figure evokes an ancient Roman style, but there are also many unpolished and unrefined feature details. Still, this chaotic mix of aesthetics is actually quite powerful and rough yet with a touch of beauty, and the artist’s creation provides the viewers a retrospective of how popular artistic taste and social culture have evolved since the second half of the 20th century.
Different from Gong, artist Tian Xiaolei focuses on new media, VR to attract more of the involvement of the viewers into his work. His work, is made up of three VR game scenes, with viewers able to move freely in a 4-by-4, 16-suqare-meter space and to manipulate the environment through the use of an interactive handle that “really” allows them to step into his work upon donning the helmet. For example, one of the scene titled “The Inevitable,” the viewers with helmets on will find themselves in control of a machine that launches human bodies against a bombardment of disembodied hands thrown forth from a “Thousand-Hand Venus” and “Eveil Uterine Infant.”
